(Editor’s note: This piece was first printed on November 9 in the all aspect report, dubbed occasional & unconventional opinions & investigations. The author is a lawyer, journalist, muckraker and Californian. This is a must read for anyone concerned about the homeless or the homeless spending.)
By CHRISTOPHER LEGRAS
Fifty-five homeless nonprofits organized under GLACH (Greater Los Angeles Coalition on Homelessness)to lobby for the passages of Measure A. As a group, they are now making demands.
When will Angelenos finally say “enough?”
It was probably inevitable. The Los Angeles Times reported today that an organization called the Greater Los Angeles Coalition on Homelessness (GLACH, presumably pronounced like a dry heave) is calling on the City to pay more for interim housing sites operated by scores of “nonprofits.”
GLACH, which represents 55 of those nonprofits click here claims its members aren’t “getting paid for the full cost of the services they provide at the city’s ‘interim’ housing facilities,” and therefore is demanding that the City “significantly” increase how much it spends. Otherwise, the nonprofits may “demobilize” as many as 1,488 beds in 14 facilities. The demand comes at a time when the City faces a severe budget crisis that likely will degrade essential services.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is called extortion. “Nice homeless shelter you have here. It’d be a real shame if anything was to happen to it.”
If there is one thing the Homeless Industrial Complex does not lack, it’s cold, hard cash. Ten years ago, in 2015, the City’s homeless population was 25,686. This year, it’s 45,252, an increase of 76%. Over that same period, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) budget grew from $125 million to $875 million, a 700% increase. Many nonprofits have enjoyed similar explosive revenue increases.
A sampling of nonprofits have seen their budgets skyrocket over the last few years:
Weingart Center. 2019: $13.8 million, 2023: $107 million (a 775% increase in four years)
People Assisting the Homeless (PATH). 2018: $47.7 million, 2023: $160 million (a 335% increase in five years)
Venice Family Clinic. 2018: $46 million, 2023: $90.1 million (a 195% increase in five years)
PATH is hiring and looking for applicants to join its work force. Photo: PATH Website
Nevertheless, Rowan Vansleve, president of the nonprofit Hope The Mission, told the Times that homeless service providers are losing so much money that they may have to curtail services at many sites.
Hope The Mission reported $50 million in revenue in 2022, the last year for which its IRS Form 990 is available. That was up from $7.7 million in 2019, an increase of 650% in three years. The organization’s reported assets grew from $762,254 to $20.3 million, an increase of 2,563%. In that same period, L.A.’s homeless population increased by 18%. Yet they’re out of money?
Overall, the homeless population in the City and County of Los Angeles has roughly doubled in a decade. The budgets of LAHSA and many homeless nonprofits tripled, quadrupled, quintupled, and more in half that time. Now they’re asking for even more, even though County voters just approved another $1 billion per year via Measure A, and are threatening consequences if City officials don’t capitulate. They’re literally saying, “Give us more money, or we’ll start throwing people back onto the streets.”
Rowan Vansleve
Vansleve was dire, if not menacing, telling the Times, “This is a clear warning that the homeless services system is on the verge of collapse.” Mind you, in the 2022-23 fiscal year the City of Los Angeles spent $1.3 billion on homelessness. That’s 10% of the City’s total budget, to service 0.12% of the population. Despite that largesse, which doesn’t even include unknowable millions more spent by faith organizations, neighborhood groups, and food banks, as well as countless individual handouts, donations, gifts, and other acts of charity, Vansleve and the rest of the Homeless Industrial Complex want Angelenos to believe the system is “collapsing.”
If these nonprofits really are in such bad financial straits, it’s not for lack of money, it’s a result of mismanagement, fraud, and waste. Interviews conducted with hundreds of homeless people throughout L.A. County by myself and other local journalists leave no doubt that a majority of nonprofits are predatory, fraudulent operations. Services are illusory, support is nonexistent, but the money keeps on flowing.
To offer just one of myriad examples, last summer I captured video of employees from Venice Family Clinic (2023 revenue: $90.1million) distributing hypodermic needles and glass pipes to drug addicts in two Santa Monica public parks.
VFC charges the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health more than $3,000 an hour for the three hour, once a week so-called “harm reduction” program. At no point was anyone offered any sort of support, counseling, or referrals. The employees all but tossed bags of 10 needles at the addicts, who then walked away. In many cases they did not exchange so much as a word.
