LAHSA CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum has resigned.
Va Lecia Adams Kellum, the head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, resigned on Friday.
She had accepted the position as CEO in 2023 for an annual salary of $430,000 dollars.
L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath
In July 2023, LAHSA voted Supervisor Lindsey Horvath as chair, and on her website, Horvath said she wanted LAHSA to focus accountability and transparency on the use of resources.
The agency has come under fire for the past few years as Federal Judge David O. Carter has supervised the audits of LAHSA. The L.A. Alliance for human rights had sued the City and County in 2020, because homelessness was not decreasing, and it was estimated that seven people a day die on the streets. The most recent audit results were released by the firm Alvarez & Marsal (A & M) on March 27 and it was damning to LAHSA, the County and City.
Carter said, “Somebody’s got to start making [decisions] or we’re just running up a bill pretending to the American public we’re doing something, but we’re not.”
He asked L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, “can you fix it?”
Bass responded, “I believe that we can stop people from dying in the streets. That’s what I believe.” Adams Kellum is friends with Bass and previously ran St. Joseph Center, a homeless nonprofit in Venice.
Adams Kellum cited that as a result of her leadership, homelessness was falling around the city, as measured by the annual Point in Time Count. That count has come under scrutiny for failing to count certain areas (as realized by the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness in 2023) and problems with the counting app.
In the audit, on page 122, “FY 2023-24 sampled sites reported a median permanent housing exit rate of approximately 22.0%, whereas 47.8% of exits resulted in a return to homelessness.”
Nonprofits, which were paid to house homeless and offer services, often did not have records of who were helped or the outcome of that help. Did people really exit homelessness?
Westside Current ran a story about the 1,200 Project Homekey units purchased with taxpayer dollars that were left vacant months or even years after they were purchased.
LAHSA’s CEO took heat in February, when she signed a $2.1 million contract authorizing taxpayer funds to a nonprofit where her husband is senior staffer.
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors annually funds LAHSA $350 million. With the new county sales tax, a half cent increase that just went into effect April 1, about $1 billion in annual revenue is expected and is to be used for the homeless crisis.
After the recent audit, Horvath with Supervisor Kathryn Barger, moved to centralize the work of 14 County departments and to bring back the functions given to LAHSA back to the County. The motion passed 4-0-1 on April 1 and effectively defunded LAHSA.
The County will now fund its own homeless bureaucracy and say they will have better accountability and oversite.
The City of Los Angeles is still projected to send about $306 million in taxpayer dollars to LAHSA.
(Editor’s note: without attention given to the mentally ill or to the people with chronic alcoholism and drug issues on the street, housing will not be effective.)
An March audit noted that nearly half of homeless housed exited back into homelessness.
Who do you believe?