L.A.'S PLAN TO SOLVE ITS HOMELESS PROBLEM IS A MESS.

• Author: Weissmueller, Zach

MORE THAN 2,500 homeless individuals sleep on the streets of the 53-square-block Skid Row area in downtown Los Angeles.

"Skid row is the worst man-made disaster in the United States. There's human waste on the sidewalks. There's all kinds of disease," says Rev. Andy Bales, CEO of Skid Row's Union Rescue Mission, the nation's largest private homeless shelter.

While California's homelessness crisis extends far beyond L.A., the city's predicament is notable for its sheer scale. It has the highest unsheltered homeless population in the country, and more than 1,000 homeless people died on the streets of Los Angeles County last year, according to government figures. The problem is so bad that in 2016,76 percent of L.A. voters approved a bond referendum to spend more than $1.2 billion in public funds on 10,000 new apartment units for the homeless.

The plan called for completing construction within a decade, but just 1 percent of those apartments will be ready for occupancy by the end of 2019. Now, homeless advocates like Bales are concerned that the city is wasting money on the most expensive possible solution--one that might not work as advertised even if it weren't behind schedule and likely to bust its own budget.

The city's approach to homelessness, known as "housing first," was adopted by municipalities nationwide after Utah reportedly reduced chronic homelessness by 91 percent by giving away permanent apartments with no strings attached. But state auditors later attributed those findings to a data collection error. Utahans don't actually know what effect various programs have had on the state's homeless population, which, in any case, is estimated to be two-thirds the size of just Skid Row's.

What's more, building housing for the homeless is considerably more costly and complex in Los Angeles than in Salt Lake City, thanks to local and statewide zoning and...