Perhaps we’ll never know what happened to the tens of billions of dollars that have been wasted in California to address the crisis known as homelessness.

The mystery has only deepened after audits ordered by the state, by Los Angeles County, and by a federal court all found vast gaps in information about where the money went and what, if anything, it bought.

Another gap was revealed by LAist journalist Nick Gerda, who reported that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, is refusing to release public records related to an $800,000 payout of taxpayer funds to settle claims that include whistleblower retaliation. On what exactly was the whistle blown?

LAHSA won’t release that information, although legal experts told LAist that withholding the documents is “unlawful.”

LAHSA did finally release the settlement agreements reached with former chief financial and administration officer Kristina M. Dixon and data and IT director Emily Vaughn Henry. Both were fired in the first year that Va Lecia Adams Kellum was LAHSA’s chief executive. The homeless services agency admitted no wrongdoing but paid Dixon $450,000 and Henry $350,000.

LAHSA is a city-county Joint Powers Authority funded by about $800 million per year in federal, state and local tax dollars to address homelessness.

Adams Kellum recently resigned as CEO of LAHSA following L.A. County’s decision to pull more than $300 million of county funding away from the city-county agency and instead set up a new county department to oversee homelessness. The new department will have $1 billion per year to spend and 1,000 employees to spend it, thanks to voter approval in November of a county sales tax increase for homelessness programs.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass opposed the county’s move to withdraw from LAHSA. Apparently she was counting on some of that $1 billion to sustain her signature homelessness program, Inside Safe, which she has refused to allow City Controller Kenneth Mejia to audit.

The controller’s website has an Inside Safe dashboard with limited data from reports by the city administrative officer. Through Dec. 31, 2024, Inside Safe has spent or committed $367,581,719 and has served 4,037 individuals. Of those, 1,356 have returned to homelessness.

That means the taxpayers of Los Angeles spent more than $137,000 for each of the 2,681 individuals helped by Inside Safe, including 69 individuals who ended up incarcerated and 70 who died.

In her State of the City address on Monday, Bass said Inside Safe represents a “major change,” because “instead of waiting on expensive new housing to be built, we tapped L.A.’s supply of underused motels to bring people inside immediately.”

Of course, the city does not have a “supply” of underused motels. The Inside Safe program spent $95.8 million on “motel acquisition.” Another $121 million was spent to provide supportive services. According to the city’s data through 2024, Inside Safe has provided 1,123 people with “interim housing” in motels.

The Inside Safe program also purchased and renovated the Mayfair Hotel for about $83 million, and then signed a contract to pay LAHSA $12.5 million to provide a year of onsite supportive services, for which the city administrative officer recently requested an additional $2 million. The controller says 291 people have been provided with interim housing at the Mayfair Hotel.

The mayor admitted in Monday’s speech that her motel model is “not financially sustainable.” Bass declared that “we must invest” in “long-term interim housing.” What would that cost?

“Invest” is government-speak for higher taxes, which L.A. voters have approved over and over again, only to see the homeless count grow. Bass said there were 25,000 homeless individuals in the city in 2016, when Measure HHH, a $1.2 billion bond for homeless housing, was approved. Many billions of dollars later, the homeless count in 2024 was more than 45,000.

At $137,000 per individual “served,” it would cost more than $6 billion to “serve” 45,000 people, roughly half the city’s annual budget to support 1% of the population.

On Wednesday, Mayor Bass was in Sacramento pleading for money from the state.

Here’s a better budget plan. Let’s make “waste” an Olympic event, and then every four years, L.A. can pawn its gold medals.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley