I’m Ruth and I live outside in Los Angeles.

This article follows-up on one I wrote in October 2023:

🔗 All data is linked at the end of the article, so you can check it out and draw your own conclusions! Please let me know what you think in a comment.

66% of people who enrolled in Inside Safe are indoors.

4,994 Participant Statuses:

* 3,305 indoors

* 1,606 outside

* 83 deceased

Nearly 5,000 people enrolled in Inside Safe by New Years’ Eve and an additional 346 people enrolled in January. As of January 31, 5,340 participants have enrolled in the Inside Safe program “ISP”.

21%* 12% of Inside Safe participants moved into permanent housing.

As of the end of last year, 609 people had moved from Inside Safe to permanent housing “PH”:

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* 288 people are on subsidies like Section 8 housing choice vouchers “HCVs”,

* 283 moved to permanent supportive housing “PSH” units, like those built and financed through the City’s Measure HHH, as they become available. PSH units are subsidized by Project-Based vouchers “PHVs”.

* 38 people got market-rate “MR” (unsubsidized) housing. It’s unclear if the Inside Safe program “ISP” assisted these participants in securing private leases.

In addition to the 12% who are permanently housed, 54% of Inside Safe participants are sheltered.

* 2,552 participants enrolled in ISP are in interim housing “IH”/shelter.

* 1,846 Inside Safe participants are in hotels and motels (37%):

* 1,432 people are staying in motels that have booking or occupancy agreements with the City.

* 414 participants are in The Mayfair Hotel, a City acquisition in Eunisses Hernandez’ District 1

* 448 people are housed with Time-Limited Subsidies “TLS”*, which are also called Rapid Re-Housing “RRH” (9%). *TLS typical duration = two years. I’m uncomfortable calling this subpopulation “permanently housed” like the City does. In 2013, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” re-classified people on this kind of subsidy as “housed”, which made homeless counts appear to improve. Unfortunately, many households on TLS end up homeless again, like 300 families Byrhonda Lyons and Jeanne Kuang reported on in Calmatters a year and a half ago.

* 204 people are in Interim Housing “IH” - “other IH” (4%). There is no explanation on what this housing is. Maybe it is “halfway” housing by the Office of Diversion and Re-entry “ODR”, SHARE! nonprofit, market-rate housing, or something else?

Additional “sheltered” statuses:

194 participants had other outcomes (4%) but many of them still probably need housing:

* 89 people are incarcerated,

* 31 people accepted transportation out of LA through “reunification” programs

* 15 people are in medical or psychiatric hospitals, and

* 5 people are in substance abuse treatment facilities,

* 21 people are in A Bridge Home “ABH” congregate shelters,

* 33 people are in “villages” of Pallet Shelter tiny structures.

32% of enrollees are on the street, with one-third in touch with providers.

* 1,714 out 5,320 participants “returned to homelessness”

* 586 remain in touch with service providers

* 61 people enrolled for zero days (1%).

I wrote more about serious issues in Inside Safe here:

Total enrollments +494% in 22 months.

* March 2023 • 1,077

* January 2025 • 5,320

Enrollments have been tightly controlled to stay within budget constraints while focusing on highly-visible “encampments”. One of the top issues I encounter is qualified unhoused people who want to access ISP, but can’t. The bottleneck in “throughout” is lack of available housing and subsidies for permanently exiting participants.

I am not enrolled in Inside Safe. My neighborhood was targeted for an Inside Safe operation last year, but it got cancelled. I wrote about it here:

49% of participants have documents; await housing placements.

* 2,441 Document-ready (Avg. 411 days)

* 2,553 Not yet documented (Avg. 136 days)

The longer people stay enrolled, naturally, the more get their documents and they are less likely lose them.

Participants spent 1,767,138 nights enrolled in Inside Safe in the first two years.

Average enrollment: 355 nights (≈ 1 year)

According to the data I obtained from the City Administrative Officer “CAO” Matt Szabo, 16 participants have been in Inside Safe for over two years continuously, which isn’t a great sign that housing placements are moving along expeditiously.

But the fact remains: the program has retained them, as Mayor Bass promised. In Project Roomkey, hotels were constantly being “demobilized” to switch service providers, removing participants, and cause staff to have to seek unemployment. Inside Safe seems to be a more stable environment.

83 people are known to have passed away (2%).

🕯

0.8% Annualized Program Mortality

83 Inside Safe participants were known to have perished as of the end of 2024 (1.7%). That means the mortality rate of the first two years of Inside Safe is 1,662 per 100k. In 2023, the annualized mortality rate of people experiencing homelessness “PEH” in Los Angeles County was 3,326 per 100k, using figures from the Department of Public Health “DPH” and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA”’s point-in-time “PIT” count. Inside Safe seems to significantly improve mortality, slashing rates for participants to levels closer to that of the general housed population.

Disappearing Dwellings

* 3,465 tents in 2020

* 2,589 tents in 2025* *draft

After reaching an all-time high of 3,465 tents in 2020 (this was technically a pre-pandemic count because it was in January), the number of tent-dwellings has been slowly but surely decreasing. The draft 2025 count, obtained from LAHSA through CPRA, indicates fewer than 2,600 tents City-wide, coming directly from tally sheets collected by point-in-time “PIT” volunteers. It is unclear if or when it will be publicly released. Meanwhile, other homeless populations, like people in emergency shelters, are on the rise.

I wrote about LAHSA’s choice to withhold 2023’s dwellings counts here:

I don’t celebrate reductions in makeshift shelters because, to me, tents represent survival and independence. 1,846 people are in Inside Safe motels and The Mayfair, with most having given up their survival supplies to redeem that opportunity, and their continued status indoors probably depends a lot on the Mayor getting re-elected.

Outside Safe?

Homeless victims of homicide:

* 2022: 92 (per LAPD data via my CPRA).

* 2023: 56 (per LAPD Homicide Report).

* 2024: 8* (using MO code 1218) *preliminary from open data; not complete

A sustained reduction in homicides with homeless victims is cause for applause. My 2024 data isn’t complete, but the difference of 36 fewer homicides in 2023 compared to 2022 is confirmed and significant. Inside Safe participants are technically still homeless until permanently housed, but their sheltered status likely contributes to safer conditions.

I wrote about 2022’s 92 homicides with unhorsed victims here:

In November 2022, voters in the City of LA saw Karen Bass as the leader equipped to address the top issue of homelessness over her well-connected, wealthy competitor, Rick Caruso, who had the endorsement of the LA Police Protective League “LAPPL”, on which he is a commissioner. Maybe this achievement is what earned Mayor Karen Bass an endorsement from the police for her re-election, over Los Angeles Police Protective League Commissioner-challenger Rick Caruso.

Considering Bass’s considerable achievements in public safety and shelter, it makes sense for Caruso’s own co-commissioners to endorse the incumbent mayor so early. But gaining the support of LAPPL is not the same as keeping the favor of the voting majority. What more would people like to see from the Mayor and her Inside Safe program before they feel confident re-electing her?

What can you do?

* Ask your council person what is delaying the opening of Homekey acquisitions

* Introduce your neighborhood council to residents and staff at City-run shelters

* Demonstrate around vacant housing units to demand immediate occupancy

* Identify affordable rentals to facilitate “throughput” of shelter participants

Raw ISP participant status data:

* Click here for January 2025 PDF

* Click here for December 2024 data

* Click here for October 2024 PDF

* Click here for August 2024 PDF

* Click here for March 2024 data

* Click here for September 2023 data

Obtained through California Public Records Act “CPRA”/Freedom Of Information Act “FOIA” requests on the City of Los Angeles’ NextRequest portal, lacity.nextrequest.com.

The data I analyzed for this article is from December 31, 2024 because the 2025 data is a PDF. I’m certain an AI is capable of converting it into a usable format such as .CSV, but I have not found a free one that is up for the job. Please let me know if you have the solution (besides for tailoring multiple different requests to the City, which is what eventually worked).

Wombo dream.ai (illustrations) • Canva (graphics) • Flourish Studio (map)

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

70-year-old Benito Flores uses a square frame in his tidy, green front yard as a mini-billboard to oppose state violence:

“KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER.”

—Reclaimer Benito Flores’ sign

PRESS RELEASE

Mr. Flores has no rent debt.

He has no behavioral issues.

He has a codified right to purchase the home he’s occupied for over five years, which he would like to rightfully own.

With all of these factors in his favor, as far as eviction cases go, Benito is easy to defend.

His lease agreement with the housing authority says he will vacate the premises eventually.

But the Housing Authority promised permanent housing placements, and they haven’t delivered.

What will it take to redeem his right to buy?

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Affordable Sales Program

By law, Surplus Residential Property is disposed according to Government Code Article 8.5 [54235-54238.9]. A current low/moderate-income occupant (like Mr. Flores) has the highest priority for purchase, second only to a current occupant who is a former owner of the home.

The law hasn’t stopped Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This week, they extracted three similarly-situated neighbors from their Caltrans homes on Shelley Street in El Sereno’s sleepy 710 Corridor.

If Benito is removed from the home, he will become a former tenant, and lose his priority to purchase the property at an affordable price. How shameless can the City, County and State be to work together to come between a peaceful elder and his legal right to own his dwelling?

710 Corridor

How 600 homes in El Sereno and South Pasadena got condemned by the State Department of Transportation “Caltrans” just to be seemingly forgotten for decades is the type of nonfiction that sounds more like Los Angeles lore. Homeowners in the Caltrans Corridor were forced to accept buyouts through a legal freeway expansion process that began with the State acquiring the properties through eminent domain in the 1950s and 60s. Plans changed and changed again, and the 710 stub never got connected to the rest of the highway system as planned. The “just compensation” homeowners were paid didn’t replace single-family homes they were forced to relinquish. Many of them had to downsize and/or leave the State altogether.

Renters would’ve had to seek leases elsewhere, and some would not be able to afford similar accommodations, especially when were competing with other desperate, displaced neighbors. Local landlords took advantage by raising rents. Families, many of whom were immigrants, some living with multiple generations under the same roof, resented loss of the stability they carved-out in El Sereno. Without support of neighbors, marginalized households’ economic injuries didn’t heal the same as they might’ve for more resilient, privileged households, who actually benefit from redevelopment. Generational resentments toward the State over the harm their families endured for this failed freeway project was passed down family trees.

