In Los Angeles, the management of homelessness on Skid Row has evolved into a $2.4 billion administrative web that critics argue prioritizes the maintenance of the 'scaffolding' over solving the underlying crisis. This phenomenon occurs when temporary support systems—funding streams, oversight agencies, and non-profit networks—develop their own bureaucracies and political constituencies, eventually becoming a permanent ecosystem that can stifle actual progress.
The Evolution of Administrative Scaffolding
When a social crisis emerges, the instinctive response is to build support systems to hold a collapsing structure together. Paul Taylor argues that while these systems are intended to be temporary infrastructure, they often mutate into permanent industries with their own executive payrolls and bureaucracies.
This 'scaffolding' can eventually become a self-reinforcing ecosystem. Instead of solving the problem, the system begins to protect its own existence, making it harder to implement radical changes that might render the administrative layer unnecessary.
“When a problem gets big enough, the ecosystem of providers, auditors, and bureaucracies becomes part of the problem.”
— Are big problems really more difficult to solve?
Case Study: Skid Row and Proposition HHH
The situation in Los Angeles serves as a primary example of this institutionalization. Despite the city's economic power, homelessness on Skid Row persists because the response has focused on expanding the administrative web rather than rethinking the model.
Following the approval of Proposition HHH, a $1.2 billion housing bond, the massive administrative web swallowed the intended outcomes. An independent audit revealed that the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) lacked basic performance requirements for contracts and could not accurately track the vast majority of its spending.
The Failure of 'Plug-in' Reforms
Taylor notes that simply changing a role within a large system—such as replacing housing officers with neighborhood coaches—is often insufficient. If the connections between roles, such as who holds the budget and who signs off on decisions, remain the same, the system will eventually pull the new role back to its previous shape.
This was observed in attempts to implement the Dutch Buurtzorg model of self-managing nursing in the UK's NHS. While patients often preferred the new teams, the surrounding organizations did not change their operational structures, leading to caseloads that exceeded the model's requirements and a lack of true autonomy for the staff.
Dismantling the System through Decentralization
To break the cycle of institutionalized problems, Taylor suggests dismantling the centralized machinery and breaking problems into digestible, human-sized chunks. This involves a structural shift in how targets are set, how budgets are held, and where decisions are made.
The trade-off for this decentralization is a potential loss of consistency and visibility. While it removes heavy administrative scaffolding, it requires a disciplined approach to ensure that the new autonomous teams have the necessary language of autonomy without being burdened by excessive new oversight roles.