Government program hucksters exploit lack of oversight to perpetuate crime and poverty.

Buried in an Wall Street Journal article on reality star turned would-be Mayor of Los Angeles Spencer Pratt’s campaign, a throwaway revelation:

“Since 2022, Los Angeles voters have approved a half-cent increase in the local sales tax and a tax on real estate sales above $5 million (including apartment buildings) to reduce homelessness and boost “affordable” housing. Yet the streets are as dingy as ever, and a UCLA study found that indirect effects of the real-estate tax suppressed housing construction of all types.”

“Under Ms. Bass’s signature initiative, the city has spent $82,420 a year for each homeless person it has sheltered in motels. A withering independent audit of L.A.’s homeless agency last year found the government wasn’t tracking spending or outcomes.” — “L.A.’s Bonfire of Liberal Vanities” — Allysia Finley. Wall Street Journal. May 24, 2026

“A withering independent audit of L.A.’s homeless agency last year found the government wasn’t tracking spending or outcomes.”

Wasn’t tracking spending or outcomes?

What kind of nonsense is this?

This is public money — billions of dollars — taken from taxpayers under the moral promise that it would help the poorest, sickest, most desperate people in the city.

And then the people in charge apparently could not say where all the money went or whether it worked.

At some point, the American taxpayer is allowed to ask the obvious question: Is it just fraud all the way down?

Sometimes fraud wears a lanyard. Sometimes fraud has a nonprofit mission statement, a grant writer, a DEI consultant, and a very moving website with stock photos of suffering people.

Sometimes fraud is not even technically illegal. It is simply a system built to consume money while producing very little of what it promised.

This is the part government’s defenders do not want to talk about. They prefer to discuss “underfunding,” “systemic inequity,” “root causes,” and “historic disinvestment.” Fine. Some problems are complex. Poverty is complex. Mental illness is complex. Addiction is complex. Homelessness is complex.

But tracking spending is not complex.

Tracking outcomes is not complex.

If a city can send a ticket to your house because a camera caught your car rolling one inch too far through a red light, it can figure out whether an $82,000 motel room actually helped a homeless person get permanently housed.

If the IRS can find a waitress who forgot to report tip income, surely Los Angeles can figure out whether homelessness contractors are delivering results.

The problem is not that government lacks the tools. The problem is that too many programs are designed around intentions instead of results. Good intentions become the accountability mechanism. The mere act of spending money is treated as compassion.

It isn’t new.

Medicare fraudsters have long called Medicare the “bank without a lock” because the system often pays first and investigates later. COVID relief programs sprayed money across the country at such speed that organized criminals, fake businesses, identity thieves, and foreign fraud rings treated the whole thing like an ATM. Unemployment insurance was looted. Pandemic loans were looted. Medicaid and Medicare are looted through fake billing schemes, phantom services, and unnecessary equipment.

And then we are told the solution is always more money.

More money for homelessness. More money for health care. More money for education. More money for poverty. More money for equity. More money for “community partners.” More money for “wraparound services.” More money for consultants to study why the last pile of money did not solve the problem.

But money without accountability is not compassion. It is bait.

It attracts the wrong people. It creates an industry around the problem instead of a solution to the problem. The homeless person becomes a revenue stream. 

This is how government programs can end up perpetuating the very misery they were designed to relieve. The worse the problem gets, the more funding the system demands. Failure becomes proof that the program needs to be expanded. No one asks whether the people running the program should be fired, audited, prosecuted, or banned from receiving another public dollar.

That is the real scandal.

The scandal is not only that money disappears. The scandal is that human beings remain trapped in suffering while an entire class of professional helpers gets paid.

Voters in Los Angeles taxed themselves because they were told the money would reduce homelessness and build affordable housing. Most people are willing to help. What they are not willing to do forever is be treated like fools.

And yet that is how this game works. Raise taxes. Promise help. Spend billions. Produce little. Track nothing. Blame capitalism, racism, zoning, NIMBYs, Republicans, billionaires, climate change, colonialism, or whatever villain is fashionable this week. Then ask for another tax increase.

No.

Before any government asks citizens for another dime, it should be required to answer three questions:

Where did the money go?

Who got paid?

What changed?

If officials cannot answer those questions, they should not be trusted with more money. If contractors cannot answer those questions, they should lose their contracts. If nonprofits cannot answer those questions, they should lose public funding. And if people knowingly billed taxpayers for services they did not provide, they should be prosecuted.

Compassion without accountability is not virtue. It is negligence.

And negligence, when repeated long enough and funded generously enough, starts to look a whole lot like a business model.

(Contributing writer, Brooke Bell)