(The Center Square) – A scathing county audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and its nearly $1 billion annual budget revealed millions of dollars of unreturned cash advances, insufficient oversight to make sure contracts are actually fulfilled, no accurate idea of how many total contracts it has, with whom, and for how long, and no establishment or tracking of performance metrics.
In response to the audit, Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath — who ordered the audit — announced she would be introducing a motion to create a new county homelessness agency.
“The audit makes clear our structure for service delivery is not working. We need greater accountability [and] bold action,” said Horvath on X. “I’m bringing a motion to create a new County department to create more transparency [and] accountability on public [money], and expedite real results on homelessness.”
The official county audit came with 16 recommendations based on specific LAHSA failures.
Since fiscal year 2017-2018, LAHSA provided $51 million in cash advances to contractors that was supposed to be repaid; only $2.5 million has been recovered thus far due to recipients’ “cash flow issue” and lack of “formal agreements to determine how and when the funds would be repaid.”
The audit found LAHSA could not provide comprehensive contract data — such as an accurate list of contracts with execution dates, and that “due to a lack of standards for conducting and documenting the results of their contract monitoring reviews … [auditors] could not determine whether LAHSA adequately monitored all their contracts to ensure subrecipients complied with their contract terms.”
LAHSA, which has existed since 1993, had not established key performance indicators by the time of the auditors’ review, but created a new policy in May governing the development and implementation of KPIs, with an expectation the KPIs would be finalized in the coming 2024-2025 fiscal year.
“Not measuring performance diminishes the organization’s ability to determine whether they are effectively meeting their objectives,” noted the auditors.
LAHSA, which oversees homeless services across all of Los Angeles County, is half governed by the City of Los Angeles — whose mayor appoints five board members — and Los Angeles County — whose five-member Board of Supervisors each get to appoint a member.
Horvath is the only BOS member to sit on LAHSA’s board, having appointed herself. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass also sits on LAHSA’s board, having appointed herself. It’s unclear how LAHSA, which for fiscal year 2024-2025 is receiving $348 million from the county, $307 million from the city, $144 million from the state, and $73 million from the federal government would be wound down or split responsibilities for LAHSA.
