Independent Audit Shows Los Angeles Can’t Account For $2.5 Billion Supposedly Directed to Combat Homelessness
One of the LA County Supervisors wants to “DOGE” Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
About a year ago, I reported that an state audit of the California homeless program was conducted, which was focused on the actual effectiveness of the $24 billion effort to curb the problem.
The findings revealed there was no mechanism to judge effectiveness, nor efficient ways to account for how the money was being spent. The entire effort to curb homeless in this state has been a complete failure.
Now comes news that an independent audit commissioned by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has revealed significant issues in how Los Angeles city and county are managing billions of taxpayer dollars spent on addressing the homelessness crisis.
Not surprisingly, the findings align with those identified as problems with state efforts.
The audit by the global consulting firm Alvarez & Marsal found that the city was unable to track exactly how much it spent on homeless programs and did not rigorously reconcile spending with services provided, making it impossible to judge how well the services worked or whether they were even provided.
Contracts written by LAHSA were vague, allowing wide variations in the services provided and their cost, it said.
Those findings echoed a November report by the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller that found lax accounting procedures resulted in the failure to reclaim millions of dollars in cash advances to contractors and to pay other contractors on time, even when funds were available.
The audit, posted on the website of U.S. District Judge David O. Carter Thursday arose from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group representing business owners, residents and property owners, which alleged that the city and county were failing in their duty to provide shelter and services for people living on the streets.
I hope you’re sitting down, but after an audit it looks like there may be problems with homeless services in Los Angeles. pic.twitter.com/GG4qsSlvqS
— Kevin Dalton (@TheKevinDalton) March 6, 2025
One attorney following the review closely referred to it as an “infrastructure disaster”, with The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) at the epicenter of the problem.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for LA Alliance for Human Rights. “It’s atrocious. It’s immoral. It’s unjustified. But, what it is not, is surprising.”
Many of the problems identified were at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA.
The auditors said the agency’s paper trail was so poor that tracking the $2.5 billion spent last year was nearly impossible.
“It is an actual infrastructure disaster,” Mitchell said. “The truth is everybody is in charge and nobody is in charge. There are no checks and balances.”
One of the LA County Supervisors wants to “DOGE” LAHSA.
In one example, auditors said LAHSA leaders failed to provide them documentation to verify the existence of about 2,300 housing sites the agency was responsible for. Seventy percent of the contracts for those sites did not disclose any expenses over the prior year, the auditors added.
County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath responded to the audit by calling LAHSA’s problems “a nightmare,” and announced that she will schedule a vote by county supervisors to pull county funding from the agency and instead have the county manage it directly.
“We cannot accept this dysfunction any longer,” Horvath said.
The fires have made a bad situation even worse.
Formerly homeless people who have experienced addiction, domestic violence, or mental illness now worry they won’t be prioritized for placements, despite losing their homes and qualifying for state and local homelessness initiatives to get people indoors. Many homeless people who have long waited for housing will be forced to wait even longer, as more displaced people face homelessness and compete for costly housing.
It’s unclear how many formerly homeless people are homeless again. Street medicine providers and other front-line workers say some are temporarily living in hotels, while others moved in with friends or family members.
🤬🤬🤬 MORE PROOF that EVERY CENT of “homeless” in LA & California is a waste & must be PERMANENTLY HALTED.
If it weren’t bad enough that @GavinNewsom lost $24B state homeless $, independent audit shows “impossible” to track $2.5 BILLION of LA homeless $
We need to IMPRISON… pic.twitter.com/lKYytewdyC
— California DOGE (@CA__DOGE) March 7, 2025
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Comments
“LA can’t account for 2.5 billion…”
Why can’t they account for it?
Well, if they tell what they did with it, they’ll get in trouble.
Check the coffers of ActBlue.
This is insane.
If you go into ANY private company and they ‘can’t account for’ money, people go to prison.
It’s utter LUNACY that government is allowed to just casually shrug and say, ‘whoosie poopsie! We just can’t figure out where the money went, our mistake!’
Hold the chief executive accountable. Right to prison.
