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iAUDIT! - Over the past few weeks, news stories may have left you wondering who, if anyone, is in charge of the $4 billion in taxpayer money spent on homelessness. LAHSA’s Commission has indefinitely delayed changes to its internal audit charter that would increase accountability of its programs. Service providers complain LAHSA’s shelter occupancy data is so inaccurate it slows the process of moving people off the streets. The City Controller is in a political battle with the City Council over his authority to audit homelessness programs. Further, the Council has delayed approving a program monitor as ordered by a federal judge. It seems no one has the ability or desire to step up and take responsibility for how the homelessness system works or where our money is going.
Let’s take a look at LAHSA’s latest effort to avoid accountability. In late September, its Audit Subcommittee brought internal audit reforms before the full Commission, only to see them deferred to an unknown date. LAHSA’s public relations person gave lip service to reform, saying the Commission wanted to carefully study the reforms before approving them. When a reporter from LAist asked the LAHSA representative who was reviewing the proposals, he received no response. In the face of a devastating audit from the County and an even more damning assessment from a court-ordered review, one would think systemic reform would be at the top of the Commission’s agenda, but it has adopted its usual attitude of delay and deflection.
A good example of LAHSA’s inability (or unwillingness) to confront its performance issues is the years-long problem of providing inaccurate shelter bed data to the city and service providers. In December 2023, the L.A. City Controller released a performance audit revealing LAHSA’s shelter bed tracking system was practically useless, to the point employees were using daily emails to survey shelters on availability, and some providers resorted to calling shelters to see if there were beds available. In its response to the audit, LAHSA’s leadership promised it would have a useable system in place by June 2025.
However, as reported in an October 2 LA Times article, LAHSA still hasn’t fixed its system. For example, data from early August showed 86 of 88 beds in an East Hollywood shelter were empty. In reality, the shelter provider said 84 of its beds were full. Despite LAHSA’s cheery December 2024 press release about taking a “major step forward” in implementing a new system, providers told the Times the system is even worse than it was before. The article quoted LAHSA interim CEO Gita O’Neill as saying the “software behaved in unexpected ways,” forcing LAHSA staff to follow up via email to confirm bed status. A more robust internal audit function, with the authority to monitor and measure performance, could have found the problems earlier in the process and made recommendations to fix them. As usual, a majority of LAHSA’s Commissioners showed no stomach for committing to actual performance measurement, instead deferring internal audit reforms to a later and as yet unspecified date.
The habitual avoidance of accountability seems to be an unstoppable epidemic in LA’s homelessness community. For its part, the Los Angeles City Council seems to be just as avoidant of responsibility as its LAHSA counterpart. On October 7, it deferred, for the third time in a month, approval of a court-required monitor over its data reporting. In June, federal Judge David O. Carter ordered the appointment of a monitor to oversee the City’s homelessness program data collection and reporting system, after an assessment by audit firm Alvarez & Marsal found much of the information in city reports was missing or inaccurate. Last month, the attorneys for the plaintiff, LA Alliance for Human Rights, and for the City agreed to appoint former LA City Controller Ron Galperin and data specialist Daniel Garrie as the monitors. Apparently, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto failed to inform the Council of the agreement, and Councilmembers refused to approve the agreement on September 29 and October 2. On October 7, the Council punted the decision to the Housing and Homelessness Committee for a recommendation. Details concerning the deferment are sparse because most of the decision-making took place behind closed doors, but there could be a number of reasons for the delay. Mr. Galperin was a persistent voice for reform when he was City Controller, calling for changes in the City’s relationship with LAHSA and more financial oversight over the costs of housing funded by Measure HHH. Some Councilmembers who depend on support of the corporate nonprofits that have benefited from the lack of performance requirements may be hesitant to appoint Mr. Galpern. Cost shouldn’t be an issue, since the Council approved almost $6 million in payments for a few weeks’ work by law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher in its fight with the Alliance. If the City is willing to spend $6 million to avoid accountability, it will certainly be unwilling to spend anything that may expose its program weaknesses.
Part of the pushback against a monitor is coming from current City Controller Kenneth Mejia. In multiple statements to the press, he has criticized the Council for agreeing to use outside consultants to review homelessness programs, and for opposing his proposal to audit them with staff from his office. He believes he can do the monitor’s job within his department’s existing budget. His statements are part of a larger effort to get the City’s Charter Reform Commission to recommend expanding the Controller’s authority. He claims he could have done a more thorough--and less expensive--analysis of the City’s programs than the one done by Alvarez & Marsal. The Council also stymied Mejia’s efforts to investigate Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit with a long history of questionable ethical and financial practices.
As a former government auditor, one might think I support Mejia’s efforts to expand his authority. His staff has done some very good work on homelessness, including highlighting deficiencies in data reporting and performance. Nevertheless, I do not support his proposal. The reason is not because of his political ideology (he’s a confirmed member of the city’s progressive DSA-aligned contingent). It’s that he allows that ideology to affect his objectivity. As I wrote last year in the Westside Current, Mejia wasted the Controller’s limited resources on a valueless audit of police helicopter operations and made fundamental errors in a review of deaths among the unsheltered homeless. He also wants to change his office’s role to include duties as the City’s Chief Financial Officer. This shows a serious misunderstanding of an auditor’s role. If he were to be both auditor and CFO, he would then have the authority to audit himself. One cannot spend money and then audit that spending. Anyone who has even a passing understanding of government audit standards knows that. I may go into more detail in another column, but the point is that Mejia, like other elected leaders, has allowed his personal agenda to supersede his obligation to work for the common good.
Returning to the question of who’s in charge, the answer is no one. Elected officials, neither individually nor collectively, are willing to take responsibility for the widespread failure of LA’s homelessness programs. LAHSA’s Commission won’t take responsibility for its own operations, and the City Council won’t allow itself to be held accountable by an independent monitor. Council members, the City Attorney, and the City Controller all have their own agendas and priorities, and can’t coordinate issues among themselves, no less provide consistent direction to program managers. But we must not forget that it is we, the electoral public, also bear responsibility. If City Council or County Board of Supervisors members have failed to exercise their authority, it is we who elected them to their offices. If elected officials duck accountability, it is because we have allowed them to. Perhaps we need to be reminded elections have consequences and take that reminder to the ballot box in 2026.
(Tim Campbell is a longtime Westchester resident and veteran public servant who spent his career managing a municipal performance audit program. Drawing on decades of experience in government accountability, he brings a results-driven approach to civic oversight. In his iAUDIT! column for CityWatchLA, Campbell emphasizes outcomes over bureaucratic process, offering readers clear-eyed analyses of how local programs perform—and where they fall short. His work advocates for greater transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness in Los Angeles government. )
