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iAUDIT! - On Thursday, February 5, I had the pleasure of being a member of a town hall panel discussion on homelessness at a meeting of the Encino Neighborhood Council’s Public Safety Committee. I was one of 14 panel members who represented the Mayor’s Office, Councilmember Raman, LAHSA, the County’s new Homelessness and Housing Department, LAPD, Supervisor Horvath’s Office, and other City and County Departments. Representatives from the nonprofit Chrysalis were also there. The session was in a Q&A format and lasted about 90 minutes.
Overall, the town hall was cordial and informative. When I said a critical weakness of current homelessness interventions was the fragmented nature of city and county programs, the City, County, and LAHSA representatives agreed, and claimed they were working on more coordinated efforts.
Things became a bit less collegial when the subject turned to the number of homeless people assisted. When I pointed out most of the statistics cited by the city merely showed the number of processes completed rather than the number of real people served, the Deputy Mayor took umbrage, claiming the city has made great strides in increasing outreach, shelter and housing. I cited the March 2025 court-ordered review from Alvarez & Marsal, as well as audits from the City Controller and L.A. County Auditor showing how easily people could be counted more than once in the current homelessness system. Rather than explaining how those reports were wrong, city and county representatives insisted they were helping more people than ever, with no empirical evidence to support their claims. Councilmember Raman’s aide took particular offense when I pointed out the inconsistency of the city claiming a reduction in unsheltered homelessness, when recent court hearings showed the City CAO could not empirically verify the number of shelter and housing units. I said it seemed odd the Mayor and Council would brag about great numbers, then spend more than $7 million in attorneys’ fees to withhold statistical proof. Councilmember Raman’s aide said she has expressed “concern” about the expenditures, but was unable to commit that she will not bring those expenses to a stop.
The conversation turned testier when I cited four audits from 2007, 2018, 2021, and 2024, in which auditors cited LAHSA for poor cash handling and contract management practices, (and also found the City routinely approves whatever LAHSA sends it). The Deputy Mayor accused me of cherry-picking audits that made public agencies look bad, while claiming he had a “study from RAND” that showed how cost efficient Inside Safe is. That was an interesting statement since the four reviews I cited came from the L.A. County Auditor, a professional and independent audit agency. He could have been referring to a RAND study showing a significant reduction in Hollywood’s homelessness, but that same study found the latest PIT count may have undercounted the unhoused population by as much as 7,900 people, completely wiping out the claimed reductions in homelessness over the last two years. Regardless, he quickly changed the subject, trying to move away from a “philosophical discussion” about audits and looking for new questions. This is indicative of many officials near-paranoid aversion to discussing actual performance. There is nothing philosophical about audits; they are based on hard and undeniable facts.
The discussion descended to the absurd when the subject turned to Inside Safe. I cited the City Controller’s homelessness dashboard showing $323,452,150 has been expended to house 1,352 people, for a per capita cost of $239,240 per housed person. (At the meeting, I erroneously said $260,000, but the $239,240 is correct as of this writing). Inside Safe has “served” 5,179 people for a cost of $62,450 per person. I said that, for reference, the 2023 per capita income for the city of LA was $48,000 per year, or about 76% of what Inside Safe spends per unhoused person served. I said it didn’t seem very cost-effective that the cost per person housed was five times the median per capita income in the City. The Deputy Mayor claimed it was well worth the money spent to house 1,352 people. What he failed to mention is that 2,270 of Inside Safe’s clients fell back into homelessness, a number 67 percent higher than the number housed. The Deputy Mayor also bragged about housing retention rates near 90 percent in the first two years of a person who was housed. Again, he failed to mention the long-term results. A study of permanent housing from the American Public Health Association showed that, while most clients remained housed in the first two years, the number fell to 36 percent by the fifth year, and 45 percent of clients died over the 10 years of the study. Even those who remained housed faced a precarious lifestyle, with 38 percent moved 45 times in 10 years to avoid eviction.
