Homelessness in LA: When Will We See Real Change?
iAUDIT! - When I began this column in 2023, I had a simple goal: to write stories about homeless program performance based on verifiable facts and numbers. There is more than enough opinion and political spin surrounding homelessness, and I wanted to cut through the rhetoric. To that end, I have tried to cite objective sources whenever possible. I often use reports from homeless government agencies themselves, as I did for a 2023 report on LA County homelessness agencies I prepared for the LA Alliance for Human Rights. That report showed the County consistently underspent money dedicated to homelessness programs, and failed to properly track the outcomes of its programs. The only comment from County officials was that the report didn’t “tell the whole story” even though 90 percent of the data cited came from County records.
That report and the reaction to it set a pattern that has persisted to present times. Every time a report showing how poorly local government has responded to the homelessness crisis was released, officials would claim the results were biased, inaccurate, or that the problems had already been corrected. In November 2024, L.A. County’s Auditor/Controller issued a report on LAHSA’s chronic financial mismanagement. Among other things, the Auditor found LAHSA failed to track more than $50 million in advance payments to service providers, and used restricted funds to pay for ineligible costs. Even though LAHSA claimed it had corrected the most egregious problems, as I described in a column from this past March, the Authority’s financial mismanagement persisted right up to the present. Only HUD’s threat to withhold federal funding, and the County’s withdrawal of its funding has brought an end to LAHSA’s fiscal incompetence.
But readers should not assume LAHSA’s imminent demise will end the waste and inefficiency. A court-ordered report from forensic accounting firm Nardello & Company released in October revealed years of mismanagement and lack of oversight of LA’s homelessness programs. Nardello’s investigators found rampant neglect of the physical and mental well-being of people in subsidized housing, including copper theft and flooding. An LA Times article summarized Nardello’s findings, citing poor communications among the City, County, and service providers. The article stated “Information being reported to the court comes from a handful of agencies that all use different data systems: the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the Los Angeles Housing Department, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, and the mayor’s office”. In other words, each agency uses its own reporting system, and they exert little effort in reconciling discrepancies. Hundreds of housing units remain vacant because repairs have not been made, or because the inability (or unwillingness) to share data means people who would be eligible for shelter remain on the streets. Once again, local officials issued reassuring statements about a new commitment to working together, but offered little in the way of concrete action.
Nardello’s report shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has been following LA’s homelessness crisis. As I wrote in October 2025, homelessness program managers have no idea how many homeless people live on our streets; they don’t know how many unique individuals are sheltered or housed, and they often have no idea what service providers do with the money they’re paid. No amount of political rhetoric can change those facts.
Nor should we expect real change after the recent elections. Despite her unproven claims to have reduced street homelessness in her district by 47 percent, mayor-elect Nithya Raman has been an ardent supporter of the status quo for years, opposing the County’s efforts to defund LAHSA (until she decided to run for mayor), and ignoring residents’ complaints about a mismanaged shelter in her own district, other than granting a $42,000 no-bid contract to a nonprofit she founded for unspecified “ambassador services”. Now, County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath has announced she will run for the newly created position of County CEO. Speculation among pundits is that she championed LAHSA’s defunding so she could bring its revenues into the County’s organization; funding the new CEO will control. That funding, much of which will go to a huge constellation of nonprofits, will give the CEO immense power to steer grants to favored organizations. Horvath, like Raman, has supported the Housing First approach to homelessness for years, despite its long history of failure. Instead of real reform and true progress, we can expect more of the same rhetoric from local leaders. Even as yet another story of alleged fraud by a nonprofit executive broke a few weeks ago, no one in power has seriously discussed fundamental reform. The real question is how much more bad news can LA’s electorate tolerate before it demands real change.
(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.)
