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$2.3 billion: Homelessness money LA couldn't fully trace
Court-ordered auditors identified $2.3 billion in city homelessness funding and couldn't fully quantify what was spent on each program.
Los Angeles
- City homelessness funding identified by auditors$2.3B1
- Spending per program fully quantifiedNo1
- Provider invoicesMany lacked dates or support2
- Case managers at one site vs. case managers billed2 vs. 102
- City staff tasked with monitoring resultsNone1
- What the $2.3B bought████████████████
What happened
A federal judge ordered an independent audit of Los Angeles' homelessness spending as part of a lawsuit settlement. Auditors at Alvarez & Marsal found fragmented records, manual invoicing, and contracts too vague to measure what was delivered.
In one case, a provider that appeared to have two case managers at a site billed for ten.
Why nobody caught it
- Money flowed through several city departments and a joint city-county agency, so no single set of books showed the whole picture.
- The city spends more than $1 billion a year on homelessness, and no city staff or department is assigned to monitor the results, according to a councilmember's office.
How sure are we?
The books or the spending can't be verified, so fraud can't be ruled in or out.
The audit did not find fraud. It found the city couldn't show where much of the money went, which is the condition fraud needs.
Sources
- Lack of clarity, oversight hamper LA's homeless programs (court-ordered audit)Spectrum News · Mar 6, 2025
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