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iAUDIT! - Last week, Governor Newsom issued his latest order on encampment clearings. The order will apply to California’s 10 largest cities, including Los Angeles. The governor is assigning special teams of law enforcement, clean-up crews, and social service workers to work with local governments to clear encampments on state land like underpasses. The order’s intention is to combine clean-ups with support services and shelter offers so camps remain cleared. Most advocate groups expressed concern, repeating their mantra that the only solution to homelessness is housing. Mayor Bass, on the other hand, created a press release that tried to thread the needle; she said she supported the governor’s order but also claimed LA has experienced two years of solid reductions in homelessness using Housing First policies. The release said, “Los Angeles has bucked nationwide trends of increasing homelessness and Governor Newsom’s announcement of a task force today will help keep that momentum”.
We know from several news reports and other sources that the so-called reduction is both unverifiable and unsustainable. It is altogether possible the apparent reductions are due to a combination of cooked numbers, structural inaccuracies, and the appalling death rate among the unhoused. The Mayor’s press release is, in reality, an outgrowth of the Big Lie that forms the foundation of Los Angeles’ homelessness programs.
Right after I read the Mayor’s press release, I watched an interview with Dr. Robert Marbut, a homelessness expert who consults with local governments on their homeless programs. He was head if the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021, and under his direction, the USICH issued its “Expanding the Toolbox” report that warned Housing First has usurped other more cost-effective solutions. Although he was interviewing with someone from Spokane, the short discussion is applicable to Los Angeles and touches on the main elements of the Big Lie. I broke the elements down, in no particular order:
1. Only housing can solve homelessness. This refrain has driven homelessness policy for almost 30 years and forms the foundation of Housing First. Advocates claim homelessness is primarily driven by the lack of affordable housing, and whatever support services someone may need, without stable housing, those services will be ineffective. Under this assumption, billions of dollars have been spent building new housing and rehabilitating hotels and motels. Yet homelessness has steadily increased in LA and throughout the country.
Dr. Marbut described the central fallacy of the housing-only solution; it lacks nuance and context. He pointed out that a nationwide study conducted by the California Policy Lab (a joint venture of UCLA and UC Berkely) in 2018 found that 75 percent of unsheltered homeless people have untreated mental illness and an overlapping 75 percent have substance abuse issues. Only about 20 percent fit the “down on their luck” stereotype and may benefit for the provision of housing. He said there is a whole other population of unhoused who suffer from housing insecurity--moving from short-term rented rooms to the streets and back--who could benefit from housing, but this population isn’t the typical target of most homelessness programs. In other words, most homelessness resources are being misdirected to the people least likely to benefit from them.
2. Harm Reduction is the most effective way to get people inside and in treatment. This element of the Big Lie supports Housing First’s focus on providing a private home for all unhoused people. To quickly summarize, Harm Reduction is a loosely defined set of policies that should combine safe drug consumption with recovery services in a non-carceral setting. Harm Reduction’s programs range from providing clean drug paraphernalia to prevent the transmission of communicable diseases, to safe places where people can use drugs under medical supervision. The underlying philosophy is that removing the stigma and threat of arrest from drug use saves lives and makes recovery services more likely to be successful in the long therm. Dr. Marbut said most Harm Reduction programs don’t make drug consumption safer, they just make it easier. Few programs offer robust recovery services, and when they do, acceptance is entirely voluntary.
The tragic reality of Harm Reduction as practiced in LA and elsewhere, is that it has done little to reduce deaths due to overdose, which account for nearly half of all homeless deaths in LA County. Since 2017, overdose has been the leading cause of death among the unhoused, increasing from 469 per 100,000 in 2017 to 1,489 per 100,000 in 2023. Heart disease, which is often associated with chronic substance abuse, is the second leading cause. Combined, these two causes led to 59 percent of homeless deaths in 2023. A recent investigative article in the Voice of San Francisco found that, over the past five years, there have been 549 overdose deaths in permanent supportive housing (PSH) operated by the city’s five largest nonprofits. That may not seem like many but remember San Francisco’s population is only about a quarter of Los Angeles, and the purpose of PSH was to offer services to prevent overdose deaths.
Since an essential precept of Housing First is its “No Barrier” policy, people are often given shelter or housing with no expectation of changing their substance abuse habits. The theory is recovery services will be more effective once a person is in a stable living situation and has built trust with providers. The real result is that people with drug and behavioral problems constantly cycle in and out of housing, while facility managers are left with exorbitant repair bills due to residents having mental breaks while housed.
