An audit released Tuesday by the L.A. City Controller's office estimates that the city has enough shelter beds and interim housing for about a third of unhoused people living in the city.
Roughly 46,260 unhoused people live in the city, according to the latest Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, but there’s only about 16,100 interim housing beds available.
The audit said the “woefully inadequate” number of housing resources, combined with data quality issues and inefficient referral processes, make it nearly “impossible” to get an accurate count of how many shelter beds and interim housing space is available in the city of Los Angeles at any given time.
The city and L.A. County gave LAHSA the responsibility of creating a bed availability system to facilitate shelter referrals in 2016, but the audit said it still doesn't have a functioning system seven years later.
The current bed reservation system is so unreliable LAHSA instead uses phone calls and daily emails to keep track of bed availability.
Those methods became “wholly inadequate” during the last winter storms, the audit adds.
When LAHSA contracted with 211 LA to make referrals to shelters during the 2022-2023 winter season, 211 operators had to call multiple shelters to verify bed availability before they could make a referral.
“Having to constantly reach out to multiple winter shelters to confirm bed availability also added to the time it took for 211 LA to respond to calls and increased wait times for callers in general,” the audit said.
Bed attendance data can also be improved, the audit notes. That information is used to determine the number of sheltered unhoused people for the annual homeless counts.
The audit found multiple data entry errors and a significant number of shelters reporting low bed utilization rates, which increases the risk that the number of sheltered unhoused people is being undercounted.
The audit said LAHSA should create a functioning shelter bed availability system and improve the data quality for the existing process.
Specifically, it recommends LAHSA:
The controller’s office notes that changes are necessary because of LAHSA’s expanding responsibility in newer city programs such as Inside Safe.
“We want to get people inside as fast as possible, but in order to do that, we need to have a real time available shelter bed system that can provide that,” City Controller Kenneth Mejia told LAist. “Unfortunately, that was lacking.”
In a statement, LAHSA thanked Controller Mejia for his continued collaboration to increase accountability, transparency, and efficiency.
LAHSA said it’s already working on the next generation of its bed availability system, which will be fully implemented by Dec. 31, 2024.
According to LAHSA, the new system will include:
LAHSA said it’s also working on a new client portal that will help the unhoused community “get the help they need faster.”
That portal will show a list of all shelters and access centers, allow unhoused people to direct message case managers, view upcoming appointments, and receive alerts that can help them find shelter during an emergency or severe weather, according to LAHSA.
“These technological enhancements to LAHSA’s data practices will happen on top of other practices LAHSA is changing to paint a more accurate picture of bed availability,” LAHSA said in a statement. “LAHSA is transitioning from reporting nightly bed usage to enrollments and exits for interim housing sites. People experiencing homelessness may hold but not use an interim housing bed for three consecutive days, so reporting enrollments and exits provides the best perspective on bed availability.”
LAHSA said it is making significant improvements to data collection and dissemination, and it looks forward to collaborating with the city as it moves forwards on these projects.
Sergio Perez, the chief of accountability and oversight for the Controller’s office, told LAist the formal response they got from LAHSA after the audit was very positive.
“In part because they've lived with these failures on a day to day basis,” Perez said. “So we were telling them new things, I think we certainly revealed and brought into focus some issues they weren't aware of. But in terms of the reality of not having a functional bed inventory system, it's something they've been living with for years.”
To give an example of what L.A. needs, the Controller’s office launched an interim housing bed availability map.
The map is incomplete, the office notes, but it includes information for current bed availability, referral processes, requirements for entry, and daily reporting practices for each location.
“We invite all necessary stakeholders (including LAHSA and the service providers that it works with) to join efforts and make an achievable dream a reality: the people of Los Angeles, including all of its unhoused neighbors, should know how many interim shelter beds are available on any given night,” the audit said.
Ashley Bennett, the Controller’s director of homelessness, told LAist they called more than 350 interim housing sites to gather the information themselves and also created a back-end system on the map.
“That would make it very easy for providers just to enter a bed availability number at the end of the day so we could have that kind of bird's eye view of what's available and what it takes to actually get someone inside,” she said. “So we know that it's possible.”
