L.A. County Holding $24 Million Until LAHSA Finances Are In Order

The Santa Monica Daily Press reports today on the County’s promised money toward homeless services. Here's the PDF file. Their headline is: “Holding out on giving to homeless.” And their byline is: “County keeping $24M earmarked for homeless until LAHSA can crawl out from financial fiasco.”

Although it is a little melodramatic, it is true that the County is holding their money until Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s (LAHSA) financial house is cleaned up. It was reported in the Los Angeles Times in July that LAHSA owed $5 million in unpaid bills from service providers, but only had a fraction of this amount in the bank.

The article states: “LA city and county officials are working to restructure LASHA, which has been operating without a chief financial officer and minimal financial staff.”

Joe Bellman, the press deputy for L.A. County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky is quoted: “It’s not responsible to allocate money without having transparency. We don’t want to flush money down a dysfunctional system.”