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 [ LOS ANGELES ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=312)

#  Welcome to The City That Can’t. Broken Lights, Broken Streets, Broken Promises, Broke

May 18 2026

Written by Tim Campbell.

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iAUDIT! - In March, I published an op-ed on my [Substack page titled “Los Angeles - The City That Can’t](https://open.substack.com/pub/timcampbellinla/p/los-angeles-the-city-that-cant?r=3sf8ec&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web)”. In the column, I described LA as a city with its priorities so jumbled it can’t fix its streetlights or deter street takeovers. Money is wasted on encampment cleanups, only to have them repopulated, sometimes on the same day. The City’s failure to provide basic services is one of the reasons [an annual survey shows residents’ quality of life ratings are at an all-time low](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-04-16/la-county-residents-report-decade-low-quality-of-life-metrics).

[A recent column in the LA Times by Steve Lopez focusing on the huge sidewalk repair backlog drives home how badly LA has failed its residents.](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-05-16/cracked-la-sidewalks-are-symptom-of-bigger-breakdown) As Lopez wrote, the city uses an arcane scoring system that leaves some residents waiting decades for sidewalk repairs, if they are done at all. The backlog stands at about 30,000, with only 600 repairs done every year, and being on the repair list isn’t a guarantee a sidewalk will be fixed; locations can move up or down on the list as new requests come in. A report from the Mayor’s Office on capital repairs notes long-range planning is hampered by siloed authority and disjointed data systems, meaning the Mayor and City Council cannot make informed decisions about repair needs.

If that sounds familiar, it should. [Last month, I summarized a report from the Chief Legislative Analyst that said the same thing about homelessness programs](https://www.citywatchla.com/los-angeles/32583-the-citys-contracts-with-lahsa-buried-details). They are siloed within different departments, making program coordination unnecessarily difficult. As with most programs, homelessness priorities are set by each Councilperson; clearing encampments may be a priority in one district, while the other emphasizes street outreach. The same is true of sidewalk repair. Some Councilmembers have used their discretionary budgets to make spot repairs, which may or may not coordinate with the city’s repair database. In reality, there is no such thing as city-wide policies in Los Angeles. As long as Councilmembers set their own priorities, coordinating programs will be impossible.

There is another interesting fact in Mr. Lopez’s article. He mentioned the City has committed to spending $1 billion over 30 years to make sidewalk repairs, or about $33.3 million per year. That’s about $10 per resident per year. On the other hand, the City spends about $1 billion per year on homelessness. That’s a little more than $22,000 per each of the City’s roughly 44,000 unhoused people. Broken sidewalks affect nearly every resident and business in LA, and the City commits $10 per resident to fix them in any given year. What the expenditures have in common is that we’re not getting much for our money. The backlog of sidewalk repairs is growing, and homelessness remains stubbornly high. Despite Mayor Bass’ constant claims that her programs have reduced street homelessness by more than 17 percent, the reliability of the data is extremely questionable, so we really don’t know how many unhoused people live on our streets.

As I’ve pointed out before, [we don’t get much for the money we spend on homelessness](https://open.substack.com/pub/timcampbellinla/p/what-does-los-angeles-get-for-its?r=3sf8ec&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web). The same is true of many other city programs or services. Sidewalk repair is just one of many examples. The growing number of broken streetlights is another symptom of a dysfunctional city. The problem with streetlights illustrates how some of the city’s crises are related. Because LA does such a poor job on homelessness, thousands of people live on the streets, (despite Mayor Bass’ claims, a RAND survey found an increase in “rough sleepers” in the areas it counts). Unhoused people often need power, especially if they live in self-made shelters. Streetlights are a handy, albeit dangerous source of electricity (some older circuits run on up to 7,000 volts), so people tap into them. Copper is also a hot commodity, and the city’s stretched police department doesn’t have the resources to stop every small incident of wire theft. And of course, tapping electric circuits always runs the risk of fire, which could be [a major reason why 30 percent of LAFD fire calls are homeless-related](https://laist.com/news/housing-homelessness/la-fire-department-homelessness-budget-trash-unhoused). If the City did a better job reducing homelessness, copper theft and the fires associated with it would both decrease, and the city could free up resources to serve the entire population.

But LA’s politics are so balkanized, efforts to clear encampments are haphazard at best, and often met with vigorous opposition from self-proclaimed advocates who seem more concerned with protecting encampments than they are with the quality of life of almost four million people. The ideological hyperfocus fails to consider larger issues that affect the entire city. That’s why one of my most consistent mantras has been that we need a complete restructuring of the homelessness intervention system, but to achieve that, we need to reunite the fragmented way the city operates. Until we can do that, broken sidewalks and homeless tents will be just part of the price we pay for a dysfunctional city.

***(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.)*

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