County keeping $24M earmarked for homeless until LASHA can crawl out from financial fiasco
LA COUNTY — Elected leaders who two months ago earmarked tens of millions of taxpayer money to combat homelessness are holding onto the public’s wallet until the county’s lead agency gets its financial house in order.
A July audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LASHA) showed that it owed $5 million in unpaid bills from service providers, some in Santa Monica (See related story, page 6).
In mid-August, LASHA still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Santa Monica City Hall and service groups which serve homeless individuals locally.
While media reports showed that LASHA had only $700,000 in the bank in July, the authority said it had $1.4 million and was waiting on $3.9 million in expected funding.
“It’s not a $5 million deficit, it’s just that we were slow in requesting money from our agencies (that fund LASHA),” said LASHA Executive Director Mitch Netburn. “If we had done our job right, we would have asked for that $5 million so we could pay our providers.”
Regardless, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is waiting to give LASHA $24.6 million that it approved in June to aid in homeless efforts, part of which local officials hope may go toward the creation of a new, year-round homeless shelter on the Westside. The allocation is said to be the largest single payment from either the city or county of LA for homeless services.
The board of supervisors had indicated in June that it would decide within 60 days how the money should be used. That all came to an abrupt halt when county officials learned of LASHA’s financial troubles in July.
“We were told after the fact,” said Joe Bellman, press deputy for LA County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who represents the Westside. “We learned about (LASHA’s financial troubles) when we sat down to determine how to spend the money.”
LA city and county officials are working to restructure LASHA, which has been operating without a chief financial officer and minimal financial staff.
“It’s not responsible to allocate money without having transparency,” Bellman said. “We don’t want to flush money down a dysfunctional system.”
The funding allocation has been delayed to an unspecified date, but at least until after LASHA has straightened out its finances. County officials, however, will be cautious that the majority of money goes to new facilities, not administrative costs.
“This is not intended for it to be operational funding for LASHA,” Bellman said, adding about $2 million of the $24.6 million had been budgeted for administrative costs.
Netburn expects all of LASHA’s debt to be reconciled by Sept. 9.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 6, 2005. Read the original PDF.