Los Angeles City Council Approves Only $29 Million Of $46 Million Requested Inside Safe Homeless Funding

In a meeting earlier this week, the Los Angeles City Council voted to give the Inside Safe homeless program, Mayor Karen Bass’ signature homeless initiative that places many in hotels and motels, only $29.1 million of the Bass Administration’s requested $46.1 million, citing the massive $1 billion budget deficit that the city is currently facing.

Earlier this year, City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo recommended that, in order to fund Inside Safe and other homeless initiatives this year, they would need $46.1 million and requested that much. While that amount was originally considered, last months revelation that Los Angeles was now facing a nearly $1 billion budget gap made the likelihood that the Council would approve that much slim to none. As a result, the Council agreed to pay only $29.1 million, only 63% of the requested $46.1 million and a far cry from the first year of the program when $67 million was pumped into it.

When broken down, the two largest amounts in the new Inside Safe budget are to go right to hotels and motels. $12.1 million is to go to Inside Safe booking agreement costs, while $10.7 million will go towards the Inside Safe Motel Interim Housing Portfolio Service Provider.

In addition, Councilmembers stressed that Szabo, the Mayor’s office and others have not been answering questions the Council asked about Inside Safe and requested yet again that they give them a detailed fiscal and operational plan for Inside Safe, as well as other L.A. homeless facilities. When it comes to Inside Safe, they also want a detailed report on how to make the program more cost effective and asked for information that homeless officials have been hesitant to give regarding vacant rooms within Inside Safe, what booking agreements entailed, and in general what operations are like.

Inside Unsafe

When it came to funding, Councilwoman Nithya Raman, who chairs the Housing and Homelessness Committee, pushed for a reduced amount.

“It is not to be a conflict or to criticize the work of the Mayor’s Office or homelessness service providers,” stressed Raman. “It’s designed to make us better at doing the work that we have all committed to over and over again.”

“It’s not to prevent any service provider from getting money for services they’ve performed,” added Councilman Bob Blumenfield. “The city is just starting to get receipts for the third quarter and the city administrative office is still working on paying the first and second quarters. That’s the natural order. We all want our service providers to be paid quickly. We want Inside Safe to be effective.”

Since it began in late 2022, Inside Safe has almost universally been seen as a failure, with only Mayor Bass’ mishandling of the Los Angeles wildfires earlier this year seen as her biggest failure as Mayor. At the one year mark of Inside Safe, homelessness actually went up exponentially, with Inside Safe only moving 255 people to permanent housing out of the 46,000 in LA, despite $67 million going into the program. While 21,000 did get housing of some type in her first year, few stayed for long because of the highly restrictive conditions and Bass’ focus on housing and not on other areas regarding homelessness, including job placement.

The situation only compounded last year when it was found that the city was actively making people lose shelter. And this past month has seen the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority (LAHSA) be pretty much defunded in favor of a new homeless authority created by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. While these shortcoming have always put Inside Safe on high notice, with Raman and Bass vehemently against the defunding of LAHSA, the incoming budget shortfall for the city made the Council finally cut back on expenses for the program.

Questions by the Globe to several Councilmembers over if funding would continue to be reduced in future budgets remained unanswered as of Thursday evening.