Even though the property transfers were fully legal, and most homeowners were compensated with real checks in amounts considered “fair”, the former residents of El Sereno missed the homes they knew, the neighbors they had, and the community to which they belonged. They told their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and for decades, the houses sat like time capsules, portals to better days and living reminders of when they were doing better, things were less expensive and life was simpler.

March 2020 • COVID-19

Slowly, some displaced descendants eventually returned to their old homes in the Corridor, accompanied by other local families needing adequate housing for themselves and their children during the pandemic.

They call themselves Reclaimers.

Former owner-occupants are legally recognized by law as having the highest priority to purchase back their homes at a reasonable price. Next in line are low-income occupants like Mr. Flores. Then, occupants who make up to 150% median income. Occupants with incomes 150% median or less are to be offered the homes at lower, affordable prices. Finally, public and private “housing related entities”, current tenants and former tenants get a chance to buy the homes at fair prices. All of this happens before the public has a chance to bid on the dwellings at an auction.

11/26/20 • Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving in 2020, everything was calm in the 710 Corridor until the police showed up to break up a community gathering of reclaimers and remove new occupants of surplus homes by force.

When homeless families and elders occupied these government-owned homes during the pandemic, they began the hard work of improving long-neglected properties, allowing children to socially distance in their own bedrooms. As reclaimers and their network of neighbors were enjoying dinner, California Highway Patrol “CHP” violently extracted a mother and hogtied her teenage child in the middle of the street that splits the corridor.

Earlier that day, the reclaimers had been thankful to be thriving in a global pandemic. Now, red-and-blue strobes illuminated an eerie, mostly-empty residential street, animating an advancing army. The onslaught of uninvited State police were ironically forgoing their own families’ festivities for overtime tearing their fragile households apart. The feast was forgotten and fear rightfully froze them. Even their new Councilman, the now- embattled Kevin de León, officially called the images of the CHP raid that circulated in the media “heartbreaking”. They were.

The dizzying lights, shiny guns, clipping walkee-talkees, and shock of instant separation…it all felt devastatingly familiar.

Witnessing the Reclaimers’ roller coaster of re-housing and immediate displacement play out on social media, I was instantly triggered by the similarities to my first ejection from stable housing. When I was in middle school, police detained my dad and told my mother, brother and I to leave our home indefinitely. We had just moved in that year, and it was a school night, and I had homework and planned to hang out with my friends that weekend.

I wanted to support and protect these brilliant, resilient strangers, the Reclaimers, but didn’t know how.

My For more on-the-ground perspectives from the Thanksgiving CHP raid, listen to the Thanksgiving 2020 Special of iheartradio’s “We The Unhoused” podcast (Episode 36) by clicking on the image below.

WTU is produced by host Theo Henderson, who once lived in a public park in the City of Los Angeles, and Jamie Loftus.

The people have spoken…WTU was a double-winner in the 2025 Webby Awards! Thank you for voting in support of Theo’s well-deserved wins.

Full disclosure: I am honored to have spoken as a guest on WTU a handful of times, including last year with my sometimes-Substack co-writer, Zachary Ellison and most recently about my partner J’s legal woes.

2021 HACLA Lease

Mr. Flores and other reclaimers signed agreements with the Housing Authority of LA that said they would vacate the premises in a few years, so the homes could be returned to Caltrans. But, for their end of the deal, the Housing Authority promised to help Reclaimers secure permanent housing, and it didn’t follow through for many.

Benito fears that if he leaves, the “offer of a lifetime” which he is clearly entitled to, by law, will never come. That’s why he won’t leave.

Broken promises

Now, the Housing Authority was moving the goalposts, telling media all they technically have to do to live up to their end of the bargain was pass along referrals. If those referrals were full, unaffordable, inappropriate, or otherwise unavailable, well, that wasn’t their problem. That was basically the illuminating position of LA’s Housing Authority.

One reclaimer, Ruby, did get a sustainable permanent supportive housing unit and another family got a Section 8 apartment. But there were dozens of reclaimers in several homes, and one single-room occupancy “SRO” unit plus one apartment wasn’t enough housing for all of them.

HACLA never did come to the table with suitable replacements or federal vouchers for the rest. But the press covered the individual successes without questioning why universal offers weren’t made to all reclaimers, or why their right to purchase under Roberti wasn’t being acknowledged at all.

It felt wrong to me for the City’s Housing Authority to threaten to remove 70-year-old Benito from his reclaimed, government surplus home of five years without making good on HACLA’s promise to permanently house him elsewhere. It wasn’t simply knowing the diabetic sores on his feet wouldn’t heal on the streets, or the understanding that he would never find a place in Los Angeles on his fixed income of Social Security.

I found it deeply offensive that the Housing Authority would move in a way that is likely cause injury to elder Benito, in order to protect emptiness, enforce displacement, embrace waste and buckle down on the racist redlining restrictive real estate policies of decades past…all while we are in a homelessness state of emergency in the City and County. Seven people are dying on the streets of Los Angeles per day. When Mr. Flores moved in, the same statistic was three daily deaths.

May 2022 • 710 cancelled

The highway extension ultimately got cancelled for good in 2022. It should have been good news for The Reclaimers, whose occupied homes were no longer in its path. That hundreds of residential properties sat vacant for over half a century situated right in the middle of Los Angeles, oblivious to the largest unsheltered homeless population in the nation is probably the most literal metaphor for “the Los Angeles way of doing things”.

2023 • LAHD

The City’s Housing Department, LAHD is supposed to manage affordable housing, whereas the Housing Authority manages public housing and federal subsidies. A tenant can’t be evicted unless they’ve been properly noticed by the landlord.

One would think that an eviction that is being carried out by the City’s own housing department would follow all the rules. But Mr. Flores’ notice hasn’t appeared on the Housing Department’s website. Despite the oversight, three reclaimers, Tina and Sandra and Elitania were violently removed from their Caltrans homes on May 21st:

“On Wednesday May 21, the sheriff’s deputies violently displaced the Reclaimers, Tina, Sandra and Elitania out of their homes.”

—Benito Flores 5/21/25 statement

2025 “NOTICE TO VACATE”

It’s now been five years from when he first occupied his reclaimed home, and Benito Flores has poured love, resources and sweat into making the unit in the older El Sereno duplex into a real home. He wants to exercise his right to become the legal buyer. He wants to become a homeowner, not homeless, or living in a vehicle once again, like he was immediately before moving in.

The Notice to Vacate posted on Benito’s door by LASD was dated Wednesday, May 7th. He also has a pending affirmative case against the Housing Authority about his right to purchase under Roberti, but it is moving at a much slower pace than the efficient removal process.

One week after the date on his vacation notice, Benito was due in court. He showed up to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse with supporters wearing red shirts to show tenant solidarity. The judge rejected his attorney Arturo Gomez 300+-page filing meticulously outlining the many injustices in removing the reclaimers. Though no fault of his own, Benito had lost, but he is still inside his reclaimed home…for now.

Why does a transportation department get to possess housing, but a qualified constituent in need does not? What would happen if the housing department came to possess an abandoned highway?

The surplus residences are finally realizing their purposes as occupied homes full of families, and our authorities are now violently demanding they be kept in a vacant, useless state. The homes are like “offerings” to Gods of real estate or sacrifices to the demon spirits of capitalism in the name of enforced deprivation. It is such a true Los Angeles tragedy.

Help Benito resist removal by signing up for rapid response and showing up for him when the time comes.

* Call elected officials like CD14 Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado, County District 1 Supervisor Hilda Solis, Representative Jimmy Gomez, and Senator Maria Durazo, and demand they meet with Mr. Flores to offer him the opportunity to purchase his home at an affordable price.

* Call the Sheriffs to persuade them not to get in the middle of the City and State.

* Post about the Reclaimers on social media and tag @reclaimingourhomes on Instagram

* Call the media to tell them why Mr. Flores’ story matters: Anyone who owns real estate in LA can be targeted for eminent domain acquisition and have their property taken for public projects that never materialize.

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

I’m Ruth roofless. I’ve been unsheltered in the City of Los Angeles continuously since 2017. I write about corruption and housing policy from the streets and host live Displacement X Spaces discussions on Sundays at 7pm PST on Twitter, where I’m @rooflesser.

Federal Housing Choice Vouchers “HCVs”, also called “Section 8” are our country’s #1 “safety net” against mass homelessness. In the City of Los Angeles, a planned opening of the decade-long waitlist for housing subsidies turned into a trap that left applicants, including my partner and I, in even worse shape than we were in before.

After applying for Section 8, our private data was in the hands of professional hackers demanding a ransom, making us virtual hostages.

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2017 Lottery

“We are very pleased to be opening our Section 8 waiting list after 13 years…”

—Douglas Gunthrie 10/2/17

When we applied for Section 8 in October 2022, J and I had been living together in the City of LA’s outdoor public spaces, such as under the highway and underground in storm drains continuously since October 2017, which also happens to be the previous time the City’s Section 8 waiting list opened. Before 2017, the City’s Section 8 waiting list had been closed since October 2004.

The 2017 occasion, celebrated by Mayor Eric Garcetti and HACLA President and Chief Executive Officer “CEO” Doug Gunthrie, seems like it was nearly identical to the 2022 opening.

“The application for the waiting list lottery is scheduled to open starting Monday, October 16, 2017 at 6:00 AM until Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 5:00 PM. Applications are available only online through hacla.hcvlist.org.”

There doesn’t appear to be much public information about the 2004 event. But on August 4th, 2017, LA Sentinel’s Sentinel News Service reported CVP Associates, Inc. (CVP) won a competitive bidding process to handle an estimated 600k incoming applicants and manage the City’s Section 8 waitlist. CVP seems to be Customer Value Partners, Inc. (CVP), a consulting firm that boasts partnerships with Amazon Web Services “AWS” and Google Cloud.

“At the end of the application period, HACLA will use a computer-randomized lottery to select up to 20,000 applicants for placement on the Section 8 Waiting List. As funding is available, HACLA will contact applicants for program eligibility determinations.“

—HACLA.org 10/2/17 announcement

Anirudh Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of CVP and previously worked as a founder at Answerthink $HCKT . CVP acquired Atlas Research (Atlas) in 2021. Atlas, founded in 2008, boasts the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs “VA” as a client, where it won a role in fulfilling a 10-year, $1B Veterans Health Administration’s “VHA” Integrated Healthcare Transformation “IHT” contract.