Dr. Marbut cited professional medical recovery guidelines that state people with serious substance abuse and mental health issues need institutional care in a dedicated facility where they can be monitored and supported 24/7. This is the type of care many advocates brand as “carceral” and vehemently oppose as denying people “personal agency” in making decisions about their care. Dr Marbut counters that argument by saying people in the grip of addiction or mental crises are rarely able to make informed decisions in their own self-interest. Providing structured care allows them to recover to the level where they can make such decisions far more quickly than the haphazard methods used in Harm Reduction programs.
3. Homelessness is a homegrown problem. Advocates often point to surveys that show most unhoused people live in the communities where they were most recently housed and have long-term connections. These surveys are used to refute arguments that some cities have become magnets for homelessness. Phrases like “our unhoused neighbors” are used to support that belief. Advocates use these statistics to link the high cost of housing to homelessness, specifically in Los Angeles: If most homeless people are from LA, and if the cost of housing is the primary driver of homelessness, then creating more affordable housing is the answer to homelessness.
Dr. Marbut said most of the surveys showing the unhoused come from the cities they live in do does not probe deeply enough. He said an in-depth study of Spokane’s homeless population found that 50 percent had no long-term ties to the city. While they may have lived in the city for a few years, half came from elsewhere and have never had stable housing. He said the results of interviews with the unhoused showed many moved to Spokane because it has a reputation for being very tolerant of most encampments. Likewise, a 2024 survey by the City of San Francisco found that 40 percent of its homeless population came from other California counties or other states. Until recently, San Francisco also had a reputation for tolerating encampments, especially in terms of unfettered drug use. Serving unhoused people from other areas makes homelessness programs more expensive than they need to be. Perhaps that is why some cities, like San Francisco, and those in LA County’s South Bay, are placing new emphasis on family reunification to get people back to their communities, where they may have better access to supportive environments.
Finally, there is an element of the Big Lie Dr. Marbut did not mention, but that has been repeated many times in the past 18 months:
4. Los Angeles’ homelessness programs are starting to see positive results. Perhaps this is the most pernicious of all the myths about homelessness programs in LA. Mayor Bass’ press release said the city has seen two years of decreases in homelessness, especially unsheltered homelessness. In reality, no such claim can be honestly made. Several new reports and columns have detailed the problems with LA’s homeless counts, not the least of which is an allegation that the numbers were manipulated by LAHSA’s senior managers to make Mayor Bass’ programs look more effective than they really are. LAHSA’s former CIO testified in court the Authority’s data is nothing but “smoke and mirrors”. LAist has reported on the possible deletion of hundreds of area counts by LAHSA’s data managers in 2024, and on the transfer of hundreds of people counted in 2025 from the City of Los Angeles to surrounding communities. At the very least, these and other problems make any data coming from the city or LAHSA unreliable; at the worst they reflect a concerted effort to manipulate the numbers to fit the city’s narrative.
But why do Mayor Bass and others continue to use questionable data to claim success? The answer goes to the heart of what a Big Lie is. The Big Lie is something untrue, but said with such force and repeated so often, people begin to believe it. Officials and advocates are banking on the constant repetition of central themes, people will believe them. If they can make people believe homelessness is just an affordable housing problem, they can justify the money spent on new construction. If they can demote drug abuse and untreated mental illness to be mere consequences, instead of two among various causes of homelessness, they can convince people we need more supportive housing. If they can convince people current programs are working, they can ensure the money keeps flowing to favored providers. It is a cynical worldview that supports a very narrow concept of the homelessness crisis and how it can be solved.
One last thing Dr. Marbut emphasized: the homelessness crisis is not a political issue. Those on the far right and the far left spin their own myths and create their own narratives on its causes and its solution. The crisis has grown during the administrations of both political parties. We must rely on empirical data and getting to the root causes of homelessness to solve it. It’s not about political posturing or slogans. There are real human beings behind the numbers. In Los Angeles, nearly seven in ten homeless people sleep on the streets, and seven of them die each night--that is the sad result of LA’s Big Lie.
(Tim Campbell is a longtime Westchester resident and veteran public servant who spent his career managing a municipal performance audit program. Drawing on decades of experience in government accountability, he brings a results-driven approach to civic oversight. In his iAUDIT! column for CityWatchLA, Campbell emphasizes outcomes over bureaucratic process, offering readers clear-eyed analyses of how local programs perform—and where they fall short. His work advocates for greater transparency, efficiency, and effectiveness in Los Angeles government.)