The Deputy Mayor also seemed to be unaware of a 2024 survey of Inside Safe clients documenting the lack of services. The survey results found:
· 70 percent of clients in the program received no permanent housing assistance
· More than 70 percent received no mental health services, and of those who did, most received just one service contact
· 45 percent received no social services of any kind, with only seven percent receiving substance abuse recovery assistance and five percent employment help
· 34 percent don’t even know who their case manager is.
City representatives went to great lengths to convince the audience homelessness has decreased, and Inside Safe has been the primary reason. Taking them at their word, at a cost of $239,240 per person and with 46,000 unhoused people in the City of LA, it would cost $11 billion to house them through Inside Safe, or about 82 percent of the City’s entire annual $13.5 billion budget. That is neither cost effective nor realistic.
The City’s position was the perfect example of what social researcher Stephen Eide refers to the power of rhetoric over reality. Their response to critical reports was basically “why should we just take a bunch of audits as the last word, when we’re up here showing the audience the great progress we’re making”? Basically, the city’s representatives were asking attendees to suspend their belief in professional studies and actual statistics in favor of what the representees (and the elected officials they represent) want us to believe.
In all fairness, some of the city’s representatives were more grounded in reality. The spokespeople for the LAPD, LASAN, and Recreation and Parks commented on the frustration of clearing encampments, only to have residents move back in, sometimes on the same day. Their comments reflected my initial statement that there is no such thing as city-wide policies. Since each Councilperson can decide the priorities for his or her district, and since there is no single authority over all homelessness programs, there is no unified response to clear an encampment and keep it cleared.
The representatives from Chrysalis also offered a realistic take on what an effective service provider looks like. Chrysalis focuses on life skills like job training and financial responsibility, instead of simply providing inconsistent services to a passive population of unhoused people. Since the system pays providers for completing processes instead of outcomes, it was refreshing to find a provider who truly wants people to learn how to live independently. An especially radical response came from a question about service resistance. The Chrysalis representative was forthright in saying some people do not want to leave the streets because it means giving up their substance abuse habits, or because they don’t have the mental capacity to make decisions in their own interests. This was a startling break from the usual provider narrative that unhoused people are helpless victims of circumstance, and service resistance is a myth.
As I said several times during the town hall, I did not want to turn the meeting into a personal attack on anyone sharing the stage with me, especially the career civil servants from the LAPD, Recreation and Parks, LASAN, and County Mental Health. They are struggling with limited resources, politicized leadership, and conflicting priorities. In my encounters with City and County staff, I have found them to be dedicated professionals doing their best to operate within a broken system. My issue is with the elected and executive leaders who have created a cumbersome, unproductive, and inefficient system, and who will do anything, including spending $7 million in legal fees, to protect it.
Overall, the town hall was an example of the “something is better than nothing” argument. Inside Safe may be titanically expensive and marginally effective, but it’s better than nothing. As the Deputy Mayor said, “We know it’s expensive, but it gets people off the street”. While the statistics show that claim is shaky at best, it also shows the mentality of most homelessness program managers; it’s better to do something, no matter how expensive or ineffective, than to change the narrative and rethink the entire structure of homelessness interventions. Any question about the efficacy of a program that spends nearly a quarter of a million dollars per person to temporarily house people in barren hotel rooms with no support services must be rebranded as placing money over human lives. That attitude is either incredibly naïve or profoundly cynical. It also creates a false dichotomy between cost and effectiveness. A program can be effective without being ridiculously expensive. Thoughtful and responsible public managers look for the most cost-effective way to provide the best possible results. In LA, we see just the opposite; insanely expensive programs that show poor results, but that support a narrative that in turn supports a complex system of public agencies and providers, all of which must maintain that narrative to survive. It has not only led to waste on a mammoth scale, but it is the main reason 75,000 people sleep on our streets each night.
Finally, I would like to than Roy Nwaisser, president of the Encino NC and its Public Safey Chair, and other members who coordinated a very successful, and I hope, informative meeting. We need more open discussions like that to separate fact from rhetoric. A recording of the meeting may be found here.
(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. )
