Los Angeles spent $62.6 million on a homeless housing program that filled three apartments in nine months — and the politician who designed it is now running for mayor.
Story Snapshot
- LA’s Time Limited Subsidy Program launched in September 2025 with a goal of placing 2,000 homeless people into apartments — it housed three by late June 2026.
- The program burned through $62.6 million in taxpayer money during that period, a figure presented to Raman’s own homeless committee on July 1, 2026.
- Separately, over 1,100 taxpayer-funded housing units sit empty under LA’s Homekey program, which has cost the city $911 million in property acquisitions.
- Raman’s office called the three-unit figure an “early snapshot” of a redesigned program — but offered no specific explanation for why 1,997 apartments went unfilled.
A $62.6 Million Program That Housed Three People
Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman chairs the city’s Housing and Homelessness Committee. She launched the Time Limited Subsidy (TLS) Program in September 2025, promising to secure 2,000 apartments for homeless residents. Nine months later, a July 1, 2026 presentation to her own committee confirmed that three units were occupied. The total bill to taxpayers: $62.6 million. That works out to roughly $20 million per occupied apartment.
Raman’s office did not deny the numbers. Instead, a spokesperson called the data an “early snapshot of the redesigned TLS program.” That framing deserves scrutiny. Nine months into a nine-month initiative, with $62.6 million already out the door, calling the results “early” strains credibility. If this were a private company, the board would have fired the executive team by now. In government, the architect of the failure runs for mayor.
Raman’s Defense Does Not Hold Up Against the Numbers
Supporters of the TLS program point to real data. City figures show the program costs roughly $24,000 per household per year — far less than the $85,000 annual cost of placing someone in an Inside Safe motel room under Mayor Karen Bass’s approach. And a city council presentation showed that 67% of people who received time-limited subsidies since July 2024 moved into permanent housing. Those are legitimate data points. But they describe a different version of the program than the one that housed three people for $62.6 million.
The counter-evidence describes TLS as a proven model. The actual rollout described in the July 1 committee presentation describes something else entirely. Raman’s team has not released the full committee presentation, has not explained what specific barriers prevented 1,997 additional leases, and has not provided a breakdown of how the $62.6 million was actually spent. Calling the results “early” without answering those questions is not a defense — it is a delay.
This Is Not an Isolated Failure — It Is a Pattern
The TLS program does not exist in a vacuum. Under Mayor Bass, the city spent roughly $300 million on the Inside Safe motel program. The result: 255 people placed into permanent housing, with about 40% returning to the streets. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), the lead agency for the city’s homelessness response, was suspended by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after a federal inspector general investigation into fraud. LAHSA also claimed credit for funding 2,293 TLS beds when its own financial records showed the city paid for only 673 of them — 30%.
LA Mayoral candidate and Councilmember Nithya Raman, the chair of the Los Angeles City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, spearheaded a $63 million project promising to get people off the streets by delivering 2,000 apartments.
Wanna know how many she delivered?
👉… pic.twitter.com/jb4tZeIUVs— AwakenedOutlaw⚒️ (@AwakenedOutlaw) July 17, 2026
Meanwhile, more than 1,100 units acquired through the city’s Homekey program sit empty, despite $911 million spent on property purchases. The average housing unit in Los Angeles takes 1,784 days to build. The city issued only 8,714 residential permits in all of 2025 — a ten-year low. LA has spent billions on homelessness and housing while simultaneously making it harder and more expensive to build either. That is not bad luck. That is policy failure compounding on itself, year after year, with the same political class in charge.
The Accountability Problem No One in City Hall Wants to Solve
Raman built her mayoral campaign by attacking Bass’s Inside Safe program as wasteful. She argued that TLS vouchers could house people for a fraction of the cost. That argument is reasonable on paper. The problem is that her own program just demonstrated the same pattern she criticized: enormous spending, minimal results, and official explanations that raise more questions than they answer. Voters watching this from the outside are not wrong to ask why they should believe the next promise.
No independent city audit of the TLS program has been released. No forensic breakdown of the $62.6 million expenditure has been made public. The full July 1 committee presentation — the document at the center of this story — remains inaccessible to the public. Until those documents surface, Raman’s “early snapshot” claim cannot be verified or rebutted on the merits. What can be said with confidence is this: the city promised 2,000 units, spent $62.6 million, and housed three people. That is the number that matters most heading into a mayoral election.
Sources:
thegatewaypundit.com, knock-la.com, cityclerk.lacity.org
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