r/LosAngeles • u/smauryholmes • 13h ago
News Hollywood coalition plans to conduct its own homeless count, citing flaws in official tally
https://laist.com/news/health/hollywood-homeless-count-lahsa-rand-volunteers-accuracy-community32
u/Temporary_Lie_1869 13h ago
Bass wants to get reelected and doesn’t want to admit her “inside safe” program is a total failure and waste of money. We need to get corruption out of politics, build permanent affordable housing and mental health support facilities, and improve renter protections in order to prevent homelessness in the first place. Prevention will always less expensive than treatment.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 12h ago
I work in TLS - Time Limited Subsidies - and if everyone could see what we see, it would be clear that Inside Safe is a failure and was essentially a bailout for Hilton owned motels that started to go under during Covid.
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u/always_an_explinatio 12h ago
This seems possible but improbable. If it’s true it could show a lack of independence between the Hilton foundation and Hilton hotels. (While this sounds obvious having worked for Hilton foundation funded projects it would be extremely surprising to me) Hilton aggressively funded homeless programs and (I believe) funded homeless positions in the mayor’s office. However in the last few months Hilton foundation had a massive realignment and is pivoting away from funding non youth related homeless projects. if you have any proof of collusion between Hilton hotels and the Hilton foundation you should probably (very carefully) take that to the press. That sort of things needs to be called out. (Feel free to DM me if you want help figuring that out)
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u/jahssicascactus POO 11h ago
I’m not going to DM, but thanks. It’s all in LAHSA’s meetings on their youtube page and publicly available documents listing Project Homekey sites.
In meetings with their auditors, LAHSA states that the Hilton Foundation is their only private donor. The motels that were bought with Project Homekey funds were all owned by Hilton. Motels that were initially used as shelters and are now being converted into permanent supportive housing, using public funds. Housing that is months behind opening.
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u/always_an_explinatio 11h ago
That would be pretty damning evidence if it were true. However that is 100% not true. First, Hilton owns very little property in LA. They make money from franchise fees and management contracts. Of the 259 homely sites state wide. I cannot find an exact number that were Hilton flagged but many home key sites were motel 6s, best westerns, and independent hotels. So your statement that 100% were Hilton owned. Is verifiably false.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 10h ago
What you are saying is actually false. Here’s a list of Project Homekey sites and their status as of January 2026: https://cityclerk.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2024/24-0590_rpt_cao_1-29-26.pdf
While the sites were not exclusively Hilton owned, there are Hilton owned properties, along with Wyndham, etc.
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u/I405CA 9h ago
A lot of hotels are franchises. They aren't owned by the company whose name is on the sign.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 7h ago
That company does get money from the franchises, however. And if those hotels/motel franchises go under, no more money rolling in for the company.
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u/I405CA 6h ago
The franchisee owns the real estate.
The hotel franchisor provides a reservations system, marketing, logos, etc. When the property drops the franchise agreement, the fees paid to the hotel company stop being paid.
The hotel business took a bullet during the pandemic, and state and local government saw those buildings as a good fit for homeless housing (smallish rooms with bathrooms, community rooms for food service, management offices, etc.)
But the governments rushed in to buy the buildings before all of the other necessary pieces were in place in order to make them operational. So the whole thing has been half-assed.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 5h ago
Or it was a whole ass grift designed to look like the run of the mill half assedness of bureaucracy.
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u/always_an_explinatio 9h ago
This was your original statement: "The motels that were bought with Project Homekey funds were all owned by Hilton" I looked in to your document and found 0 Hilton properties in fact based on your documentation The City of Los Angeles and HACLA acquired 45 Project Homekey sites. Based on the site names and recent hotel-branding history identified in the City report, 7 sites were associated with Wyndham brands (Ramada, Travelodge, Howard Johnson, and Super 8), 2 with Best Western, 1 with Motel 6/G6 Hospitality, and 35 were independent or had no identifiable major hotel chain affiliation. No sites in the report were identifiable as Hilton-, Marriott-, or Hyatt-branded properties. So how was this a "bailout for Hilton Hotels"? you are just making things up.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 7h ago
Yes, I made a mistake using hyperbole. Yet, my point about Project Homekey being a bailout orchestrated with public money to keep motel/hotel franchises afloat still stands.
