August 11, 2026 • 32 mins
Hour 1 - The homelessness crisis faces renewed scrutiny as an accounting glitch is blamed for nearly half of the city’s reported increase in homelessness. Meanwhile, a new village of 200 tiny homes is opening as officials look for solutions, while political changes reshape the city’s homelessness leadership. Plus, an L.A. councilmember is ordered to stand trial on 12 corruption felony charges.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Kay Merrow Damn. Hi, this is Monks and Merrill, but
it's not an effective program. And at some point you've
got to stop using your heart and start using your
brain and saying this isn't working. We have to shift gears.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hosted by Michael Monks and Chris Merrill on k I am.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Thank you for being a part of the program. I'm
Chris Merrill. He's Michael Monks on the socials at Monks
and Maryland. If you haven't been there, please follow up,
subscribe like all that stuff, and on the podcast too.
On the iHeartRadio at app click that follow button and
subscribe to it. Always have the latest of Monks and Meryl.
Before we get on to what looks like more drama
around the homeless count I did want to tell you this.
(00:46):
They're still finding trying to find survivors in that earthquake
in Colombia, one hundred and fifty confirmed, a twenty seven
hundred people still missing. Those scenes out of that country
are terrifying, and as we talk locally about the you know,
the stress on the local fought lines the highest it's
been in a thousand years, and that stress has to
be relieved somehow, and it can only be relieved through earthquakes.
(01:07):
Boil boy. It makes me wonder how their infrastructure is
in South America. We saw similar scenes in Venezuela and
now in Colombia. We know that our architecture here, at
least the more recent architecture, tends to be built with
earthquakes in mind. I don't know what the situation is
with that stuff in Colombia because that stuff just fell
down like sand castles. Yeah, that's true. But seven point
(01:30):
four is so that's what I mean. That's the other thing.
How much can we withstand? I don't know. I was
watching Katla this morning, you know I like to do that. Yeah,
and they had the earthquake expert lady on and she says, oh,
it's not a question if it's coming. Well we know
that she said that, but she said the devastation could
be much worse.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, that's Lucy Jones. You're talking about, doctor Lucy Jones. Okay, Yeah,
that's that's reassuring it's not And it terrifies me. And
now I think I've mentioned this to you before, and
now I'm like, when I go to bed at night,
I'm worried about am I going to wake up under
a pile of rubble. I get worried when I go
get my car out of the parking garage because I
(02:11):
think I'm gonna get buried down here. You know, we
have the car wash here a few times a week,
and they do it at the bottom level of our
parking garage, which is under this building, four floors under
the building. I mean, it's so deep into the ground
that I can feel my ears doing stuff when I
go down there to get the car after it's been washed.
And I have that thought, like, what would happen if
the big one came and I'm down here and suddenly
iHeartMedia and Disney are on top of me, poor toast.
(02:35):
The only thing I can hope for is that it
happens quickly. I suffer. I want to be dramatic at
the end. I can't imagine the horror of someone who
gets buried, has broken bones, and has to lie there
in pain for three days while they slowly die of dehydration. Now,
is that is the most horrific thing I can possibly
think of. I'm gonna be Jessica in the well, baby
Jessica from my earliest memories. That's how I'm and it's
(02:58):
gonna be baby monks, and it's going to be live,
non stop streaming coverage of whether we can get big
streaming everything. I'm tired of streaming stuff. Did you happen
to see that we've got a word on the homeless count?
Oh man, it might be that all those numbers that
we had the last couple of years where we kept
hearing about homelessness was dropping, that those might have been wrong.
What a surprise. But it's also weird because the way
(03:20):
I'm interpreting today's article in the La Times about this
alleged accounting glitch at LA Homeless Services Authority, it suggests
that the increase may not be as big as we think.
That's the offset because the decline didn't really happen so
much in the last couple of years. This three and
a half percent increase that we saw may not have
(03:41):
been as big an increase. In other words, we haven't
done squat with homelessness in the last three years, is
basically what we're hearing. Either way, I mean, the numbers
were negligible one way or the other. Whether it was
a decrease, I imagine that yes, that could be cause for
a political victory Lap to say, some of the stuff
we're doing is working. See it's trending in the right direction.
Karen Bass did that. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. But
I mean many of us were doubting, one the accuracy
(04:03):
of the numbers, and two whether a modest, negligible drop
was really worth the amount of money that we spent,
especially knowing that the numbers weren't completely believable. So what
we've got here now, according to the La Times, tells
you you're right. You've been right all along. The numbers
were not believable. The latest numbers that came out, as
we know, they were delayed in their release, first of all,
(04:24):
and when they came out, they showed more than a
three percent increase in the number of homeless people in
La County over the previous year's count. A lot of
that came from where else, skid Row. This exact number
showed that there were more than eight hundred homeless residents
and increase of twenty four percent. But and I don't
(04:45):
even know that I'll explain this well because I didn't
fully understand it as I've read it in the article
or as I'm reading in our show notes. Most of
this increase in skid row came from six hundred and
fourteen additional sheltered people. But those were not new homeless
pace people, right, But they didn't count in the last
couple of years. These were people who were staying in
beds that Union Rescue Mission had operated for years. I
(05:08):
saw decades these beds had been in existence. So if
I'm to believe last year's numbers, it's because they didn't
count these six hundred plus people. Yeah, they said, no,
these people were in beds, they were in the Union
Rescue Mission. They're not homeless. And now they're saying we
should not count these people as newly homeless. They were
homeless all along. They were homeless all along, but they
(05:28):
also need to reflect in the numbers that they're actually homeless.
It's an absolute disaster. Union Rescue Mission does not participate.
And LASS is a homeless management information system. They say
it operates independently from the largely tax beer funded system.
LASA has to request numbers separately, and so they just
didn't count those numbers. And they were like, oh, those
six hundred people don't count because we had to request
(05:49):
the numbers and we didn't want to actually send a request.
So The Times did some back of the envelope math
and said that if they had treated those beds that
number of homeless people can consistently, it would have reduced
the increase. But there still would have been an increase,
not of three point four percent, as we've reported, but
to just under one point nine percent. So regardless, we're
(06:11):
still within two to four points of dropping or going up.
If it's flat, that's a defeat as well. But then likewise,
the last two years where we saw two and a
half percent plus the last two years, that actually would
have only been like two percent each year, So two
percent up or excuse me, two percent fewer homeless, two
percent fewer homeless, now two percent more homeless. I don't
(06:32):
know what. Here's the takeaway on this for me. You
can't trust LASSA. You can't trust everything that we've put
all this money into. First of all, the programs are
not working. The evidence is there. It's as clear as day.
The evidence is there. The programs aren't working. We're wasting
our money, we're spinning our wheels.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Go.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The other is, you can't trust the agency that has
been entrusted with making things better and then giving us
the truth about what things are like on the street
and your eyes were along. When you see more tents
in your street and you don't see them going away,
your eyes are not lying to you. It's absolutely true.
It's what's so depressing about this mayor's race. It's that
you have a significant program costing a lot of money
(07:13):
from Mayor Bass. You have city Councilman Nythia Rahman who's
challenging her this year, who chaired until today, the Homeless
Committee at LA City Council. She has an abysmal record
on homelessness and oversight as well. It's a race to
the bottom in this election to see whose program is
least worst, and it's a terrible place to be. By
the way, a new poll is out on this race.
