The city of L.A. is running into major data problems as the mayor’s office works to address homelessness — it was discovered this week that the city may be paying for services that were never used, such as motel rooms that sat empty.
Councilmembers learned new details about the issues, which include missing data points on people leaving motel shelters, during their housing and homelessness committee meeting this week.
“It’s just insanity,” said Councilmember Monica Rodriguez. “There's a fundamental problem with getting some very basic information here, and it's costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”
So far, the council has authorized $300 million for the Inside Safe motel shelter program since L.A. Mayor Karen Bass took office, an unprecedented spending level to try and move people off the streets and into housing at a time when the number of people experiencing homelessness continues to rise. The latest count shows nearly 33,000 people on L.A. streets are unhoused.
The issue blew up Thursday at the meeting when a councilmember asked about missing data points about people who leave the Inside Safe motel shelter program.
The nonprofits that serve unhoused people are supposed to log when unhoused people exit the motel room program. But that requirement has not been enforced by LAHSA, which contracts with the providers and manages the data system. The agency’s system allows providers to “bypass” disclosing whether a person has left the program, said Emily Vaughn Henry, LAHSA’s deputy chief information officer.
That means the city might not know if it’s paying for empty motel rooms after people leave, councilmembers were told by the mayor’s top homelessness advisor in response to questions.
Inside Safe is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ signature program to address homelessness and aims to give people living outdoors immediate quality housing in motels or hotels.
“That's horrifying,” Councilmember Bob Blumenfield said at the meeting Thursday. He also chairs the council’s budget committee.
“So we could be paying for weeks for an empty room, when somebody left two weeks earlier, and we could be using that room to house somebody?” Blumenfield asked.
Mercedes Marquez, who leads the mayor’s homelessness efforts, acknowledged that could be the case.
“If there was nothing else that was being done, you would be absolutely correct,” Marquez said in response to Blumenfield’s question.
The mayor’s office is doing its own checking of motel invoices to try to ensure they’re accurate, she said. But LAHSA’s incomplete data about exits is a real problem that makes it possible that the city does not know if it’s paying for empty rooms in some instances, Marquez added.
“I wouldn't tell you that it is never true that an extra day is paid for,” she said. “But it is not the usual because we're checking, and we check every invoice” before it’s paid.
Councilmember Rodriguez said she also is extremely frustrated by LAHSA’s data problems.
How do we know that we're not leasing out rooms that are not in fact being utilized?
“How do we know that we're not leasing out rooms that are not in fact being utilized?” she said.
Rodriguez said these types of problems with LAHSA’s data have been going on for the six years she’s been on the council.
“Get me off this merry-go-round from hell,” Rodriguez said, referring to a pattern of councilmembers pressing for more transparency but, in her view, not getting it. “The idea that we continue to have the same conversation with the same agency and the same problems being uplifted, and no one can seem to learn this lesson – I don't understand.”
It feels like we’re flying blind with the people’s money.
“It feels like we’re flying blind with the people’s money,” added Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson.
Data problems at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) long predate Bass’ term and the time that LAHSA’s CEO, who started in April, has been in charge.
Despite the issues, city councilmembers and the city’s top fiscal advisor do acknowledge major improvements in recent weeks to the accuracy and transparency of the data, which city leaders and the public rely on to know how many people receive which types of housing services – and whether those programs are working.
But huge problems remain, councilmembers say.
Among those problems, according to councilmembers, is that city officials still don’t have direct access to LAHSA’s data. That’s despite the council providing LAHSA with millions more in funding over the last year in order to improve data access, they said.
Blumenfield said this is putting him on the verge of halting any more city dollars going to the region’s homeless services agency.
“I’m at the end of my rope on this,” Blumenfield said, adding that he’s “sick of us paying money without getting any data.”
“I want to stop any dollars going to LAHSA until we have access to this…that’s literally where I’m going.”
But while council members have threatened that repeatedly, Councilmember John Lee said it’s been an empty threat so far.
The council has “failed” to actually explore other options for homeless services, he said.
“If we were to make that choice, what would we do?” Lee said, adding that he shares his colleague’s frustrations about the data issues and supports looking into a replacement for LAHSA.
“Otherwise, every year we're going to be coming here and having the same exact conversations,” he said.
Mayor Bass promised to house 17,000 Angelenos during her first year in office. How’s she doing so far? Our Promise Tracker is keeping tabs on Bass' progress tackling homelessness in L.A.
Vaughn Henry, the LAHSA official, responded that the holdup in giving data access is not from LAHSA but from L.A.’s Continuum of Care Board, which is a regional planning group that has 17 representatives of government, service providers, and people who have been unhoused. Vaughn said she supports giving the city direct access to the raw data.
Multiple city officials have told LAist that the lack of accurate data from LAHSA has made it difficult to hold leaders accountable, going back many years, because there often is no reliable measure of whether programs are working as intended.
Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who inherited the data problems when she started as LAHSA’s chief in April, acknowledged this week that LAHSA “has long been challenged to produce data that is accurate and timely.”
At a news conference Tuesday marking her 100th day in office, she described a series of actions to try to fix it.
Adams Kellum said LAHSA has hired additional data staff and brought on an information technology consulting company, Gartner, which she described as an industry leader.
Our team is working diligently every day to produce reports, on a weekly and bi-weekly basis.
“Our team is working diligently every day to produce reports, on a weekly and bi-weekly basis,” she said.
“And that means working directly with the service providers, making sure we're curing data, making sure we're looking at the data, making sure that it's accurate and accessible.”
How did we get here? Who’s in charge of what? And where can people get help?
Among the changes LAHSA has made in the last couple of weeks is spelling out in their reports exactly how much of the data they believe is unreliable.
“We're being transparent, and we know that we can get better. And we know that our whole entire system has to function more effectively and be more data-driven,” Adams Kellum said in response to LAist’s questions Tuesday about the data problems.
At Thursday’s meeting, Harris-Dawson noted he and his colleagues keep expressing frustrations with LAHSA’s data at the twice-per-month committee meetings.
“It is beginning to sound unfortunately like a choir that sings the same song every two weeks,” he said, also expressing frustration about the issue.
But, he said, residents are demanding urgent action on homelessness.
His constituents who live in homes and own businesses aren’t so concerned about how much motel rooms are costing, he said. They want more encampments cleared.
“For them, they're not asking me about how much we're paying per night per room, or if the room is filled or not,” Harris-Dawson said.
“They're saying, ‘It's great that this encampment is gone. Can we get rid of the next one?’”