2019 VASH cut off

“A preference for assistance will be given to applicants who live or work in the City of Los Angeles and to applicants who are veterans or have a household member who is a veteran, released from such military service under conditions other than dishonorable.”

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 statement

Last year, I wrote about how the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing “HUD-VASH” vouchers for veteran families evaporated in 2019 in “Somehow at some point”, which was originally published by CityWatchLA.

When Heidi Marston left the Veterans Administration “VA” for LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA” in February 2019, a program in Echo Park that had helped veterans utilize vouchers shut down and reopened as a LAHSA family shelter. Since that happened, the HACLA has not met HUD’s VASH utilization requirement of 70% or higher, and therefore the City of Los Angeles has been effectively cut off from receiving new HUD-VASH vouchers. The HACLA received only one allotment of 250 vouchers since 2019, or 50 vouchers per year, on average.

The HACLA and LACDA, LA County’s Development Authority, combined, used to get over 800 vouchers per year, on average. Had the HACLA managed to lease-up more veteran households on VASH in 2019, Los Angeles could have received enough vouchers for every homeless veteran in LA to have permanent housing on the private market by now, assuming there was enough physical housing.

“The opening of HACLA’s Section 8 Wait List lottery will help thousands of families who struggle to pay for housing on a fixed-income.”

—Doug Gunthrie, The HACLA’s then-president and CEO

Too often, government departments like the VA and our PHA seem to work with each other to deprive beneficiaries of entitlements. For example, until recently, veterans’ benefits counted as “income”. This caused veteran families to be ineligible for subsidized housing, and may have contributed to the low HUD-VASH utilization rate.

Since the government is responsible for paying many “fixed incomes” like VA benefits, Social Security, disability and welfare, public housing authorities “PHAs”should be the voice of their tenants and applicants. PHAs could lobby for higher payments that allow recipients of benefits to afford rent without having to rely on multiple bureaucracies.

2021 3,365 EHVs

“Rental subsidy programs reduce poverty, housing instability and homelessness...”

Until 2021, Section 8 had never specifically sought to relieve recipients of homelessness by bringing people from the street indoors. Then 2021’s American Rescue Plan “ARP” funded 70k HUD Emergency Housing Vouchers “EHVs” targeting unsheltered households. Los Angeles received more than 5,000 with 3,365 coming to the HACLA on July 1st, 2021, and they had to be assigned to a household for leasing by September 30th, 2023. EHV applications were not accepted by HACLA directly and had to come from LAHSA, subjecting them to gatekeeping of nonprofit service providers, whose workers claim they are housing insecure themselves.

Ultimately, the vouchers got leased up, but not quickly enough, causing Los Angeles to forfeit its chance at getting another allotment. EHVs are supposed to expire on September 30th, 2030.

Last month, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” sent a letter to public housing authorities around the country explaining that final payments would be made this month and they will likely last through the end of 2025. It explains that the funds don’t technically expire until September 30th, 2035, but that no more money will come in after this last payment, so landlords are going to stop getting paid, possibly in 2026, and people are going to be evicted.

✉️ Read the letter from HUD.

2022 LAUSD ransom

On March 10th, 2022, LA Unified School District “LAUSD” released a memo about multi-factor authentication “MFA”, but failed to implement it for six months. On Labor Day, September 5th, 2022, LAUSD was subject of a ransomware attack. Later that week, it decided to finally implement MFA. Ransom negotiations went on for about a month, with LAUSD flatly refusing to pay and the hackers eventually publishing a limited amount of data, giving the appearance that they were exaggerating the amount of information they possessed. It could be said that this attack led to positive changes within the department, and the solution was a practical one which isn’t likely to open a new “back door” for hackers.

2022 Lottery

“It’s been five years since we last opened our Section 8 waiting list and the need for rental assistance has grown…Our goal, with the reopening of HACLA’s Section 8 Waiting List Lottery is to help thousands of families who are struggling financially to find stable housing.”

In October 2022, my partner J and I applied online for the City’s Section 8 “lottery” on my iPhone, which we charged off a 12v car battery. I heard about the lottery on Twitter (now X).

“…We’ve ensured that the online application is convenient to access and easy to apply. There are step-by-step videos to assist applicants on how to apply and frequently asked questions that applicants may have about the program and their eligibility.”

—Doug Gunthrie

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles “The HACLA”, under then-President and Chief Executive Officer “CEO” Doug Gunthrie, had decided to again open its federal housing choice voucher “HCV” waiting list, closed since 2017.

“No applications will be handed out or accepted in-person, by mail, email, or fax at any HACLA office. Applicants will be required to have a valid, working email address.”

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 press release

For two weeks, from 6 a.m. on Monday, October 17th through 5 p.m. on Sunday, October 30th, to much of former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s excited style of fanfare and media buzz, the possibility of a future in stable, subsidized housing was just one online form away at HACLA.HCVList.org.

We lost.

In December, we were notified via email that we were among over half-a-million “losers” who had not been lucky enough to secure one of 20,000 or 30,000 “slots” (the number was inconsistently reported) for subsidized housing that were expected sometime in the next decade. That means The HACLA, which manages roughly 50,000 vouchers, plans on processing 5.5 vouchers per day for the next 10 years.

From July 1st, 2021 through September 30, 2023, The HACLA also had 3,365 Emergency Housing Vouchers “EHVs” available from the American Rescue Plan. That’s 4.3 EHVs per day, in addition to 5.5 Housing Choice Vouchers “HCVs”, for a total of 9.8 vouchers for the HACLA to process per day. The EHVs are no longer available, but why can’t HACLA keep up that same pace?

Public data from the HUD’s HCV dashboard show The HACLA utilizing 82% of its HCVs, with 44,169 out of 52,645 in use as of December 31st, 2023. 85% or 44,772 out of 52,471 HCVs are in use as of December 31st, 2024, a slight improvement in utilization but only because there are 174 fewer vouchers than the year prior. How are we losing vouchers?

HUD considers public housing authorities “PHAs” with utilization rates under 95% “failing”. HUD wants to see utilization rates of 98%. The anticipated average output of 5.5 vouchers/day is disappointing, especially from a department that has a budget of >$1.9B annually, mostly coming from federal sources, supplemented by rents paid by low-income tenants.

Our housing authority needs to be performing more lease-ups daily just to outpace deaths from poverty.

#7adayinLA 🕯️

Seven people are dying on the streets of Los Angeles daily, according to information available from the LA County Medical Examiner. Los Angeles is utilizing death as its main permanent housing outcome and primary escape from poverty.

“Rental assistance programs like these fight against poverty and help reduce homelessness.“

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 press release

I spoke to one family of Section 8 lottery “winners”, who were very grateful and extremely deserving after dealing with a flooded apartment for several years. They were slightly disappointed to learn they’d be waiting by the phone for up to ten years for their permanent subsidies to be ready. The overall effect this lottery had on the public was not a massive sigh of relief, as it should have been for the massive and growing housing insecure population of LA.

When the lottery was over, no one was kissing the ground because it didn’t greatly improve the lives of any of the many needy participants. There was no token winner jumping up and down, being handed a giant coupon redeemable for the lions’ share of their rent on a safe LA home, surrounded by balloons and camera flashes.

Unbelievably, the City’s Section 8 lottery made many of our lives a little bit harder.

2023 “NOTICE OF DATA BREACH”

Less than six months after applying for Section 8, in March 2023, J and I received identical letters to our shared P.O. Box informing us that our data had been breached by HACLA, which had collected our private info in October for the Section 8 lottery.

✉️ Read the entire letter.

The three-page letters offered us one year of free credit monitoring as a consolation for having our data exposed publicly. Examining the letter, it seemed to have been sent from outside of Los Angeles, which was suspicious. It was from a P.O. Box in Pennsylvania. We both decided not to enroll in the free credit monitoring. The offer to call a number and give them the information we were trying to guard felt like a trap.

▶️ Listen to my audio diary from March 2023:

“How are we supposed to know that this isn’t the scam?” 🙃

I asked J, who replied,

“…does it ever end?” 🥴

In the months following, we were called by bill collectors who knew our names. We didn’t engage, but imagined it was probably related to the breach, but we couldn’t definitively prove it. We screened our calls and became wary of answering unfamiliar numbers.

The overall impression I got at the time was that we were somehow being blamed for personal negligence in sharing our private personal information with The HACLA in the Section 8 lottery, while the undetected hackers apparently had access to their system. If we can’t trust our housing authority, one of the oldest in the country, operating since 1938, with our information, how are we supposed to be able to trust them with our housing, if we’re ever lucky enough to become tenants who rely on them to cover a portion of our rent each month?

“What happened?”

—The HACLA, 3/10/23

Contemplating the timeline of events raises more questions. It seems convenient for the waiting list to open like a fire hose of data as hackers were present in the HACLA’s system. Was the entire lottery engineered to extract more personal information from the system for the hackers? Was HACLA.HCVList.org (which no longer exists) compromised? Why didn’t CVP, Inc. become aware of the infiltration sooner? Why did hackers think recovery of our data was worth anything to The HACLA, when they had already decided who was and wasn’t getting assisted from the next voucher allotment? If the whole lottery was engineered to be a scam using the bait of affordable housing, I guess we were suckers.

2023 SBSD Ransom

The following month, the San Bernardino Sheriffs Department “SBSD” paid out over half a million dollars as a ransom payment in response to a cyber attack. On April 8th, 2023, SBSD said their insurance covered half of the $1.1M ransom. Whenever ransoms get satisfied, it increases the value of this disruptive style of hacking. It’s interesting that the police coughed up the cash in order to protect themselves, but school districts and housing departments, who typically have smaller budgets, couldn’t afford to. Do they have a higher deductible on their insurance?

2024 Cyberattack

On Halloween, a tweet on X announced a second incident targeting The HACLA’s system. Lars Daniel wrote for Forbes that 900GB of sensitive data was “exfiltrated” by a named “ransomware gang”, a different named entity than the initial incident, including:

* Personal identification information

* Database backups

* Financial documents

* Executive and employee records

* Customer information

* Internal corporate communications

On May 18, 2023, Attorney Ryan Clarkson of Malibu’s Clarkson Law Firm filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. Like my partner and I, plaintiff and class representative Michael Azar applied for a subsidy through the HACLA’s open lottery.

Who houses the hackers?

