Are LA’s Homelessness Programs Collapsing on Themselves?

Anyone who’s seen documentaries about space exploration knows what a black hole is. When a supermassive star runs out of hydrogen fuel, the forces of nuclear fusion can no longer counteract its mass, and the star collapses in on itself. If the star’s mass is high enough, the collapse is so intense, and the remaining matter compacts itself so tightly, a teaspoon of it weighs millions of tons. The gravity field created by the remaining material is so strong, even light cannot escape. Since we can’t see them, the only evidence we have of black holes are images of superheated material being sucked into their gravitational fields. Scientists are still debating what happens to material caught in a black hole; it may disintegrate into basic subatomic particles, or it may be ejected back into space. In layman’s terms, black holes are eternally hungry, and we have no idea what happens to material entering their fields of control.

Although it takes billions of years, supermassive stars eventually collapse. The collapse happens in the blink of an eye, but there are signs disaster is coming. Stars go through wild fluctuations as they destabilize, flooding nearby space with radiation and becoming brighter and dimmer until they implode.

The analogy with Los Angeles’ homelessness system is obvious. Local agencies are huge, cumbersome organizations propped up by massive cash infusions. Programs are so opaque, no one, including their leaders, knows what, if anything, they accomplish. Attempts to reform the system meet fierce resistance from advocacy groups and the elected officials who depend on them for support. But we are seeing definite signs of eminent collapse. Within the past few weeks, the news has been full of stories that indicate LA’s bloated homeless system is on the precipice of falling apart.

Starting from a wide view, LA Times columnist Steve Lopez describes how LA is spiraling into a dystopian landscape of broken infrastructure and wasted resources. The area around City Hall, which should be the city’s showcase, is weed-choked, covered in graffiti and populated by homeless people, many in the throes of mental illness or substance abuse. He specifically called out Councilmember Hernandez’s $27 million social experiment at MacArthur Park, where fences and unarmed “ambassadors” have done little to stem the flood of drug users and crime in and around the park.

Narrowing our view to the three major homeless agencies: the City, the County, and LAHSA, we can see the relentless erosion of the official story that we are making progress on homelessness. On April 5, the Times ran a story on Mayor Bass’ premier homelessness program, Inside Safe. The article details how more than $300 million in expenses over the past three years have resulted in about 40 percent of the program’s clients returning the to the streets. According to the City Controller, Inside Safe has housed only 1,431 people, and 25 percent (358) are in time limited subsidized housing, and may fall back into homelessness when the subsidies run out. Per the Times, most clients are stuck in a netherworld of long-term shelter occupancy, neither housed nor technically homeless. Mayor Bass offered no concrete plans for getting people stuck in the system into permanent housing.

For her part, Mayor Bass has consistently stuck to statements long on rhetoric but short on results. A March 4 press release cautioned the City Council not to make rash decisions about defunding LAHSA. In the release, Bass stated, “What we need is a serious, thoughtful transition plan – the last thing we need is a new department and more bureaucracy. In the last budget cycle, we created a Homelessness Bureau within the LA Housing Department, solely focused on ensuring oversight, accountability and results. We need to continue investing in oversight capacity over time while we develop a comprehensive transition plan. My proposed budget for the next fiscal year will prioritize streamlining operations and improving efficiency within LAHSA to continue the progress made thus far. We need to continue putting people and services first.” Her statement is ludicrous. LAHSA’s failures are manifold and well-documented. And whatever gains the City has achieved after spending $1 billion per year are either temporary or unverifiable. The City has been embroiled in a months-long contempt of court hearing for obstinately refusing to produce the raw data to support the Mayor’s claims of success. To justify her claims, Mayor Bass regularly uses statistics from LAHSA, data that was labeled as “smoke and mirrors” by the Authority’s former CIO during court testimony. As I described in a recent CityWatch LA column, few of the City’s homelessness numbers can be supported by the limited data available.

A key statement in the press release is “We need to continue investing in oversight capacity over time while we develop a comprehensive transition plan”. What does that mean? Why wasn’t oversight built into the structure of homelessness programming to begin with? What is it about oversight that needs to take place “over time”? LA has had more than 20 years of the same program structure; surely that would be enough to implement effective oversight. Its these kinds of statements that reveal just how unserious Mayor Bass and other leaders are about bringing accountability to the homelessness system.