(07:34):
We'll get into that as well as the political machinery
taking place at LA City Hall that has removed Nythia
Rahman from that role on the Homeless Committee. As Monks
and Merrill continues on this Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
You're listening to Monks and Meryll on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Forty more stimulating talk. So glad to have you with us.
There is finally a pole in this race for Los
Angeles mayor. But when incumbent Karen Bass and city Councilman
Nitya Rahm. And my understanding is reported by the California
Political Playbook is that this was an internal poll by
the Bass campaign, which some could interpret as possibly being biased.
(08:13):
But it was a survey of twelve hundred likely voters
in late July July twenty second through the twenty eighth.
That's important because think about what was going on at
that time. We had these homeless numbers come out that's
not great sure for Karen Bass, and we had the
aftermath still of the Boyle Heights situation right in the
middle of it, right in the middle of Alice. So
she's conducting a pole. She's ahead, Karen Bass is Apparently
(08:36):
she leads when asked directly who you would vote for
by a margin of forty one to thirty seven. But
when they push the respondents who may be undecided to
choose a candidate, the number goes up for her. So
she leads forty one to thirty five when they factor
in the lean of undecided voters. So right now, it's
a lot of great place for an incumbent mayor to be.
(08:58):
But the fact that she's not loose using I mean,
I'm sure she's looking for any positive trends in this way.
How how much would we believe these polls? I know
this is an internal poll that kind of thing. My
hesitation is this, and I don't want to be one
of those guys is like, oh, I don't trust the
polls because in twenty sixteen they said Hillary was going
to win. Like, I get that those polls were off.
What was the phenomenon that created that in twenty sixteen?
(09:21):
I think sociologists have tried to explain that people were
hesitant to tell pollsters that they were going to vote
for a reality star. Now people are very proud to
say that they're voting for President Trump. It's become part
of the identity. This time around, I don't know that
I trust the polls. And my evidence is the primary
polling was it was real close to the edges of
(09:41):
the margin of air when it comes to Ramen's yeah returns.
It wasn't bad, It wasn't it wasn't wrong, but it
was close to the margins of ara A little too
close for my comfort on that. But this time around,
I kind of wonder that people who are voting for
Ramen are they the ones answering the phone and taking
the polls. I don't know, that's my concern. I think
there's going to be a lot of people head into
those polls, headed to the polling booth excuse me, that
(10:03):
are not accessible to the polls. I'm sure we'll see
more polling right now is voters, I mean early to
mid August have to crawl out from their tense, that's true,
to vote. We'll see some polling as this gets as
street people as they're going to debate, you know, and
who knows what disasters all wait, we were talking about
the potential for an earthquake here again at the top
of the hour, and my goodness, we know how ill
(10:25):
prepared we are for minor disaster is much less a
major one. So would a major disaster be good or
bad for them? Well, it's bad for us either way.
I think. You know my position on this. It's between
worse and worser. Politically speaking, who's it worser for? I
think the incumbent every time I do too. I do
too because even though you're an incumbent city council person,
(10:46):
you are below mayor and the monk stops at the top.
Exactly you have. That's that's the way Nithia Roman is
trying to play the homeless stuff despite her own complicity
in the failures of this system. Yeah, which is interesting.
I think that the council just did her a fate
because she was she was the chair of the Housing
and Homelessness Committee, and all of a sudden they just
said you're out, which feels very political behind the scenes
(11:10):
to me, it feels like the council president, his name
is Marquise Harris Dawson. It feels like he's saying, let's
give the bass the boost here, let's get Ramen off
the council and now Basque can say that she's now,
she's gonna now, she's gonna take charge and things are
gonna get done. But Nythia Ramin has been the problem
all along, and it was so bad that we had
to we had to boot her from her her committee
(11:31):
chair position. I don't know if I uh, I don't
know if I think this is gonna be the political
win that they believe it to be. Yeah, I'm not
sure it has happened. In the past. We saw Councilman
Monica Rodriguez, who is who has I believe fought with
Nythia Romin, and it was also very much disagreed with
Mayor Bass. She was a strong opponent to a lot
of the homeless strategies a year ago, and she was
(11:53):
also on the Budget Committee. But she was removed from
the Homeless Committee and the Budget Committee and it looked
like a political decision because she was asking too many questions.
This has not hurt hurt politically no. In fact, it's
given her a place to look like opposition even though
they're politically mostly aligned. But on these very key important issues,
she's the one asking question. And that's where I think
(12:13):
this is actually going to come out as a win
during campaign season for Ramen. Now she's going to be
able to point directly at the committee. Look, I was
on the inside trying to make changes and now it's
not getting any better. And look what they're doing except
I mean, sound bites can work on the campaign track. Huh.
But you can already see the arsenal against Ramen for
her role on this committee from the Basque campaign and
(12:36):
her allies who say, look, the last time there was
a Homeless Committee meeting, it was loaded with items because
of how many meetings had been canceled. I totally agree
with you. How many voters pay attention to that's that's
a harder argument, and that's why I think like that.
She responded, already, she's already come out and said, this
is all political.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I might be getting punished for running against Mayor Bass,
but Angelinos are the.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
One I love the piano in the backgrounds. You're right, right,
really really tough.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Angelino's are the ones who are paying the price for
these political games. Seerbas and her allies are protecting what
we all know is a deeply broken status quo, one
that is not serving any person here in the city
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
So, as you can see, they turned that into a
quick campaign commercial on video.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Now these from NBCLING.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
The councilwoman has said that when it comes to the
homeless count, and she's correct, homelessness has been reduced in
her district. The mayor's office says that's because of the
mayor's effort inside safe Remember they were allies and at
one point Nittha Rama endorsed Karen Bass for reelection.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Now the mayor's.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Office has said, if you want to look at the
homeless problem, look at the lack of leadership out of
the city council, and that starts with the Homeless Committee.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
So again it's up to debate.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
The homeless issue is fundamental to this campaign.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'm going to stop it there. I just wonder how
many voters hear this, how many voters pay attention, and
how many voters are really captivated by the day in
and day out wonky workings of city Hall. All they
say are tents on the street. Whose fault is it?
And right now the buck stops with the mayor except
for a couple of things. And that's true. But again,
(14:13):
to make this argument you do have to get into
the weeds a little bit. Sitting on the homeless Committee
is a powerful position in a city grappling with homeless
is the way that Los Angeles is. But Ramen is also.
While Bass has Inside Safe, Romen has also got her
own signature plan that she help pushed through city home
side tents. It's called time limited Subsidies. It's not as
(14:35):
sexy as Inside Safe, but it's basically subsidized rent for
folks to get into an apartment. Oh, we'll pay the
rent for a while if you meet certain criteria and
that ends after a certain period of time. So this
was apparently more than sixty two million dollars to fund
this program, and according to the Bass campaign, only three
apartments have been leased. Oh you kidding. So it's another
(14:56):
multi tens of million dollar failure that does not produce results.
All that sixty two million dollars are spent on this
and there are only three apartments least, See these are
twenty million dollar apartments. Yeah. Romins campaign says, I wish
I were homeless. Robins Campaign says the characterization is inaccurate
because the money is committed for the initiative, it's not spent.
(15:17):
But the fact that you have this much money allocated
and you are so bad at allocating it. Only three
You mean to tell me, of all these homeless people
that none of them are capable. I know that most
of them are not capable of living on their own,
but only three?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Oh not.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The fire department just came and asked if I wanted
my taxes raised so that they could continue to pay
firefighters and expand the fire department and make sure they've
got new equipment. And you're telling me they're sitting on
sixty million dollars not being spent to try to help
homeless people. You're catching on, why am I paying more
for the fire department, which is an essential city service?
