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“Never mistake motion for action.”
--Ernest Hemingway
iAUDIT - Over the last few weeks, there has been a lot of movement, handwringing, and calls for action regarding homelessness. Most of this motion has centered around recent news about the City’s Inside Safe initiative.
In early July, the City released the latest Inside Safe numbers. They were dismal. For a year-to-date expenditure of $40 million, about 1,400 people had been temporarily sheltered, for an average cost of $28,570 per person. Of those, only 77, or just under six percent, received permanent housing. As of the date of the report to the City Council, it cost the city an astonishing $519,480 for each person housed, although one could have hoped the cost will come down as more people are housed. During the Council committee meeting where the Mayor’s Office released these numbers (after a two-month delay), Councilmembers also discovered program managers don’t know how many hotel rooms are available for homeless housing, where people have been sent, nor the number of people who left the program. The Mayor’s office also seemed unable to give a full accounting of where the money has been spent.
A few weeks later, and the numbers don’t look much better. LAist has obtained internal city reports showing about one person per day has attained permanent housing since Inside Safe started. As the article points out, and as I’ve mentioned before, “permanent housing” is a nebulous term, and can mean anything from achieving an independent living situation to being in “rapid rehousing”, long-term, albeit temporary government-funded housing.
After each story broke, Mayor Bass and her head of homelessness programs, Mercedes Marquez, blamed federal rules for the poor numbers. They blamed the requirements for proving low-income eligibility and other bureaucratic roadblocks for the lack of progress. According to the July 6 LAist article cited above, the early July meeting was the first time Councilmembers had been told about problems with federal funding rules, despite holding 13 housing fairs since Inside Safe’s rollout six months ago. Bob Blumenfield said that despite lining up service providers and people to help with documentation, he was shocked by the low rate of housing. One could rightfully ask, if federal requirements are such an impediment, and were known to be, why didn’t the program’s managers make the necessary preparations to deal with those requirements, and why they didn’t tell the Council before July 5? At the same meeting, it was revealed there are about 6,000 vacant shelter beds in the City; Bass again blamed federal rules for the vacancies. An LAsit reporter who talked to shelter managers said many of the beds were vacant because they’d been reserved for people who were assigned shelter spots but never showed up. Incidentally, if the July 6 LAist article is accurate, the Mayor and her senior staff seemed content to throw a management analyst under the bus and present the numbers to the Council committee.
Blaming federal rules is especially puzzling because Karen Bass was a U.S. Representative from 2011 to 2022. In 11 years in Congress, Ms. Bass never took action on what she now says are onerous federal housing regulations. During her mayoral campaign, she often spoke about working with other local, state and federal agencies to address the homeless crisis. Therefore, only one of two possibilities exist: 1) She knew what the federal regulations were but chose to implement Inside Safe in a way she knew to be non-compliant; or 2) she and her staff didn’t know the regulations existed, which raises concerns about how well Inside Safe was planned. In any case, blaming an external conditions like federal regulations makes for a convenient excuse for Inside Safe’s continuing troubles?
The one-two punch of bad news about Inside Safe’s numbers generated a tremendous amount of motion but has yet to result in much action. Ms. Marquez promised to get the Council more detailed information on shelter rates and expenditures by August. Councilmember Blumenfield said the Council and Mayor’s office need to do a better job working together to bring accountability and progress to the program. While blaming federal rules, Mayor Bass didn’t say what she intended to do about them.
What we are seeing is a tremendous amount of motion and no action. Ernest Hemingway warned us to recognize the difference between motion—mere movement—and action, meaning actually doing something. Nobody seems to be asking the core questions: after billions of dollars spent over many years, and after a concerted effort under Inside Safe, why are there more people than ever living on the streets? Are service providers actually delivering the services they’re contracted to provide? Are those services effective? After more than 20 years of following the same model of Harm Reduction/No Barrier Housing First, is it time to reassess what we’re doing? Why are programs that emphasize personal responsibility, like those used by Union Rescue Mission and SOFESA, successful?
Instead of asking tough questions and taking action based on honest answers, our leaders continually fall back on a standard set of bureaucratic scapegoats: they blame the state’s environmental and housing construction regulations. They blame the red tape created by the city’s building and safety codes. They blame the federal government. They blame high housing and construction costs. The only group absolved of any responsibility for the failures of the programs they manage are themselves.
If you review the statements from local leaders, they contain a lot of “action’ phrases like Mayor Bass’ mantra of “linking arms” with the County and other government agencies to develop a unified plan for reducing homelessness. LAHSA’s CEO, Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum, told reporters the government had to “do better” after the latest PIT count revealed a substantial increase in unsheltered homelessness. Not one official called for a fundamental review of the City and County’s basic approach, No Barrier Housing First. Behind the strident talk, the central idea was “We need to keep doing the same thing we always have, we just need to throw more money at it.” Lots of motion and no real action.
Near the end of the Civil War, Robert E. Lee visited the Confederate Congress to ask for new conscription programs to refill the thinning ranks of his army. Congress responded by passing a few resolutions supporting the army but took no meaningful action. After he arrived back at his field headquarters. Lee told a subordinate officer all the Confederate Congress did was “pass resolutions and eat peanuts.” Our local leadership is no better at taking substantive action on homelessness.
(Tim Campbell is a resident of Westchester who spent a career in the public service and managed a municipal performance audit program. He focuses on outcomes instead of process. Tim is a regular contributor to CityWatchLA.)
