Tag: los angeles

Los Angeles cannot track money spent on homeless programs, independent audit finds

  • An independent audit commissioned by a federal judge raised serious concerns about how Los Angeles city and county are handling the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the homelessness crisis. 

Sergio Moreno’s business sits in the heart of Skid Row, where he sees homeless people overdosing on drugs. 

“There were days we’d see two to three overdoses,” he said. 

The things Moreno has witnessed made him suspicious on how the city has managed the response to the homeless crisis. 

“It’s not dollars we’re talking about,” he said. “Those dollars translate into people’s lives.”

His feelings have been heightened following the independent audit released on Thursday. It claims that Los Angeles city and county leaders cannot account for the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on the homeless crisis last year. The LA Alliance for Human Rights pressed for a series of audits in recent years. 

“It’s heartbreaking,” said Elizabeth Mitchell, an attorney for LA Alliance for Human Rights. “It’s atrocious. It’s immoral. It’s unjustified. But, what it is not, is surprising.”

Many of the problems identified were at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. 

The auditors said the agency’s paper trail was so poor that tracking the $2.5 billion spent last year was nearly impossible. 

“It is an actual infrastructure disaster,” Mitchell said. “The truth is everybody is in charge and nobody is in charge. There are no checks and balances.”

The office of LA County Supervisor Linsey Horvath called for accountability, results and an end to this “nightmare.”

“This audit is another reminder of what we already know – the current homelessness services system is broken,” she said in a statement. “We need accountability and results right now, which is why I’m proceeding with the creation of a consolidated County department that will end this nightmare.”

The president of the Downtown LA Neighborhood Council believes there are other record-keeping problems. 

“Even the homeless count is not accurate,” Claudia Olviveira said. “Nothing is accurate and based on data.”

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“Needs To Be Torn Down”: LA Fire Stations Are In Total Disrepair

LAFD fire stations are in disrepair, with firefighters often funding and handling repairs themselves, according to The Free Press.  

At a Pico-Robertson station, two firefighters were seen filling a three-foot pothole with sand. At another, a sewage leak had persisted for six months—“now the ceiling is falling in.”

A source reported that at least 12 of the city’s 106 stations were infested with mold. At Fire Station 112, an April 2022 report found 2.3 million spores in the dining hall, where a safe level is under 700. A firefighter who paid for the test claimed his chief became so ill he was hospitalized, resulting in a thumb amputation. Another firefighter refused to enter the kitchen because his “face would break into hives.”

At a station east of downtown, a broken window had been boarded up, and roof tiles showed water damage. Another firefighter stated that the LAFD ignored a broken garage door for a year—only repairing it after the community raised funds.

A firefighter, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, said “anyone legitimate would say the station needs to be torn down.”

The Free Press article notes that the LAFD’s budget was cut by $17.6 million last year, a reduction Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said had “adversely affected” the department’s “ability to maintain core operations,” including fire prevention. Mayor Karen Bass has denied that the cuts have impacted firefighting efforts, despite blazes that have killed 27 people and destroyed 12,000 buildings.

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Leaked Phone Call: Karen Bass Defends Trip to Ghana, Drops Cryptic Warning Before LA Wildfires

O’Keefe Media Group obtained leaked audio of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass defending her trip to Ghana just three days before the wildfires erupted in Los Angeles in early January.

LA’s Democrat Mayor Karen Bass slashed Fire Department funding by $17.6 million a few months before the fires erupted last month.

January’s blaze was the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history and the city was not prepared to contain the fire because of Democrats like Karen Bass.

Karen Bass was tweeting from Africa as her city burned down.

The LA Mayor was actually in Africa attending the presidential inauguration in Ghana as hundreds of thousands of Los Angeles residents evacuated and watched their homes burn down.

Fire hydrants ran dry due to Democrat incompetence but Karen Bass saved the day by tweeting from Africa.

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MUST SEE: LA Officials Blame Residents for Wildfires, Admit They Knew The Fires Were Coming and Pacific Palisades Reservoir Was Empty for “A Year” – Official Threatens to Call 911 When Confronted

James O’Keefe’s O’Keefe Media Group has released a new investigative report on Los Angeles officials’ response to the wildfires last month, which raged across LA County. 

Over 12,000 homes were destroyed in the blazes, and at least 29 died.

Due to Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass’s failed leadership and radical leftist policies, which cut $17.6 million from the Fire Department’s budget a few months ago and reduced the city’s water supply available in fire hydrants, firetrucks were forced to use residential hoses to fill up their water tanks. The fire hydrants had run dry, exacerbating the crisis.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir, with a capacity of 117 million gallons, could have played a critical role in providing water pressure to firefighters battling the devastating fire that destroyed thousands of homes and buildings in Los Angeles, Santa Monica, and Malibu. However, it had been offline and empty for nearly a year, which incompetent Governor Gavin Newsom called “deeply troubling.”

