The Brief

An audit released Tuesday by the L.A. City Controller's office estimates that the city has enough shelter beds and interim housing for about a third of unhoused people living in the city.

Roughly 46,260 unhoused people live in the city, according to the latest Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count, but there’s only about 16,100 interim housing beds available.

The audit said the “woefully inadequate” number of housing resources, combined with data quality issues and inefficient referral processes, make it nearly “impossible” to get an accurate count of how many shelter beds and interim housing space is available in the city of Los Angeles at any given time.

Concerns

The city and L.A. County gave LAHSA the responsibility of creating a bed availability system to facilitate shelter referrals in 2016, but the audit said it still doesn't have a functioning system seven years later.

The current bed reservation system is so unreliable LAHSA instead uses phone calls and daily emails to keep track of bed availability.

Those methods became “wholly inadequate” during the last winter storms, the audit adds.

When LAHSA contracted with 211 LA to make referrals to shelters during the 2022-2023 winter season, 211 operators had to call multiple shelters to verify bed availability before they could make a referral.

“Having to constantly reach out to multiple winter shelters to confirm bed availability also added to the time it took for 211 LA to respond to calls and increased wait times for callers in general,” the audit said.

Bed attendance data can also be improved, the audit notes. That information is used to determine the number of sheltered unhoused people for the annual homeless counts.

The audit found multiple data entry errors and a significant number of shelters reporting low bed utilization rates, which increases the risk that the number of sheltered unhoused people is being undercounted.

Controller’s recommendations

The audit said LAHSA should create a functioning shelter bed availability system and improve the data quality for the existing process.

Specifically, it recommends LAHSA:

• Reevaluate its information requirements and redesign a shelter bed availability system that is publicly accessible to facilitate referrals to LAHSA -funded shelters.
• Develop and implement a plan to monitor, evaluate, and enforce its requirements on shelter program operators to enter bed availability and bed attendance data in a complete, accurate, and timely manner.
• Follow up with all shelter program operators participating in the Annual Homeless Count that report bed utilization rates below 65% or more than 105%, and require them to correct their count of people experiencing homelessness in their shelter, or provide an explanation for low or high bed utilization rates.

The controller’s office notes that changes are necessary because of LAHSA’s expanding responsibility in newer city programs such as Inside Safe.

“We want to get people inside as fast as possible, but in order to do that, we need to have a real time available shelter bed system that can provide that,” City Controller Kenneth Mejia told LAist. “Unfortunately, that was lacking.”

LAHSA's response

In a statement, LAHSA thanked Controller Mejia for his continued collaboration to increase accountability, transparency, and efficiency. 

LAHSA said it’s already working on the next generation of its bed availability system, which will be fully implemented by Dec. 31, 2024.

According to LAHSA, the new system will include:

• Detailed tracking of sites, buildings, units, and beds.
• Provide current occupancy rates.
• Provide unit/bed availability in real-time in a dashboard.
• Provides visibility to service providers on multiple programs in the same building.
• Track rooms being used as offices or other spaces. 
• Provide greater visibility and better insight into the shelter count and the Housing Inventory Count.

LAHSA said it’s also working on a new client portal that will help the unhoused community “get the help they need faster.” 

That portal will show a list of all shelters and access centers, allow unhoused people to direct message case managers, view upcoming appointments, and receive alerts that can help them find shelter during an emergency or severe weather, according to LAHSA.

“These technological enhancements to LAHSA’s data practices will happen on top of other practices LAHSA is changing to paint a more accurate picture of bed availability,” LAHSA said in a statement. “LAHSA is transitioning from reporting nightly bed usage to enrollments and exits for interim housing sites. People experiencing homelessness may hold but not use an interim housing bed for three consecutive days, so reporting enrollments and exits provides the best perspective on bed availability.”

LAHSA said it is making significant improvements to data collection and dissemination, and it looks forward to collaborating with the city as it moves forwards on these projects. 

Sergio Perez, the chief of accountability and oversight for the Controller’s office, told LAist the formal response they got from LAHSA after the audit was very positive.

