By FRED SHUSTER
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said Friday that the city would foot the bill for an independent audit of her signature Inside Safe initiative to combat homelessness in answer to an LA federal judge’s questions about the program’s transparency in light of alleged missed deadlines by the city in moving homeless residents out of the city’s largest encampments and under a roof.
Bass, who is currently in France, spoke to U.S. District Judge David Carter by telephone early Friday, agreeing that the court will have final say in choosing an auditor, the judge said during the brief resumption of a hearing dealing with a motion brought by the LA Alliance for Human Rights asking for penalties to be brought against the city.
Carter, who indicated Thursday that the city has acted in “bad faith” in meeting its goals, said Bass and City Council President Paul Krekorian would appear in a federal courtroom in downtown Los Angeles on March 18 to work out the details of the focused audit.
The LA Alliance, a coalition of downtown business owners and residents, is demanding the city of Los Angeles pay a nearly $6.4 million fine for its alleged lack of transparency and failure to reduce homeless encampments within deadlines set in the April 2022 settlement of the city’s part of the Alliance lawsuit.
The Alliance suggested that the city’s alleged problems in clearing encampments and creating enough shelter beds, particularly for the mentally ill, are the result of issues connected with the Inside Safe program, which allocates $250 million for outreach and motel rentals to clean up encampments. Bass claims the program has housed people in every council district in the city since December 2022.
LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia has also expressed concerns about the mayor’s program, telling Carter of what he views as the city’s “lack of transparency and accountability on homelessness efforts despite billions of dollars spent.”
Carter has demanded…
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