In 2022, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvallo told LAist the hackers were located in Russia, but gave no further proof or explanation. I’m choosing not to speculate on the origin or name either group of hackers. I don’t want to amplify them unless and until I understand their intentions. If these hackers end up exposing illegal tenant removals, denial of housing on any scale and/or shedding light on the inner-workings of the often-opaque, State-mandated City Housing Authority, I’ll appreciate their work. For example, what do the “internal corporate communications” say?

While renewal of federal housing assistance, administered by local public housing authorities “PHAs” like The HACLA, is uncertain, as it currently is, and it appears our City is actually losing coveted subsidies on its own, without outside interference, relief feels farther away than ever. I would like to be wrong, but these data breaches feel like part of a larger assault on tenants and those qualified to reside in subsidy-stabilized housing in general, not rebellion or liberation.

How many identities must be stolen until none of our personal information has any value? Would that be bad, or possibly a good thing?

TL;DR

Types of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” (federal) vouchers:

* HCV • Housing Choice Vouchers “Section 8” come directly from a public housing authority “PHA” waitlist.

* LACDA • LA County Development Authority

* HACLA • Housing Authority of the City of LA

* VASH • Veterans Administration Supportive Housing referrals come from nonprofits working for the Veterans Administration “VA” at the Soldier’s Home

* VASH PBVs are for permanent supportive housing “PSH” units located at the Soldier’s Home

* EHV • Emergency Housing Vouchers funded by American Rescue Plan “ARP” targeted at unhoused households; applications must come to PHA from LAHSA

* PBV • Project-Based Vouchers are for PSH; they are non-portable; tenants may move out on HCV after one year; referrals come to PHA from LAHSA, DMH, DHS through the co-ordinated entry system “CES”

HACLA Timeline:

2004 • October • 20k HCVs

2005-07 • HACLA waitlist closed

2008–16 • 4,275 VASH including PBVs

2017 • 10/16–29 • 20k HCVs; 340 VASH

2019 • 0 VASH

2020 • COVID-19; 0 VASH

2021 • 3,365 EHVs; 0 VASH; CVP acquires Atlas (VA contract)

A timeline of the attack was published last year in Forbes. It appears below, with additional events added by me, Ruth, with a *:

2022 • 250 VASH*

* 1/15 • [Hacker] gained initial access to HACLA’s systems.

* 3/10 • LAUSD Multi-Factor Authentication “MFA” document*

* 9/6 • LAUSD ransom attack • *9/12 • LAUSD MFA rollout*

* 10/17–30 • 20k HCVs*

* 12/31 • HACLA’s IT team discovered their systems had been encrypted, prompting an immediate server shutdown.

2023 • *0 VASH

* 1/27 • [Hacker] published the stolen data after ransom negotiations failed.

* 2/13 • An investigation revealed the true scope of the breach.

Additionally:

* 3/10 • “Notice of Data Breach”

* 4/7 • SBSD attack • 4/8 • $1.1M ransom paid

* 5/18 • Class-action lawsuit

* 9/30 • EHVs sunset; Exp. 9/30/30.

2024 • 10/31 • 2nd HACLA cyber attack

2025 • 3/6 • HUD EHV letter

2026-35 • EHVs expiring

Ruth is unsheltered in the City of Los Angeles and writes about corruption as it relates to homelessness and mismanagement of funds within Los Angeles. She wants people to know that homeless people aren’t what is broken about our re-housing system.

Also please check out The Homeless Hacker by Andrew Weisbeck, who is homeless with his fiancé.

Illustrations created from prompts with Wombo’s free dream.ai app for iOS

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

I’m Ruth and I’ve been living in public in the City of Los Angeles for around eight years. I’m one of Ava’s many advocates (including Ava herself!) trying to facilitate her transition into sustainable, dignified housing.

For those who participate in the 2025 Greater Los Angeles Count, which has been delayed for one month because of the #LAfires, Ava V. may be a mark on a tally sheet or a tap in an app. But to others in Venice Beach, she’s a longtime neighbor, friend and empowered tenant.

Ava has rented at her building near Muscle Beach for the past 20 years.

She has already been evicted.

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Her days in her apartment are numbered. Despite the existence of many vacant affordable units on the Westside, Ava doesn’t have a place lined up and will be falling onto the street for the first time. She, like many, have found the process of accessing deeply affordable housing prohibitively convoluted.

Ava spends most of her time enrolling in services, pursuing assistance, and seeking applications for affordable housing units, especially those targeted at older, low-income tenants with disabilities. She has done dozens of “intakes”, hoping each would be able to help.

Over the past year, Ava has called 211, which only had help for families with minor children, LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA”, and the City’s Housing Rights Center, who said:

“Try 211.”

Neighbors supporting neighbors

Ava’s athletic neighbor in Venice Beach, Danny Slant extended a hand and made her story a feature on his YouTube channel, a slight deviation from his usual content. He had an open-hearted conversation with Ava and set her up with a GoFundMe. It did little to put a dent in her rent debt but warmed her heart, fed her over the holidays and made her feel seen. Danny calls Ava “a unicorn” because she’s such an upstanding neighbor who never causes commotion. He doesn’t want to see her on the streets or forced out of the neighborhood.

Even if Ava’s fundraiser had raised enough to purchase an RV for several thousand dollars, she’d still have nowhere on the Westside where she’d be allowed to park. Slant’s other videos show vehicle dwellers being displaced and threatened with parking violations and poverty tows. Police enforcement makes downsizing into a vehicle seem impossible, but high costs make maintaining a life indoors prohibitively expensive, too.

How did an incumbent tenant find herself in this untenable situation?

Ava saw her financial hardship coming from a mile away after she went through a breakup and downsized from a “1BR” into a “0BR” unit in her rent-controlled building. She made the opposite move many years prior to accommodate her partner, occupying three different units at the same address over the past two decades.

Ava applied for General Relief, Medi-Cal and CalFresh from Los Angeles County’s Department of Public Social Services “DPSS” and was quickly approved for their full suite of benefits. It adds up to <$2,000 cash/year, if she does all of their assignments, appointments and paperwork on time, buying her less than a month. And to make things worse, this month, her benefits were scammed out of her account, which is a common glitch for which there appears to be no real fix.

Last year, Ava had sought Social Security for long-documented health struggles (she has over 200 pages of records) that make it hard for her to maintain employment and income. Her 3-day notice to “pay or quit” and SSI denial came in last year on top of more bills: bad news on top of bad news. She is appealing the disability denial with the help of an advocate and a lawyer who will eventually pay himself out of the proceeds of her approval, whenever that finally happens. If she could make a similar deal with her landlord, she’d be okay.

According to the overdue Sheriff’s notice to vacate on her door, Ava was to vacate her unit with her things before Monday November 11th, Veteran’s Day. She’d have been more than willing to leave, if only she knew where she was going.

Solidarity in struggle

Before dawn on Tuesday, November 12th, peer advocate Vera C. took a bus to Santa Monica wearing a red jacket to identify herself when meeting Ava for the first time and as a show of solidarity with the tenant struggle. The same morning, activists were packing a downtown courtroom in support of a Filipina Housing for Juanita tenant who was facing her landlord. In October, Mohawk Tenants packed City Hall and got City Council to close an abusive “renoviction” loophole.

Requesting a Stay

Dressed in red, both Mohawk and Juanita supporters were successful in securing their immediate demands. Ava and Vera hoped they would be, too. At the self-help area of the Courthouse, Ava and Vera requested a 30-day stay of execution on the Sheriff’s notice to vacate, which had been posted the prior Wednesday, November 6th.

As it turns out, Sheriffs seem to be at least several months behind on eviction enforcement, basically granting an automatic “30+-day stay” for everyone. Indeed, Ava’s eviction is just one instance in a huge system that has limits. One limit is LASD’s physical ability to carry out long lists of removals on behalf of landlords. The “eviction machine” presents quite a logistical challenge, like Santa making it to all of the “nice” households in one evening. This sad fact morphed into a silver lining because the removals ahead of hers kept Ava inside over the holidays. It also reminded that no matter how lonely her situation felt, she was not alone in her struggle.

Not homeless enough

A staffer in City councilwoman Traci Park’s Westside (CD11) office was one of several people to say Ava’s not “homeless enough” for assistance, despite her having already been evicted. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” defines four categories of homeless and considers Ava to be either literally homeless (Category 1) or imminently homeless (Category 2).

For the record, I consider Ava to be homeless, and I am what they consider “chronic” and “unsheltered”. As fond as I have become of Ava, I don’t want her outside with me, if we can help it. It is really frustrating when I get told there is assistance for people like her but not for people like me, and she gets told that there is assistance for people like me but not for people like her. It feels like there isn’t actually assistance for anyone.

Sheltered homelessness is increasing because of evictions.

At the same time sheltered homelessness is on the rise, the number of makeshift dwellings and tents is slowly going down. This is a consequence of “sweeps”, not an effective re-housing system, which would produce similar results without depriving people of their means to survive on the streets.

You can’t resist shelters that don’t exist!

Calling homeless people “shelter resistant” requires there to be an open shelter for them to resist, and on the Westside, there are none. When I was speaking to CD11’s homeless deputy, she made remarks about Ava’s perceived “shelter resistance”. But Ava is not wrong in her impression that congregate shelter will expose her to infectious disease, violence, and theft. Sleeping in a row of bunkbeds in a shelter with dozens of others does not get Ava any closer to securing affordable housing versus what she can access on the street through outreach.

Venice’s 154-bed, $8.6M Garcetti-era “A Bridge Home” (ABH) shelter shut down after operating for three years, and there was no plan in place to replace the beds before it closed. In this sense, CD11’s office staff seemed more resistant to maintaining shelter than Ava was in trying it.

Temporary accommodations

* Ramada Inn at 3130 Washington Blvd has 33 units that were supposed to be converted into housing by December 2024, according to Circle the News. However, the opening has been delayed indefinitely and it has actually been vacant since 2022. With nearly $20M spent so far on the acquisition and conversion, a new motel could have been developed for the cost.

* Cadillac Hotel at 8 Dudley Ave was operating as a County-funded Project Roomkey, but it has since returned to use as a regular hotel. The City and County may still be owed around $150M from FEMA under the Biden administration, but administered by the State, for Project Roomkey reimbursement.

