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.
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.
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