Report: Los Angeles spends $100 million on homeless

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The city of Los Angeles spends $100 million a year to deal with homelessness, according to a new report, but it's not nearly enough if L.A. hopes to truly solve its homeless problem.

Andre McCullough prepared for another night on Skid Row on Thursday. He's been homeless for the last six years, and he says getting help is getting harder every day.

"It's gotten worse ... if you don't know where to go for resources," he said.

The report from City Administrative Officer Miguel Santana says the majority of the money -- $87 million -- was spent on police services and arrests.

"There appears to be no consistent process across city departments for dealing with the homeless or with homeless encampments," the report states.

Santana says there's a joint city and county authority that fields emergency response teams to deal with problems involving the homeless but it has only 19 people to cover the entire county.

"Right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing. There's (no) accountability system," said Walter Contreras of the Fred Jordan Mission.

Contreras says without a unified support system between all departments and services, there is no way to end homelessness as a whole. He says $100 million is a drop in the bucket in solving the problem.

At Original Glass Products in the heart of Skid Row, they know firsthand the growing cost of the city's homeless.

"I see it getting worse. I see people coming from other towns, telling me they're getting bus tickets from other places, and every day I see new faces here. I don't think anything is getting better," said Casey Williams, owner of Original Glass Products.

The 21-page report says it was not possible to get a full measure of the costs of homelessness for the city, but does recommend increasing funding in key areas, like homeless outreach and creating a homeless office.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.