Botched data on shelters aggravate homeless crisis

Nonprofits say system is often inaccurate and makes it more difficult to provide housing.

- BY ANDREW KHOURI AND DOUG SMITH

Photographs by GENARO MOLINA Los Angeles Times A MAN, top, reclines under the 405 Freeway last month in Culver City. Above, Anthony Bacon and his daughter Cherish have lunch in July at a Pasadena shelter.

In early August, data from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority showed only two out of 88 beds at an East Hollywood homeless shelter were occupied, a shockingly low rate in a county where some 47,000 sleep on the streets.

There's just one big problem, according to the nonprofit PATH, which operates the shelter. The data were dead wrong. PATH's internal data showed 84 beds were filled.

For years, LAHSA has worked on a system to provide "real-time" information on availability at interim housing sites, promising it would wipe away an arcane "matching" process and fill more beds and fill them quicker.

But since the system rolled out, nonprofits that operate interim housing for LAHSA said it can be difficult to work with, and the data it produces are frequently inaccurate, providing the public with a skewed view of reality and potentially making it harder — not easier — to get people off the streets.

"You have to know which interim housing sites can take" people, PATH Chief Executive Jennifer Hark Dietz said. "If it's not accurate, you are actually sending people to a place that doesn't have availability for them."

LAHSA, a joint city-county agency established in 1993, has long faced criticism for not adequately tracking its programs and funds, potentially leaving them open to waste and fraud.

According to LAHSA, the process of placing people into shelter beds in L.A. County was cumbersome and time-consuming and relied on spreadsheets, phone calls and daily emails to track inventory and get people shelter. While LAHSA directly placed people into many beds, nonprofits handled the process at many other shelters, each doing it somewhat differently.