Comments
iAUDIT! -
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury.
Signifying nothing.
-- William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, Scene V
One of the reasons I enjoy Shakespeare is because his writing covers every facet of the human condition. From unbridled love to the worst treachery, Shakespeare described the whole spectrum of humankind’s strengths and weaknesses as no one did before or has since. His play MacBeth is possibly the best example: love, betrayal, ambition, loyalty, guilt, mirth, delusion and death itself all have pivotal roles in the play. Towards the play’s end, MacBeth is beset by tragedy on all sides; his wife has been driven to madness and suicide over the guilt she feels for her part in murdering good King Duncan. The army of MacDuff, a rebellious noble bent on avenging Duncan’s death, is at the gates of MacBeth’s castle. Macbeth himself is tortured by paranoia and guilt. Sensing his impending doom, MacBeth performs a final soliloquy packed with despair and defiance, concluding with the famous lines quoted above. It exposes life’s ultimate futility, and our tendency to defend lost causes and mistake vanity for honor. Despite the tragic circumstances, one can almost hear MacBeth laughing at himself for foolishly believing his time in power was anything more than a fleeting moment in history.
If Macbeth saw life in his time as full of sound and fury, we could see 2025 as a year of noise and silence, especially when it comes to homelessness in Los Angeles. Local officials were quick to claim victory when it suited them and even quicker to stay silent when faced with hard truths. The year started out with an unusual announcement from the City and LAHSA that, based on the 2025 Point in Time count, homelessness had decreased by about five percent. What made the announcement unusual was that it was made in March, several months earlier than LAHSA usually releases its count results. The timing was interesting because it came on the heels of a devastating court-ordered review of homelessness programs which found, among other things, that neither LAHSA nor the City do a good job tracking clients. The City/LAHSA press release also touted increased numbers of people in shelters. What the release failed to mention was a CalMatters investigative report from the month before that described sexual assaults, violence, and mistreatment of people in shelters, including those operated by some of the City’s and LAHSA’s favorite providers.
Despite all the boasting about a supposed decrease in homelessness, leaders have been notably silent about questions regarding the actual number of people sheltered and housed. The CalMatters report was just one of several detailing poor management and inaccurate data in LA’s shelter system. In fact, we really don’t know how many people have been served. A 2019 L.A. City Controller audit of LAHSA’s outreach programs showed that people who enter shelters, then leave and return after more than a month are counted twice. Similarly, the court-ordered assessment from Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) revealed there are multiple risks of counting the same person more than once as he or she moves through the shelter-housing system. On December 9, 2024, Mayor Bass’ office issued a press release ponderously titled, “Delivering Results In 2024: Comprehensive Homelessness Strategy Nearly Doubles Permanent Housing Move-Ins Since Mayor Bass Took Office, Thousands More People Moved Inside Than in 2022”. In the release, the Mayor claimed more than 23,000 people moved into temporary housing in 2024. However, taking the Controller’s 2019 audit and A&M’s report into account, those 23,000 people include an unknown number of clients who moved in and out of shelters as many as six times in one year and were counted as unique each time. The Mayor’s press release was followed the next day by an audit from the City Controller that showed shelter bed occupancy never exceeded 78 percent over the five years covered in the report, and fewer than 20 percent of those in shelters were permanently housed, with nearly 50 percent falling back into homelessness, some of whom fed the continuing cycle of multiple counts. What the Mayor’s report actually recorded was the repetition of a temporary housing process 23,000 times, and that process has little relation to the number of people actually served.
There is also no empirical basis for the claim homelessness has decreased. There are so many questions about the way LAHSA conducts the annual PIT count, it seems little better than divination. An October LAist article detailed problems with recent counts, including areas LAHSA’s managers chose to ignore rather than correct with follow-up counts. The article quotes the RAND Corporation as finding the 2023 and 2024 counts could have undercounted the homeless population in three key areas by between 26 and 32 percent. In terms of numbers, that means as many as 7,900 unhoused people were missed, more than the claimed reductions in 2024 and 2025 combined. The PIT count’s mismanagement could have been exacerbated by purposeful manipulation of the numbers by LASHA executives, as alleged by two whistleblower complaints. Again, city officials have remained curiously silent in the face of these stories, continuing to insist homelessness has declined.
