“Leadership in L.A., someone is going to have to fall on a big, fat grenade to really change the way housing is produced,”

read the quote from

“economist and co-director of the RAND Center on Housing and Homelessness,”

Jason Ward, in the Los Angeles Times story by journalists Doug Smith and Liam Dillon.

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Repeating the quote outside the courtroom of Judge David O. Carter, himself known for colorful language from his time in the U.S. Marines, suddenly didn’t seem like such a good idea. Most especially, in the presence of the U.S. Marshals Service, which staffs the courthouse entrance. If anyone has tried to jump on the “grenade” though in Los Angeles, it’s been Judge Carter, and he’s taken the blast from trying to tackle the issue.

Only minutes before, Judge Carter had threatened to get the U.S. Attorney’s office involved if the audit launched by firm Alvarez & Marsal didn’t get to the bottom of a hold-up in producing invoice data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) to Los Angeles County to provide to the auditors. The audit was approved by Mayor Karen Bass and City Council last March. The Mayor said at the time,

“We’ve reaffirmed our commitment to transparency and accountability,”

promising that financial data would become even more transparent within a matter of weeks. Despite the optimism, things haven’t proved so simple at getting at why LA has failed so badly in addressing the crisis of the unhoused, at least in terms of official numbers and spending. Admittedly, the numbers can be more complex than they seem; some people are getting off the streets, but others are landing on them.

Controller Kenneth Mejia had now produced the website promised by the Mayor, so the City and the County found themselves in court again with LAHSA, an independent joint-powers authority, in response to a settlement agreement with LA Alliance for Human Rights. Counsel for LA Alliance, Matthew Umhofer and Elizabeth Mitchell had spent the morning of Wednesday, October 16, before Judge Carter demanding an “evidentiary hearing.” At one point, LA Alliance showed pictures of First Street between the U.S. Federal Courthouse and Los Angeles City Hall from 1984 and 2024 showing encampments to highlight their argument that not only had the City, County, and LAHSA failed to address the crisis, but to seemingly try to drive a wedge between the governmental bodies. County outside counsel J. Mira Hashmall from the firm Miller Barondess wasn’t impressed, shooting back that they needed:

“evidence, not pictures,”

that the government was acting in “bad faith” again, as Mitchell and Umhofer had previously argued.

Immediately after taking office in November 2022, Mayor Karen Bass had declared homelessness an emergency, launching her signature Inside Safe program to address the crisis. Intervenor Shayla Myers from the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles ("LAFLA") was equally unimpressed with Alliance’s strategy, accusing Umhofer of having:

“misstated the City’s position,”

in regards to their proposed bed plan.

Judge Carter wasn’t impressed with the legal fireworks over the plan, which would seemingly reduce the number of available shelter beds by 2,500 from the 8,663 total as of June 30.

Carter resolutely declared:

“The bottom line is, I don’t think it’s in anyone’s interest to reduce beds.”

The City and County, under the now-expired Freeway/Roadmap agreement, had an elaborate funding strategy that incorporated State funding. The City, under increasing financial pressure, has become reticent to promise continued funding for the system, especially with unclear and uncertain Federal, State, and County funding.

The deeply troubled bottomline for maintaining an expensive and undulating re-housing system through LAHSA has been fraught with invoicing problems. Past uninvoiced spending totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly after the passage of Measures H and HHH, when Mayor Eric Garcetti faced increasing “point-in-time” figures and authorized new programs, including A Bridge Home, seems to be the focus of concern. Investigation to-date has revealed that a significant portion of this spending may have gone to non-reimbursable “sworn” Los Angeles Police Department (and possibly Los Angeles Fire Department) overtime as well as to dozens of nonprofit service providers. So who could help track down the missing invoices?

To begin addressing this question, we attempted to contact four prominent Garcetti-era officials; only one responded: former Controller Ron Galperin. The former Controller, in an email response, noted that his position:

“does not work for the Council or Mayor,”

but rather is:

“independently elected.”

Galperin further stated:

“In my role as Controller, my office did report on City spending (including, of course, homelessness-related). The office also issued reports and conducted audits - on matters such as [City Proposition] HHH, City properties available for housing development and homeless, mapping of dedicated affordable housing…”

A prior report from Galperin in 2019 criticized LAHSA’s outreach efforts as reactive and goals went unmet. During the Garcetti administration era, homelessness worsened in the City of Los Angeles, going from an estimated 22,993 in 2013 to an estimated 41,890 in 2023. Garcetti stated that solutions to the problem were beyond the reach of the Mayor’s office in exit interviews.

We did not hear back from former Deputy Mayor for City Homelessness Initiatives Christina Miller, who now works for the Hilton Foundation, along with former Deputy Mayor for Homelessness Jose “Che” Ramirez, who lists himself as a “Senior Advisor” to Mayor Karen Bass, and Brian Buchner, former Chief of Homelessness Operations & Street Strategies, who now serves as an Assistant Inspector General for the LAPD, Office of Inspector General. Buchner now teaches at the University of Southern California in their Online MS in Criminal Justice program, and famously, per reporting from former Knock LA journalist Jonny Peltz, worked to organize meetings for billionaire entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg with city leadership to discuss homelessness. Out of the five members of the Board of Supervisors, only Hilda Solis declined to meet with Katzenberg.

According to current LA City Council President, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Katzenberg:

“lobbied him about mobile healthcare stations,”

per the report and met with almost the entire City Council and other officials.

The City of Los Angeles has subsequently heavily invested in a street medicine program, piloted by Keck Medicine of USC, which received a $4 million contract per USC’s press release, describing a “fireside chat” between Mayor Karen Bass and USC President Carol Folt.

The latter is quoted as saying:

“The homeless population is probably something that everyone in this room thinks about every morning that they wake up.”

—USC President Carol Folt in a “fireside chat” with Mayor Karen Bass

The audit ordered by Judge Carter, which now may not be delivered until January 15, 2025, may not be fully comprehensive, despite the expanded scope covering LAPD costs and services from the County of Los Angeles, most notably mental health services. It seemed for every step forward, there were two backwards.

The Alvarez & Marsal auditors, led by Managing Director Dianne Rafferty, suggested that due to the complexity of auditing such a large-scale endeavor, they would only have “low-to-medium confidence” in its findings, despite costs approaching $4 million dollars. And it’s not even a fully forensic audit! Comparatively, this is a drop in the bucket of past spending, much less future spending, with the Times report suggesting a revised draft proposal to reach a “functional zero” level of homelessness that would cost:

“$21.7 billion to end homelessness in a decade in Los Angeles, two-thirds of which is unfunded.”

Rafferty had joined via videolink for the morning's hearing, barely speaking as the hearing turned into a municipal back-and-forth over invoicing between City, County, and LAHSA. The meeting didn’t feel very productive at the end.

Later that same day, City Council’s Homelessness and Housing Committee met in Room 401, which is smaller than the body’s chambers. Councilmember Kevin De León, who was recently allowed back on the committee after being removed over the Fed Tapes scandal, and Monica Rodriguez, who represents part of the San Fernando Valley, were no-shows. Committee Chair Nithya Raman, Bob Blumenfield, and Imelda Padilla presided over the overflowing meeting with a number of critical items, including invoicing on the agenda as well as tenant rights. Many people were unable to enter from the exterior of City Hall’s public entrance on Main Street. Powerwashers cleared the sidewalk across Main Street at City Hall East.

A letter...