Audit: LA Lost Track of Billions in Homeless Funds

A new audit has found that the City of Los Angeles lost track of billions of dollars allocated for combatting homelessness, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter commissioned the audit, which was conducted by Alvarez & Marsal Public Sector Services and filed with the court on Thursday.

The report outlines A&M's difficulty in tracking how the city spent $2.3 billion in funding meant to shelter and feed the homeless due to the city's poor record and data collection, which is managed by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

"Repetitive information gaps, coupled with a lack of accurate and complete data and documentation, posed significant obstacles to this assessment," the report stated. "Insufficient financial accountability led to an inability to trace substantial funds allocated to the City Programs. Fragmented data systems across LAHSA, the City, and the County and inconsistent reporting formats made it challenging to verify spending and the number of beds or units reported by the City and LAHSA, track participant outcomes, and align financial data with performance metrics."

The auditors determined that the poor data collection standards lend to the concern of resource misallocation. A&M also found that key stakeholders did not monitor homeless programs and that LAHSA could not identify the contracts and expenses of relevant service providers. Gaps in documentation were also found.

"Contracts between the City, LAHSA, and service providers," the report stated, "frequently contained broad terms without clear definitions, which created ambiguity about the scope and type of service delivered."

The report comes as Los Angeles has experienced historic growth in homelessness. On March 6, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health released a report indicating that in 2023, seven homeless people died per day in the city. The leading causes of death were overdose, followed by heart disease and "transportation-related injuries."

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