Alexander Boz, an international relations official with the Los Angeles Mayor’s office, and LA Department of Water and Power project manager Angel Luna told an undercover journalist more about the state’s botched fire response.

Angel Luna acknowledged that the reservoir in Pacific Palisades was empty and taken out of service but claimed that the more than 100 million gallons wouldn’t have made an impact “because of the fact that you lost so many homes.” He further claimed that LA firefighters were “breaking our equipment” when the topic of empty fire hydrants was brought up.

Ignoring the incompetence that led to a lack of available water, Luna dismissed the notion that residents needed water, saying, “Yeah, but we like in a desert” and “It doesn’t rain here.”

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WAIT, WHAT? LA Mayor Karen Bass Investigating Why She Was Allowed to Travel to Africa While Her City Burned

The people of Los Angeles really need to fire Mayor Karen Bass.

As it is now widely known, Mayor Bass was traveling in Africa when the incredibly destructive fires broke out in the city weeks ago. When she finally made it back to LA, she was questioned by a reporter and stood there silently, unable or unwilling to explain herself.

Now, weeks later, she has done a TV interview where she explained that she is launching an investigation into why she was allowed to go on her Africa trip when people knew there was a possibility of fires.

Is this the most absurd thing you have ever heard? Is it close?

FOX News reports:

LA Mayor Bass points fingers when grilled on Africa trip amid botched wildfire response

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who has come under intense scrutiny for traveling to Africa last month amid a botched fire response, is deflecting blame on the controversial trip.

“I felt absolutely terrible not being here for my city,” Bass, a Democrat, told a Fox 11 Los Angeles reporter in a recent interview.

“Would I say it was a mistake, absolutely. The idea that I was not present was very painful,” she added, saying that proper “preparation didn’t happen” to notify her ahead of the Ghana trip.

She said she would not have even traveled south to San Diego had she been given the proper “preparation” about the fire danger.

“It didn’t reach that level to me to say ‘Something terrible could happen and maybe you shouldn’t have gone on the trip,’” the Democrat added.

“I think that’s one of the things we need to look at, everything that happened, including that, needs to be examined,” she continued, revealing that there are at least two investigations into the city’s response to the fires.

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‘Scientific Socialism’ Has Come to Pacific Palisades

“You can’t rebuild the same. We have to rebuild with science. We have to build with climate reality in mind,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom told CNN last week in an interview about rebuilding the burned-out Pacific Palisades. “We have to look at infrastructure or redundancy systems. Ingress, egress, as it relates to emergency management and planning materials.”

The interview seems to have flown under the radar, but when I caught it this morning, a bit belatedly, my alarm bells went off left and right.

Well, to be honest, they were all on the left.

Whatever happened to Newsom’s promise that he’d eliminate red tape and accelerate the rebuilding of one of L.A.’s nicest and most historic neighborhoods? The former homeowners of Pacific Palisades who were hoping to quickly rebuild from the ashes now understand to their very cores what Otter told Flounder in “Animal House”: “You f***ed up, you trusted us.“

Anyone dumb enough to believe Newsom’s promise to get people rebuilding within six or nine months… well, they probably voted for him. Gooder and harder, California.

What Newsom says needs to be done before lots can be cleared and construction begins looks to me like a huge, centralized process involving an awful lot of well-connected and high-priced “experts” empaneled to redesign Pacific Palisades according to “scientific” principles involving all the techno-babble Newsom went on about in that CNN sit-down. Instead of, you know, letting people build the homes they want in the kind of city they like. 

If the temporary council to name the permanent council has completed its initial studies on who should conduct the actual studies that will someday mandate a Scientifically Perfect Palisades in terms of those “infrastructure or redundancy systems, ingress, egress, as it relates to emergency management and planning materials” has finished finding a list of acceptable names in six months, I’d be shocked. 

If you think it’s expensive and time-consuming just to get permission to add a small deck on the back of a Pacific Palisades home (which it is), just wait until a panel of experts gets together to redesign the entire neighborhood from the ashes up.

None of this boondogglery (hey, I made up another new word!) comes as a surprise to Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™. It wasn’t even two weeks ago that I covered Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s plan to rebuild the Palisades in her own image (shudder), led by philanthropist, “chief recovery officer,” and former LAPD commissioner Steve Soboroff. They’ll hire “an outside consultant to handle a significant rebuilding contract for areas devastated by this month’s Palisades fire,” as the Los Angeles Times put it, and Soboroff promised that “they’re going to represent you and make sure that everybody does exactly what they say they’re going to do.”

