Senior writer Doug Smith scouts Los Angeles for the ragged edges where public policy meets real people, combining data analysis and gumshoe reporting to tell L.A. stories through his more than 50 years of experience covering the city. As past database editor from 2004 through 2015, he hunted down and analyzed data for news and investigative projects. Besides “Grading the Teachers,” he contributed to investigations of construction abuse in the community college system and the rising toll of prescription drug overdoses. Smith has been at The Times since 1970, covering local and state government, criminal justice, politics and education. He was the lead writer for Times’ coverage of the infamous North Hollywood shootout, winner of a 1997 Pulitzer Prize. Between 2005 and 2008, Smith made five trips to Iraq on loan to our foreign desk.
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Los Angeles city Controller Kenneth Mejia reported that the city failed to spend nearly half of the $1.3 billion budgeted for homelessness in 2023-24.
An audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has found lax accounting procedures. The LAHSA executive director says she knew of these problems and has been working to fix them.
The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of appeals has issued an emergency stay stopping work on the installation of more than 100 units of modular housing on the campus.
A measure that would double L.A. County’s quarter-percent homeless sales tax is closing in on the majority it needs to pass, a poll of likely voters found.
Gov. Gavin Newsom joined Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and county supervisors Hilda Solis and Kathryn Barger in Skid Row Tuesday to announce $380 million for the county in the fifth round of the state Homeless Housing Assistance and Prevention program.
A month after locking UCLA’s baseball team out of its stadium, located on VA land, a federal judge allows the team back for the upcoming season.
After starting a homeless court, building up its shelter, housing and outreach services, the South Bay city of Redondo Beach has reached the point where more people are getting shelter and housing than becoming homeless.
Department of Veterans Affairs is appealing a judge’s order to build more than 2,500 housing units and that invalidated land leases to UCLA and a private school.
A federal judge has ordered the parking lot of UCLA’s Jackie Robinson Stadium to be turned into temporary housing for veterans on the VA campus in West L.A.
Experts say a new $22-billion plan to end homelessness in the city of Los Angeles reveals decades of underfunding and pitfalls of leaders’ current approach.