“In part because they've lived with these failures on a day to day basis,” Perez said. “So we were telling them new things, I think we certainly revealed and brought into focus some issues they weren't aware of. But in terms of the reality of not having a functional bed inventory system, it's something they've been living with for years.”

New availability map

To give an example of what L.A. needs, the Controller’s office launched an interim housing bed availability map.

The map is incomplete, the office notes, but it includes information for current bed availability, referral processes, requirements for entry, and daily reporting practices for each location.

“We invite all necessary stakeholders (including LAHSA and the service providers that it works with) to join efforts and make an achievable dream a reality: the people of Los Angeles, including all of its unhoused neighbors, should know how many interim shelter beds are available on any given night,” the audit said.

Ashley Bennett, the Controller’s director of homelessness, told LAist they called more than 350 interim housing sites to gather the information themselves and also created a back-end system on the map.

“That would make it very easy for providers just to enter a bed availability number at the end of the day so we could have that kind of bird's eye view of what's available and what it takes to actually get someone inside,” she said. “So we know that it's possible.”

Longer wait times for graffiti removal and streetlight repair. Fewer police officers per shift. Completely eliminating school crossing guards.

Those are just some of the service cuts the city of South Gate made earlier this year as it stared down a $9.4 million annual budget deficit and a looming fiscal emergency.

But none of that was enough to convince South Gate voters to approve an 8% utility user tax that would have been tacked onto a wide range of utility bills, including electricity, water, cable and phone service. Now, the city is gearing up for more cuts, including closing sports fields and the city pool for the winter months.

South Gate’s utility tax was just one of the many ways Southern California cities asked their residents to give them more money via local tax initiatives this November, with proposed taxes on everything from hotel stays to cannabis businesses.

And those early results suggest South Gate is an outlier: Of the 32 total local tax measures on the ballot in Los Angeles and Orange counties, all but six appear poised to pass, according to early results. (There are still several more days of vote counting to come.)

Eleven transient occupancy tax measures, which tax overnight stays in hotels or short-term rentals, passed in cities from Burbank to Los Alamitos. Most cities sought to increase their existing hotel taxes by anywhere from 1 to 5 percentage points, while Lynwood residents voted to establish a hotel tax for the first time.

Business-related taxes, such as taxes on business licenses or on certain businesses, also mostly passed, as did most parcel taxes in cities including Pasadena and Culver City.

But sales taxes saw more mixed results. Cudahy, San Gabriel, Orange, Santa Ana and Los Angeles all approved sales tax measures, while voters in Diamond Bar, Hermosa Beach and San Clemente all voted down their local sales tax proposals.

Most of those sales taxes focused on maintaining basic city services in communities facing big budget deficits, driven by the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions, among other factors. But in San Clemente, the proposed 1% sales tax would have specifically funded sand replenishment and other beach projects, along with wildfire prevention work. That measure appeared to be headed for failure, with just 36% of voters in support as of Wednesday afternoon.

Voters in San Marino approved an extension of their utility tax, and increased it from 5% to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue.

City officials in South Gate had hoped for a similar boon, and projected the utility tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year in general fund revenue, while raising total utility costs by about $39 per month for a typical household.

Leading up to the election, the city of South Gate pointed to other neighboring cities that have their own utility taxes, including Downey, Lakewood and Norwalk, where the tax mostly hovers around 5%. “South Gate is the exception, not the rule,” noted one city presentation that pointed to these other taxes in a bid to coax voters to go along.

Voters weren’t convinced. “I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said one resident at a City Council meeting on the measure earlier this year.

LAist has reached out to the city of South Gate about what’s next for the city.

The city of West Hollywood has approved an ordinance to create a domestic partnership registry for people in polyamorous relationships.

The domestic partnership registry extends certain legal protections for people in the city, including visitation rights to hospitals and jails in West Hollywood and some tenant protections. The registry doesn’t replace the state’s marriage or the state’s domestic partnership laws.

