Ron Galperin
The Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness will host a community forum, virtually, on Monday, May 23, from 7 to 8:15 p.m. with guest speaker L.A. City Controller Ron Galperin. He will speak on city-owned sites for interim housing and shelter. (To register: visit: palisadeshomeless.org.)
Galperin recently released a report that identifies 26 underutilized city properties that could potentially be used for homeless housing or shelter. He also recently conducted an audit of HHH funding for building permanent supportive housing, concluding that the costs are too high and the pace far too slow.
Task force members urge you to register to hear Galperin discuss his findings and his recommendations to the city.
Galperin received his bachelor’s degree in English, business and political science from Washington University in St. Louis. He received his law degree from Loyola Law School.
In 2018, he completed Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government program for senior executives in state and local government.
He served on the Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood Council. He was elected as L.A. City Controller on July 1, 2013, despite being outspent 2-1 by three-term City Councilman Dennis Zine.
As controller, he oversees the city’s $11.2 billion budget and supervises the payroll for 40,000 city employees. One of his first acts was to launch the Control Panel, the city’s first open data portal in October 2013.
Galperin was reelected in 2017.
In 2019, he released a report, Improving Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) Outreach Program, finding that LAHSA was not meeting five of its critical outreach goals when working with unsheltered individuals. He noted that LAHSA’s street outreach performance was insufficient to provide services for people experiencing homelessness. He also questioned LAHSA’s reporting procedures.
In 2020, Galperin released reviews of Proposition HHH – the $1.2 billion measure approved by L.A. City voters in 2016 to build 10,000 permanent supportive housing units for unhoused Angelenos. He advocated strongly for cutting red tape, and re-allocating dollars from slow-paced and high-priced projects to projects that can be completed faster and cheaper.
Galperin found the cost for a one-bedroom/studio apartment-type unit was about $530,00, with that number rising to $600,000 in just one year. That price covers a multitude of housing types, from renovated motels to new construction – and includes units being built on the higher cost end of more than $830,000.
He is currently running for California State Controller.