This is Weston You got me screaming, now, I know,
(15:53):
but this is exactly what the selection is supposed to
be about. And I wish there were a way for
voters in the City of Los Angeles to say neither,
because we are spending so much money there on failed
programs to address homelessness, and we have all the evidence
that we need to suggest nothing is working at all
at the detriment to the detriment of basic city services.
(16:16):
Just name any basic civic service and think about how
it's being delivered to you if you live in the
City of Los Angeles. How many water means could have
been replaced with sixty mine, how many lives could be
turned back on, how many police and fire could be
hired and dispatch to places where we need them, And frankly,
for the amount of money we spent, how many homeless
people could be off the street if there were better programs,
(16:39):
just very quickly, just so we have this clear, Yes,
Nithie rom is being removed from our Homeless Committee, but
that committee is technically called the Homeless and Housing Committee.
What's happening at City Hall is they are splitting that committee.
It will now be a housing committee and a homeless committee.
And by the way, the new chair, as reported of
the homeless committee will be is a bell Herado, my
(17:00):
city council person who represents DTLA and skid Row as
well as Boyle Heights, saying that's Boil Heights, right, So
she's also terrible at these issues. And it just it
just makes you want to set yourself on fire. It
almost makes you want to be in the bottom of
this parking, except no fireman would be able to come
to put you out. No, we couldn't fund that because
there's money sitting in a bank account somewhere. You know,
the city's never seen a price tag. They weren't willing
(17:22):
to pay, just as long as it promises to reduce homelessness,
which is how they've burned through billions of dollars in
the last decade and still have the worst crisis in
the country. But this next project is going to work,
they say, just don't ask how much this one's going
to cost. Where the homeless are heading is next Monks
and Merril kfi am six forty. We're everywhere the iHeart
(17:42):
Radio Web.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Six Monks and Merril KFI AM six forty on demand
any time on the iHeart radiopp where you can also
follow along, subscribe to the podcast and follow us on
the socials where Monks sings at and Merril at Monks
and Merrill. You just were talking about the amount of
money that is being spent on the homeless program. Robins
(18:09):
program has sixty million dollars set aside for rent subsidies, right,
and that has gone toward three.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Dude who in their right mind says I wish I
was homeless.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
What's wrong with you? Man? I need a reality check. No,
I don't think you're understanding my point here. If you're
homeless in Los Angeles, you would have access to the
twenty million dollar apartment. And I know that that's money
set aside for leasing many more apartments than that, But
how many condos have we seen that are eighty thousand
dollars a year? Wait a story yesterday where they're spending
(18:41):
eighty four thousand dollars a year. I think that was
the number on a particular apartment, which is more it's
it's far more than I'm that I pay for my apartment.
Somebody's getting a much nicer apartment than me because they
live on the street. So my point is, I wish
I were homeless, because then I could have nice stuff
in the city of Los Angeles. Being right, being that
(19:01):
I'm not homeless, I can't afford those things. She is
right and saying who in their right mind? And that's
one of the main problems with a lot of these
approaches is that they are treating folks as if they
fell on hard times, and some did, of course, right, Okay,
but it's not the dust bowl out there. Okay, this
isn't the Great Depression out there. Go spend time and
skid roll. Don't go visit a homeless camp by the freeway.
(19:24):
Don't don't because you will see what you're dealing with.
You know how frequently we have headlines from the wires
this just happened yesterday, pedestrians struck on freeway. How often
do you see a pedestrian on the freeway. I don't.
On the rare occasion that somebody's car breaks down and
they do the wrong thing and start to walk in right,
but they don't walk in the middle of it. No,
(19:45):
that's always somebody out of their mind, out of their mind,
and that's what's going on all across the regions. The
same thing when they get hit by a train. Yeah,
you're not gonna you're not going to subsidize this guy's
rent in an apartment because he's a drug addict and
he's lost his mind, and the type of treatment they need,
we're not offering enough. Well, what hang on, what if
we were to set up a tiny home park, give
(20:07):
everyone a cabin, but then not disclose how much money
we're spending on it. That would make things better. Well,
and they tell you all about Sun Valley Metrolink station
there on a Linda Street, and this is a brand
new village of tiny homes. Although the exact number of
homes is a little bit unclear. It seems like the
city wants us to believe these are two hundred new
(20:29):
tiny homes. No, it's not. These are like backyard sheds
if you've ever seen them. It's eighty four cabins, four
two hundred people. Yeah, exactly, So technically I guess we
could split hairs and define the word home. Well, but
they're also not really being completely transparent. When they say
there's two hundred tiny homes, well, they're saying two hundred homes,
(20:50):
and I guess technically for two hundred people, that's splitting hairs,
and that's that's not honest. That's not completely honest, not honest.
Basically eighty four several dozen. Okay, Now here's the deal.
Residents of this new tiny home park will not have
to pay rent. Hope. The mission is going to provide
round the clock operation through a LASA contract now, including monitoring, security,
(21:14):
three squares, and a case management. If these things work,
mind you, I'm all for it. If this were if
we had a proven track record, Karen Bassas. The city
wants tiny homes to lower inside safe costs. They want
to reduce dependence on motel rooms. For that, cabins on
publicly controlled land can avoid the nightly hotel race. They
provide predictable locations for services. That all sounds really great too.
(21:38):
This all comes from what the governor did in twenty
twenty three. He wanted to provide five small homes tiny
homes to la Is part of the statewide deployment, but
by May there were only thirty three beds. So now
we're up to two hundred. This is about two hundred
and forty beds total with that program that had been completed.
So the problem that we have with this is it
(22:01):
doesn't always work out. Portland State University did find the
village and motel shelters did offer greater privacy and better
produce better housing outcomes and traditional congregate shelters. That's great.
Researchers conclude though, that the temporary villages worked best as
stop gaps permanent housing with rental assistance to say it
can actually cost less over time. My issue is who
are you putting in these places? Yeah, and they're not effective.
(22:23):
LA Public Press did an analysis of data from the
LA Homeless Services Authority from twelve different tiny home villages, Okay,
and they found that twenty three percent of the residents
departed the tiny homes into permanent housing, so just under
a quarter. But how many went back to homelessness more
than half fifty three percent and that includes two Hope
(22:48):
the Mission villages that were in this analysis, which seemed
to perform better. Hope the Mission has one of the
better reputations among these organizations out there. They contract with LASA.
The report Homeless Exit rate was closer to seventy percent. Well,
why don't we find the places that are doing it right?
Why don't we work with the organizations that prove their
(23:08):
results matter, they are worthy of the dollars. That's what
So many people are running schemes out there and we
just look the other way. If only we had a
responsible chair of the Homeless Committee.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yes, but being more efficient with their money is a
complete contrary issue, because the whole purpose between every one
of these programs is to steal money to get it
to their friends, the channel for whatever, and the only
reason they're using it in homeless or whatever issues is
because it looks good. Yeah, and it'll sell to the public.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This cynicism is earned. It's just earned. Yeah, long track
record of failures is LA giving Chicago a run for
its money as the most corrupt city in the country.
You've said that. Yeah, Another former council member headed to
court looking at twelve felonies. It's just warming up. Yeah.
This also involves a little bit of the homeless industrial COmON.
