Frontline, homeless outreach workers in Los Angeles are not making enough
money in their salaries in order to afford housing themselves.
And that's according to a new report done by the nonpartisan Rand Corporation.
Let's get into the details and
then talk about just how much these organizations are funded.
And how much money rises to the top but
doesn't make it to the actual people doing the work.
Now, researchers estimate that the workers need to make $64,000 annually
just to afford a one-bedroom apartment or $82,000 for a two-bedroom.
Instead, they make about 40,000 to 60,000, spending a large portion
of their income on rent with very little money left for other necessities.
Now, we live in Los Angeles.
You definitely need to make at least the amount that's specified by
this Rand study.
And what's leading to this is, what this is leading to, I should say,
is burnout and high turnover among these organizations.
Either government agencies or
nonprofits dealing with the homeless crisis in Los Angeles.
Low pay places financial, emotional, and health burdens on
workers already facing hazardous and stressful conditions.
It's interesting that it's referred to as hazardous when it's convenient,
because it is hazardous.
You're dealing with people who have severe mental health issues in some cases and
might be going through an episode.
You're dealing with people who might be on some pretty gnarly drugs that
compromise their ability to control their impulses.
And so, this is a very difficult and important job.
I really wanna be clear about that.
They eventually leave for other careers, creating staffing shortages that
ultimately affect the quality of care given to people experiencing homelessness.
And Rand looked into these nonprofits.
But of the organizations that is funded by the county and
city of Los Angeles is a government agency known as
the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.
And I wanna get into the details about how they spend their funding in just a moment.
I think it's really important to dissect the way they deal with the financial
situation within that organization.
Before we do, though, Cenk, any thoughts?
>> Yeah, well, you know you might not be doing it right.
If the workers that you have that are supposed to address homelessness don't get
paid enough to the point where they might become homeless themselves.
That would be deeply counterproductive.
And some of them have to live all the way out, a couple of hours from LA.
Some of them now are struggling with having their own apartment for sure,
as they explain in a number of instances.
There's a little bit of a hero in this story at some point.
But, guys, overall, the big picture here is tons of cities,
including LA spend a gargantuan amount of money on trying to address homelessness.
>> I'll tell you how much.
>> Yeah, and homelessness only goes up.
So, we are misdirecting the money.
The money is not being spent right, that is for sure.
>> 1000%.
>> And if you care about any of it, so
maybe some of you only care about the money.
Maybe some of you care about the homeless.
I hope you care about both, right?
Cuz it's our money and those are folks we to help.
For all of you, you have to care.
Wait, are we doing this right, right?
Is this actually working?
And right now, it doesn't appear that way at all.
>> So there are about 200 different organizations dealing with
the homeless crisis in Los Angeles alone, and they employ 8000 people, okay?
And the county of Los Angeles spends $3 billion a year on homelessness, 3 billion.
So any allegation that we're not
allocating the necessary resources is ridiculous.
If you look at their books, if you look into the salaries and
how they're broken down, you'll see where the money's going.
So let's get into some details here.
Cenk mentioned that a hero makes an appearance in this story, and
you're right about that.
It's just that the hero gets pushed out of LAHSA.
Let's talk about who she was.
A year ago, Heidi Marston,
the chief executive of Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Resigned after giving raises to her lowest paid staffers without
approval from the commission that oversees the agency.
In her resignation letter, she said that LASA employees were making as
little as $33,000, leading to high turnover.
In March of 2021, she increased the annual salaries of 196 employees to $50,000,
while freezing the compensation of the 10 highest-paid staffers.
Now, I'm sure the highest-paid staffers were not happy about that.
And when we talk about the highest-paid staffers, we're talking about a government
funded agency that's supposed to be dealing with a very serious crisis.
In which as many as 60,000 people are living, and in some cases,
dying on the streets of Los Angeles.
Well, how much money are we talking about here at the upper echelons of LAHSA?
Well, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, she's the new head of LAHSA,
and she makes $430,000 a year, $430,000 a year.
