The Trouble With Measuring Mayor Bass' Impact on Homelessness (And Other Headlines)

Our newsroom spent the last year tracking L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ progress in addressing homelessness.

We even created a promise tracker that answered some questions like: Are people being moved out of encampments and into housing? Are people staying housed once they move off the streets?

Keeping up with Karen Bass

For most of the year, we couldn’t get an accurate overall picture — partially because there were errors in the data, and partially because of the way homelessness data is recorded. So my colleagues Brianna Lee and Nick Gerda wrote this story breaking down the importance of data to get clear, accurate answers on how many people are being housed, which is essential to holding the Bass administration accountable.

I found this to be incredibly illuminating, but I also want to highlight these key points about parsing the information and why it’s so hard to get the right numbers:

• There actually is a lot of data about how many people are being housed, but it’s tracked by program, making an overall picture of progress challenging to get.
• According to Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) officials, there are about 6,000 people across different service providers who enter data into this system, making it challenging to ensure consistency and accuracy across the board.
• Many of the data problems we encountered appear to be longstanding issues that Mayor Bass inherited when she came into office.
• Mayor Bass is also taking on a more direct oversight role at LAHSA — in a way that prior mayors have not — by putting herself on its governing commission.

To learn more about the data behind the goal and get the best available answers to the foundational questions that we’ve spent all year figuring out, read the story here.

Have a happy Thursday, friends. There’s more news below - just keep reading.

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Making a list and checking it twice and thrice

I love making lists. It’s how I keep my life organized, and it keeps me focused because I feel like I’m always doing a million things at once. So, in the spirit of trying to get things in order, I’ll be creating a list of my favorite things, plus some to-do’s.

• Stop procrastinating and get those holiday gifts already: I know I’ve been writing about our LAist gift guides, but I have not been leading by example. I have yet to start my holiday shopping. But I’m definitely going to reference our gift guides to help get it done.
• Speaking of lists, music playlists are a must: Music is the core of my being, both discovering new music and revisiting old favorites. If music were an official love language, it would be mine. So obviously I enjoyed reading my colleague Mariana Dale’s story about what songs L.A. teens are into this year. And yes, there’s a playlist ready for listening … seeing an emo song on there makes my heart happy.  

Getting my social calendar ready: I’m always looking for things to do or sharing some potential plans with friends. If you want a list of things happening in SoCal, we have one for you here. We also have some good LAist events lined up for 2024, if you’re someone who likes to plan in advance.