(24:00):
We'll get into that next. As Monks and Merrill continues.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill onto the Air from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Available anywhere on the IART radio app. A second judge
now has found enough evidence to send La City councilman
Current Price to trial on twelve public corruption felonies. This
is a case where prosecutors say Current Price repeatedly used
his office to benefit his wife as well as another
organization that he led. Hmm, so he's convenient. He has
(24:34):
pleaded not guilty. He says he was innocent. But this
is one of those cases that you can look at
all of the documents and think, boy, just take your
come on, just take the punishment because he has dragged
this out. He's term limited, Chris, so this is his
last year in office and his South La seed is
up for grabs, and you just go to jail, just
(24:55):
serve that you're old, Just get it over with. I
don't think anybody's gonna say, well, hey, you got me
submitted jail. I would, especially while he's on the council.
He still wants to maintain as much power as he
can for as long as he can. You know what's
interesting in the context of the committee flips that we
were talking about a little while ago with Nythia Rahmen
and Isabel Herrado, and Nythia Raman being removed from Homeless
(25:15):
Committee and Holmost Housing, Housing and Homelessness Committee. Yes, okay,
there was a time where Current Price was removed from
his committee, and so was Councilman Kevin dele On who
was no longer on there Current Price because of this investigation,
and Kevin daily On because of his involvement in the
racist audio tapes from several years ago. They decided to
(25:38):
bring Kevin daily On back to his committees because he
was facing a very difficult re election campaign and some
of the insiders at city Hall did not want a
woman named Isabelle Herado to unseat him. But because they
were putting Kevin daily On back on his committee, felt
they needed to put Current Price back on his too,
in the interest of fairness. This is all Marquis Harris
Dawson's decision, by the way, and the reason I bring
that up, this collus entry here and the irony is
(26:02):
now Isabel Herado is getting a plumb chairmanship. How quickly
things change at La City Hall. Blow it all up.
They were like, let's legitimize Kevin dal Leon again because
he might lose to this DSA Isabelle Herado. We don't
want another one of them on this council. And then
he did, and then he did, and now she's bell
of the ball. Yeah, they just decide who they hate.
(26:25):
They lick their thumb, they stick it in the air
and decide who they hate that day. Absolutely well, I
think they lock that. You're not far off. I believe
that they lick their thumb, they stick in the air,
they say which way the political winds are blowing? And
right now, what do we see nationwide? I mean Fox
is talking about it NonStop. I heard John Colbot discussing
this and that is that the Democratic Socialists are set
to take over. I mean, if you look at even
(26:46):
the New York Times today, headlines of the New York
Times is that today is another round of elections. Will
the Democratic Socialists win in Wisconsin and Iowa and all
these other it's all about democratic socialists. Now, Democratic socialists
is a new hot thing. And as long as there
are wins going on, then you've got a very liberal
community like ours, where democratic socialism is expanding like it
(27:06):
is in New York City. And they go, uh oh,
I can't ignore this. I'm going to play ball. And
that's exactly what's happening. They're going I'm going to play ball.
I'm going to give them the power that these voters
want because I want to keep my spot. I don't
want to be challenged by a democratic socialism is going
to come along in the future and say that I'm
not doing enough. Well, they will anyway. That's the fatish
democrats need to learn, is that leftists are always going
(27:26):
to come for you because leftists hate Democrats way more
than they could ever hate Republicans. Oh, I agree. They
hate Democrats in the same way that Maga can't stand
what they call rhinos. It's exactly the same thing. They
just can't stand them. If you're farther out there, you're
mad somebody else is enjoining you. Even worse than your
enemy is the person who's who's who's not seeing quite
(27:47):
eye to eye with you. Yeah. No, you look at
them as an existential threat. The others are your competitors,
but the people within your own party that disagree with you,
that's an existential threat. You know. I when when Zoron
Mamdani was running for mayor of New York, and he's
probably the highest profile of this new wave of democratic
socialist He holds the highest office. He's mayor of New
York City, the biggest city in the country. There were
a lot of think pieces even now, wasn't that the Raman
(28:08):
running is she LA's mom Donnie? Who will be LA's
mom Donnie? We had mom Donni before New York had
Momdanni at LAC. She just didn't call them that. Yeah, they're
very powerful. There's only there were only a few of
them at the time. Now there's four the actual Democratic Socialists.
But we've had democratics so progressive liberal that they were.
Certainly they would fall into that camp of democrats. And
the problem is is that we can look at their
(28:28):
policies in motion. They're not great, no, and they end
up fighting against democrats like Monica Rodriguez or Tracy Park
you know, who are successful in their districts. Would say
that this is not how they're not real democrats, Michael Monks,
they're Dinos. They're democrats in name only. They don't really
(28:49):
believe in the issues. They're part of the establishment. All
the pejoratives that you heard about Republicans from MAGA, you're
hanging about democrats from the DSA. That's exactly right. This
is exactly what's going on. Meanwhile, for Current Price, who
is not a DSA memberies it's an old school bring
this long time career politician prosecutor say that he participated
in votes. You're supposed to recuse yourself. But he participated
(29:11):
in these votes benefiting developers and public agencies that paid
his wife's consulting company more than nine hundred and fifty
thousand dollars between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one. It
was the housing authority of the City of la that
paid his wife allegedly about six hundred thousand dollars, and
then Price later supported applications for a thirty five million
(29:32):
dollar federal grant and a two hundred and fifty two
million dollars state grant for that authought. You know what
I think really bothers me about this is not that
Current Price may have done this allegedly. It's that it
continues to happen again and again and again. We're not
putting safeguards in place. We haven't, we don't, and that
there's there should be an automatic alarm that triggers when
(29:54):
this sort of thing happens. It goes Hey, oh, Current
Price is up for a vote on this thing that
his wife is a part of of. Hey, current, you
can't vote on this. That boom done. All of the
other council members should stop in your tracks until you
get the guy to go. You can't vote on this,
and then we move on. We keep allowing corruption. It's
(30:14):
not just that corruption is happening, is that we continue
to allow it. We have a system that places too
much trust in people. You can't create a system for
those who are never going to violate. You have to
create a system with safeguards against those who seem to
exploit the system. When I started covering La City Hall
in the newsroom here at KFI, I did a lot
of research on the history of La City Hall and
(30:35):
the La City Council. We've had historic preservation of it. Yeah,
you know, I'm interested in those things. We've had the
same fifteen council districts. They've shifted a little bit since
nineteen twenty five. And as I read about every single
member whoever represented these districts, because I went down a
rabbit hole, we've had people hauled out of there in
handcuffs almost annually since the beginning. It's like every cycle
(30:57):
since the beginning. So we think about Chica as the
epitome of municipal corruption in America. I mean, LA has
always been right there. Yeah, it's like they're being run
by a bunch of bad people, evil people. I just
want to really excuse to play this. By the way,
(31:21):
we're gonna give away more tickets to the Hollywood Bowl
where they're doing the John Williams Tribute content I guess,
tribute app whatever you want to call it, celebration of
John Williams scores or giving a chance to win a
pair of those tickets. I'm a little over an hour,
so that's that's still coming up here. Hey, you report
ugly conduct inside the LAPD, you deliver the evidence to
internal affairs, and still you are the person facing thirteen
(31:42):
years in prison. The message that this prosecution is sending
to every police station is next. Monks and Merril k
I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
KFI on demand. You've been listening to Monks and Merrill
here the show live weekdays from noon to three on
kf I AM six forty and anytime on demand on
(32:05):
the iHeartRadio app.
