As L.A. residents continue to rank homelessness as a top concern, taxpayers are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on Mayor Karen Bass’ signature program Inside Safe to help get people off the streets and into motels.
Now an LAist review has found major errors in a recent data release that tracks where encampments have been cleared and how many people were brought inside from each council district.
It comes as some council members have questioned a lack of details about how the mayor’s office chooses which encampments to offer motel rooms to.
The data was the first — and so far only — detailed public listing of each encampment operation for Inside Safe, a program that started a year and a half ago.
About the data and errors
The data was provided to the City Council back in April by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), after the council ordered officials to gather it.
As LAist was analyzing the data last week, we reached out to all 15 council offices to verify the accuracy. That’s when problems with the data were pointed out to LAist by officials — problems that hadn’t previously been acknowledged publicly.
Click to compare the spreadsheets
Officials who prepared the spreadsheet acknowledge it had the following errors:
- It incorrectly labeled encampments located in multiple districts as only being in a single district. In one of those operations, 116 people were incorrectly labeled as all coming inside from Council District 1. The vast majority — about 100 — were actually in Council District 13, according to that district’s spokesperson.
- It double-counted about 50 people who left Inside Safe motels, returned to an encampment, and then re-entered an Inside Safe motel.
- It listed incorrect dates for when encampment clearings took place. Among the problems: It showed an Inside Safe operation as starting before the mayor took office. The program didn’t launch until after she was sworn in.
Officials at the Homeless Services Authority acknowledged the errors in an interview with LAist and issued a correction this week for the City Council. The agency is overseen by Bass and other officials appointed by the mayor and county supervisors.
LAHSA official owns the errors
“I will own the errors in that report,” said Bevin Kuhn, who has been overseeing data at LAHSA on an interim basis since February. That’s when the previous data chief — Emily Vaughn Henry — left, before this data was compiled.
Kuhn was brought into the top data role at LAHSA by its CEO, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who formerly worked with Kuhn at the Westside service provider St. Joseph Center.
Kuhn said the data was compiled as she was starting in her new role, and that she did not take the time to thoroughly review the data before it went out for the council.
“This report unfortunately fell off my personal radar,” Kuhn said.
“There was nothing nefarious about it, and there was nothing hidden there.”
LAHSA fixed the errors, and the corrected report sent to the city on Tuesday is “100% accurate,” Kuhn said.
Kuhn said she’s learned to communicate if deadlines aren’t realistic, and to do a better job of educating staff to prevent data errors.
Adams Kellum said she believes overall that LAHSA’s data is much more accurate than in the past, but that mistakes do still happen. She said she’s been working to get LAHSA staff to feel more comfortable asking for more time to make sure data reports are correct, and owning up to mistakes.
“We know nothing will get better, and we won't be able to hone our interventions if we can't tell you what's working and what's not,” she told LAist.
Timing: Homeless count numbers coming soon
LAist discovered the errors as LAHSA prepares to release the widely-anticipated homeless count results on Friday.
Asked why the public should trust the point in time results, Adams Kellum said it’s important to note that the data for that is overseen and validated by researchers at the University of Southern California.
She acknowledged “data issues across our entire homeless delivery system,” noting that LAist has reported on many of them.
“We've made great strides,” Adams Kellum said, adding that Kuhn “is making a great improvement in our ability to stand behind the numbers and also share with you where there's gaps.”
“That's that transparency that we're trying to get to.”
How to get involved
If you’re concerned about this or anything else about the local homelessness response, you can contact your local elected representatives. LAHSA in particular is overseen by the L.A. mayor and City Council, as well as L.A. County Board of Supervisors.
To find out who your city and county representatives are, click on the following links:
LAHSA is governed by commissioners, who are appointed by the L.A. mayor and county Board of Supervisors. Click here for the list of LAHSA commissioners. The next commission meeting is on Friday morning, and members of the public can attend and speak in person or via Zoom. More info is available here.
LAist also would like to hear from you. You can contact reporter Nick Gerda at ngerda@scpr.org.
The backstory
The data was collected under a City Council order in February, which was initiated by Councilmember Monica Rodriguez.
“I requested the data because this information was not forthcoming from the mayor's office when we were requesting these reports” previously, Rodriguez told LAist in an interview.
“My big problem is that there was a lot of dollars being spent, a lot of money being allocated, but there hasn't been a lot of accountability for who's getting what money, what is it going to — like, breaking down and distilling more of those details,” Rodriguez told LAist in an interview.
The mayor’s office should be ensuring transparency and accuracy for data about the mayor’s key program, Rodriguez said.
“The administrator of the program should be able to account for how the program operates and where the deployments are.”
LAist requested an interview with Bass and her top homelessness advisor, Lourdes Castro Ramirez. They have not responded.
Why there are still unanswered questions
Many City Council members say Inside Safe is making a real difference in the lives of their constituents — housed and unhoused alike. More than 2,700 people have come inside under the program, as of the latest data, of whom about 1,900 are still known to be in shelter or housing.
Still, lack of clarity around how decisions get made persists, which the City Council’s directive to collect data in February noted. The strategy “remains open to further definition,” states the motion.
Asked how encampments are prioritized for Inside Safe, Mayor Bass’ office pointed LAist to a short description that says factors include “council district priorities, voluntary participation, encampment-specific needs (e.g., RVs, number of residents, size of encampment, safety/hazard issues, multiple jurisdictions), availability of interim housing, and service provider capacity."
Her office did not respond to follow-up questions, including what "council district priorities" means and how they’re decided.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who chairs the council’s budget committee, called for “more transparency and accountability” about Inside Safe decisions in an interview with LAist.
He credited the mayor’s office with trying to prioritize encampments for Inside Safe in “a rational way,” but said “the decision process is not necessarily clear or inclusive of the entire council.”
“I think they're just trying to address a crisis. I don't think they have a clearly delineated process,” Blumenfield said.
The City Council is now stepping up its push for transparency about that. As part of its budget approval for the new fiscal year, the council is requiring detailed data about each Inside Safe operation on a regular basis — including, for the first time, how encampments were chosen.
As for the data errors uncovered by LAist, he said LAHSA’s data quality has been a longstanding problem and one that’s still “a big concern” for him.
LAHSA officials “certainly have asked us for more money for admin, for data, and we've provided that every time we've been asked,” he added.
“And we're spending a lot on making sure that they're resourced to provide the data.”
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