What we are seeing is the slow but inexorable crumbling of the City’s narrative around homelessness. Like a dying sun burning the last of its fuel, the Mayor and some Councilmembers continue to pump out earnest press releases about “success stories” with little or no factual support. Federal Judge David O. Carter may soon find the City in contempt of court, and increased scrutiny from state and federal funding agencies may call the City to account for the billions it has spent on homelessness, with no definitive progress.

Moving on to the County, its new Housing and Homelessness Department is headed by a former LAHSA senior manager. There is little chance she will vary from the failed policies that have plagued LA’s homelessness system for decades. Indeed, like the City, the County is sliding toward a contempt of court hearing because it cannot produce proof of its claims that it is meeting its agreement to provide additional services. The new department is pleading poverty because of reductions in state and federal funding, even though it anticipates collecting as much as $1 billion from the half-cent sales tax voters approved in Measure A in 2024. Like the new County Department, the “independent” advisory committee on the measure’s funding priorities is full of representees of the status quo, including some whose organizations will benefit from the new funding.

Finally, we come to the poster child for failed programs, LAHSA. The Authority has a virtually unbroken history of managerial and financial disasters; over the past few months, these seem to have piled up into an avalanche that may well overwhelm it. The latest fiasco occurred when LAHSA missed the deadline for submitting its federally-required Single Annual Audit. The audit is a routine task almost every local agency performs without difficulty. Yet LAHSA’s leaders cannot even complete this simple duty. External auditors warned executives for months they were not receiving required documents and financial information, but leaders failed to inform Commission members until a few weeks before the deadline. Despite assurances to the press from LAHSA’s Communications Director, the Authority missed the deadline, and we’ve heard nothing since on when it may finally submit the audit report.

Nearly two months ago, LAHSA’s Finance staff told Commission members it owed at least $69 million to providers in late payments. The same problem was noted by LA County auditors in November 2024. Managers claimed they were working on improvements to the Authority’s payment system, but on April 10, LAist reported the payments were still late and some providers were on the verge of shutting down. The article reads like something from a Kafka play, as City officials noted they’ve authorized millions in advance payments, yet have no idea where the money went. Senior city staff member Jon Wickham “…said advanced payments from the city to LAHSA were being passed “back and forth and around and around in circles.  I actually haven’t been able to get to the bottom of that myself,” Wickham said when asked why that’s happening. “Nobody [can] understand that.” As poor as LAHSA’s cash management may be, it speaks poorly of the City when it willingly advances the Authority millions when it doesn’t know where the money is going, especially, as the article notes, some of the money for the advances was “borrowed” from the City’s beleaguered General Fund. And, it should be noted, this is the agency Mayor Bass has staunchly defended from calls for reform since she took office.

Examples of LAHSA’s mismanagement are so numerous and so flagrant, the proposed federal government budget for 2027 singled it out as an example of a failed homelessness program. (See page 31 of the draft budget). That is quite remarkable because the document is only 92 pages long and covers the entire apparatus of the US government, not just homelessness or HUD. The document succinctly states, “LAHSA has an abysmal record of reducing what is the highest number of street homeless individuals in the United States, and an independent audit issued in March 2025 found that the authority failed to accurately track billions of Federal and local dollars..”. Regardless of what one may think of the current occupant of the Oval Office, LAHSA’s disastrous track record of poor leadership, fiscal irresponsibility, inept contract management, and unaccountable programming more than justifies questioning its continued existence.

Are we seeing the impending implosion of LA’s homelessness system? The signs are certainly there. The City and County are being battered by questions neither can answer in court. LAHSA’s finances are collapsing and leaders seem unconcerned. People continue to live on the streets or remain stranded in poorly-run shelters. Funding limits are forcing leaders to confront the precarious state of the narrative they’ve tried to maintain for decades.

Suppose the system does collapse. What then? We could hope reform-minded leaders would emerge to bring accountability and goals-based management to the homelessness system. But the reality is that unless elected officials are willing to appoint leaders from outside LA’s hermetically sealed homelessness environment, we may see more of the same, merely rebranded. We need reform at the very top of the political system to drive real change.