* Marina 7 at 2435 Lincoln Blvd is an Inside Safe location which has open beds that are only accessible by targeted sanitation operations at encampments. Marina 7 also happens to be a residential hotel protected by a 2008 ordinance, LAMC § 47.70. It is supposed to ensure affordable rates for long-term tenants, but protections and programs mean little when the rooms are inaccessible to those in need.

Mayor Karen Bass was supposed to get a report about the status of residential hotels before the end of 2023 per Executive Order 6, but if the report was completed, it was never published. Capital & Main and ProPublica published an investigative series called “Checked Out” about these protected hotels which inspired a City Council motion for a report back about the status of these motels, but there has been no action by the City since August 2023 on the matter.

Venice Dell

A permanent housing project in Venice has been stalled for eight years, seemingly intentionally, by CD11 Traci Park, who ran on a “Not In My Back Yard” (NIMBY) platform. In December, the Coastal Commission cleared the project, only to have the Board of Transportation Commissioners “BOTC” railroad it the next day. City Council’s Transportation Committee, in a special joint meeting with the Public Works Committee last week, heard from BOTC that they voted not to approve the Venice Dell project, sited for a median parking lot called Lot 731.

Venice Dell was planned by former CD11 councilman Mike Bonin in an era prior to the passage of City Measure HHH as a 100% affordable deed-restricted project. Recent plans include 128 units, 68 of which were to be reserved for formerly homeless people. The agenda item heard by Transportation Committee on Thursday was about a transportation hub planned for a nearby parking lot, Lot 701, which BOTC have decided is a better fit for the larger Lot 731. The Venice Dell already included replacement public beach parking and even a boat launch with access to the original canal built by Abott-Kinney, plus much-needed affordable housing on top, but now it sounds like it may never get off the ground.

The question is if anyone will ever get to live in that space in a real affordable unit, or if it will only intermittently house people who wander through with little more than a sleeping bag and get shooed away by police and sanitation.

Ava’s formerly unhoused neighbor told Ava it was time to start packing up, so she would be ready, but how ready can one be for homelessness, especially in a community that is so hostile to the unhoused?

To be continued…

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The passage of County Measure A in the November elections committed an estimated $1 billion in additional sales tax revenue for homelessness services and affordable housing initiatives. Two bodies now exist to administer these funds, which will be available for collection on April 1, 2025 (no joke!) with the first tranche of funding entering government accounts sometime in June 2025. In approving a permanent source of revenue, voters chose the new Measure A and repealed Measure H, making permanent the increased sales tax along with changes to administration and oversight that will improve the management of funds.

The Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHSA), already envisioned by local government officials from the County of Los Angeles, City of Los Angeles, and neighboring officials, and the Executive Committee for Regional Homelessness Alignment (ECRHA), although slightly different in size and scope, are now essentially the two sides of a pretty penny. Some had feared Measure A wouldn’t pass based on polling.

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LACAHSA first met on May 17, 2023, but has essentially been a paper tiger with no funding. Now the tiger has teeth, with a planned 40% of Measure A revenues going its way and 60% going to ECHRA, which first met on February 20, 2024. If LACAHSA is the paper tiger, ECHRA is like the pen writing its notes. On both bodies sits Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who in February 2020, after being nominated to lead it by Board of Supervisors Chair Lindsey Horvath, said:

“Our expansive region has notably lacked a formal forum where key decision-makers from multiple levels of government can convene, craft unified homelessness response policies, and cultivate shared plans for allocating resources.”

Both LACAHSA and ECRHA have so-called leadership tables for intersectoral participation, with foundations such in as The California Endowment and Conrad Hilton Foundation having noticeable presences. Just how much money they might bring to the table to match taxpayer funding remains unknown, but it certainly is the aspirational goal.

The shifting sands of Los Angeles

Los Angeles as a region is severely underfunded on housing and homelessness, but ask most people, and they’ll tell you that money alone won’t solve the crisis. With an estimated roughly 40,000 people on the streets of the City of Los Angeles and an additional perhaps 35,000 spread across the County in other locales, the ability of government to organize and focus itself is in question.

LACAHSA plans to spend the next 6 months developing a strategic plan for the implementation of what’s essentially a so-called “opportunity fund" to keep people in their homes through preservation and at the same time develop affordable housing to get people housed. To get LACAHSA going, $6 million was loaned from the County of Los Angeles to it to support staffing up and administrative costs with planned repayment after the first Measure A collection in June. Statutorily, LACAHSA can’t spend more than 10% of its roughly $400 million on overhead.

“We’re gonna have to move different than other acronym agencies that we have….it’s showtime.”

At their last meeting, first Vice Chair and one-time City Administrative Officer for the City of Los Angeles, Miguel A. Santana, reported that the ECRHA and Leadership Table for Homeless Regional Alignment (LTRHA) boards were, in fact, created by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors (BOS) and clarified that the BOS determined the member composition for both, ECRHA and LTRHA. He further added that progress from both ECRHA and LTRHA will proceed even if changes in leadership occur within Los Angeles County and its cities. Board Member Jonathan Jager voiced an assertion that an expert in rental evictions (hopefully not a landlord...) should have a seat on the LTRHA. There’s some overlap between the groups.

In passing its first budget, it’s unknown how close it intends to get to this cap. A request for comment to interim CEO Ryan Johnson wasn’t immediately responded to, nor is there at present a list yet of eligible projects, what one might call a target list.

“As money comes in, we have to get the money out,”

Johnson declared at LACAHSA’s meeting on December 18 at the Metropolitan Water District Headquarters in Downtown Los Angeles.

LACAHSA itself lacks a “home” in that it doesn’t have office space staff yet, with Johnson noting he was taking

“meetings from his car.”

Apparently, the County of Los Angeles is unwilling to provide human resources or legal support to the new agency, so LACAHSA will have to use “search firms” to ensure that positions are adequately posted in accordance with law.

LACAHSA’s board members at least have again rejected a proposed stipend for their additional service, with Johnson noting that he at least

“wanted to give them the option.”

The body is co-chaired by energetic Mayor Rex Richardson of Long Beach, who stated:

“It’s important that we execute with urgency”

in fulfilling the mission of what he called a body with the

“potential to be the biggest social impact fund in America.”

It’s unclear if LACAHSA’s funding can be for operating costs such as janitorial services and security within affordable housing buildings. Headlines have noted the recent decline of such services in adaptive reuse projects on Skid Row. More importantly, Los Angeles City, at least, the epicenter, has, due to its fiscal crisis, actually cut City sanitation’s budget by $15 million last year.

The City also faces a dumping crisis, as highlighted in reporting by KCAL’s Jeff Nguyen, including in Pacoima, where an area has come to be dubbed “Produce Row” because of the dumping of food waste. The Los Angeles Times’ Steve Lopez, after several months of being camped out in the Westlake area, which includes MacArthur Park, is similarly at his wits’ end as to how to address “Yoshinoya Alley," which he claims is “ground zero” for the city’s fentanyl addiction crisis.

The lone critic of the signature program under the Office of Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, has a problem equal to that of Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. Blight isn’t just urban in Los Angeles; it’s a suburban phenomenon too, and it spans all reaches of the City of Los Angeles from end-to-end, excepting wealthy pockets where policing seemingly keeps a check on it. With the threat of criminalization on the horizon on top of the failed effort known as “LAMC § (section) 41.18” to keep the unhoused from setting up encampments in certain zones, it’s clear that it’s not only the unhoused who are contributing to the idea of a lawless Los Angeles, but rather all of us failing together to create the conditions in society for future success.

The only way we will be

Money isn’t the answer. Neither is blame. Rather, it’s the poor environment of civic engagement that’s holding back new efforts toward success. Richardson ended the LACAHSA meeting promising its members “Long Beach Pie” for their service, meanwhile in Los Angeles there’s not a single place outside of privately-funded philanthropic Missions on Skid Row where you can just walk up and get a meal. The same for housing. You can’t walk in to any shelters funded by the government and get a bed for the night.

Reportedly, a new walk-up health clinic is being setup in Skid Row, the “STAR Clinic,” backed by State funding. Located at 242 E 6th St. in downtown Los Angeles, it features 1,300 square feet of clinic space within a 2,400 square foot facility operated in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services and originally by the now-defunct Skid Row Housing Trust. It’s the collapse of this entity that has created perhaps the biggest vulnerability in the safety net in Los Angeles. But can LACAHSA, much less ECRHA, move fast enough to preserve this sizable chunk of single-room occupancy housing stock and keep them from turning into a complete blight under developer Leo Pustilnikov? It’s no secret where the money needs to go, but can it be delivered to the right places in time?

To be effective, as Barger noted at ECRHA on December 13 in the posh headquarters of the California Endowment:

“We have to avoid setting up for failure.”

Mayor Karen Bass for her part, who sits on ECHRA alongside others such as Redondo Beach Councilmember Paige Kaluderovic and Monrovia Mayor Becky Shevilin. After the meeting, asked what she thought the biggest gap was, Kaludervoic, whose city was recently highlighted for its success in The Los Angeles Times, stated that more reliable “data” was needed. The existing agency for delivering this information, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), is on the re-alignment chopping block in favor of the new “Homeless Response” agency currently under study.

To conduct the so-called “point-in-time”/PIT count, LAHSA relies on volunteers, with the next go-round set for January 21–23, 2025. The PIT count is mandated biennially by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), but the Greater Los Angeles region has elected to submit annual counts since 2016.

LAHSA has a controversial new Chief Executive Strategist, Kris Freed, to support its CEO, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, PhD, who, according to the report by LAist journalist Nick Gerda, was hired after the post was:

“open for about a week”

at

“$322,587 for a maximum of 29 hours per week.”

We’re not kidding!

It’s not even Kris Freed’s only job. In taking the position, the former LA Family Housing official wrote in a public post on LinkedIn:

“My role and commitment to my clients at The Impact Consulting Group and Freed’em Consulting will remain unwavering and steadfast.”

According to Nick Gerda’s report, LAHSA might not even be complying with state ethics laws with only its CEO disclosing conflicts of interest in an annual Form 700. Apparently they’re working on it, but at that rate we might as well be burning Benjamin’s in a bucket. For many years, in what’s almost an act of defiance to the so-called “Homeless Industrial Complex,” groups have formed as “mutual aid” organizations to take direct action to provide essential basics to those living on the streets.

Undoubtedly, at least as far as alleviating human catastrophe, such groups might make better fund recipients than pouring money down the same barrel. Even as Measure A promised reform, it’s not totally clear what exactly is changing.

