Homelessness money—where did it all go?

“We can’t take a message,” I heard over and over again, from Mayor Bass’ office and from every councilmember’s office I contacted. “Send an email detailing exactly what you want and someone will get back to you.” A spokesperson in the mayor’s office did send a number of press releases and promised to connect me to someone to interview soon, but  when will the council members call back? Good question. No responses by press time.

I remembered that when the Larchmont Chronicle interviewed Kenneth Mejia during his run for city controller, the position he now holds, he promised he would use his analytic skills to create charts and graphs that would rate the efficacy of government programs. I called and emailed his office to hear how Mayor Bass’ Inside Safe initiative fared by the numbers. No answer yet.

Governor Newsom allocated $24 billion for the state to tackle homelessness over the last half decade. My quest is to get information about what happened to the purported $2.4 billion of Los Angeles’ unaccounted for funds earmarked for homeless housing. The biggest problem is there was no tracking of whether any of the various funded homeless programs and providers succeeded. Do recently housed Angelenos stay housed? I would settle for details numbering the refurbished housing, new shelter beds, tiny homes, hotel rooms and any other list of what we’ve done to house, temporarily or permanently, the unhoused in our city. The 2025 Homeless Count took place in February, and the preliminary tally indicates a 5-10% decrease in the numbers of our unhoused population. That data was released early by LAHSA, the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority, to try to mitigate the damage done by the disastrous audit. It will be late spring or early summer before the final results are tabulated. That information will certainly help shed some light on what’s been accomplished.

For three years I wrote about Franco (originally called Giorgio), a homeless man who stood with his shopping cart on Larchmont Boulevard by day and slept by the Beverly/Rossmore bus bench most nights. I followed his journey from the street to a senior facility. Along the way I talked with various entities working to find a dignified solution to our homeless problem: nonprofits, city and county officials, medical and psychiatric personnel. There was an extraordinary belief in their power to do good, matched by the extraordinary amount of overlap in what they were doing and where they were doing it. No wonder we can’t account for all the good that’s been done and all the waste that’s occurred.

I look forward to hearing back from more of the people who should have at least some of the answers. We deserve to know more.