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iAUDIT! –
Dear Councilmembers and Supervisors:
On February 11, LAist published the second article on how LAHSA’s CEO, Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum has approved more than $4 million in contracts to a nonprofit that employs her husband in a senior management position. That article was preceded by one on December 18, 2024, detailing how Adams Kellum is the only LAHSA executive who completes a state-required Conflict of Interest form, even though at least 35 other positions should be submitting the forms. We don’t know how many other potential conflicts exist. In November 2024, the LA County Auditor/Controller released a report on LAHSA’s financial mismanagement. That report described several problems, such as the Authority paying vendors without approved contracts, not knowing who its contractors are, improperly shifting funds to pay vendors, and a lack of meaningful performance measures tied to payments. These articles and reports are just the latest in a long series of negative news about LAHSA. Since at least 2018, the Board of Supervisors has been demanding reform of LAHSA’s financial practices. In 2018, LAHSA’s budget was about $257.8 million; it has since increased more than three-fold to nearly $900 million, yet no fundamental financial or operational reforms have been implemented.
As a 2021 UCLA Luskin School report says, LAHSA has never had a clear mission and has been plagued by weak management since its creation in 1993. Through benign neglect and political maneuvering, it’s been allowed to redefine and shift its role in LA’s homelessness industry. It claims to be the leading homelessness agency in the County yet lacks authority to set city or county priorities. HUD and the State of California regard it as merely a pass-through agency for state and federal funds, yet it directly manages hundreds of service contracts worth more than $700 million. As one may expect from an agency with a nebulous mission, inattentive leadership, and millions to spend, LAHSA is rife with management and financial problems, from high turnover to paying contractors without the required documentation. Court-appointed auditors have hinted at the existence of fraud, especially in contracts to operate shelters.
LAHSA was created and is led by the City of L.A. and the County of Los Angeles. In theory, it answers to the City Council and the Board of Supervisors, some of whom sit on its Board of Commissioners. My question to Councilmembers and Supervisors is when do all the problems, weak management, opaque financial transactions, and ineffective contracts become too much to tolerate? How many inside deals and shady financial transactions are acceptable to you? When will you take action?
In August 2023, Councilmember Rodriguez called LAHSA’s lack of reliable Inside Safe data “insanity” and decried the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars. You did nothing.
After the County Auditor released its report last November, Supervisor Horvath (who sits on LAHSA’s Board) said “LAHSA is us” and called for changes. You did nothing.
In 2021, the Board of Supervisors agreed LAHSA needed a “new model of governance” to improve accountability and oversight of homelessness funding. You did nothing.
When HOPICS, a large corporate nonprofit and favored LAHSA contractor, was found to have badly botched a contract for subsidizing rent, hundreds of formerly homeless tenants were evicted for non-payment. Yet LAHSA continues to grant HOPICS large no-bid contracts. You’ve done nothing to assure HOPICS uses its funding effectively.
When media in San Francisco revealed the head of the agency overseeing its Dreamkeeper Initiative approved contracts for a nonprofit headed by her domestic partner, she resigned within a few days. Further, the City took action to review the program’s contracting practices. Dr. Adams Kellum’s husband works for a nonprofit that benefits from contracts she approved, but the most any elected official has called for is a meeting to discuss ethical contracting practices. Why can’t LA hold LAHSA’s leaders accountable when others can?
A reasonable outside observer has to wonder why LAHSA and its contractors have been allowed to run roughshod over basic contracting and financial practices. Why have you, as elected officials, been so afraid to hold LAHSA accountable for its mismanagement? Is it because of the personal relationships among you and service providers? Is it because Dr. Adams Kellum is a personal friend of Mayor Bass and her former nonprofit, St. Joesph Center, employs one of the mayor’s daughters? Is it because Bass and Horvath, among others, had themselves appointed to LAHSA’s Board of Commissioners, meaning they were running the agency they were supposed to be monitoring? Or is it because you depend on the support of corporate nonprofits that rake in millions of taxpayer dollars from contracts devoid of performance measures? Perhaps you fear vocal advocacy groups who can activate a cadre of screaming supporters to drown out voices for reform. Or are you just lazy, and accept the status quo instead of doing your jobs and making the tough decisions that would make L.A.’s $2 billion homelessness industry more efficient and effective? (The $2 billion figure is extremely conservative since it doesn’t include the costs of some city and county departments for homelessness program support).
A reasonable outside observer has to wonder how officials use words like “compassion” and “bold action” when the policies you support leave more than 70 percent of homeless people unsheltered. We have to wonder how you can claim “progress” when LAHSA houses less than 20 percent of people in shelters. We have to wonder why you express almost no interest in where all that taxpayer money goes or who gets it, and what they do to earn it.
As taxpayers, we have the right to ask legitimate questions about how LAHSA and other homelessness agencies use our money. We have the right to ask why homelessness has worsened even as homelessness budgets have increased ten-fold in less than 10 years. In other words, we have the right to ask the questions you should be asking.
So again, Councilmembers and Supervisors, when will it become too much for you to tolerate? How many more personal relationships and closed-door deals will you tolerate? How many no-bid contracts to nonperforming providers will be too many? How much money needs to be lost or unaccounted before you stop the cash flow? When will you actually do something instead of telling the media how concerned you are, and then approving millions more in taxpayer money for programs that have shown no results? When will six deaths per night become six too many?
(Tim Campbell is a resident of Westchester who spent a career in the public service and managed a municipal performance audit program. He focuses on outcomes instead of process in his iAUDIT! column for CityWatchLA.)
