Remember the $640 toilet seat covers, $435 hammers, and $7,600 coffee makers — all billed to federal taxpayers in a 1980s defense-procurement scandal for the ages?

Well, plus ça change …

The more they stay the same.

Today, taxpayers in LA, LA County, and California face extravagant bills for renovating hotels, motels and dorms for the homeless, per an exposé by The California Post.

Costs can climb to $1.5 million per unit.

Since 2020, taxpayers have spent $2.6 billion on renovations for homeless housing in Los Angeles, in areas such as West Hollywood, Cheviot Hills and Venice Beach.

That’s just crazy.

The city, county and state need to end this lunacy; renounce the failed “housing first” paradigm; and support an independent audit of where exactly the money has gone.

“We’re seeing per-unit costs that exceed what a single-family home sells for in the San Fernando Valley,” said LA City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez, in calling for an audit.

Indeed.

Developer and former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso delivered more scathing remarks, blasting the city, county and state for “funding luxury” in “unsustainable” fashion.

And what’s more: The “housing first” approach, long in fashion on the left, has delivered dismal results.

How do we know? Because homeless numbers remain stubbornly high after many years and tens of billions spent on housing and other “services” that enable rather than end homelessness.

That’s the case because “housing first” puts common sense last:

Most people who live on the street struggle with addiction and mental illness, and handing them keys to a ($1 million+) room or apartment does nothing to address the root cause of their homelessness.

It does, however, enrich a homeless industrial complex that profits from perpetuating the problem: The homeless always need more housing, more laundry services, more city-subsidized needles to do drugs.

It’s an endless assault on taxpayers, with little enduring good done for the people the system purportedly helps.

The approach is so absurd that city, county and state officials are either unmoored from reality — or they benefit, even if just politically, from the racket.

The heedless spending on homeless housing should end — and face audits.

In the defense-procurement scandal of the ’80s, the government was billed (though did not end up paying) $9,600 for a fancy hex wrench.

All these decades later, city, county and state officials need to stop turning the (gold-plated) screws on taxpayers here, now.

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