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By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Contributing Columnist
It wasn’t the first time, nor many fear the last time, that the billions of dollars that have been spent to combat Los Angeles’ chronic homeless problem has been lost, strayed or simply unaccounted for.
The latest revelation about the alleged missing billions for homeless came courtesy of yet another audit of homeless spending ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter. The audit again found what other prior audits found: that a lot of money earmarked for an array of homeless programs went who knows where.
The audit blamed poor to non-existent recording keeping, an absence of documentation and just plain negligence and sloppiness in accountability measures as the prime causes for the missing money.
Mayor Karen Bass has been frustrated by the repeated lack of transparency in the spending. She has continually demanded that the dollars be accounted for and there be transparency in the accounting.
But there’s a larger problem that goes beyond sloppy to nonexistent record keeping about homeless program spending. That’s the stubbornly high number of homeless still in the city.
While the latest survey shows a small but significant dent in the number of L.A. homeless, tens of thousands still languish on L.A. streets on any given night. That makes the unaccounted for billions the audits cite even more troubling, even galling.
The wildfires that tore through major parts of Los Angeles got and continue to get major attention and publicity. Yet, the homeless crisis remains the city’s number one public policy issue and dilemma.
This is a bitter pill to swallow. But the blunt fact, as I’ve written in the past about the homeless crisis, is that there are crucial, near intractable reasons, why it continues to be the chronic crisis that it is.
First, let’s debunk a popular myth. The cause, as many continue to repeat, is not a horde of down and out, mentally challenged, drug and alcohol abusers that flood the streets.
Certainly, many of the homeless fit into that category. But many don’t. Homelessness is not about wayward, impoverished people. It’s a deep structural problem.
It’s fueled in large part by unchecked, unaffordable high-end development. Drive down any Los Angeles street and you will see yet another apartment or townhouse development going up. There’s a steep price for that.
These new projects displace thousands of moderate- to lower-income people and virtually consign many of them to the streets. The unchecked development is facilitated by the L.A. City Council that has virtually given the company store away to high-end developers.
While there is the minimal requirement that some set aside a small number of units as “affordable,” that’s a small price to pay for getting their high-end project approved.
Homelessness has been the runaway number one public policy worry of L.A. officials for almost two decades. Every mayor and every city official has made promises and projected solutions to get rid of the tent encampments that are tantamount to a city of the dispossessed within a city in Los Angeles.
Bass’ public pledges to tackle the crisis have taken a realistic and comprehensive approach to the problem. But it’s a long, hard, uphill process. There are no quick fixes. Bass understands that.
It will take a mix of ramped-up approaches — strategic spending, land-use changes, housing subsidies and the expansion of support services — to dent the problem.
The monumental challenge is to craft and push the City Council to enact a solid land-use plan to rein in upscale development. That means taking checkbook politics out of the development process while ensuring the building and subsidizing of more affordable housing.
It’s a daunting task given the outsized power of corporate developers to get just about anything they want from the City Council with minimal checks and controls. The latest survey on the homeless surge shows what anyone with eyes can see and that’s that homelessness will be here to stay without a total commitment to not just put up new housing but housing that people can actually afford.
Now compounding that is money that no one seems to know where it went to at least help fund stop gap measures to aid the homeless. Said one leading homeless rights advocate, “Billions have been squandered on ineffective bureaucracy while lives are lost daily. This is not just mismanagement; it is a moral failure.” She’s right.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His latest book, “A Tale of Two Los Angeles Wildfires — Separate and Unequal” (Middle Passage Press). He also is the host of The Hutchinson Report Facebook Livestreamed.
