LA leaders want to take apart homeless services agency, calling it ‘broken’

Los Angeles cannot account for billions in money spent on the homeless.  They can not show positive results.  In fact, the more they spend, the more homeless we have.  The author of this article is “worried” that the agency running this failed program will be torn apart.  Who cares, it is a total failure.  They could not pass an audit.

“While the estimated number of unhoused people in the city of Los Angeles shrank slightly last year, from around 46,000 in 2023 to 45,000 people in 2024, the number of people experiencing homelessness has swelled in the last several years in both the city and the county. Countywide, the number of people who are homeless was estimated at around 66,000 people in 2020, compared to last year when more than 70,000 people were estimated to be homeless.

Meanwhile, investment in tackling homelessness has increased tremendously in the last decade, with sales tax measures and bond measures adopted by voters to fund services and the construction of housing. 

The city of Los Angeles budgets around $1 billion to tackle homelessness. But in November, City Controller Kenneth Mejia reported that in the previous fiscal year, the city spent less than half of the $1.3 billion budgeted.”

They did not have “trouble” tracking the money—THEY COULD NOT TRACK THE MONEY.

LA leaders want to take apart homeless services agency, calling it ‘broken’

As homelessness spending increased, a court-ordered audit found the agency was having trouble tracking the money it spent.

by Elizabeth Chou, Los Angeles Public Press,  03/18/2025,  https://lapublicpress.org/2025/03/los-angeles-homeless-services-agency-lahsa-audit/

Los Angeles leaders responding to scathing audit findings have renewed calls to gut or dismantle a joint authority that’s been tasked with responding to homelessness for the last 30 years.

County and city officials will take up proposals this week aimed at revamping how homeless services are delivered, amid criticisms over the ability of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to handle those services. 

A motion by LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath that calls for a new county department to deliver services, is set to be discussed Wednesday at a “cluster” meeting of board aides and county department staff that is open to the public. This meeting is expected to tee up a conversation by the Board of Supervisors, scheduled for April 1, on the creation of the new department, which Horvath  proposes should be staffed up and funded by July 2026.

The LA City Council is also slated to take up a proposal on Wednesday to create a homeless services oversight bureau in the city’s housing department. That plan is authored by City Council member Nithya Raman, who chairs the council’s housing and homelessness committee.

The proposals come after court-ordered audit findings released this month pointed to a lack of data on how homeless services funding are spent. The audit also questioned whether those funds were successful in actually helping the tens of thousands of unhoused people who are supposed to be able to rely on LAHSA for housing and other services. 

While the estimated number of unhoused people in the city of Los Angeles shrank slightly last year, from around 46,000 in 2023 to 45,000 people in 2024, the number of people experiencing homelessness has swelled in the last several years in both the city and the county. Countywide, the number of people who are homeless was estimated at around 66,000 people in 2020, compared to last year when more than 70,000 people were estimated to be homeless.

Meanwhile, investment in tackling homelessness has increased tremendously in the last decade, with sales tax measures and bond measures adopted by voters to fund services and the construction of housing. 

The city of Los Angeles budgets around $1 billion to tackle homelessness. But in November, City Controller Kenneth Mejia reported that in the previous fiscal year, the city spent less than half of the $1.3 billion budgeted.

LA County provided nearly $350 million to LAHSA this year, while the city of LA sent around $307 million. LAHSA’s budget also includes around $145 million from the state, $73 million from the federal government, and $2.5 million from private donors.

Horvath’s plan would likely gut LAHSA’s ability to contract with homeless services providers by taking away the county’s funding. Those contracts are for services that include field outreach, case management, housing navigation, and other services offered at shelters and housing programs. Without them, the agency would largely be left to handle the annual homeless count and to oversee a case management database for unhoused clients. 

Horvath was among several local leaders who said they were unsurprised by the audit’s findings. She said in a March 6 statement they were “another reminder” that the “current homelessness services system is broken.”

Meanwhile, Raman’s motion does not include proposals to scale back on LAHSA’s funding or duties, focusing instead on creating a bureau to do oversight over the city’s homelessness programs. She said the audit’s findings “reinforce the need for real oversight and performance management of our city’s homelessness response.”

“The work must happen now: this is about more than just metrics – this is about saving people’s lives by bringing them indoors into safety,” she said.

Proposals to break up LAHSA are not new. Horvath’s motion builds on recommendations by an LA County Blue Ribbon Commission in 2022 to create a county department. And the City Council voted last year to look into setting up a city department to deliver services in response to a motion by City Council member Monica Rodriguez.

Rodriguez responded earlier this month to the latest audit saying it, “underscores the need to immediately cease funding LAHSA,” and that it was “time to untether the city from this modern day Titanic known as LAHSA.”

LAHSA was set up in 1993 to resolve a lawsuit between the county and city over how general relief, also known as welfare, was distributed. 

While the LAHSA commission that steers the agency is made up of appointees of LA city and county leaders, the agency provides services to unhoused people in 85 of the 88 cities in the county. The cities of Pasadena, Glendale, and Long Beach opted to set up their own agencies to handle homeless services.