Mayor Karen Bass at ECRHA questioned whether the spending would be evaluated quickly enough, with the requirement being only that it be done within 5 years, stating:

“That doesn’t sound right,”

and questioning the meeting purpose.

Mayor Karen Bass soon clarified:

“Just for the record, I’ve always supported a regional approach.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman said:

“I have been making efforts between the City and the County.”

If Measure H was fatally flawed by being temporary, there are no guarantees that making funding permanent will simply fix things. By far, the biggest weakness is that essentially there is no feedback mechanism required. Those served by the providers backed by the City and the County are all but unmonitored absent blowouts that attract other authorities, such as auditors and investigators; the entire system is built to be reactive, not pro-active.

No State law requires municipalities or providers to engage in any feedback process, such as lived experience bodies, to collect any information qualitative or quantitative on whether what they’re doing works. For their parts, Bass and Barger at least seemed to find some common ground, which considering that LAHSA, which is a joint-powers city-county agency, seemed promising.

Let them eat pie

Perhaps the City and County should just meet together, with representatives from the other cities pooling representatives in the new “Homelessness Response” agency were it to be created. At LACAHSA, Long Beach Mayor Rex Richardson had promised “Long Beach pie” as a year-end celebration for board members listing off the types he had brought; none was available to the public.

For several attendees who had for consecutive meetings come to plead their case against an alleged slumlord in public meetings, it had to be a little let down. For sure, you could buy a lot of pie with $322,587. I’m not sure what Kris Freed is doing for that salary, but it better be good. Perhaps she could prepare a written report for public consumption!

LACAHSA will create several more positions, pulling in more than $100,000, including a Chief of Human Resources, a Managing Director of Investments, a Chief of Staff, and a Chief of Intergovernmental Policy. Surely staffing and infrastructure are needed, but how does this fit into the overall picture of current spending? Government in Los Angeles County assuredly is no finely tuned machine, but can resolving homelessness be done by anyone else more cheaply, who can deliver better results, faster?

Supervisor Holly Mitchell quizzingly asked LACAHSA:

"Is our current schedule realistic?”

within the planned 6-month timeline.

Solutions from near and far

The Los Angeles City Council Housing & Homelessness Committee, as assigned by Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, will now consist of Chair Nithya Raman, Vice Chair Ysabel Jurado, Curren Price, Bob Blumenfield, and Adrin Nazarian. The late Kevin de León was voted off, and Monica Rodriguez was thrown off. Along with Eunisses Hernandez’s District 1, it’s Jurado’s District 14 that likely has the greatest population of unhoused people. In a recent interview, Jurado told LAist journalist Makenna Sievertson,

"Folks have said on the campaign trail that we've funneled so much money to homelessness and we don't see... it getting better.”

In building her staff, Jurado has hired Steve Diaz, a former deputy director of the non-profit Los Angeles Community Action Network in Skid Row, to be her housing and homelessness director. Diaz himself is formerly unhoused and has in the past stated opposition to both overpolicing and gentrification in the area. Whether the new Housing & Homelessness Committee, much less Jurado alone, can move the dial on this issue promises to be a big test.

Leadership in Los Angeles is fickle. Criminalization of the unhoused won’t be the solution, and already the 2026 elections are in the distance. The implementation of City Measure ULA, which promised to be a mansion tax to help keep people in their homes, has both undercollected compared to estimates at $375 million instead of an expected $600 million to $1 billion, which has also resulted in delayed implementation of the homelessness prevention component.

There are no guarantees with Measure A, even as Mayor Rex Richardson boasted:

“We’re good for it!”

about repaying the $6 million County loan to LACAHSA and also acknowledging the current “alphabet soup” of agencies.

Getting out of this conundrum means getting serious about not just spending more but reigning in the current bureaucracy even if it’s uncomfortable. Judge David O. Carter, aged 80, can’t be the only doorstopper in Los Angeles willing to hold people to account for results. The LA Alliance case is back in session on January 7th with a full agenda that’s essentially steering overall governance.

Litigation has a lifespan. Assuredly, once the LA Alliance lawsuits expire in June 2027, the group that is fervently seeking to raise money with social media won’t outlive Measure A. Nor is the LA Alliance for Human Rights the watchdog that they bill themselves as; rather, it’s a temporary lawsuit pushed forward on behalf of business elites. Perhaps more of those elites should be joining the ECRHA and LACAHSA leadership tables and putting their money behind their mouths, because this holiday season the only mouths to feed aren’t on their Instagram. For what it’s worth, ECRHA and LACAHSA seem to be a step in the right direction, but to be successful, they should take some hard lessons learned from LAHSA, which shouldn’t slip the reform dragnet in 2025. We can only hope the electeds will get their heads screwed on straight.

Alarmingly, at least one promising, albeit expensive, project, the proposed Venice Dell 120-unit building, despite a lawsuit from LA Forward and the best efforts of advocates, remains stalled with the City of Los Angeles despite receiving approval from the California Coastal Commission. The building, which would be constructed on what’s currently a public parking lot just blocks away from the Pacific Ocean. The City of Los Angeles is still refusing to convey the land to developers Venice Community Housing and Hollywood Community Housing Corp.

In a statement to Los Angeles Times journalist Liam Dillon, the Mayor’s Office wouldn’t commit to specifically backing the project, saying only that:

“the mayor remains supportive of affordable housing being built in this area”.

Councilmember Traci Park said about the Los Angeles Board of Transportation declining to relinquish the lot:

“There is no lot to build it on.”

Really, Traci?

A request for comment to the Office of Attorney General Rob Bonta on if he would enforce the State’s Housing Accountability Act yielded the following response:

“We are aware of the project, but cannot comment on possible future actions.”

The act requires all municipalities to meet State goals. Perhaps all housing projects in LA aren’t equal. The project was first brought forward in 2016. If LACAHSA were to start asking people in Los Angeles which projects they wanted to see funded, it would surely be among the most popular. Former Councilmember Mike Bonin, who previously represented the area, argued on Substack last October that this essentially is a new form of racial “redlining” on the Westside, calling the opposition “disturbing.”

Meanwhile, Attorney General Bonta is now suing over:

“the operation of Cathay Manor, a 268-unit apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles that is financed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under a Housing Assistance Payment contract”.

Just how involved Bonta wants to get in this all remains to be seen, but for now, the balancing act of State, Federal, and Local powers continues for the future in the City of Angels.

USC whistleblower Zachary Ellison goes to all the meetings and hearings about the housing crisis in Los Angeles and Ruth @roofless reports on homelessness directly from the streets.

Support our independent investigative journalism by writing, sharing, commenting, pledging and subscribing to our Substacks!

🔗 Measure A homeless sales tax edges closer to the 50% majority needed for passage, poll shows

🔗 Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency

🔗 STATEMENT OF PROCEEDINGS FOR THE INAUGURAL MEETING OF THE LOS ANGELES COUNTY EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE FOR REGIONAL HOMELESS ALIGNMENT

🔗 Barger Issues Statement on Launch of Inaugural Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment

🔗 The California Endowment

🔗 Conrad H. Hilton Foundation

🔗 New owner cuts security, janitors at Skid Row homeless housing as tenants fear worsening conditions

🔗 Videos capture frustration with illegal dumping in Los Angeles

🔗 Column: The time for excuses is over. L.A.’s MacArthur Park needs a champion now

🔗 Resolving Encampments in Skid Row

🔗 Star Clinic and Housing for Health Office

🔗 How Redondo Beach brought its homeless numbers to ‘functionally zero’

🔗 LA's homelessness agency handles $700M in contracts each year. Just one employee must disclose conflicts

🔗 Kris Freed LinkedIn Post

🔗 Newly elected LA City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado sets her eyes on public services, housing, and homelessness

🔗 Ysabel Jurado is building her District 14 team. Here’s who’s on it

🔗 L.A.’s ‘mansion tax’ has collected $375 million. Where is the money going?

🔗 LA Alliance for Human Rights

🔗 LA Forward Institute and Community Members Sue Los Angeles Over Venice Dell Delays

🔗 Venice homeless housing development continues in limbo as councilmember declares the project dead

🔗 L.A.'s New Redlining: Connecting the Dots

🔗 Attorney General Bonta Files Lawsuit Seeking Dissolution of C.C.O.A. Housing Corporation and Transfer of Millions of Dollars to Legitimate Charity Providing Affordable Senior Housing

Illustrations made on Wombo’s free dream.ai app for iOS

Graphs made on free Canva app for iOS

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Los Angeles City council member Nithya Raman sat resolutely and declared in City Administrative Officer “CAO” Matt Szabo’s Homeless Strategy Committee meeting on December 9th to staffers from the Housing Department (LAHD), Housing Authority “The HACLA,” and Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) that she wanted:

“a map of encampments” with an overlay of outreach teams.

Moments before, Chief City Legislative Analyst John Wickham had questioned the arrangement in terms of “vertical integration,” a management science term for the combination of stages of production to address housing and homelessness through the two City housing agencies and the City-County joint-powers authority, LAHSA, at the center of it all.

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Raman soon ended the meeting, stating that they would reconvene again next year on January 7th. It was hardly a reassuring response given the more than 40,000 people who will spend the rest of 2024 unhoused in the City of Los Angeles. Makeshift shelters will almost certainly get bombarded with heavy winter storms between now and the first 2025 CAO Homeless Strategy committee meeting, and nighttime temperatures, which dropped briefly at the end of November before warming back up, are again dropping.

For many it will be a long, cold winter in LA on the streets.

LAHSA’s Commission, which meets Friday, December 20th at 9am at 637 Wilshire Blvd on the first floor, is comprised of five Mayor-appointed representatives of the City of Los Angeles and one appointed by each Supervisor of the five-member Board of the County of Los Angeles. Their finance committee meets this Friday, December 13th at 9am (in the Commission Room) and programs and contracts committee meets at 10:30am at 707 Wilshire Blvd on the 10th floor. Just weeks before, the agency’s responsibilities had been brought into question by County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath in putting forward a motion to study the creation of a new County agency for homelessness response. Implementation won’t occur until at least next year.

Can LA wait that long?

