Last week Los Angeles City Controller Laura Chick released a report stating that there were serious financial problems at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. The agency cash accounts are running low, and they are not paying their vendors on time.

In two earlier posts, we

• Questioned the surprisingly high count of homeless people the HSA says it found in its most recent census — it was much higher than earlier LA County counts, with no explanation for the increase, and out of proportion to what other counties, such as San Diego, counted ; and

• Reported the success of the census gambit, as the HSA obtained commitments for significantly increased funding from the county, with more likely to come from the City of LA.

The new cash flow problem makes us even more suspicious of this “Look! We found tens of thousands of additional homeless people! Give us more money!” cycle.

• We now know that management and staff had additional motive to either explicitly or subtly promote an overcount of homeless people.

• At the same time, the cash crisis should raise questions about the ability of the agency to manage itself — and that includes its ability to manage an accurate census.

The city and county government and the local media have to date been uncritical of the HSA. Now that we know there was motive, means, and opportunity to pump the homeless count, perhaps it’s time for them to dig a little deeper.

Technorati Tags: government waste, homeless, Los Angeles

This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 at 12:05 pm by A Senior Administration Official and is filed under California Schemin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.