Judge Carter Demands Answers on How Millions for Homeless Services Are Being Used
City officials in Los Angeles have not yet released data regarding how they are spending more than $230 million of public funds designated for homeless outreach and services. That delay has landed them in hot water with a federal judge, raising concerns about transparency and accountability in addressing the city’s homelessness crisis.
Judge David O. Carter of California’s Central District Court told Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) officials that the agency seems to be intentionally “slow-footing” the data’s release.
“You’re not working on your time frame now. You’re working on mine,” Carter said during a court hearing in late August, according to a report from LAist.
The data is part of a settlement reached two years ago between the City of Los Angeles and the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights. In March 2020, the Alliance sued both Los Angeles city and county officials and accused them of neglecting the human rights of people experiencing homelessness.
As part of the settlement, officials agreed to spend more than $236 million to create enough shelter space for 60% of the area’s unhoused residents. That includes more than 13,000 new shelter beds and supportive housing units, as well as 3,000 mental health and addiction treatment beds.
However, city officials have been reluctant to detail how they’ve spent the money to date. Those delays seem to have angered Carter, who chided the city’s efforts in court.
LAHSA’s deputy chief analytics officer, Brett Kuhn, told Judge Carter that the agency plans to release the data in October. But that didn’t seem to be enough to assuage Carter’s concerns.
“I don’t know how much more clear I can be. Get going,” Carter said during the hearing. “I mean now.”
A Long-Standing Struggle for Transparency
Carter’s comments exemplify a broader issue between the local homeless advocacy community and Los Angeles officials. For years, advocates have been trying to get local officials to be clear about how they are spending public money when it comes to addressing homelessness through services and supportive housing. However, those efforts have not cleared the waters.
In January, Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia released an audit that found the city had three times more people experiencing homelessness than available beds in the shelter system. The audit was released at a time when Los Angeles was doubling down on its sweep-to-shelter efforts to try to get more homeless people to use the city’s shelter services.
A couple of months later, in March, U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer noted that the city of Los Angeles made more than 100 revisions to their sweep data as part of an ongoing case. The records were submitted in response to a request by Fischer for the city to show that they were not destroying personal items like photo IDs, tents, and clothing during homeless sweeps. In response, the city removed time and date stamps from their documents and changed the verbiage they used to describe what happened at the sweeps.
Attorney Shayla Myers, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of local advocacy group KTown For All, told the Los Angeles Times that the city’s submitted evidence was about “misleading the court and the public about the existence of safeguards to ensure the city isn’t illegally throwing away unhoused people’s belongings.”
Ineffective Use of Tools to Combat Homelessness
LA has also struggled to use its existing tools to address homelessness effectively. One of the main tools in the city’s sweep-to-shelter model is an ordinance designed to prevent encampments on public property. However, the city’s chief legislative analyst found that the ordinance has been “mostly ineffective” at getting people into housing.
Only 17% of contacts—or roughly 315 people—were placed in supportive housing over the course of three years because of the ordinance.
Take Action Now
Now is not the time to be silent about homelessness in California or anywhere else. Unhoused people deserve safe and sanitary housing just as much as those who can afford rent or mortgage.
Poverty and homelessness are both policy choices, not personal failures. That’s why we need you to contact your officials and tell them you support legislation that:
- Streamlines the development of affordable housing
- Reduces barriers for people experiencing homelessness to enter permanent housing
- Bolsters government response to homelessness
Together, we can end homelessness.