Kay Merrow Damn. Hi, this is Monks and Merrill, but
it's not an effective program. And at some point you've
got to stop using your heart and start using your
brain and saying this isn't working. We have to shift gears.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hosted by Michael Monks and Chris Merrill on k I am.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Thank you for being a part of the program. I'm
Chris Merrill. He's Michael Monks on the socials at Monks
and Maryland. If you haven't been there, please follow up,
subscribe like all that stuff, and on the podcast too.
On the iHeartRadio at app click that follow button and
subscribe to it. Always have the latest of Monks and Meryl.
Before we get on to what looks like more drama
around the homeless count I did want to tell you this.
(00:46):
They're still finding trying to find survivors in that earthquake
in Colombia, one hundred and fifty confirmed, a twenty seven
hundred people still missing. Those scenes out of that country
are terrifying, and as we talk locally about the you know,
the stress on the local fought lines the highest it's
been in a thousand years, and that stress has to
be relieved somehow, and it can only be relieved through earthquakes.
(01:07):
Boil boy. It makes me wonder how their infrastructure is
in South America. We saw similar scenes in Venezuela and
now in Colombia. We know that our architecture here, at
least the more recent architecture, tends to be built with
earthquakes in mind. I don't know what the situation is
with that stuff in Colombia because that stuff just fell
down like sand castles. Yeah, that's true. But seven point
(01:30):
four is so that's what I mean. That's the other thing.
How much can we withstand? I don't know. I was
watching Katla this morning, you know I like to do that. Yeah,
and they had the earthquake expert lady on and she says, oh,
it's not a question if it's coming. Well we know
that she said that, but she said the devastation could
be much worse.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
What.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, that's Lucy Jones. You're talking about, doctor Lucy Jones. Okay, Yeah,
that's that's reassuring it's not And it terrifies me. And
now I think I've mentioned this to you before, and
now I'm like, when I go to bed at night,
I'm worried about am I going to wake up under
a pile of rubble. I get worried when I go
get my car out of the parking garage because I
(02:11):
think I'm gonna get buried down here. You know, we
have the car wash here a few times a week,
and they do it at the bottom level of our
parking garage, which is under this building, four floors under
the building. I mean, it's so deep into the ground
that I can feel my ears doing stuff when I
go down there to get the car after it's been washed.
And I have that thought, like, what would happen if
the big one came and I'm down here and suddenly
iHeartMedia and Disney are on top of me, poor toast.
(02:35):
The only thing I can hope for is that it
happens quickly. I suffer. I want to be dramatic at
the end. I can't imagine the horror of someone who
gets buried, has broken bones, and has to lie there
in pain for three days while they slowly die of dehydration. Now,
is that is the most horrific thing I can possibly
think of. I'm gonna be Jessica in the well, baby
Jessica from my earliest memories. That's how I'm and it's
(02:58):
gonna be baby monks, and it's going to be live,
non stop streaming coverage of whether we can get big
streaming everything. I'm tired of streaming stuff. Did you happen
to see that we've got a word on the homeless count?
Oh man, it might be that all those numbers that
we had the last couple of years where we kept
hearing about homelessness was dropping, that those might have been wrong.
What a surprise. But it's also weird because the way
(03:20):
I'm interpreting today's article in the La Times about this
alleged accounting glitch at LA Homeless Services Authority, it suggests
that the increase may not be as big as we think.
That's the offset because the decline didn't really happen so
much in the last couple of years. This three and
a half percent increase that we saw may not have
(03:41):
been as big an increase. In other words, we haven't
done squat with homelessness in the last three years, is
basically what we're hearing. Either way, I mean, the numbers
were negligible one way or the other. Whether it was
a decrease, I imagine that yes, that could be cause for
a political victory Lap to say, some of the stuff
we're doing is working. See it's trending in the right direction.
Karen Bass did that. Oh yeah, yeah, of course. But
I mean many of us were doubting, one the accuracy
(04:03):
of the numbers, and two whether a modest, negligible drop
was really worth the amount of money that we spent,
especially knowing that the numbers weren't completely believable. So what
we've got here now, according to the La Times, tells
you you're right. You've been right all along. The numbers
were not believable. The latest numbers that came out, as
we know, they were delayed in their release, first of all,
(04:24):
and when they came out, they showed more than a
three percent increase in the number of homeless people in
La County over the previous year's count. A lot of
that came from where else, skid Row. This exact number
showed that there were more than eight hundred homeless residents
and increase of twenty four percent. But and I don't
(04:45):
even know that I'll explain this well because I didn't
fully understand it as I've read it in the article
or as I'm reading in our show notes. Most of
this increase in skid row came from six hundred and
fourteen additional sheltered people. But those were not new homeless
pace people, right, But they didn't count in the last
couple of years. These were people who were staying in
beds that Union Rescue Mission had operated for years. I
(05:08):
saw decades these beds had been in existence. So if
I'm to believe last year's numbers, it's because they didn't
count these six hundred plus people. Yeah, they said, no,
these people were in beds, they were in the Union
Rescue Mission. They're not homeless. And now they're saying we
should not count these people as newly homeless. They were
homeless all along. They were homeless all along, but they
(05:28):
also need to reflect in the numbers that they're actually homeless.
It's an absolute disaster. Union Rescue Mission does not participate.
And LASS is a homeless management information system. They say
it operates independently from the largely tax beer funded system.
LASA has to request numbers separately, and so they just
didn't count those numbers. And they were like, oh, those
six hundred people don't count because we had to request
(05:49):
the numbers and we didn't want to actually send a request.
So The Times did some back of the envelope math
and said that if they had treated those beds that
number of homeless people can consistently, it would have reduced
the increase. But there still would have been an increase,
not of three point four percent, as we've reported, but
to just under one point nine percent. So regardless, we're
(06:11):
still within two to four points of dropping or going up.
If it's flat, that's a defeat as well. But then likewise,
the last two years where we saw two and a
half percent plus the last two years, that actually would
have only been like two percent each year, So two
percent up or excuse me, two percent fewer homeless, two
percent fewer homeless, now two percent more homeless. I don't
(06:32):
know what. Here's the takeaway on this for me. You
can't trust LASSA. You can't trust everything that we've put
all this money into. First of all, the programs are
not working. The evidence is there. It's as clear as day.
The evidence is there. The programs aren't working. We're wasting
our money, we're spinning our wheels.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
Go.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
The other is, you can't trust the agency that has
been entrusted with making things better and then giving us
the truth about what things are like on the street
and your eyes were along. When you see more tents
in your street and you don't see them going away,
your eyes are not lying to you. It's absolutely true.
It's what's so depressing about this mayor's race. It's that
you have a significant program costing a lot of money
(07:13):
from Mayor Bass. You have city Councilman Nythia Rahman who's
challenging her this year, who chaired until today, the Homeless
Committee at LA City Council. She has an abysmal record
on homelessness and oversight as well. It's a race to
the bottom in this election to see whose program is
least worst, and it's a terrible place to be. By
the way, a new poll is out on this race.
(07:34):
We'll get into that as well as the political machinery
taking place at LA City Hall that has removed Nythia
Rahman from that role on the Homeless Committee. As Monks
and Merrill continues on this Tuesday afternoon.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
You're listening to Monks and Meryll on demand from KFI
AM six.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Forty more stimulating talk. So glad to have you with us.