“It's a landmark ordinance and really puts and continues to elevate West Hollywood as a city that is here to support queer people and queer families as they evolve in their needs,” said Chelsea Byers, a West Hollywood City Council member. “I think that's a real joy that we can bring to people — that they can live in a greater sense of being seen and understood.”

How it works

To file, people in a multi-partner relationship will submit a form in person that will be provided by the City Clerk’s office — all members of the relationship will have to provide identification to the clerk.

The ordinance also offers an option by mail, if the signatures are notarized.

The ordinance builds on historical precedent

In 1985, the city became the first city in the nation to create a similar domestic partnership registry for same-sex couples. Similar to that registry, people outside the city can also register.

“This new law not only gives polyamorous unions legal recognition, it also gives people permission to imagine a future together and to plan their lives openly,” said Christina Fialho, president and founder of Rewrite the BiLine, an advocacy group for bisexual people and nonnuclear families, who advocated for the ordinance.

Several cities in Massachusetts have also passed multipartner domestic partnership laws.

Among the sweeping victories by Democrats on Tuesday were wins in several congressional districts that Republicans had redrawn explicitly to boost their party ahead of the midterms.

Republicans were bracing for some losses this election cycle, so last year President Donald Trump urged his party to take the extraordinary step of engaging in mid-decade redistricting efforts.

As of Tuesday night, many of those efforts had failed.

That included in Florida, where multiple Democrats — Kathy Castor, Pia Dandiya and Jared Moskowitz — won in redrawn districts, according to race calls by the Associated Press.

In North Carolina, Democratic Rep. Don Davis held on to his 1st District seat, even though Republicans in the state redrew it to be more competitive for the GOP. Trump would have won the redrawn 1st by nearly 12 percentage points, according to the Downballot.

Trump would have won by even more in Alabama's redrawn 2nd Congressional District, which Democratic Rep. Shomari Figures held on to, according to the AP race call.

Republicans in Alabama redid the state's congressional map after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act earlier this year.

And in Texas, which was the first state to redistrict at Trump's urging, a few of the redrawn districts had gone to Democrats.

Republicans redrew their maps with the expectation that the coalition of voters Trump won over in 2024 would support them this cycle. In Texas, Republicans were banking on gains made with Latino voters in new maps.

But many of those voters shifted their support to Democrats this year.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nationwide election results came at a relentless pace Tuesday night, each more of a Democratic upset than the last. But you may not have known if you were attending the California Republican Party's election night event in Garden Grove.

In the dimly lit Hyatt ballroom where gubernatorial longshot Steve Hilton and his supporters gathered, the news channels were off, the music was turned up and “Don’t Stop Believin’” blasted throughout.

Minutes after the polls closed at 8 p.m., the Associated Press called the governor’s race for Democratic favorite Xavier Becerra.

Around the room, the occasional person glanced at their phone to sneak a peek at the growing GOP carnage. More of the crowd instead looked at each other or toward the empty stage, where a lectern stood in front of a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset.

Not long after, Hilton took the stage to concede the race — which had always been heavily favored against him in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-to-1.

“Maybe this isn’t the best year to be running for office as a Republican,” Hilton told his supporters, alluding to the election results that would soon lead the Democratic Party to win so big in the House and the Senate that many dubbed it a blue tsunami. “We see what’s going on around the country.”

Hilton knew the odds were long. He’d tried a number of tactics to win over California, including a suggestive advertisement suggesting voters should “Just Try” voting for him. He’d done his best to separate himself from President Donald Trump, who backed his campaign. He also attacked Becerra for staying largely out of the limelight since making it out on top of a chaotic primary.

None of Hilton’s appeals made a significant mark on the result, which trailed at around 36% of the vote as of Wednesday afternoon.

Standing outside the ballroom, Matt Shupe, a spokesperson for the California GOP, conceded it was challenging terrain for Republicans this year across the country — and always in California.

“It’s pretty typical that the party that's not in power gains some seats, so I think that was pretty expected for the most part,” he said. “We'll plan on bringing the fight more intensely than ever in 2028.”

By 9:30 p.m., people were headed to their cars to go home.