Comments
iAUDIT! - Wikipedia defines comic opera as a “sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue”. Most comic operas we’re familiar with include nonsensical plots and outsize caricatures of pompous characters (think the “Modern Major General” song from Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore). Main characters often work at cross-purposes or deal with cases of mistaken identity. Confusion reigns until everything is resolved in the final act.
Over the past few weeks, the news about Los Angeles’ homelessness programs could easily make one feel like they’re trapped in a Victorian comic opera. We’ve seen elected officials release diametrically opposed statements about the same project. A grassroots community group has stepped up to stop an allegedly fraudulent homeless housing development, while the City is trying to push it through to completion, and while so-called advocacy groups insist we should spend even more taxpayer money on it. Meanwhile, the City Attorney and Mayor continue to pay a high-priced law firm to avoid accountability for hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars spent on failed programs.
Let’s dive into some of these issues. On February 8, County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced she authorized $3 million to restart the moribund Venice Dell project, a controversial housing development located on public land in Venice. Supervisor Horvath completely blindsided City officials; Councilmember Traci Park said she found out about Horvath’s action in the news. Horvath pontificated about creating housing despite the City’s obstruction, saying it was time for “the City to get out of its own way”. The problem was that the City Council cancelled the project last December and is working on a new plan for housing a few blocks away. Meanwhile, Council candidate Faizah Malik, an attorney and self-proclaimed housing advocate, announced her support for the development. She was part of the legal team for the L.A. Forward Institute, a coalition of advocacy groups that sued the City in 2024 to force it to build the Venice Dell project. She and Horvath decried the “waste of taxpayer money” the City spent trying to cancel the project, yet both seemed to have no problem supporting a development that would cost $1 million per 400 square-foot unit, or $2,500 per square foot. Horvath, a former West Hollywood Councilmember, also seemed ignorant of the fact that cities have primary control of land use, and the County cannot force the City to develop the site. And she seemed all too willing to authorize $3 million for a dead project despite a projected $200 million reduction in the County’s homelessness budget. Other than lecturing the city on its housing obligations, it is unclear why Horvath would try to revive the Venice Dell project, but the Westside Current noted she has been criticized by the DSA and other left-leaning groups for not promoting housing aggressively enough. Perhaps she saw the project as an easy target.
To add to the comic opera atmosphere, on February 11, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto issued a report that found the project never received proper approvals and was based on unauthorized side deals negotiated by L.A. Housing Department managers without Council oversight. The report declared the project “dead” due to the irregularities, something Horvath could have discovered if she bothered to communicate with City officials before announcing her attempt to revive it.
If the City Attorney’s allegations of backroom deals sounds familiar, they should. Last October, the US Attorney charged developer Steven Taylor with fraud over an inflated property sale involving the large nonprofit Weingart Center and state Project Homekey funds. The government alleges that Taylor bought an assisted living center in Cheviot Hills for $11 million, and then sold it to the Weingart Center, using the City’s Project Homekey funds, for $27 million a few weeks later. The allegation says Taylor used bogus appraisals to support the inflated price. Remarkably, the City of LA, despite having its Project Homekey money used for fraudulent purposes, seems to have taken a passive role in the prosecution, other than a milquetoast statement from the Mayor about not tolerating dishonesty.
Much of the evidence used for the indictment was gathered by a grassroots organization called The Integrity Project, a citizens’ group that questioned the eviction of senior citizens for an expensive interim housing project. Integrity Project volunteers pored over thousands of pages of documents to uncover the complex web of shell companies and phony transactions leading to the US Attorney’s charges. As I’ve noted before, it is often left to citizens’ groups to advocate for themselves because local officials are so intertwined with special interests, they have no interest in holding providers and developers accountable. There is no better proof of that than in the City’s continuing support for the Cheviot Hills project. Instead of pausing what is clearly a troubled project, Councilmember Yaroslavsky insists it must be brought to completion for a variety of reasons. Even though the Weingart Center’s Board of Directors has placed its CEO and Real Estate Director on leave over their role in the property’s acquisition, the Councilmember seems determined to push ahead. The Integrity Project again stepped in and filed a lawsuit demanding a pause of further expenditures until the criminal case plays out. A state judge has set a March 5 hearing to consider a temporary restraining order on further progress.
If, as Supervisor Horvath said, the City can’t get out of its own way, a great example would be a federal judge’s recent decision that found City managers fabricated records about destroying unhoused peoples’ personal property during encampment clean-ups. When city crews conduct a clean-up, they must have a valid reason to immediately dispose of personal property; otherwise, the city must retain it so the owners can retrieve it later. The judge found overwhelming evidence that city employees doctored documents to make it look like they were disposing of hazardous waste when the items posed no threat. The judge said the city did such a poor job fabricating its records that a trial wasn’t necessary to find the city liable. The decision affects more than the six plaintiffs. CARE and CARE+ clean-up efforts may be put on hold until the City can reform its policies to meet property disposal requirements. It is just another example of the city’s wasteful and haphazard practices, and its emphasis on the appearance of action instead of thoughtful and comprehensive policies that address city-wide needs.
Throughout the City’s comic opera stumbling, officials have done their best to avoid responsibility and accountability. The City Attorney has committed almost $7.5 million to paying law firm Gibson Dunn & Crutcher to defend the City’s refusal to provide federal Judge David Carter with data to substantiate its claims of sheltering and housing thousands of people. There may be good reason for the City’s intransigence. A City report on homelessness program performance for 2025 shows just how little substantive progress has been made reducing homelessness, despite official’s claims otherwise. I’ll take a deeper dive into the report in a future column, but a brief overview shows that:
- Only about 20 percent of the unhoused go into some kind of shelter or housing, and about half of those fall back into homelessness or go to unknown destinations within 90 days.
- The City relies on Time-Limited Subsidized (TLS) units for much of its housing actions. When the subsidies run out (usually within two years), where will the tenants go? Exits from TLS units have slowed, creating a situation like a clogged sink--people are still coming in but nobody is coming out. Eventually, they'll overflow and be forced out.
- Despite housing expenditures in the billions over the last few years, the report (Slide 8) shows there are a little less than 15,000 units of PSH, interim, and TLS units for a homeless population exceeding 43,000.
Where else but in the comic opera world of LA’s homelessness universe would a County Supervisor try to dictate the City’s housing priorities by trying to revive a cancelled housing project, while at the same time the City’s Attorney claims the entire deal was made through a series of improper back-room agreements? Where else would a City Councilperson insist that another project must be completed despite a principal to the property’s sale being indicted on federal fraud charges? Where else would the City Attorney declare one project dead because of improper agreements, while at the same time spending more than $7 million of taxpayers’ money to ensure the City doesn’t have to provide proof of its programs’ performance? And where else would the City try to defend a system with management so weak, a service provider was able to defraud it of $23 million by, among other things, serving shelter residents microwaved ramen noodles instead of three full meals? This is the system that Mayor Bass, Councilmember Raman, Supervisor Horvath, and many others zealously defend. Unfortunately, unlike a Gilbert & Sulivan operetta, there is nothing funny about our officials perpetuating a system that leaves 75.000 people on the streets, where seven die every night.
(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.)