And by the way, I looked at their books to see just how many of
their employees are making, at a minimum, a six figure salary.
And the latest data that we have is for 2020.
And there were 33 employees making at least six figures.
I wanna know why the frontline workers who are out on the streets trying to do
the work are making as little as $33,000.
Whereas the head of this organization is making almost half a million dollars.
>> Yeah, unfortunately, they've adopted the for profit model where the top gets
all the money, and the regular workers, unfortunately, don't get very much at all.
But in a nonprofit situation, in a governmental situation,
that is even more unjustified.
So we can get into the economics of why it's unjustified, but
it's kind of obvious, so we don't have to.
I love that she raised their salaries without asking the commission,
the commission afterwards was livid, and they said, well,
we probably would have raised it anyway.
We just said that she didn't ask us, my ass you would have.
No way.
That's the only way that those people would have gotten a raise.
If she had asked permission, they would have stonewalled her for sure.
So that's why it was bold, courageous, and
the correct thing to do if you [INAUDIBLE].
>> Yes, the commission wouldn't have done that because they don't actually value
what the objective is supposed to be.
They don't, they just don't.
>> Yeah. >> Because take a look at how much their
funding has increased while simultaneously homelessness has exploded, okay?
>> Yeah. >> But no, I wanna give the numbers and
then you can jump in.
>> Yeah. >> So in the 2014 to 2015 fiscal year
LAHSA received funding of $63 million.
That's a lot of money.
But by 2022, funding had increased nearly 13-fold, to about $808 million.
In the same period, the number of people experiencing homelessness in LA county
increased by 56%.
>> It's just a monumental failure.
>> And that data is from a lengthy report that McKinsey did, and
maybe you don't trust McKinsey.
I actually thought they did a pretty good job with this report, but
I wanted to confirm that $808 million figure.
So I went to LAHSA's website, and here is what their website says.
Let's go to graphic eight.
LAHSA coordinates and manages over $800 million annually in federal, state,
county, and city funds of programs that provide shelter, housing,
and services to people experiencing homelessness.
Except they don't hit their goals.
And I'll tell you what I mean by that in just a moment.
They don't even come close to hitting their goals.
But Cenk jump in.
>> Guys, if the funding goes from about 60 million to 800 million and
homelessness doesn't go down, but it goes up by a giant number, 56%,
that's such a monumental failure.
You have to almost rip the whole thing up and start over again.
And by the way, that would probably do us a world of good.
But if you have to have an excellent manager,
I'm not even sure they have to be excellent.
Maybe they're just good would be enough.
Because, Jesus, $3 billion.
I cannot imagine a world in which I couldn't solve the homelessness
problem in LA with $3 billion a year.
That's insanity.
Can you build enough homes with 3 billion?
Yes, there's a thousand things you could do with $3 billion a year,
except it's mainly going to, apparently, salaries of the top end of these folks.
And by the way, when I ran for office in the LA area,
I would often hear people telling me that, hey, you know what?
For a lot of the establishment Democrats,
the best scam they have is going to run one of these homelessness organizations.
>> 1000%, that's why there's 200 of them.
Receiving $3 billion a year to do what?
What have they done?
LAHSA was caught throwing away perfectly good food that was meant for the homeless.
They just threw it away.
That was part of a local news investigation.
They also are supposed to count the number of people living on the streets
every year.
Last year they claimed that there were no homeless people in Venice.
>> [LAUGH] >> I'm not kidding.
>> If you've ever been to LA,
that's the most comical ridiculous thing you could possibly hear.
Okay, look, one more thing about the raising the employees salaries.
33,000 in LA is 100% unlivable.
So let me give you a sense of context.
When I moved here a little bit over 20 years ago,
I was on a one-bedroom apartment.
It was so crappy that I moved eventually because my car got stolen.
There was blood in the hallways, etc.
And that used to be $1,000 for a one-bedroom apartment.
Now that's about 3000 or $3,500.
Well, let's say they take the lower number 3000.
That's 36,000 right there, just for your rent, for
an apartment where you might bleed out, okay?
