After a string of negative audits and a scathing court-ordered review, it’s no secret that the Los Angeles homeless services system has flaws.
Now a new report filed in federal court has reaffirmed those earlier findings with on-the-ground detail previously lacking.
Without naming names, the report filed Wednesday by the global investigations firm Nardello & Co. recounted, among other things, how various agencies charged with aiding homeless people are unable to communicate and share data efficiently and how some subsidized housing projects were plagued by numerous problems, such as vandalism.
One property manager said a building has experienced what she called “large-scale intrusion events.” In other words, intruders overran the building to steel copper pipes.
The 225-unit building had 83 vacancies. The manager said move-ins had been paused during remediation work. The most recent event, involving “a resident’s guest who attempted to steal copper wire from the water system, affected more than 20 units and several common areas.”
Another homeless housing project operated under a master lease by Los Angeles County had only 102 occupants in its 169 beds due to several factors, “including water damage, elevator outages, and incidents involving the theft of copper wiring,” its manager told Nardello & Co. investigators.
At the time of the visit, the manager was overseeing multiple transfers from other locations including 51 residents leaving another building “due to flooding.”
Going into greater detail than earlier reports, Nardello & Co. included summaries of site visits to dozens of shelters and permanent housing projects. At more than half the locations, on-site staff declined to answer questions or allow the interviewers access.
The report was the first from Nardello & Co., named in May by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter to monitor a settlement between the city of Los Angeles and the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of business and property owners that sued the city and county, alleging they were failing to address homelessness.
Lawyers for the L.A. Alliance had repeatedly complained that the city was obfuscating to cover up its inadequate efforts to comply with a 2022 settlement requiring it to create thousands of shelter and housing beds and remove close to 10,000 encampments.
While denying a 2025 motion to place the city’s homeless programs in receivership, Carter ordered a review of the data being produced by the city on its homeless housing and encampment goals. That led to the appointment of Nardello & Co. to conduct the review.
The report primarily concerns the methods city, county and other housing agencies use to report how many homeless people are being served in interim and permanent housing.
Echoing the findings of an earlier evaluation also ordered by Carter, Nardello & Co. found “a reporting environment that relies on numerous databases, self-reported information, manual data transfers, and decentralized reporting practices.”
Also like the previous report, Nardello & Co. said it could not verify the accuracy of information provided to the court because privacy rules prevented access to the underlying data.
Information being reported to the court comes from a handful of agencies that all use different data systems: the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the Los Angeles Housing Department, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, and the mayor’s office.
The Housing Authority issued a statement saying that it welcomes “continued partnership with the City to explore responsible ways to improve data‑sharing and coordination” but that such efforts must comply with federal, state and local laws and safeguard the privacy of residents, property owners and others.
Mayor Karen Bass’ office did not respond to a request for comment.
The agencies use different data systems, and even different Google spreadsheets, to produce their reports and often have different bureaus within them managing different housing programs.
For example, a senior director for Bass told the interviewers that the Inside Safe program uses an internal Google spreadsheet to manage its occupancy records and does not have access to the Homeless Management Information System, the countywide database that tracks street contacts with homeless people and housing placements.