Block-by-block

The Los Angeles City Council had approved last Wednesday, December 4th, an additional $440,000 to fund a federally-ordered audit underway commissioned under Judge David O. Carter with the agreement of Mayor Karen Bass. Now Carter’s court is set to reconvene on January 7th, 2025, to take up the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights’ motion to hold the City of Los Angeles in non-compliance for failing to reduce the number of encampments. The LA Alliance had been stymied by the city’s claim to lack “block-by-block” data in lieu of summary data, showing only slight progress toward the development of interim and permanent supportive housing units. Mayor Bass’s top homelessness advisor, Lourdes Castro-Ramirez, recently stepped down to become President & CEO of HACLA after 1 year and 2 months.

Blocks away from City Hall, next to a fenced-in empty plaza, Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics loaded an elderly Latino man from a wheelchair in the streets. Bystanders had called for assistance, and LAPD officers came racing with lights and sirens, forcing a Waymo vehicle to the side. They couldn’t load his wheelchair into the ambulance from the side door, forcing the paramedics to again open the rear door. One of the LAPD officers went with him as another sped off to a new call, lights and sirens, again. His worn sneakers had sat on the wheelchair as his feet were visible in navy blue socks. Just how much money from LA’s “Homelessness Industrial Complex” hits the streets? That’s what Judge Carter had demanded to know only weeks prior, and yet here was anecdotal evidence that the so-called “Poverty Pimps” were again getting the better of the funding. The man thankfully hadn’t been struck by a vehicle.

However, block-by-block data does already exist, and it does show a reduction in the prevalence of “encampments.” Specifically, it shows a significant decline in the number of tents in 2024. Each year (except 2021, which was cancelled due to COVID-19), USC has counted unhoused peoples’ “dwellings” (tents, makeshift shelters, RVs, and vehicles) as part of the point-in-time “PIT” homeless count. Census tract-level data is publicly available for 2017 through 2020, 2022, and 2024. Additionally, Ruth Roofless obtained the 2023 dwellings data, which USC advised LAHSA not to release to the public, using the California Public Records Act, allowing us to analyze trends in the number of tents in the City of LA by council district and even by block.

This easiness and peril of mapping was readily illustrated by the emergence of an X account, formerly known as Twitter, claiming to do exactly this task. It wasn’t immediately clear who was behind the account and contingent website, with the operator claiming that the Los Angeles map was a “pilot” project. Advocates for the unhoused are deeply concerned that such records will be used to facilitate criminalization and increase targeted violence.

X owner Elon Musk recently stated:

“the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,”

calling it:

“a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness”

while attacking the “Housing First” strategy in response to reporting in the San Francisco Chronicle. The billionaire Elon Musk is a close advisor of President-elect Donald Trump with a potential cabinet post in a new Department of Government Efficiency.

Bed-by-bed

The sudden fixation on “block-by-block” results is curious, because the City doesn’t fund a single walk-up shelter. How are people supposed to literally “get off the streets” when there’s nowhere to go sleep indoors immediately? Additionally, Roofless secured census-tract-specific eviction data from the LA Courts, showing that dozens of homes in the City of LA are being vacated daily. And Westside Current has been reporting on Project Homekey, some of which have stayed vacant for years, which, despite having been purchased with State funds years ago, continue to be granted additional money by City Council. This all is simply not working.

For example, just last week, the Ramada Inn at 3130 Washington Blvd in Marina Del Rey received an additional $1.5M, this time from HHH funds. The 33-unit Homekey was purchased for $10M and received an additional $5M, totaling $16.5M. It was supposed to open as housing in December, according to Circle the News, but CD11 Councilwoman Traci Park's homelessness deputy Carol Williams said that date was “exaggerated,” and opening is now projected in 2025.

The issue of vacancy and eviction has not been addressed in the LA Alliance court, although property and business owners comprise most of the members of the Alliance. However, the scope of the audit prescribed by Alvarez & Marsal has expanded several times to include LAPD spending at the suggestion of intervenor Shayla Myers with LAFLA, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, on behalf of affected unhoused people, especially those on Skid Row. This also includes spending by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health.

United to House LA…but not until next year

The oversight body for United to House LA, “ULA,” meets at 2:30 pm on Thursday, December 12th, in the Metropolitan Department of Water and Power chamber, where the scandal-plagued DWP Commission and newly-formed LACAHSA also convene. ULA’s prior meeting was supposed to occur after LACAHSA's first meeting since Measure A’s passage but was canceled. Recently, former City Attorney Mike Feuer, at the center of a scandal that included the DWP over rate-fixing as reported by L.A. TACO journalist Lexis-Olivier Ray, was hired by a prominent legal-aid nonprofit, the Inner City-Legal Center. The announcement was met with outrage.

This week in City Council, a report was received from ULA outlining this year and next year’s budgeted funds versus actual expenditures so far this year. The report reflected delayed implementation of ULA’s income assistance program for elderly and/or disabled people who have fallen behind on their rents. The rollover of 100% of this year’s budgeted $11.5M was clearly communicated in the attached slides. LAHD’s ULA dashboard shows that money has consistently been coming in from the “mansion tax” since its passage, with the most transactions coming from CD11 (Traci Park), followed by CD5 (Katy Yaroslavsky).

Mansion taxes were supposed to prevent displacement, but their program to keep vulnerable tenants housed went unfunded in 2024.

With both of ULA’s top-contributing districts being on the Westside, it makes sense for the property owners paying the “mansion tax” to want to see results. Many of their property transfers occurred a year or more ago, and they want to know where the money went. But expecting results in the form of less visible displacement is contingent on program implementation, not tax collection alone. Perhaps the FBI should be investigating just why exactly Los Angeles is so consistently so bad at getting results and where the money has gone.

ULA’s income assistance program to keep vulnerable tenants housed won’t begin until sometime next year. Meanwhile, without delivery of promised anti-displacement measures, evictions are overwhelming the Court and Sheriffs, with 1,453 unlawful detainers originating from within the City of LA over the Thanksgiving holiday between November 4th and 29th. A notice to vacate posted the first week of November that we have been tracking still hasn’t been enforced by LASD as of publication, indicating a delay of at least 5 weeks. Another 474 unlawful detainers were initiated on tenants just last week, over 90% of whom owe rent, according to LAHD’s dashboard. Is LA simply kicking people out faster than it should be for its own good?

Also scheduled for January 7th, 2025, is an Alliance hearing (the CAO Homeless Strategy meeting is later that day) where the Court will hear an update from Controller Kenneth Mejia and LAHSA on the recoupment of funds advanced to service providers under County Measure H. Measure H has now been replaced by Measure A, providing a permanent half-cent sales tax County-wide to fund homelessness reduction efforts. How much money LAHSA can claw back from roughly $45 million in accounted cash advances, much less the City’s budgetary allocation, is actually being spent in ways that benefit the unhoused, will be the question before the judge.

Meanwhile, those in the City system face a reported 20:1 chance of receiving permanent housing, even as the City plans to complete 3,000 units in the next 6 months. A study of the “Housing First” policy, which Alliance lobbies hardline against, found that only 11% of unhoused people who entered LAHSA’s “Coordinated Entry System” or CES were offered permanent housing within 12 months following intake. The findings of Controller Kenneth Mejia’s audit were perhaps even more concerning than the recent internal County audit that preceded it.

If it takes a year for the high-tech, federally required, overly engineered “solution” to locate a unit of housing for one in every ten qualified unhoused clients, is it possible the burden of the CES is the problem, and not the “Housing First” policy itself?

Some say:

“The purpose of a system is what it does”.

It does seem CES serves a purpose of bottlenecking demand for affordable housing. Have we simply created a system so complicated no one can understand it?

Ruth Roofless made a tool to locate affordable housing units and motel shelters within the City of LA, identifying projects that receive funding from Homekey, HHH, Roadmaps, Alliance, Inside Safe, and Measures H/A. I figured if the system of “matching” is so inefficient, people could do their own matching and seek the unit they want directly, rather than expecting an algorithm to eventually decide where they are best suited to live. After selecting a project, the new problem that arises for unhoused tenants lies in identifying the nonprofit and the person within it that is willing and able to take an application directly.

Going through LAHSA’s burdensome entry system, which is a federal requirement enforced by the Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD,” removes accountability to the unhoused tenant, which our neighbors are now visually interpreting as unaccountability to them as well.

Something has to change.

Curiously, LAHSA excitedly announced their new “bed-finding” tool in a social media blast over the weekend, but it appears that the resource was designed for service providers and is not “public-facing”, demonstrating the level of gatekeeping that has become acceptable or even required when it comes to administering homeless services, housing, and shelter. The last Homeless Strategy committee meeting included a disconnected discussion about “throughput” from shelter to housing sprinkled with whimsical euphemisms. “Unicorns” was the choice word to describe brand new but long-vacant HHH-funded permanent supportive housing units that have layered tenant eligibility requirements.

The Homeless Industrial Complex is a mindset.

Representatives from LAHD described difficulty matching unhoused applicants to these units because they must seek out prospective tenants with specific disability-related needs, sometimes layered with other requirements like domestic violence/trafficking survivor, veteran, and/or a family with a certain number of children. For example, a unit with a visual fire alarm would be best suited for a person or family member with a hearing-related disability, but they must also have the appropriate number of family members to utilize the unit’s bedrooms. The idea that it is this difficult to locate tenants for subsidized units in brand-new buildings when six unhoused people perish every day in the City of LA is a fairy tale. Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights continues to bill itself as the key watchdog despite providing no services other than a lawsuit that is down to one plaintiff. Multiple requests for the identity of that plaintiff made to the City Attorney’s office of Hydee Feldstein-Soto went quite unanswered.

Whether the City and County of Los Angeles can make this any better remains to be seen, much less President Donald Trump.

Writing in the Los Angeles Public Press, journalist Liz Chou wrote:

"Unlike most parts of the country, Los Angeles has significant funding to address homelessness that does not originate from the federal government.”

She added with a caveat:

“But federal funding remains a significant portion of the overall budget, and experts worry that a more conservative federal government might apply stringent requirements that complicate how those funds are used.”

State funding is also critical to addressing this crisis. Governor Gavin Newsom, even as he gives orders and money to “Trump-proof” California, will be termed out in 2026. More than any other issue, this may be the one that defines his legacy as a leader.

