{"id":236844,"date":"2025-09-18T17:14:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-18T17:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/236844\/"},"modified":"2025-09-18T17:14:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-18T17:14:10","slug":"website-from-la-controllers-office-tracks-city-spending-on-homelessness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/236844\/","title":{"rendered":"Website from LA Controller’s Office tracks city spending on homelessness"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keep up with LAist.<\/p>\n

If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less. <\/p>\n

Los Angeles is working to update its website<\/a> where the public can view the city\u2019s spending on homeless services, including Mayor Karen Bass\u2019 signature Inside Safe program.<\/p>\n

The updates were prompted by a request from a federal judge who for years has urged the city and county of L.A. to maintain websites that detail homelessness spending for accountability and transparency reasons, according to court documents<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Both have failed to keep those sites updated.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter reiterated the request in a June ruling<\/a> that found L.A. officials failed in multiple ways to follow a settlement agreement to create more shelter for unhoused people. <\/p>\n

The ruling was the result of a long-running lawsuit filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners who sued the city and county\u00a0in 2020 for failing to adequately address the local homelessness crisis.<\/p>\n

L.A. City Controller Kenneth Mejia was ordered to appear<\/a> in court Tuesday to share his office\u2019s progress on the website, which earned compliments from the judge.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first website \u2014 that the court is aware of \u2014 that seems to be starting to function on the public\u2019s behalf,\u201d Carter said during the hearing.<\/p>\n

However, Mejia noted that the Controller\u2019s Office has been \u201chitting some hurdles\u201d maintaining the website, including delays with data and extensive manual work.<\/p>\n

About the website<\/p>\n

The website breaks down information about service providers working with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, otherwise known as LAHSA, including dates and invoice details.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s designed so people can \u201cdig in for yourself\u201d and \u201csee what the city is spending its money on,\u201d Mejia said.<\/p>\n

You can see the controller\u2019s site here.<\/a><\/p>\n

The Controller\u2019s Office has a two-person team working on the website, Mejia said.<\/p>\n

The pair is tasked with sorting through thousands of pages of invoices and contracts from LAHSA to redact any sensitive data before they\u2019re posted publicly.<\/p>\n

Some of the controller\u2019s staff, including Director of Homelessness Ashley Bennett, told the court that the website requires extensive and time-consuming work from the team, all of which needs to be done manually.<\/p>\n

Staff said the Controller\u2019s Office has also faced up to nine-month delays in getting data and documents from LAHSA, which the judge said worries him.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s ahead<\/p>\n

One reason for making the information on the website widely available is to gain public trust, the judge said. He noted that a months-long delay could undermine that.<\/p>\n

Carter urged the Controller\u2019s Office to speed up the process and get the website updated to as close to real time as possible. But he noted that\u2019s outside the court\u2019s jurisdiction.<\/p>\n

Mejia told the judge that his office needs help and “cooperation from the outside\u201d to update the site more quickly. That likely means more cooperation from LAHSA, the controller said.<\/p>\n

Mejia is expected to provide another update on the site to the judge on Nov. 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Keep up with LAist. If you’re enjoying this article, you’ll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":236845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,6537,58647,37795,123875,2961,127110,224,5337,42897],"class_list":{"0":"post-236844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-city-of-los-angeles","11":"tag-controller","12":"tag-homelessness-spending","13":"tag-kenneth-mejia","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-homelessness","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-website"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115226428497861401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}