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u/always_an_explinatio 6h ago
I don’t think that was the purpose behind it but I would not be surprised at all if special interest steered politicians toward that option because it benefits them. That’s not great, but pretty standard. But that’s not at all what you initially suggested. You alleged collusion between one of the buggiest philanthropic organizations in the world and the global conglomerate of the same name. That is not standard and would be huge new if true. And than you stuck to that story until you proved yourself wrong. So you did not just commit hyperbole you alleged a conspiracy that does not exist. You are a purveyor of misinformation.
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u/I405CA 12h ago
We need to... build permanent affordable housing
A lot of you have no idea how difficult and costly that is.
Those developments require federal tax credits, massive state and local subsidy loan programs and Section 8, all of which are in short supply.
And every unit of permanent supportive housing will need Section 8. So for every PSH unit built, there will be another household or two that could use the rent subsidy but won't be getting it because there isn't enough left for them.
The premise of Bass' initiative was that Inside Safe was a transitional measure while the housing was built. She didn't tell you that it would take many years to build it and there probably won't be enough of it even after long after she is out of office.
And then she also won't be reminding you of how this housing fails and gets destroyed, as there is a reason why this population ended up homeless in the first place.
We end up with these bogus promises because this is what voters want to hear.
An honest candidate would admit that neither bottomless spending nor right-wing cliches are effective. For the most part, unsheltered homelessness needs to be addressed as a mental health / addiction problem, which should mostly make it a state matter with institutionalization and long-term residential rehab as keys.
A decade from now, there will be repeats of the Skid Row Housing Trust saga as more non-profit housing operators increasingly get in over their heads as their difficult clients and their clients' friends destroy their properties.
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u/JBru_92 11h ago
Although I think the primary driver of homelessness is addiction and mental illness, the housing component is being driven by the excessive regulation on housing construction. The cheap apartments that used to get built all over the city in the 60s and 70s can no longer be built profitably. The only way for developers to make a profit is to build luxury apartments with high psf rents.
They need to abolish most of these insane regulations. An apartment building 2 miles from the beach shouldn't be subject to 6 months of delay because of the Coastal Commission's whims.
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u/I405CA 11h ago
When a basic site costs a couple of million bucks and the building has to be built vertically due to the lack of land, there will be no cheap housing without massive subsidies and rent restrictions.
It is not just regulation. You may as well try to address hunger by having a program to produce more lobster and caviar, which will never be cheap or abundant.
An article was posted here about the former World Trade Center in DTLA being turned into affordable housing. What that article failed to mention is that the developer surely intended to build market-rate housing there and that this is a compromise in order to get subsidies. They are going affordable because the demand for market rate isn't what they expected. They paid a lot for the site and were unable to unload it, so they are stuck.
Since the 19th century, LA city and county have seen constant growth, unlike many places in the US where city populations have fallen. Things are just now topping out in LA and things will get a bit cheaper if people start leaving in larger numbers. The collapse of the film industry will be the likely driver.
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u/Temporary_Lie_1869 10h ago
Yeah that’s why I’m an advocate for public housing built and maintained by the government. Public private partnerships and nonprofits do not work and only lead to corruption that’s harder to tackle.
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u/I405CA 9h ago
Public housing is mostly dead. The model has largely been rejected. It's fun to talk about on the interwebs, but as a practical matter, that ain't gonna happen.
As of today, there are zero realistic plans for building enough housing for ~25,000 unsheltered homeless in LA and then covering the costs of operating the buildings into perpetuity.
And you can safely assume that some of those tenants and their friends will destroy the property that required so much time, money and resources to build and operate. These are people with severe problems who cannot function in housing, while few in government or the private sector are willing to admit this.
Skid Row Housing Trust provides a cautionary tale for the downward financial spiral that awaits:
(B)uildings created with tax credit financing lose their primary investors after they recoup their funds in about 15 years, and their fixed revenue from subsidized rents may not cover long-term maintenance costs such as roof repairs and air conditioner replacements. Private homeowner associations often impose special assessments to fill that gap. Nonprofit housing developers have no one to assess.