I’m SHOCKED! SHOCKED! I tell you.
You beat me to it.
You could make an effort to be even more shocked.
Surprise, surprise, surprise! — Pyle, G.
Oregon wants permanent funding at over $200M annually for 4800 beds. You do the math.
They must be in this affordable housing project:
https://djcoregon.com/news/2023/05/11/northeast-portland-affordable-housing-on-the-way/
I’ll let the reader do the math, and this is from the numbers that they don’t want to hide!
I guess there isn’t as much grift in a $50 tent and a $50 sleeping bag, even though those are generous prices.
Every blue city needs DOGE.
I guarantee you will find the well-connected serving as well-paid executives of the “homeless charities” that got the money.
It is increasingly looking as if NGOs that are not money-laundering operations are the exception rather then the rule.
There is a lot of money to be made in the poverty business.
Everyone sane knows if you subsidize something, you get more of it.
If there is federal money in that mess, Kash should be putting together a task force right now. Hopefully the LAHSA people and their contractors and subcontractors will be losing sleep soon.
Yeah, that was my question. All state money? Any federal grant sweeteners?
How much was “lost” at the State Department when HRC was Sec. of State? 6 or 7 billion dollars IIRC. Does anyone remember that? Was there any investigation? Were there any consequences?
Didn’t think so.
Who ever thought this homeless fund was ever intended to actually do anything for the homeless?
“Well, I hope that will be a lesson to progressives that problems aren’t solved simply by throwing money at them,” I said in my cheeriest SpongeBob SquarePants imitation.
There was a county or city in CA that had planned to build a bunch of tiny homes (shacks), and the plan had them costing over $600,000 each. Insane.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I expect exactly zilch to be done about this. After all, it’s not their money
Incorrect.
It wasn’t their money at the start of the program, but its sure as heck their money NOW.
“Thanks, taxpayers!”
I would have thought it would be much higher.
It’s likely nothing will change, the homeless- industrial complex is a vested political interest group now, along with the public sector employees unions that own and operate CA government.
now do the high speed rail
infrastructure jobs are often union payoffs.
The vile Dhimmi-crat Party crime organization has turned graft, nepotism, embezzlement and wanton profligacy of the public fisc — at municipal, state and federal levels — into an art form.
Behind almost EVERY government paid social aid program, there is a massive GRIFT.
Not new news.
Back in the days of (the sainted) Ronald Reagan when suddenly, for no apparent reason, homelessness was a problem (perhaps it was not having a (D) in charge?) there was a certain homeless “activist” active in the DC area (where I was then residing, so I followed the soap opera). He had a few…. issues, his longterm gf kept wanting to break up and kept coming back when the threatened suicide.
So…. homelessness then being the hammer (D)s used to hit (R)s over the head with, and DC being National News Central, every time that activist threatened to commit public suicide they increased the homelessness budget again. And again. (DC’s budget being provided by the Feds, btw.)
So…. at one point the budget was so generous that even using the inflated numbers the (D)s and activists made out of thin air for the #of homeless in/near DC, it came to “build new houses with gold-plated plumbing” for each homeless levels. Reagan had it cut back to “build new shelters with gold plated plumbing” levels, for which sanity he was resounded criticized as a heartless bastard by the MSM and the (D)s (but I repeat myself).
>The activist in question finally killed himself, when that (and his gf finally staying left) both happened.
>The MSM and the (D)s rode that horse into the ground.
Until the next (D) president, where for no apparent reason the estimated (never counted, it was standard practice for activists to make actual counting of homeless both racist and undoable) #of homeless dropped on Day 1, and was never a problem worth talking about again.
>Until the next (R) president, where Day 1 the (estimated) #of homeless again increased and was a problem worth talking about.
Mitch Snyder.
He slept on crates with Martin Sheen and liked to clock old lady.
Gace Mitch image prob that even WAPO couldn’t shine up.
High schoolers left alone for the weekend with the liquor cabinet unlocked.
Most of the homeless are drug addicts or alcoholics. They choose to be homeless because they will have more money to spend on drugs and booze. We should reduce the welfare for people living on the streets.