Federal judge orders overseer for LA’s 'failed' homeless programs, too few beds provided

(The Center Square) — A federal judge ruled the city of Los Angeles is failing to meet its court-ordered agreement to provide another 12,915 new beds for the homeless by 2027.

U.S. District Court Judge David Carter ordered the selection of a third-party monitor and quarterly, in-person court hearings on the status of the city's programs.

In 2022, the LA Alliance for Human Rights reached a settlement with the city of Los Angeles to create new “housing or shelter solutions” by June 13, 2027.

The federal ruling focused on the city’s failure to adhere to the agreement. The judge noted the city did not verify that contractors are providing the services they are paid for and that half of the new homeless beds it says it created were either not open or could not be verified. According to the ruling, the city has recently inflated its bed count by counting nearly 2,000 beds from the city’s Inside Safe program, which places homeless individuals in hotels.

The Inside Safe program has been particularly controversial due to its high costs and limited outcomes.

In 2023, an investigation from The Center Square uncovered that Los Angeles was spending $17,009 per homeless individual per month on the Inside Safe program, which temporarily places homeless individuals in hotels.

Last summer, City Controller Kenneth Mejia released data showing the $341 million spent thus far on Inside Safe had served only 2,728 individuals, only 30 of whom were either reunited with family or back on their feet in unsubsidized housing.

City officials now say taxpayer costs for room and board alone for Inside Safe beneficiaries are $7,000 per month, a figure that does not include additional, often standard supportive services.

The $84,000 annual room and board cost per Inside Safe beneficiary is even higher than the Census-reported $80,366 median household income in the city, which typically supports a family of three.

The ruling also found the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has failed to consistently verify “programmatic compliance” — that contracted services are provided — and that “over half (51%) of planned reviews omitted such checks.”

“In a sample of 10 contract monitoring reviews for fiscal year 2023–24, LAHSA failed to maintain adequate workpapers for any of the reviews — one review had no documentation at all, and the remaining nine lacked clear support for the conclusions drawn,” wrote Carter. “Additionally, none of the reviews showed evidence of supervisory oversight.”

The ruling also identified that while Los Angeles had set its own milestones in the settlement agreement, it has consistently failed to meet them, and has not presented accurate information on its milestone status.

Carter said a review of 1,106 reported beds found “28% of those beds were not actually open and occupiable, and the City could not provide documentation to confirm that another 24% were either,” meaning half of the 4,815 beds the city reports to have cumulatively created by December 2024 may not exist.

Carter also reported the city’s most recent quarterly bed count from March jumped to 6,724 created beds due to “the recent inclusion of Inside Safe beds,” which the judge noted city officials estimated to be nearly 2,000, or about the same as the quarterly increase.

By counting the Inside Safe beds, the city was able to quickly jump to just 58 beds short of its 6,724 bed required milestone at the time, but should, as supported by the bed count audit, a couple thousand of the reported beds not exist, the city would be well short of its mandated goal.

Carter also explained his reasons for not appointing the rumored receivership of the city’s homelessness programs, writing that such an action is “the last resort after all other less intrusive remedies have been exhausted,” and that “a gradual approach incrementally ramping up compliance measures” is "more appropriate.”

“Although democracies can be inefficient and even wasteful, only the voters of Los Angeles have the power to elect representatives to solve these problems,” the judge wrote. “Public pressure has recently led the City and the County to begin to make structural reforms to the homelessness system including withdrawing funding from LAHSA and forming new agencies.”

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors defunded LAHSA, which had been jointly funded by the the county and City of Los Angeles. It’s unclear if the city will continue to fund and opt to reform LAHSA, or create a new homelessness agency.

“Plaintiffs speculate that these impending, massive changes will not make a difference, but the people and their elected officials have the right to try,” concluded Carter.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass seems to have responded to the ruling by continuing to tout the effectiveness of the Inside Safe program. She announced Friday that a new operation at an encampment in Highland Park allegedly brought “more than 45” homeless individuals “inside.”

“Through more than 100 operations, Inside Safe has and will continue to save lives,” Bass said in a statement. “Inside Safe is urgently bringing Angelenos inside from schools, places of worship, businesses and more to restore communities through Los Angeles.”