With this latest revelation of incompetence and possible malfeasance, ill Angelenos finally demand accountability?
As has been reported in the Westside Current and elsewhere, on Thursday federal district judge David O. Carter, who has been presiding over a yearslong lawsuit brought by a nonprofit called the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights against the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), released an outside audit of the agency’s operations and finances. It is, in a word, devastating. It also confirms what observers have been saying for years. LAHSA, which was established three decades ago as a city-county agency charged with coordinating homeless services, is broken. Possibly beyond repair.
The third party audit by global professional services firm Alvarez & Marsal, follows on the heels of a November 2024 audit by the Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller’s office. That report found similar flaws in LAHSA’s recordkeeping, management, and execution.
As I’ve noted in the past, the City of Los Angeles spends $1.3 billion per year on homelessness. That’s 10% of the city’s total budget, to service 0.11% of the population. That’s madness. Of that funding, $307 million went to LAHSA.
Consider also the bloat. The agency’s budget grew from $63 million in 2014 to $875 million last year. During that same period the number of homeless people in L.A. County increased from 53,000 to more than 75,000 in 2024. In other words, the homeless population increased by 42% while LAHSA’s budget increased by 1,289%. From 2014 to 2023, the last year for which numbers are available, the agency’s headcount increased from 118 people to 840, a 612% increase. The number of executives at the agency who make more than $100,000 per year increased from nine to 163, a 1,711% increase. Overall, in 2014 7.2% of LAHSA employees made six figures. In 2023, nearly 20% made that much.
Are we seeing a pattern here?
Are we seeing a pattern?
There have been other serious questions about LAHSA’s performance and competence. In December the L.A. City Controller’s Office released yet another audit that found more than a quarter of the agency’s shelter beds went unfilled between 2019 and 2023, at a cost to taxpayers of $218 million.
Last month CalMatters reached a settlement with the agency related to its failure to respond to information the outlet had requested via the California Public Records Act (CPRA). CalMatters had requested reports of serious incidents at homeless shelters including deaths, assaults, domestic violence and medical emergencies.
LAHSA stonewalled and CalMatters sued. Pursuant to the settlement the agency will release 175 incident reports every two weeks until it has released all of the estimated 5,000 in its possession. That means it will take more than 14 months for CalMatters to obtain those records. Talk about a slow walk.
Finally, recent reporting identified potential conflicts of interest on the part of senior LAHSA leadership. According to an updated story in LAist about this month’s audit, “Among the payments that have had no performance reports to LAHSA were $1.7 million last year to [LAHSA CEO Va Lecia] Adams Kellum’s husband’s employer, under a $2.1 million contract Adams Kellum signed in a breach of ethics rules …. Another with no performance reports was a $60,000 LAHSA consulting contract for Adams Kellum to advise the mayor in the six weeks leading up to becoming LAHSA’s CEO.” Her annual salary tops $430,000, nearly twice that of her predecessor.
Prior to her hire at LAHSA, Adams Kellum was CEO of the homeless nonprofit St. Joseph Center. As I wrote in September 2020, a local business owner witnessed St. Joseph Center employees attempting to dump a disabled, elderly homeless woman in his parking lot.
At this point it’s fair to ask how many more audits, lawsuits, and exposes it will take for city and county leaders to finally hold the agency’s leadership to account. Or better yet, to dismantle it altogether and start over again. Some city and county leaders are calling for just that, including Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger.
Adding bureaucracy to bureaucracy
Unfortunately, there are also some terrible ideas floating around City Hall and the County Seat. For example, on February 26 councilmembers Nithya Raman, Bob Bluemenfeld, and Katy Yarovslavsky introduced a motion to study the feasibility of setting up a new Bureau within the Los Angeles Housing Department. It would be tasked with “performance management” of LAHSA, and would be staffed by employees of the Department as well as LAHSA, the Mayor’s Office, the City Administrator’s Office, and the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
Because there’s no cure for bureaucratic bloat like more bureaucratic bloat.
Even the Alvarez & Marsal audit itself has experienced mission creep and budget bloat. Pursuant by an order from Judge Carter in April 2024 the City initially retained the firm for $2.2 million. However, according to the Times that amount subsequently increased as the “scope” of the audit grew. The final tab may have been as much as $4.2 million.
Incidentally, as a lawyer who worked at a large national firm that itself performed outside audits for cities, counties, Fortune 500 companies, and other entities with budgets far larger than LAHSA’s and the other City entities involved, I cannot fathom how Alvarez & Marsal needed that much to perform theirs.
Oh, wait. Yes, I can.
Also according to the Times story, a Managing Director at the firm was concerned that employees who worked on the audit were experiencing PTSD as a result of their visits to homeless shelters and encampments. Dianne Rafferty said, “The emotion that came out seeing what they were seeing and how these people are living, with all the money going to the service providers was heart-breaking.”
Pro tip to Ms. Rafferty: if your employees are so triggered merely by visiting homeless encampments, maybe your firm wasn’t the right pick for the job. Or maybe you chose the wrong employees for this particular gig.
Will this latest audit finally be the incentive for City and County officials to bring the hammer down on LAHSA, and for that matter the entire homeless industrial complex, which exploits some of society’s most vulnerable? They haven’t shown much appetite for it in the past.
Maybe they need a little goading. One thing residents can do is take a minute or two to write to your councilmember and supervisor to demand real reform (or, if you prefer, the elimination of LAHSA). While it’s easy to be cynical in this day and age, elected officials do pay attention. Especially if they hundreds or thousands of emails and phone calls on the same issue.
You can find your councilmember’s contact info here, and your supervisor’s here. Maybe its time for a little direct action.
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