There is finally a pole in this race for Los
Angeles mayor. But when incumbent Karen Bass and city Councilman
Nitya Rahm. And my understanding is reported by the California
Political Playbook is that this was an internal poll by
the Bass campaign, which some could interpret as possibly being biased.
(08:13):
But it was a survey of twelve hundred likely voters
in late July July twenty second through the twenty eighth.
That's important because think about what was going on at
that time. We had these homeless numbers come out that's
not great sure for Karen Bass, and we had the
aftermath still of the Boyle Heights situation right in the
middle of it, right in the middle of Alice. So
she's conducting a pole. She's ahead, Karen Bass is Apparently
(08:36):
she leads when asked directly who you would vote for
by a margin of forty one to thirty seven. But
when they push the respondents who may be undecided to
choose a candidate, the number goes up for her. So
she leads forty one to thirty five when they factor
in the lean of undecided voters. So right now, it's
a lot of great place for an incumbent mayor to be.
(08:58):
But the fact that she's not loose using I mean,
I'm sure she's looking for any positive trends in this way.
How how much would we believe these polls? I know
this is an internal poll that kind of thing. My
hesitation is this, and I don't want to be one
of those guys is like, oh, I don't trust the
polls because in twenty sixteen they said Hillary was going
to win. Like, I get that those polls were off.
What was the phenomenon that created that in twenty sixteen?
(09:21):
I think sociologists have tried to explain that people were
hesitant to tell pollsters that they were going to vote
for a reality star. Now people are very proud to
say that they're voting for President Trump. It's become part
of the identity. This time around, I don't know that
I trust the polls. And my evidence is the primary
polling was it was real close to the edges of
(09:41):
the margin of air when it comes to Ramen's yeah returns.
It wasn't bad, It wasn't it wasn't wrong, but it
was close to the margins of ara A little too
close for my comfort on that. But this time around,
I kind of wonder that people who are voting for
Ramen are they the ones answering the phone and taking
the polls. I don't know, that's my concern. I think
there's going to be a lot of people head into
those polls, headed to the polling booth excuse me, that
(10:03):
are not accessible to the polls. I'm sure we'll see
more polling right now is voters, I mean early to
mid August have to crawl out from their tense, that's true,
to vote. We'll see some polling as this gets as
street people as they're going to debate, you know, and
who knows what disasters all wait, we were talking about
the potential for an earthquake here again at the top
of the hour, and my goodness, we know how ill
(10:25):
prepared we are for minor disaster is much less a
major one. So would a major disaster be good or
bad for them? Well, it's bad for us either way.
I think. You know my position on this. It's between
worse and worser. Politically speaking, who's it worser for? I
think the incumbent every time I do too. I do
too because even though you're an incumbent city council person,
(10:46):
you are below mayor and the monk stops at the top.
Exactly you have. That's that's the way Nithia Roman is
trying to play the homeless stuff despite her own complicity
in the failures of this system. Yeah, which is interesting.
I think that the council just did her a fate
because she was she was the chair of the Housing
and Homelessness Committee, and all of a sudden they just
said you're out, which feels very political behind the scenes
(11:10):
to me, it feels like the council president, his name
is Marquise Harris Dawson. It feels like he's saying, let's
give the bass the boost here, let's get Ramen off
the council and now Basque can say that she's now,
she's gonna now, she's gonna take charge and things are
gonna get done. But Nythia Ramin has been the problem
all along, and it was so bad that we had
to we had to boot her from her her committee
(11:31):
chair position. I don't know if I uh, I don't
know if I think this is gonna be the political
win that they believe it to be. Yeah, I'm not
sure it has happened. In the past. We saw Councilman
Monica Rodriguez, who is who has I believe fought with
Nythia Romin, and it was also very much disagreed with
Mayor Bass. She was a strong opponent to a lot
of the homeless strategies a year ago, and she was
(11:53):
also on the Budget Committee. But she was removed from
the Homeless Committee and the Budget Committee and it looked
like a political decision because she was asking too many questions.
This has not hurt hurt politically no. In fact, it's
given her a place to look like opposition even though
they're politically mostly aligned. But on these very key important issues,
she's the one asking question. And that's where I think
(12:13):
this is actually going to come out as a win
during campaign season for Ramen. Now she's going to be
able to point directly at the committee. Look, I was
on the inside trying to make changes and now it's
not getting any better. And look what they're doing except
I mean, sound bites can work on the campaign track. Huh.
But you can already see the arsenal against Ramen for
her role on this committee from the Basque campaign and
(12:36):
her allies who say, look, the last time there was
a Homeless Committee meeting, it was loaded with items because
of how many meetings had been canceled. I totally agree
with you. How many voters pay attention to that's that's
a harder argument, and that's why I think like that.
She responded, already, she's already come out and said, this
is all political.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I might be getting punished for running against Mayor Bass,
but Angelinos are the.
Speaker 1 (12:58):
One I love the piano in the backgrounds. You're right, right,
really really tough.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Angelino's are the ones who are paying the price for
these political games. Seerbas and her allies are protecting what
we all know is a deeply broken status quo, one
that is not serving any person here in the city
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 5 (13:15):
So, as you can see, they turned that into a
quick campaign commercial on video.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Now these from NBCLING.
Speaker 5 (13:21):
The councilwoman has said that when it comes to the
homeless count, and she's correct, homelessness has been reduced in
her district. The mayor's office says that's because of the
mayor's effort inside safe Remember they were allies and at
one point Nittha Rama endorsed Karen Bass for reelection.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Now the mayor's.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Office has said, if you want to look at the
homeless problem, look at the lack of leadership out of
the city council, and that starts with the Homeless Committee.
Speaker 1 (13:47):
So again it's up to debate.
Speaker 5 (13:49):
The homeless issue is fundamental to this campaign.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I'm going to stop it there. I just wonder how
many voters hear this, how many voters pay attention, and
how many voters are really captivated by the day in
and day out wonky workings of city Hall. All they
say are tents on the street. Whose fault is it?
And right now the buck stops with the mayor except
for a couple of things. And that's true. But again,
(14:13):
to make this argument you do have to get into
the weeds a little bit. Sitting on the homeless Committee
is a powerful position in a city grappling with homeless
is the way that Los Angeles is. But Ramen is also.
While Bass has Inside Safe, Romen has also got her
own signature plan that she help pushed through city home
side tents. It's called time limited Subsidies. It's not as
(14:35):
sexy as Inside Safe, but it's basically subsidized rent for
folks to get into an apartment. Oh, we'll pay the
rent for a while if you meet certain criteria and
that ends after a certain period of time. So this
was apparently more than sixty two million dollars to fund
this program, and according to the Bass campaign, only three
apartments have been leased. Oh you kidding. So it's another
(14:56):
multi tens of million dollar failure that does not produce results.
All that sixty two million dollars are spent on this
and there are only three apartments least, See these are
twenty million dollar apartments. Yeah. Romins campaign says, I wish
I were homeless. Robins Campaign says the characterization is inaccurate
because the money is committed for the initiative, it's not spent.
(15:17):
But the fact that you have this much money allocated
and you are so bad at allocating it. Only three
You mean to tell me, of all these homeless people
that none of them are capable. I know that most
of them are not capable of living on their own,
but only three?
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Oh not.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
The fire department just came and asked if I wanted
my taxes raised so that they could continue to pay
firefighters and expand the fire department and make sure they've
got new equipment. And you're telling me they're sitting on
sixty million dollars not being spent to try to help
homeless people. You're catching on, why am I paying more
for the fire department, which is an essential city service?
