Cost per outcome
What a result costs
Official dashboards report spending and results separately. Tally LA divides spending by results and shows the calculation. Where sources disagree, both figures are noted.
City of Los Angeles
Inside Safe
$322M spent or committed ÷ 5,179 people served = $62,174
- Encampment operations
- 114
- per person housed, as reported by the Westside Current
- $259,000
Sources disagree. Crosstown, citing the Controller's dashboard in July 2025, reported $450M spent, including real estate bought to house people permanently.
In one four-month span, 249 participants returned to homelessness and 18 died, according to LAHSA data cited by the Westside Current. The FY 2026-27 proposed budget for Inside Safe is $121.8M, down from $137.3M.
What does this mean?
Cost per person served divides total spending by everyone who entered the program. Cost per person housed divides by the smaller number who reached permanent housing, so it is much higher. The two figures measure different things.
- Inside Safe (2022): Mayor Karen Bass's program that moves people from encampments into motels and other interim housing, then toward permanent housing. It began under the homelessness emergency the Mayor declared in December 2022.
Sources (3)
- Five charts on homelessness in Los Angeles (Jul 15, 2025) Crosstown
- FY 2026-27 Annual Homelessness Funding Report (CF 23-1022-S33) City of LA, CAO
- Inside Safe costs top $322 million Westside Current
LA County · July 2017 to June 2022
Measure H, first five years
- People placed in interim housing
- 114,212
Gap. Total Measure H spending for the same period is not in this report, so cost per outcome cannot be calculated.
What does this mean?
- Measure H (LA County, 2017) (2017): A quarter-cent countywide sales tax for homeless services, approved in March 2017. Measure A replaced it in April 2025.