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iAUDIT! - In any given year, LA’s local governments spend between $2 billion and $4 billion per year on homelessness issues. A vast array of outreach, street medicine, shelter services, and permanent housing programs target the estimated 74,000 unhoused people in the country. That’s about $54,000 per year for each homeless person. Despite increasing budgets and more human resources being poured into homelessness, the number of unhoused people has remained stubbornly high.
Before continuing, we need to understand there is no empirical evidence to support local officials’ claims of decreases in homelessness. Despite Mayor Bass’ oft-repeated claim that street homelessness has decreased, the numbers have been sullied by LAHSA’s deeply flawed PIT count, allegations of manipulating the numbers, and other studies like RAND’s survey that found LAHSA may be undercounting the homeless population by as much as 30 percent. Just because leaders keep repeating claims of decreases doesn't mean they’re real.
With all the news about failing programs, funding suspensions, and alleged fraud, it would be perfectly reasonable for one to ask if local government is really concerned with reducing homelessness. It seems many leaders are more interested in defending their programs than they are with the results those programs achieve. The mayoral campaign between Mayor Bass and Councilmember Raman has become a debate between Inside Safe and unbridled Housing First policy, as if those were the only two strategies available. And yet, despite the arguments in City Hall and County offices, tens of thousands of people remain unsheltered and unassisted on our streets.
What reasons do we have for questioning leaders’ commitment to ending homelessness? A few recent news stories can help frame that question. On June 23, I received an interesting email from LAHSA’s Public Information Office. The Authority announced it was terminating its contracts with a provider called Home at Last Community Development Corporation (HAL). The press release said the termination was due to HAL’s sudden decision to close two shelters it was managing under LAHSA contracts. The release went on to say HAL had received almost $2.8 million in advance payments, $600,000 of which it was still holding at the time of termination. LAHSA also received a notice from the IRS that it had seized cash associated with the home address of HAL’s founder. LAHSA noted the residents of the two shelters were being relocated to new facilities.
While it may appear this is a rare case of LAHSA holding a provider accountable for a failure to perform, a closer reading reveals otherwise. What the press release calls “decisive action” is in fact purely reactive, taking place only after HAL breached its contract and the IRS announced its own investigation. The key to effective contract management is being proactive, addressing issues before they become problems. The consequences of being reactive are shown in another news item about Urban Alchemy, a nonprofit that contracts with the city and LAHSA, and how it unilaterally reduced the capacity of a safe parking site without informing anyone. It took a year to correct the contract payments, and there was no mention of recouping the improper payments made to the nonprofit.
We must also understand lackadaisical contract oversight is systemic; it is not limited to Los Angeles. On June 23, San Francisco’s Grand Jury released a report on homelessness program management that found many of the same problems we see in Los Angeles. A description of problems with shelter operations included a passage on a facility managed by Urban Alchemy, “Reported conditions at or around 711 Post Street, a large-scale shelter site operated by Urban Alchemy, also prompt concerns about issues not captured by the contractual metrics for performance and outcomes. HSH described Urban Alchemy’s 711 Post Street as a success based on its contractual service and outcome objectives. At the same time, community neighbors reported ongoing safety and quality of life issues were not considered or assessed by HSH”.
Reviewing the entirety of San Francisco’s homelessness programs, the report stated, “The [Grand] Jury has concluded that such issues and concerns are not limited to these incidents; they reflect a system that often lacks the tools, oversight, and accountability to provide adequate services to a population with high levels of disease and disability, including serious mental illness, chronic physical disease, infectious disease, substance use disorders, physical disability, and functional impairment”. This summarizes a common theme I have mentioned many times in my columns; the emphasis on process over outcomes makes the goal fulfilling checklists rather than reducing homelessness.
Even veterans, who should be a priority for being housed and receiving services, suffer from local government’s apathy. A June 26 LA Times article details the bureaucratic bungling that’s left the West LA VA housing campus exposed to unfettered crime because it is in a jurisdictional no-man’s land. The campus is on federal land but managed by a private provider, so federal law enforcement cannot respond to criminal calls. The LAPD has no jurisdiction, and the nearest County Sheriff’s station, which should cover the campus, is miles away in West Hollywood; it takes deputies hours to respond to calls. Residents describe a dystopian landscape where theft, drug use, and death are common occurrences, and the city, county, and federal governments seem more interesting in maintaining siloes than in responding to veterans’ needs. The Times article quotes city/county officials using a line we hear all too often” “There’s nothing we can do”. The more accurate statement would be “There’s nothing we will do”.
The common theme in these news stories is what MIT Public Policy professor Michael Lipsky called “the myth of altruism” in his seminal book, Street-Level Bureaucracy. Lipsky wrote the myth of altruism is the assumption that public agencies provide benefits and fair treatment, and act in their clients’ best interests. (pp 71-73). Officials go to great lengths to perpetuate this myth by creating a universe of training, rhetoric, and policies that, superficially, have the goal of reducing homelessness, but in practice maintain the current structure.
Leaders create a lexicon using terms like “personal agency” and “harm reduction” to justify policies that appear to be compassionate, but in fact virtually guarantee people will be left on the street indefinitely. As Lipsky wrote elsewhere in his book, organizations and the people in them tend to adopt policies that perpetuate the status quo if that ensures their continued existence and expansion. To some degree, achieving functionally zero homelessness would be an existential threat to the funding model many large nonprofits and public agencies depend on to exist.
But perhaps the real answer to the question of why local governments have failed the unhoused is organizational inertia. Nobody has the authority or desire to question the fundamental assumptions behind current homelessness policies. As Raman’s and Bass’ campaigns show, there are no new ideas being proposed for the November election; its either more Inside Safe or more Housing First, neither of which work, but both of which provide a rich source of revenue for a huge universe of local agencies and nonprofit organizations.
Leaders’ talk of compassion and claims of reduced homelessness must be compared with reality on the ground. There is no empirical evidence homelessness has significantly decreased. Encampments may move but they are rarely permanently cleared. People move in and out of the shelter system without obtaining any meaningful services. Therefore, with some assurance, we can answer the question “Do local governments care about the homeless”? with a resounding No.
(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.)