So how the hell are they supposed to live on $33,000 a year?
And they're the ones that are actually going and dealing with homeless folks.
A lot of times when I volunteered in organizations and etc,
you'll meet some of the best people in the world there that run it on tough times and
they're looking out for one another.
And sometimes you'll meet folks who are in deep trouble and
it's a dangerous situation, right?
So for the folks dealing with them and trying to get them help,
to have them have nonlivable salaries while
the guys at the top are taking all the money, totally unacceptable.
>> Now, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has done an audit
of LAHSA, because they're, you guys are taking in a lot of money.
What's going on here?
Well, here's what they found, that the authority,
meaning LAHSA did not fully meet the goals and objectives of the program.
It did not always follow program requirements.
Specifically, it did not use $3.5 million in
Continuum of Care grant awards and let the funds expire.
They just let the funds expire.
Did not support Homeless Management Information System and
planning grant costs.
Did not submit timely annual performance reports.
And there might be a good reason for why they didn't do that.
Let's fast forward to graphic twelve here.
There was an investigation done back in 2019 into the performance of LAHSA,
specifically.
Outreach workers were supposed to place into permanent housing 10%.
Not a lofty goal, to be honest with you, 10% of the homeless people they assessed.
But in the fiscal year that ended in June, they placed only 4% the audit reported.
The goal was 20% for placing people in shelters, but they achieved only 14%.
The discrepancies were greater for referrals to treatment, 6% for
substance abuse and 4% for mental health.
Both had goals of 25%.
And what I love about this story and what I'm about to say doesn't just have
to do with LAHSA, it has to do with all of these nonprofits in general.
Is that their big complaint is we're not getting enough money.
If you want us to pay these workers more, we need more money.
So let's go to graphic ten.
Despite the 2017 approval of Measure H local sales tax hikes to
fund homelessness programs.
Nonprofit leaders told the researchers that they don't receive enough government
funding to raise wages.
They receive $3 billion a year.
$3 billion a year and
the only thing that's happened is homelessness has gotten worse.
So, I would prefer the government to use that money to construct housing,
declare this an emergency.
We are currently in a state of emergency to basically override and
bypass any of these ridiculous NIMBY laws that prevent
the construction of new housing and cut the fat out.
Because what I'm seeing here is a bunch of mismanagement, misuse of taxpayer
money and a lot of pain and suffering on the ground as a result of that.
So just build the housing and cut the fat.
They won't do it.
So we're gonna keep shelling out billions of dollars every year for one county,
and we're gonna see no results.
>> Yeah, look, there's so many potential solutions, but NIMBY is a big problem.
You need a strong person to get past that problem.
Whenever they propose low income housing in my neighborhood,
they send around petitions, you don't want that in our neighborhood.
I'm like, no, I do.
And they're, it'll reduce our property values.
>> No, it won't.
>> First of all, that's not necessarily true.
Second of all, we've got to be decent to one another.
So I say, no, I don't want any part of your petition.
But unfortunately, those things wind up affecting policy so much.
That's why we're a little heartened that Karen Bass has done a pretty good
job so far.
>> She has.
>> And so she gotta push past that stuff, and she's doing that.
But I wanna say one more thing about miss spending the money.
Guys it's such a double bogey, because when you misspend the money.
What happens is all the citizens in whichever jurisdiction you're in go, well,
we gave you the 3 billion, and it got worse.
So that's it.
We're not gonna give you any more money.
The next time a ballot measure is proposed, it's not gonna pass, right?
They're, cuz we gave and gave and gave, and it got worse and worse and worse.
So then all of a sudden, you're actually gonna have restricted money, and
it's gonna be even harder to address the problem.
That's why you've gotta get in there and actually fix the inefficiencies and
how terribly they're spending the money.
And one more thing, guys.
Do not lose hope with effective management.
These things are solvable.
Houston did a great job in addressing homelessness, and so
there are right ways to spend money.
There are correct strategies.
And we should take the Houston model and do it all over the country instead of this
giant, labyrinth, wasteful bureaucracy that we have in cities like LA.