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Grenell Calls Out Bass-Appointed L.A. Fire Recovery Chief for $500K 3-Month Salary: ‘Gross, Offensive’

Ric Grenell, President Donald Trump’s Envoy for Special Missions, slammed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’s (D) fire “recovery czar” for his large three-month salary of $500,000 paid by charity groups.

Bass announced former L.A. police commissioner Steve Soboroff as the head of the rebuilding efforts following the devastating fires that destroyed homes and businesses and claimed at least 29 lives over a three-week period.

Soboroff will be “paid $500,000 over three months, with funding coming from charitable groups,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Real estate executive Randy Johnson, who worked with Soboroff in developing the ritzy Playa Vista neighborhood in the Westside area of L.A., will receive $250,000 from charity groups over the 90-day period as he helps with the recovery efforts.

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Lawlessness – Anti-ICE Protestors Block Major Portions of Los Angeles Freeway 

It is no surprise when the border was open for four years under Joe Biden that people in support of those policies would react this way once President Trump actually started enforcing border security and deportation.

Trump’s immigration raids have already arrested and removed some of the most vicious illegal alien criminals living in the US.

President Trump’s DOJ has directed all 93 US Attorneys Offices to prosecute state or local officials who obstruct immigration raids.

In a memo, Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, has instructed federal prosecutors across the country to investigate and potentially prosecute any local officials who obstruct efforts to block Trump’s immigration enforcement raids and deportation operations.

Anti-ICE protesters took to the streets of Los Angeles on Sunday, which included the freeway itself. The 101 Freeway in Downtown Los Angeles was closed down as a result of lawless people walking onto the southbound side of the freeway.

Peaceful protesting within the First Amendment does not allow people to block a freeway or put others in danger like this group of lawbreakers.

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How Come We Don’t Know What Started the Palisades Fire Yet?

From the beginning, theories about what started the Pacific Palisades fire in Los Angeles were centered on only a couple of possibilities. Those theories haven’t changed. So why is there a blackout on what caused the fire? 

In the Eaton Fire, which torched Altadena and parts of Pasadena, a video of a Ring camera showed an electric arc from a high-tension power line that convinced many that they’d seen the origin of that devastating fire. The investigation into the cause of that fire continues, according to CalFire.  

Both the Eaton and Palisades fires are nearly completely contained and fortunately, two atmospheric rivers are blowing in this weekend to help put out the rest of the flames that may still be smoldering.

So now that we’re entering the clean-up and rebuilding phase. It’s time to find out what started the fire that wiped out an upscale swath of Palisades homes on 23,000 acres, which is nearly twice the size of Manhattan.

A team of 16 arson investigators with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has been investigating since nearly the beginning of the outbreak, according to the L.A. Times. They’re working with specialists throughout the country. One thing they agree on: the fire was most certainly started by human hand. But how?

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Lithium-Ion Batteries, Melted EVs Create New Hazards In SoCal Fire Zones

This month’s deadly and destructive Los Angeles fires that claimed 28 lives burned with such intensity that electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries melted to the ground, creating hazardous conditions as residents began returning to their communities Jan. 28.

Specialists with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) were leading the large-scale cleanup of the batteries Tuesday.

The Palisades Fire burned more than 36 square miles and tore through neighborhoods full of electric vehicles and solar panels after years of state-sponsored green-energy policies.

The size of the Palisades fire and number of lithium-ion batteries left behind make it one of the largest hazardous-materials cleanups that local first responders have seen, according to Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Adam VanGerpen.

“We’ve never seen it on this scale,” VanGerpen told The Epoch Times. “We are talking a very large scale.”

Lithium-ion batteries are used in cellphones, tablets, laptops, wireless headphones, electric cars, and solar panel storage.

Many of the batteries and electric vehicles melted after they were abandoned by fleeing residents starting Jan. 7, VanGerpen said.

“We have to remove the entire vehicle,” he added.

Actor and Pacific Palisades homeowner James Woods said in a post on social media platform X Monday that the melted electric cars were “creating a real problem for safe debris removal.”

“While I am grateful to have President Trump in charge of the federal assistance so desperately needed, we can’t ignore that the electric cars have literally melted into the earth where they stood,” Woods wrote.

LAFD hazmat crews have surveyed the fire zone, searching through 6,837 destroyed homes and buildings, and 12,317 others that were damaged, according to numbers issued Tuesday by the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire).

The teams used software to locate and flag the zone’s lithium-ion batteries, according to VanGerpen.

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