Nobody embodies noise and silence better than Mayor Bass. When the court-ordered assessment was released in March, she was quick to praise the report, saying it “Validated her efforts to ‘change what’s festered for decades’ and “The broken system the audit identifies is what I’ve been fighting against since I took office. We still have work to do, but changes we’ve made helped turn around years of increases in homelessness to a decrease by 10% — the first one in years. The City, the County and LAHSA are working together to change and improve the system, and we are committed to continuing to do that”, continuing to make unverifiable claims about a reduction in homelessness. Councilmember Raman joined the chorus by saying she was pro-reform all along.
However, when it came time to accept accountability and take action for the poor management of the city’s homelessness programs, the Mayor did a quick U-turn. Faced with the possibility of being required to testify in open court, she and the City Attorney quickly turned to high-priced law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher to threaten an appeal if she was made to testify. She and the Council majority also backed an appeal of Judge Carter’s order to appoint a monitor over the city’s data reporting; so far, that appeal has cost taxpayers about $6 million. One cannot miss the hypocrisy. When it suits her, the Mayor cites dubious numbers that claim minor decreases in homelessness, portraying herself as a bold reformer. However, when challenged to provide proof of those reductions, she and the Council hide behind a screen of lawyers and who have been paid millions in an effort to maintain the status quo. For her part, Councilmember Raman issued a rant against the contempt hearings taking place in Judge David Carter’s court, claiming that being required to back up the boasting about decreased homelessness is just too onerous for the City.
We also saw a quick switch from noise to silence regarding the US Attorney’s fraud indictments concerning properties purchased with Project Homekey funds. When the indictments were announced, Mayor Bass issued a press release saying, in part, “My administration has zero tolerance for corruption – period. We’re working with the U.S. Attorney’s Office to ensure that anyone who engages in fraud against the city will face the full force of the law.” However, an October 17, 2025, Westside Current article noted the Current had reported on questionable transactions two years before the indictments were handed down; those articles were met with silence and denials from the Mayor and the City.
As for the Mayor’s new-found intolerance for corruption, she’s had precious little to say about the matter since her long-time political ally Kevin Murray, CEO of the large nonprofit Weingart Center, was suspended over the property transactions, and then stepped down from the County policy committee overseeing the use of Measure A funds.
A few days before Mr. Murray resigned from the County committee, the Mayor released an op-ed in the L.A. Daily News railing against possible reductions in homelessness funding, once again repeating her unsubstantiated claims of reductions in unsheltered homelessness. She decried the Council’s move to defund LAHSA and transfer the money to the County’s new Department of Homelessness. Without a trace of irony she wrote, “This department does not exist yet, has no track record, and already faces a projected $300 million deficit that was closed by cutting the very programs that will almost ensure homelessness will increase next year”. Yet she heads a city that cannot prove it made any substantial progress reducing homelessness despite spending $1 billion per year on the crisis. Her op-ed made no mention of LAHSA’s mismanagement of the PIT Count, nor of the ongoing lawsuit in federal court, nor even of her ephemeral zero-tolerance policy toward corruption. She did write, again seemingly unaware of her own hypocrisy, that’s she’s built a homelessness system “rooted in transparency, accountability, and urgency”. No mention of her refusal to testify in court, her ongoing support of legal efforts to fight accountability for the data the city collects, nor of the myriad scandals swirling around programs and officials she has supported.
The irony and hypocrisy of LA’s leadership would not be lost on Shakespeare. The difference is his MacBeth at least showed a hint of introspection as he neared his comeuppance. Mayor Bass and some members of the City Council live in their own world, where they get to define reality and ignore inconvenient facts. As we move into 2026, however, they may no longer have that luxury. Judge Carter will continue his contempt of court hearing on January 12. The US Attorney’s Office has suggested the recent indictments are just the beginning. Most importantly, in June and November, voters will have an opportunity to decide if noise and silence should continue to be the City’s official policy, or if we need new blood to honestly face our structural problems and get down to the real business of solving our homelessness crisis.
(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.)