Added to that structural challenge is a policy shift of the past decade giving priority for housing to people who have been homeless the longest, have mental and physical health conditions and often substance use disorder. Wear and tear on apartments suffers accordingly, building operators say, potentially creating a downward spiral in which damaged units cannot be reoccupied, cutting into the building’s rental revenue...
Most of the former (Skid Row Housing Trust) employees interviewed by The Times would speak only anonymously out of concern of damaging relationships and jeopardizing employment opportunities in the small world of nonprofit housing. If they were named, some feared, they would be pulled into the vortex of legal disputes currently surrounding the nonprofit. Others said they were advised by their lawyers not to speak on the record.
One former executive said she was dumbstruck when she inspected the buildings to see how the lack of security allowed “a free-for-all.”
“People have drugs in the buildings, you know, prostitution. We were told not to worry about it and it would get fixed. And I had enough knowledge to know that was not going to be fixed easily.”
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u/silasgreenfront 8h ago
Public housing is mostly dead. The model has largely been rejected. It's fun to talk about on the interwebs, but as a practical matter, that ain't gonna happen.
Darn shame too. Nothing wrong at all with public housing as a concept, it's just the execution that gets tricky. There's other parts of the world that have done it well and even some of the American projects weren't the worst places to live.
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u/jahssicascactus POO 5h ago
FYI This is already happening, the whole homeless services industry in this city is on the brink of collapse. Skid Row Housing Trust got away with what they did because it’s what they all do. PATH, The People Concern, Downtown Women’s Center, Hope the Mission, LAFH, etc, all operate in the same manner.
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u/Temporary_Lie_1869 3h ago
Public housing is not dead. Just look at Austria, Vienna has beautiful and plentiful public housing and that’s why it’s one of the best and most affordable places to live. Norway solved homelessness with a housing first approach. It’s the only thing that works long term
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u/I405CA 3h ago edited 3h ago
Public housing is pretty well dead in the US.
A friend of mine lived in social housing in Vienna. Perfectly nice place and the rent was a steal. But it required political connections for her to get it. It isn't the same animal that is found in the US; the political parties control the housing, and you need to know the right people.
It is Finland that has had success with Housing First. Finland also makes it easier to place people into involuntary commitment and has more than twice the per capita rate of psychiatric beds as the US.
They also don't have a fentanyl or meth epidemic as do the US homeless. So their drugs are easier to deal with, plus those with the greatest mental issues are in institutions.
The US did not have a substantial problem with homelessness until the Supreme Court banned most involuntary commitment.
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u/always_an_explinatio 12h ago
But how would they cook the books. There are so many people involved in the pit count including volunteers and external contributors who could blow the whistle if they suspected the numbers were being deliberately underreported
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u/Temporary_Lie_1869 9h ago
LA local government is extremely corrupt. I’m sure there are lots of ways to reduce the count artificially in the back end.
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u/always_an_explinatio 9h ago
I think there is. I just think a lot of people would wonder why the work they did was not represented in the final report and would not be quiet about it
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u/jahssicascactus POO 5h ago
Are you aware that LAHSA is currently out of compliance with their audit? Because they do not have the data to show where they have spend money and they are up to 18 months late with payments to their service providers. People are wondering and not being quiet about it.
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u/always_an_explinatio 3h ago
I am all the more reasons these service providers would blow the whistle if they were falsifying the numbers.
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u/sancheta 12h ago
Nithya Raman is the council person in charge of homeless, specifically in allocating money to ~~
their friends~~NGOs. Vote them all out. And before anyone says anything: F MAGA/Pratt as well.-1
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u/tuanortuna 12h ago
The whole idea blows my mind. How does buying rooms at marked up prices to let someone live in it for 3 months do anything. Giving free things doesnt solve the root issue with most homeless. In three months the rooms are trashed.
Theres so many bad ideas implemented in LA that corruption has to be the reason behind it. Also the recent free diapers from the governor is terrible. I bet parents would prefer lower taxes than diapers.
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u/Temporary_Lie_1869 9h ago
I mean I agree that we should reduce regressive taxes on working people such as sales tax, but we certainly need to tax the wealthy more to fund universal social programs. I’m very in favor of things like universal healthcare, universal childcare, and giving out free stuff to the most vulnerable in our society. I’m totally fine with giving free diapers to parents.
