Fresh information released by the City of Los Angeles indicates that Mayor Karen Bass’s prominent homelessness reduction strategy known as “Inside Safe” costs $17,009 per person per month.
This initiative, which received an additional $250 million in the fiscal year 2023-2024 budget, involves providing hotel accommodations to homeless individuals with the help of social workers while they seek more permanent housing solutions.
Having expended a total of $32,619,694 up until June 30, 2023, for a total of 57,533 nights in hotel rooms, the expense for each homeless individual who benefited from the program equates to $567 per night or $17,009 per month.
Notably, these expenses encompass security support from the Los Angeles Police Department for the cleaning of encampments, aid from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation in relocating participants, assistance from the Los Angeles County Homeless Services Authority for outreach, housing offers, and services for program participants such as constant monitoring and food provision.
Based on the program’s current success rates, about one in six individuals who enter the program choose to exit and return to the streets. Despite substantial expenditures, the program has only assisted 1,463 individuals. Out of these, 1,105 are in short-term housing, 108 have transitioned to permanent housing, and 250 have either left the program completely or continue to be engaged with a social worker but are not housed anymore.
Of the allocated $250 million for Inside Safe in the fiscal year 2023-2024, $92 million is designated for hotel accommodations, $18 million for compensating hotels for participant-related damages, $6 million for staff involved in intake processes, $16 million for case management within hotels and aiding individuals in finding housing, $16 million for administrative costs, $10 million for resident monitors in each hotel, $13 million (equivalent to $21 per individual per day) for food expenses, $1 million for storing participants’ belongings, $13 million for subsidies facilitating the move to longer-term housing, $18 million for rental assistance (covering two years per participant at $1833 per month), and $47 million (including $31 million from state funding) for the acquisition and operation of hotels as part of the Inside Safe projects.