When I attempted to engage the employees, with my press credentials displayed, they rolled up their windows and literally drove a few feet away, several times. They ignored a Santa Monica police officer’s instructions not to park in a protected bike lane. Overall, as the video plainly shows, their demeanor was best described as cagey. Why?
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that VFC is charging taxpayers more than $3,000 an hour for a program that costs, at the absolute most, a few hundred bucks. VFC pockets the rest. And again, we are supposed to believe there’s a funding crisis?
Venice Family Clinic van distributed needles at a Santa Monica Park across from Saint Monica High School and near a children’s playground.
Nothing shady going on here, folks….
Not to be outdone, GLACH’s president, Jerry Jones, is demanding the City increase its payment per shelter bed to $139 per night. For the mathematically inclined, that works out to $4,170 per month. For a cot. Not a room, not an apartment, not “permanent supportive housing” – a cot. You can rent a nice house on the West Side for that kind of money. You can Airbnb a guest cottage in Malibu.
GLACH doesn’t exactly seem like a reliable source. It appears to have been created specifically for the purpose of campaigning for Measure A. It maintains a skeletal website that reveals nothing about who’s behind it. Also, disgraced former L.A. City Councilman and Homeless Industrial Complex advocate Mike Bonin is among the few people who follow the group’s X/Twitter feed, which is another hint that they aren’t among the good guys.
The basis upon which GLACH makes its $139/night demand is a third party analysis conducted by a Rockland, Maryland, based firm called ABT Associates that was delivered to LAHSA last August (one may reasonably ask why the City and County of Los Angeles, home to UCLA, Cal Tech, USC, Cal Poly, Loyola Marymount, Pepperdine, Occidental, the Claremont Consortium, and myriad research institutes and think tanks like the RAND Corporation and the Milken Institute, all with deep local knowledge, outsourced the job to an outfit in the Old Line State).
All you need to know about the study is on page 18, where the authors report, “All survey data was self-reported by the homeless service providers operating the [interim housing] sites” (emphasis mine).
Follow the logic: A coalition of self-interested homeless nonprofits that by all appearances was created specifically to campaign for a ballot measure that will provide billions in new taxpayer dollars to those same nonprofits is engaging in political extortion on behalf of those same nonprofits, justified by a survey that was based on self-reported data from those same nonprofits.
Any questions?
Mayor Karen Bass
You might think City leaders up to and including Mayor Karen Bass would be outraged. You might think they would not only not capitulate to the nonprofits’ threats, but demand far greater transparency, accountability, and results. You might think they’d roll some heads.
If you think these things, you probably don’t live in L.A. With few exceptions the political class’s response to the nonprofits’ demands amounts to a collective, “Meh.”
At a news conference in the San Fernando Valley on Thursday, Bass said, “I will tell you one thing: We have no intention of closing facilities and putting people out on the street. Fortunately, with Measure A, we are not going to have to put people out on the street.” She may as well have been given her talking points by GLACH. It’s entirely possible she was. She could have saved her breath and just said, “uncle.” The Times also quoted Councilmembers Bob Blumenfeld and Monica Rodriguez, who merely expressed concern about how to pay the higher rates.
There’s an old Jewish saying that the definition of “chutzpah” is the young man who murders his parents, then begs for the judge’s and jury’s sympathy because he’s an orphan.
LAHSA, the nonprofits, GLACH, and the rest of the Homeless Industrial Complex certainly have chutzpah. They’ve wasted billions of taxpayer dollars while preying on human misery and suffering, and now they’re crying that they don’t have enough money and all but holding 1,488 homeless people hostage.
When will Angelenos wake up?
When will Los Angeles residents realize that giving nonprofits more money is not the key to helping the homeless.
Angelinos won’t wake up. The woke are apparently asleep. They’ve been drinking the leftist Kool-Aid far too long. And two decades into this mess, the mess is humongous. Put the blame where it belongs, on the democrats who’ve run this city into the ground. Truth hurts.
I wish there was something we could do besides report the ongoing fraud & greed of homeless organizations. Gov Gavin Newsom is aware & has taken steps to demand accountability. I assume LA Congressmen Sherman, Lieu & Schiff are aware. If they aren’t speaking out, there must be a reason. Who knows?