This is Weston You got me screaming, now, I know,
(15:53):
but this is exactly what the selection is supposed to
be about. And I wish there were a way for
voters in the City of Los Angeles to say neither,
because we are spending so much money there on failed
programs to address homelessness, and we have all the evidence
that we need to suggest nothing is working at all
at the detriment to the detriment of basic city services.
(16:16):
Just name any basic civic service and think about how
it's being delivered to you if you live in the
City of Los Angeles. How many water means could have
been replaced with sixty mine, how many lives could be
turned back on, how many police and fire could be
hired and dispatch to places where we need them, And frankly,
for the amount of money we spent, how many homeless
people could be off the street if there were better programs,
(16:39):
just very quickly, just so we have this clear, Yes,
Nithie rom is being removed from our Homeless Committee, but
that committee is technically called the Homeless and Housing Committee.
What's happening at City Hall is they are splitting that committee.
It will now be a housing committee and a homeless committee.
And by the way, the new chair, as reported of
the homeless committee will be is a bell Herado, my
(17:00):
city council person who represents DTLA and skid Row as
well as Boyle Heights, saying that's Boil Heights, right, So
she's also terrible at these issues. And it just it
just makes you want to set yourself on fire. It
almost makes you want to be in the bottom of
this parking, except no fireman would be able to come
to put you out. No, we couldn't fund that because
there's money sitting in a bank account somewhere. You know,
the city's never seen a price tag. They weren't willing
(17:22):
to pay, just as long as it promises to reduce homelessness,
which is how they've burned through billions of dollars in
the last decade and still have the worst crisis in
the country. But this next project is going to work,
they say, just don't ask how much this one's going
to cost. Where the homeless are heading is next Monks
and Merril kfi am six forty. We're everywhere the iHeart
(17:42):
Radio Web.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill on demand from KFI AM.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Six Monks and Merril KFI AM six forty on demand
any time on the iHeart radiopp where you can also
follow along, subscribe to the podcast and follow us on
the socials where Monks sings at and Merril at Monks
and Merrill. You just were talking about the amount of
money that is being spent on the homeless program. Robins
(18:09):
program has sixty million dollars set aside for rent subsidies, right,
and that has gone toward three.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Dude who in their right mind says I wish I
was homeless.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
What's wrong with you? Man? I need a reality check. No,
I don't think you're understanding my point here. If you're
homeless in Los Angeles, you would have access to the
twenty million dollar apartment. And I know that that's money
set aside for leasing many more apartments than that, But
how many condos have we seen that are eighty thousand
dollars a year? Wait a story yesterday where they're spending
(18:41):
eighty four thousand dollars a year. I think that was
the number on a particular apartment, which is more it's
it's far more than I'm that I pay for my apartment.
Somebody's getting a much nicer apartment than me because they
live on the street. So my point is, I wish
I were homeless, because then I could have nice stuff
in the city of Los Angeles. Being right, being that
(19:01):
I'm not homeless, I can't afford those things. She is
right and saying who in their right mind? And that's
one of the main problems with a lot of these
approaches is that they are treating folks as if they
fell on hard times, and some did, of course, right, Okay,
but it's not the dust bowl out there. Okay, this
isn't the Great Depression out there. Go spend time and
skid roll. Don't go visit a homeless camp by the freeway.
(19:24):
Don't don't because you will see what you're dealing with.
You know how frequently we have headlines from the wires
this just happened yesterday, pedestrians struck on freeway. How often
do you see a pedestrian on the freeway. I don't.
On the rare occasion that somebody's car breaks down and
they do the wrong thing and start to walk in right,
but they don't walk in the middle of it. No,
(19:45):
that's always somebody out of their mind, out of their mind,
and that's what's going on all across the regions. The
same thing when they get hit by a train. Yeah,
you're not gonna you're not going to subsidize this guy's
rent in an apartment because he's a drug addict and
he's lost his mind, and the type of treatment they need,
we're not offering enough. Well, what hang on, what if
we were to set up a tiny home park, give
(20:07):
everyone a cabin, but then not disclose how much money
we're spending on it. That would make things better. Well,
and they tell you all about Sun Valley Metrolink station
there on a Linda Street, and this is a brand
new village of tiny homes. Although the exact number of
homes is a little bit unclear. It seems like the
city wants us to believe these are two hundred new
(20:29):
tiny homes. No, it's not. These are like backyard sheds
if you've ever seen them. It's eighty four cabins, four
two hundred people. Yeah, exactly, So technically I guess we
could split hairs and define the word home. Well, but
they're also not really being completely transparent. When they say
there's two hundred tiny homes, well, they're saying two hundred homes,
(20:50):
and I guess technically for two hundred people, that's splitting hairs,
and that's that's not honest. That's not completely honest, not honest.
Basically eighty four several dozen. Okay, Now here's the deal.
Residents of this new tiny home park will not have
to pay rent. Hope. The mission is going to provide
round the clock operation through a LASA contract now, including monitoring, security,
(21:14):
three squares, and a case management. If these things work,
mind you, I'm all for it. If this were if
we had a proven track record, Karen Bassas. The city
wants tiny homes to lower inside safe costs. They want
to reduce dependence on motel rooms. For that, cabins on
publicly controlled land can avoid the nightly hotel race. They
provide predictable locations for services. That all sounds really great too.
(21:38):
This all comes from what the governor did in twenty
twenty three. He wanted to provide five small homes tiny
homes to la Is part of the statewide deployment, but
by May there were only thirty three beds. So now
we're up to two hundred. This is about two hundred
and forty beds total with that program that had been completed.
So the problem that we have with this is it
(22:01):
doesn't always work out. Portland State University did find the
village and motel shelters did offer greater privacy and better
produce better housing outcomes and traditional congregate shelters. That's great.
Researchers conclude though, that the temporary villages worked best as
stop gaps permanent housing with rental assistance to say it
can actually cost less over time. My issue is who
are you putting in these places? Yeah, and they're not effective.
(22:23):
LA Public Press did an analysis of data from the
LA Homeless Services Authority from twelve different tiny home villages, Okay,
and they found that twenty three percent of the residents
departed the tiny homes into permanent housing, so just under
a quarter. But how many went back to homelessness more
than half fifty three percent and that includes two Hope
(22:48):
the Mission villages that were in this analysis, which seemed
to perform better. Hope the Mission has one of the
better reputations among these organizations out there. They contract with LASA.
The report Homeless Exit rate was closer to seventy percent. Well,
why don't we find the places that are doing it right?
Why don't we work with the organizations that prove their
(23:08):
results matter, they are worthy of the dollars. That's what
So many people are running schemes out there and we
just look the other way. If only we had a
responsible chair of the Homeless Committee.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yes, but being more efficient with their money is a
complete contrary issue, because the whole purpose between every one
of these programs is to steal money to get it
to their friends, the channel for whatever, and the only
reason they're using it in homeless or whatever issues is
because it looks good. Yeah, and it'll sell to the public.
Speaker 1 (23:38):
This cynicism is earned. It's just earned. Yeah, long track
record of failures is LA giving Chicago a run for
its money as the most corrupt city in the country.
You've said that. Yeah, Another former council member headed to
court looking at twelve felonies. It's just warming up. Yeah.
This also involves a little bit of the homeless industrial COmON.