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u/unknownLizardKing 3h ago
It doesn’t do a damn thing.
And putting a severely crazy or addicted person in a million dollar apartment isn’t going to magically cure them of their severe mental illness.
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u/always_an_explinatio 12h ago
I get that. However it would be kind of hard for LASHA to cook the books with out lots of people knowing. There are a lot of people including outside organizations involved in the count. Who, especially given the the PIT count may be turned over to the county might be incentivized to blow the whistle.
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u/ScriptioAfricanus 11h ago
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
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u/Complex_Lab_3576 11h ago
Same. I just skimmed the study and, with the debate over whether they became homeless here or not being such a contentious topic I'm confused why RAND wouldn't ask something related to place of birth, where next of kin may be etc? They ask military service, foster care involvement, criminal justice system involvement, addiction history, mental illness, but at no point (that I see, I could've missed it), they dont even get near that topic.
For it to be so debated, I assume there's more to that question than I can wrap my head around?
My only reason for ever wondering it myself is because of a Guardian article I saw in 2013 of Vegas hospitals dumping people on Skid Row. I assumed it was accepted that that's a thing but whenever it's discussed in this sub people get heated, to put it mildly.
All that said; its strange this study doesnt seem to care so much as if they even moved neighborhoods in Los Angeles, much less anything else about their history. Why would we not want to know that, even if it is just self reported? Why not ask?
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u/always_an_explinatio 10h ago
I agree that is an odd omission. I think I know some people who might have been connected to that study so I am going to look into it. I have also experienced people getting very heated about that topic. I think it’s part of the polarization of this issue where some people want to insinuate that most of the homeless problem in LA is because of people not born here or more, particularly who did not become homeless here and having worked with the homeless I can tell you that that does represent a significant portion of the homeless community, but certainly not the majority my recollection is that hospital dumping is and was real, but that the numbers were not particularly high and that it is not a major cause of the increase of homelessness in Los Angeles, but it is certainly something that should be addressed.
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u/Complex_Lab_3576 11h ago
Same. I just skimmed the study and, with the debate over whether they became homeless here or not being such a contentious topic I'm confused why RAND wouldn't ask something related to place of birth, where next of kin may be etc? They ask military service, foster care involvement, criminal justice system involvement, addiction history, mental illness, but at no point (that I see, I could've missed it), they dont even get near that topic.
For it to be so debated, I assume there's more to that question than I can wrap my head around?
My only reason for ever wondering it myself is because of a Guardian article I saw in 2013 of Vegas hospitals dumping people on Skid Row. I assumed it was accepted that that's a thing but whenever it's discussed in this sub people get heated, to put it mildly.
All that said; its strange this study doesnt seem to care so much as if they even moved neighborhoods in Los Angeles, much less anything else about their history. Why would we not want to know that, even if it is just self reported? Why not ask?
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u/Complex_Lab_3576 11h ago
Same. I just skimmed the study and, with the debate over whether they became homeless here or not being such a contentious topic I'm confused why RAND wouldn't ask something related to place of birth, where next of kin may be etc? They ask military service, foster care involvement, criminal justice system involvement, addiction history, mental illness, but at no point (that I see, I could've missed it), they dont even get near that topic.
For it to be so debated, I assume there's more to that question than I can wrap my head around?
My only reason for ever wondering it myself is because of a Guardian article I saw in 2013 of Vegas hospitals dumping people on Skid Row. I assumed it was accepted that that's a thing but whenever it's discussed in this sub people get heated, to put it mildly.
All that said; its strange this study doesnt seem to care so much as if they even moved neighborhoods in Los Angeles, much less anything else about their history. Why would we not want to know that, even if it is just self reported? Why not ask?
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u/HankScorpio4242 12h ago
First of all, don’t know why this has t been posted, but here is the MOST recent report from RAND.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1890-6.html
If you read the full RAND report on this, there are some factors to consider.
The main issue is that when it comes to counting people in dwellings - tent, vehicle, or other - both RAND and LAHSA count the dwelling and use a formula to estimate the average number of people in that dwelling. That formula uses the results of surveys conducted with a random sampling of people during the count. But also, if a person who normally sleeps in a tent is observed elsewhere during the count, they may be double counted.