🔗 Dkt. 767 Motion for Order Re Settlement Agreement Compliance

🔗 HACLA Board Approves Employment Contract with Lourdes Castro Ramirez as President & CEO

🔗 Encampment Track 🚩

🔗 Elon Musk Twitter Post RE: "Homeless"

🔗 Broken Homes

🔗 Skid Row Nonprofit ‘Fighting to End Homelessness’ Hires Former City Attorney Mike Feuer, the ‘Architect’ of Anti-Homeless Law

🔗 LAHD Report from ULA

🔗 Housing First Study: TLS Programs in Los Angeles

🔗 Economic Roundtable: Los Angeles County Homeless Count Data Library

🔗 LA Alliance for Human Rights

🔗 ULA Ordinance

🔗 LA City Controller Audit - Homelessness Audit Pathways to Permanent Housing

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

“Somehow at some point” parts 1 and 2 were originally published together by CityWatchLA in their newsletter on December 5th, 2024.

I’m Ruth @roofless and I write about homelessness and housing in the City of Los Angeles. I’ve lived on the streets here continuously for seven years and first experienced displacement in 2003. I write a Substack series with USC whistleblower Zachary Ellison about the legal landscape of landlessness in LA. Zach has made himself a fixture in the courtroom of U.S. Judge David O. Carter, where major settlements affecting the unhoused like LA Alliance, addressing our civil rights and compelling “bed” creation, are enforced. In another settled lawsuit overseen by Carter, veteran plaintiffs led by Jeffery Powers sued the V.A. over illegal leases and insufficient housing at the West LA Soldiers’ Home.

In part 1, I dove into the most recent Powers hearing and revisited a 2019 displacement of veterans from Echo Park which coincided with a near-cessation of veterans’ housing voucher awards. In part 2, I interrogate top-paid homeless advocates for aligning with gentrification goals over housing and healing and suggest a simple solution.

The Raid on the Lake

In March 2021, two years after the 2019 closure of the Billets cottages and just one mile away, tranquil Echo Park Lake resembled somewhat of a war zone. LAPD swarmed in helicopters overhead and formations of riot cops unconstitutionally placed dozens of members of the press including L.A. TACO’s Lexis Olivier-Ray and Spectrum’s Kate Cagle in flexcuffs. They brutally concussed a housed civilian, putting them in the hospital and broke one protestor’s arm. LAPD’s raid of Echo Park Lake, which happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, ultimately displaced around 200 unhoused people, although some temporarily made it into shelter through Project Roomkey at the downtown L.A. Grand Hotel, three miles away, while people nearby in Skid Row were passed over for those same rooms. LAPD’s overkill response cost the City around $2M.

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The closure was a violent, expensive and unnecessary show of force, decommissioning the entire park from all public access for two months, and arresting it behind rented chain link fences for more than two years. CD13 Councilman Mitch O’Farrell, whose district included Echo Park and Hollywood, was unseated in 2022. His loss was attributed to unsatisfactory leadership during the pandemic, including his brutal handling of EPL. His successor Hugo Soto-Martinez finally removed Echo Park Lake’s gentrification fences in May 2023. Some speculated that the rental fence was possibly due for return by then, anyway. It’s unclear just how many veterans may have been displaced in the EPL operation, but documented outreach regarding Economic Impact Payments conducted by National Veterans Foundation “NVF” on May 26th, 2021, just two months after the raid, shows that at least one unhoused veteran, Marvin, was found at EPL as soon as it reopened.

LAHSA’s lack of Authority

Heidi Marston, CEO of LAHSA at the time, made an appearance at EPL during the raid. She handed people cardboard boxes to aid in their moves to nowhere (or possibly serve as their new homes?). Knock.la’s Jamie Loftus reported Marston’s delayed reaction, quoting her regrettably musing:

“…it didn’t need to happen this way.”

If only the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority had exercised any actual authority, such as instructing LAPD to stand down, demanding Sanitation back off of their clients while outreach worked to find them housing, attending City Council during LAMC § 41.18 hearings, or opposing the Recreation and Parks Department’s plans to close the public park in a pandemic, things really could have ended differently.

A lot of people showed up in incredible ways to show solidarity with the unhoused of EPL in March 2021. But many people failed the community, too. Marston’s job as the top-paid homeless advocate in the region should have given her a little more confidence to robustly oppose the violence done to her clients rather than wishing things happened differently.

Interestingly, Marston had worked as an executive for the VA prior to coming to LAHSA as a Chief Program Officer just two months before the veterans were removed from The Billets. Marston had worked for the VA in different capacities since 2009 and for a period worked as an assistant to the VA Secretary in DC. Her transition to LAHSA and exit from the VA are both listed as occurring in February 2019 on LinkedIn. Did Marston bring the Gateways contract to LAHSA? If she did, she knew exactly what she was doing, because she would soon be rewarded with a promotion to CEO.

Displacements don’t happen in a vacuum.

Gentrification pressures had been growing for years in Echo Park, with developers exploiting the “substantial remodel” loophole to evict multigenerational families from rent-controlled buildings. The “renoviction” removal mechanism was finally addressed by Housing and Homelessness Committee and City Council in November, thanks to tenant advocacy by Echo Park’s Mohawk Tenants.

Young Mohawk tenant organizer Matthew Mata and his family pleaded not to have to relocate from Echo Park for his senior year of high school. Mohawk’s supporters packed City Hall dressed in red, with some describing through translators during public comment experiences of being threatened with eviction as many as three times in the past few years under the now-closed legal loophole.

The Billets should have been studied and replicated for its ability to accommodate veterans, who some consider to be among the most difficult-to-serve clients because of their complex needs compounded by warranted distrust of the system. By managing to convert the majority of participants into residents of permanent housing, despite post-traumatic stress, serious mental illness and substance abuse, The Billets seemingly overcame the challenge of “acuity” in homelessness services, at least when it came to LA’s veteran population. Acuity has since been contemplated in the LA Alliance for Human Rights v Los Angeles court hearings. Unhoused people “with serious mental illness” are considered inappropriate for City shelters in the settlement. Alliance was filed in March 2020, right at the onset of the pandemic, and settled in 2022. It is overseen by the same judge as Powers, David O. Carter, himself a Vietnam veteran and double UCLA alum.

At the most recent Alliance hearing, the flag-draped tent across from the new federal courthouse was similarly addressed by the plaintiffs, to justify their demand for an evidentiary hearing. It didn’t go over too well, but an audit of spending on homelessness was demanded by the court, which is currently being conducted by firm Alvarez & Marsal and expected to deliver answers by February 2025.

Conflicting understandings of “harm” in court

On November 13th, the VA said it will be irreparably harmed if forced to add 100 modular housing units on-site. Plaintiffs’ lawyers said unhoused veterans (not named plaintiffs, who are now housed) will die. The VA’s lawyers wanted to know which ones, and the plaintiffs’ lawyers pointed to a 2,000 “by-name list” of unhoused veterans who they allege are connected to outreach or services, as well as the flag-draped tent near the courthouse. The West LA VA “Soldier’s Home” currently accommodates only around 300 veterans in housing on its property, and it formally objects to the Court wanting the VA to add 100 more units on-site by February, which would increase its housing capacity to around 400.

Does the VA mean it can’t federally subsidize those proposed units and will be forced to pay “out-of-pocket” for operating them, so it won’t be a profitable venture for the VA? Is that really irreparable harm that can be compared with the physical, mental and mortal costs of homelessness?

The truth is of course murkier than that, as the VA is expressing reluctance to accept what is essentially a packaged deal to implement a controversial Master Plan at the Soldier’s Home which includes retail development. The shopping component, which will open the Veterans’ property in West LA up to the general public, has an expedited timeline of two years, placing it at a higher priority than permanent housing for veterans. The VA may experience irreparable harm if it swaps out one group of illegal tenants (currently UCLA, the Brentwood School, Bridgeland Oil and SafetyPark are occupying the VA on leases that were deemed void by the Court) for another set of leases which also does not principally benefit unhoused disabled veterans and their families.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the defendant in Powers, has a $400,000,000,000 annual budget. If the VA isn’t acting in bad faith by challenging the court’s opinion, it must substantially improve housing conditions for veterans.

The VA can, on its own initiative, take action to better accommodate veterans who live or wish to live at the Soldier’s Home at any time. It can open up Building 22, which once served as a dormitory for veteran families with children. It can identify funding from its own massive budget to replace the Pallet shelters with a more dignified product like a FEMA trailer (what happened to the >600 FEMA trailers Governor Gavin Newsom sent to Los Angeles to shelter unhoused people in January 2020?), 3D printed solutions (a local Culver City company has a promising design), modular homes, or anything else. The VA in West LA could invite Habitat for Humanity to build on-site, allow veterans who are able to build or fix homes for one another through the HUD’s Self-Help Home Ownership “SHOP” program (which grants $25,000 per unit for the creation, acquisition or improvement of “non-luxury” housing units through “sweat equity”). Instead, the experience for veterans who come to West LA in need of housing is consistently a story where the buck is passed to veterans’ nonprofits which receive grants yet have nothing to offer veterans. The practice of privatizing veterans’ housing is wasteful and only destabilizes and deprives veterans of their benefits.

The VA should, first and foremost, strike a deal with UCLA for use or acquisition of the dormitories it built at the VA on the C & H tract on Veterans Avenue, across from the cemetery. It may just find itself in compliance with the Judge’s orders for the creation of both temporary and permanent housing if it can use or acquire those existing dorms.

Rejecting the Master Plan doesn’t have to mean rejecting disabled veterans who are in need of housing and support. In fact, many veterans are themselves actively opposed to the Master Plan or components of it like the public retail mall. If the VA can unite with Veterans by supporting their housing needs, it may also be able to defeat the developers who have advanced so far on a land grab that may soon be impossible to undo.

The VA needs to do whatever it takes to help veterans, as they were expected to do to protect our country.

Additionally, to prevent deaths of veterans this winter, the VA should designate outreach of their own who has access to capital for troubleshooting solutions that directly benefit veterans and their families at and around the West LA VA, Venice and Skid Row. They should be able to book hotels, repair RVs, allocate safe parking spaces, upgrade tents and sheds, order medical devices and approve accessibility features as well as improve the old buildings, all from a discretionary account specifically for the purpose of facilitating literal longevity for veterans.

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Originally published in CityWatchLA on December 5th, 2024. Stay tuned for part two or read the entire article here at the canonical link.

Illustrations made from prompts on Wombo’s free Dream.ai app for iOS.

Special thanks to those who sacrificed for our country, including my relatives who fought fascists in World War II, and the young unhoused veteran who spoke to me at length, condemning war and America’s violence on Veteran’s Day last month.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com