(24:00):
We'll get into that next. As Monks and Merrill continues.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
You're listening to Monks and Merrill onto the Air from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Available anywhere on the IART radio app. A second judge
now has found enough evidence to send La City councilman
Current Price to trial on twelve public corruption felonies. This
is a case where prosecutors say Current Price repeatedly used
his office to benefit his wife as well as another
organization that he led. Hmm, so he's convenient. He has
(24:34):
pleaded not guilty. He says he was innocent. But this
is one of those cases that you can look at
all of the documents and think, boy, just take your
come on, just take the punishment because he has dragged
this out. He's term limited, Chris, so this is his
last year in office and his South La seed is
up for grabs, and you just go to jail, just
(24:55):
serve that you're old, Just get it over with. I
don't think anybody's gonna say, well, hey, you got me
submitted jail. I would, especially while he's on the council.
He still wants to maintain as much power as he
can for as long as he can. You know what's
interesting in the context of the committee flips that we
were talking about a little while ago with Nythia Rahmen
and Isabel Herrado, and Nythia Raman being removed from Homeless
(25:15):
Committee and Holmost Housing, Housing and Homelessness Committee. Yes, okay,
there was a time where Current Price was removed from
his committee, and so was Councilman Kevin dele On who
was no longer on there Current Price because of this investigation,
and Kevin daily On because of his involvement in the
racist audio tapes from several years ago. They decided to
(25:38):
bring Kevin daily On back to his committees because he
was facing a very difficult re election campaign and some
of the insiders at city Hall did not want a
woman named Isabelle Herado to unseat him. But because they
were putting Kevin daily On back on his committee, felt
they needed to put Current Price back on his too,
in the interest of fairness. This is all Marquis Harris
Dawson's decision, by the way, and the reason I bring
that up, this collus entry here and the irony is
(26:02):
now Isabel Herado is getting a plumb chairmanship. How quickly
things change at La City Hall. Blow it all up.
They were like, let's legitimize Kevin dal Leon again because
he might lose to this DSA Isabelle Herado. We don't
want another one of them on this council. And then
he did, and then he did, and now she's bell
of the ball. Yeah, they just decide who they hate.
(26:25):
They lick their thumb, they stick it in the air
and decide who they hate that day. Absolutely well, I
think they lock that. You're not far off. I believe
that they lick their thumb, they stick in the air,
they say which way the political winds are blowing? And
right now, what do we see nationwide? I mean Fox
is talking about it NonStop. I heard John Colbot discussing
this and that is that the Democratic Socialists are set
to take over. I mean, if you look at even
(26:46):
the New York Times today, headlines of the New York
Times is that today is another round of elections. Will
the Democratic Socialists win in Wisconsin and Iowa and all
these other it's all about democratic socialists. Now, Democratic socialists
is a new hot thing. And as long as there
are wins going on, then you've got a very liberal
community like ours, where democratic socialism is expanding like it
(27:06):
is in New York City. And they go, uh oh,
I can't ignore this. I'm going to play ball. And
that's exactly what's happening. They're going I'm going to play ball.
I'm going to give them the power that these voters
want because I want to keep my spot. I don't
want to be challenged by a democratic socialism is going
to come along in the future and say that I'm
not doing enough. Well, they will anyway. That's the fatish
democrats need to learn, is that leftists are always going
(27:26):
to come for you because leftists hate Democrats way more
than they could ever hate Republicans. Oh, I agree. They
hate Democrats in the same way that Maga can't stand
what they call rhinos. It's exactly the same thing. They
just can't stand them. If you're farther out there, you're
mad somebody else is enjoining you. Even worse than your
enemy is the person who's who's who's not seeing quite
(27:47):
eye to eye with you. Yeah. No, you look at
them as an existential threat. The others are your competitors,
but the people within your own party that disagree with you,
that's an existential threat. You know. I when when Zoron
Mamdani was running for mayor of New York, and he's
probably the highest profile of this new wave of democratic
socialist He holds the highest office. He's mayor of New
York City, the biggest city in the country. There were
a lot of think pieces even now, wasn't that the Raman
(28:08):
running is she LA's mom Donnie? Who will be LA's
mom Donnie? We had mom Donni before New York had
Momdanni at LAC. She just didn't call them that. Yeah, they're
very powerful. There's only there were only a few of
them at the time. Now there's four the actual Democratic Socialists.
But we've had democratics so progressive liberal that they were.
Certainly they would fall into that camp of democrats. And
the problem is is that we can look at their
(28:28):
policies in motion. They're not great, no, and they end
up fighting against democrats like Monica Rodriguez or Tracy Park
you know, who are successful in their districts. Would say
that this is not how they're not real democrats, Michael Monks,
they're Dinos. They're democrats in name only. They don't really
(28:49):
believe in the issues. They're part of the establishment. All
the pejoratives that you heard about Republicans from MAGA, you're
hanging about democrats from the DSA. That's exactly right. This
is exactly what's going on. Meanwhile, for Current Price, who
is not a DSA memberies it's an old school bring
this long time career politician prosecutor say that he participated
in votes. You're supposed to recuse yourself. But he participated
(29:11):
in these votes benefiting developers and public agencies that paid
his wife's consulting company more than nine hundred and fifty
thousand dollars between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty one. It
was the housing authority of the City of la that
paid his wife allegedly about six hundred thousand dollars, and
then Price later supported applications for a thirty five million
(29:32):
dollar federal grant and a two hundred and fifty two
million dollars state grant for that authought. You know what
I think really bothers me about this is not that
Current Price may have done this allegedly. It's that it
continues to happen again and again and again. We're not
putting safeguards in place. We haven't, we don't, and that
there's there should be an automatic alarm that triggers when
(29:54):
this sort of thing happens. It goes Hey, oh, Current
Price is up for a vote on this thing that
his wife is a part of of. Hey, current, you
can't vote on this. That boom done. All of the
other council members should stop in your tracks until you
get the guy to go. You can't vote on this,
and then we move on. We keep allowing corruption. It's
(30:14):
not just that corruption is happening, is that we continue
to allow it. We have a system that places too
much trust in people. You can't create a system for
those who are never going to violate. You have to
create a system with safeguards against those who seem to
exploit the system. When I started covering La City Hall
in the newsroom here at KFI, I did a lot
of research on the history of La City Hall and
(30:35):
the La City Council. We've had historic preservation of it. Yeah,
you know, I'm interested in those things. We've had the
same fifteen council districts. They've shifted a little bit since
nineteen twenty five. And as I read about every single
member whoever represented these districts, because I went down a
rabbit hole, we've had people hauled out of there in
handcuffs almost annually since the beginning. It's like every cycle
(30:57):
since the beginning. So we think about Chica as the
epitome of municipal corruption in America. I mean, LA has
always been right there. Yeah, it's like they're being run
by a bunch of bad people, evil people. I just
want to really excuse to play this. By the way,
(31:21):
we're gonna give away more tickets to the Hollywood Bowl
where they're doing the John Williams Tribute content I guess,
tribute app whatever you want to call it, celebration of
John Williams scores or giving a chance to win a
pair of those tickets. I'm a little over an hour,
so that's that's still coming up here. Hey, you report
ugly conduct inside the LAPD, you deliver the evidence to
internal affairs, and still you are the person facing thirteen
(31:42):
years in prison. The message that this prosecution is sending
to every police station is next. Monks and Merril k
I AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app
KFI on demand. You've been listening to Monks and Merrill
here the show live weekdays from noon to three on
kf I AM six forty and anytime on demand on
(32:05):
the iHeartRadio app.
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