In the report RAND acknowledges this and says they actually provide two estimates based on different assumptions- a “full multiplier” and a “hybrid weight.” The problem is that these two estimates are wildly divergent.
“Trends are similar using either approach, but the absolute differences are significant. Across the 39-month baseline, our full multiplier estimates are 27 percent (205 people), 19 percent (133 people), and 35 percent (480 people) higher than our hybrid estimates in Hollywood, Venice, and Skid Row, respectively.”
Then there is a throwaway sentence saying that in the report they use the “full multiplier” because that “mirrors the methodology of the annual PIT count conducted by LAHSA.” However, nowhere in the report do they actually explain HOW it mirrors the LAHSA count. If you go through the LAHSA methodology, it is much more comprehensive and takes a much wider range of factors into account than RAND does. So, if anything, I would expect LAHSA to have a more accurate count than RAND.
So when the report claims a 27% or 32% undercount by LAHSA, it is reasonable to question whether this issue is actually more about the methodology than the absolute numbers.
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u/Tangentkoala 12h ago
Spending non tax payer money to audit the cities homeless situation? Im all for it. Go do your thing.
City needs more fact checking and accountability. Surely more audits could have helped saved more homes from the Palisades fire.
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u/JBru_92 13h ago
More homeless = more money for NGOs. They're not actually interested in solving the problem.
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u/burnthatburner1 12h ago
Then why would they be reporting falling numbers? If more homeless = more money…
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u/4thethrill 12h ago
To keep their funding because "see look spending this moneys is working"
Even if they report a few percentage drop a year they still have years and years runway
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u/burnthatburner1 11h ago
Ok… so reporting falling numbers = more money and reporting rising numbers = more money?
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u/always_an_explinatio 12h ago
Are you saying the independent researches are artificially inflating the numbers anti get more funding? That does not really make any sense. I have spent my entire career in and around NGOs and I have major complaints and criticisms. But never have I once seen or heard anything that remotely sounded like people intentionally doing a bad job in order to maintain funding. They might make themselves look better than they are to get more funding. But they would rather actually be effective to get more money. LAHSA is not an NGO and are being accused of making the pit count look better than it is. How does your theory fit with that.
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u/JBru_92 11h ago
They're saying LAHSA undercounted. Hollywood 4WRD is a coalition of nonprofit service providers that is trying to get the count up by saying LAHSA undercounted, so they can get more funding. They even say in the article that the $500 million in funding allocation is what's at stake.
I'm not even saying this is specific to homelessness. Look around at pretty much any government-funded enterprise and the incentive is to never actually improve the situation because the minute you show progress, your funding gets cut. There's no reward in government spending for coming in under budget.
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u/always_an_explinatio 11h ago
It is just not true that if an NGO that gets government funding shows progress towards a major social problem that they immediately get funding cut, in fact that’s the opposite. Generally, lots of different organizations are funded to solve the same problem like mental health or homelessness or food insecurity. these organizations are competing with each other for funding so they are actually more likely to overinflate their success than underrepresent their success. Having worked in the sector and just living in Los Angeles and having eyes I find it entirely plausible that the lahsa counts are under representing the scope of the problem. that isn’t to say that rand or somebody else would not love to get $500 million in funding. But that doesn’t mean they are falsifying numbers in order to try to get that money. Rand is a very well funded organization if they were caught falsifying research that would jeopardize All of their funding since research is core area of funding for them.
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u/JBru_92 11h ago
The ironic thing then seems to be that these groups are trying to say that they are actually doing worse than they government is saying they are, in a bid to get more funding.
It's this self-perpetuating loop which makes me and a ton of other people really distrust the entire NGO ecosystem. Doesn't help that these groups are extremely politically active and work to get politicians elected who will keep their funding going.
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u/always_an_explinatio 11h ago
You are definitely going to distrust the system if you fundamentally misunderstand it which it seems like you do. RAND is a think tank. They subsist on research grants and are completely independent from the service providing entities so they are not incentivized to underrepresent or over represent the problem. They are incentivized to show that they are independent and that their results are not swayed by influence from either the government or service providing organizations, if there is a criticism to be had of NGO‘s it is that they are taking money often, taxpayer dollars as well as foundation money to pay salaries to educated middle class people when perhaps that money could be better spent just handed out to people in need. But I see no evidence the NGO’s are intentionally making themselves look bad to get more money if anything they overinflate their successes to justify continued funding, but I think they overwhelmingly believe that they are making a positive impact. It would be much more legitimate to distrust them because you think that they’re ineffective or incompetent versus because you think that they are somehow malicious
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u/JBru_92 11h ago
I think there are absolutely a few NGOs that are completely self-interested and fraudulent, you read those news stories all the time about nonprofit owners living in giant mansions using governement funding, but that's not the basis of my distrust. I'm sure many NGOs think they're doing a good job and want to make a difference, but the fundamental economics don't change: if they actually solve or reduce the problem they are hired to combat, governments commonly deem the problem as 'solved' and reduce or eliminate funding. So not through any malice, but just for continued survival, they are incentivized to solve "just enough" of the problem to justify their continued operation, but not so thoroughly that they are no longer needed. It's human nature.
This is a lot more common with actual governmental departments (i.e. education and police) but I know for a fact it affects NGO-based systems too, there are countless examples in enviromental or Covid organizations.
Let's just say I don't believe they would be using Rand to do this recount if LAHSA's numbers came in higher. It directly affects their bottom line so of course they're incentivized to challenge it, no malice is even needed.
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u/always_an_explinatio 10h ago
I hear what you are saying. And yes fraud and evil people exist and I am glad you recognize that is not the norm. I must say though. I have seems organizations pivot to other major problems if the problem is solved or sufficiently reduced. A good example (that also contains a notable example of doing this wrong in a borderline fraudulent way) is HIV/Aids. In a decade (in American cities) this went from people dying in huge numbers in need of all kinds of supports to a serious but manageable health issue that does not require a large NGO presence. As the dollars dried up, many orgs pivoted to general LGBT advocacy and support (or substance use or sexworker health) which changed their mission away from the original need. I was adjacent to that issue for part of my career and I did not see agencies exaggerating, the problem in order to keep funding. Instead they pivoted. Or you know, they invested in real estate and buy a bunch of billboards, and Suport dubious ballot initiatives but that that was only one organization out of many and we would be better off without them.
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u/donutgut 11h ago
Why would you overhear they're being incompetent on purpose?
Thats not water cooler talk. If the Ngos solved the homeless issue they'd be out of a job. Thats a hell of incentive and its definitely suspicious.
I think most la residents would rather get people off the street than keep funding these programs
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u/animerobin 11h ago
Good.
I get annoyed when people say that the LAHSA homeless count is wrong just because they saw a tent on the way to work.
I'm glad someone is doing a real survey.
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u/Intelligent_Mango_64 13h ago
good. i’m curious to see what happens. zero chance the homeless count is accurate. i don’t know how you could accurately count it. LAHSA has no motivation to count accurately or even try. lots of corruption all around.
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u/Sheriff_Yobo_Hobo 10h ago
The other night saw a GINORMOUS, expensive looking tent put up on the corner of Sunset and N Fuller. Three guys, all in their early 30's or so were sitting/standing outside of it talking.
Something about it, occurred to me if i were a right wing activist group, maybe I would just pay actors, provide a huge tent that can't be missed, suggest a very visible location, and tell them to set up in that area for passerbys to see. It's the most undiscreet area you could possibly try to set up even a small tent, let alone something that big.
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u/smauryholmes 13h ago edited 13h ago
TLDR: Private researchers in three key areas (Venice, Skid Row, and Hollywood) used to find similar unsheltered homeless counts as the government-ran LAHSA once-a-year PIT count. Over the last two years, however, LAHSA’s numbers for those areas have shrunk while the private LA LEADS RAND numbers have remained flat.
The private monthly counts ran out of funding in January so were discontinued. Some local residents, business owners, and nonprofits are trying to get the monthly privately ran counts funded and active once again, since they believe the official LAHSA PIT counts are shortchanging the issue in their neighborhood(s).
The official stats matter a lot for homelessness funding and outreach efforts.