The Trump administration on Tuesday escalated its warning that it could cut off funding to Los Angeles’ troubled homelessness authority, sharply criticizing a system that has received nearly $1 billion in federal support over five years while the region’s homelessness crisis has worsened over the past decade.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, appearing alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., delivered the criticism at a news conference held at the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center, taking direct aim at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
“The days of funding corrupt failure are over,” Turner said. “The Trump administration will not fund a homeless industrial complex any longer.”
LAHSA serves as the primary homelessness agency for both the city and county of Los Angeles and operates with an annual budget of about $845 million.
Turner said Los Angeles has taken in nearly $1 billion in federal homelessness funding over the last five years, the largest amount awarded to any jurisdiction in the country.
Yet, he argued, the scale of the crisis has expanded even as government spending has climbed.
“During that same decade that homelessness in LA doubled, HUD funding to LA nearly tripled,” Turner said. “We gotta run a new play. That play does not work.”
According to HUD figures cited by Turner, federal homelessness funding for Los Angeles has risen 178% since 2013, while the number of people experiencing homelessness has increased 100%.
Los Angeles counted 45,194 homeless people this year, including 29,115 living without shelter.
Turner rattled off a list of failures he said showed how the system had gone off the rails.
He said LAHSA could not verify the existence of 2,300 housing units it was responsible for and cited a 2023 finding that the agency could not determine how much it spent on empty hotel rooms because it failed to properly track when people left motel housing.
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He also pointed to federal conflict-of-interest findings involving LAHSA’s former CEO and more than $2 million committed to her husband’s employer.
“The numbers don’t add up,” Turner said.
“The very organization tasked with ending homelessness and equipped with billions of dollars shamelessly wasted them on corruption and mismanagement.”
Turner also invoked the federal fraud case involving Abundant Blessings, a LAHSA contractor whose executive director was charged in an alleged $23 million fraud scheme.
Then he turned his fire on PATH, or People Assisting the Homeless.
Turner said the nonprofit received $2.5 million in HUD homelessness funding since 2021 tied to plans to convert the former Ramada Inn on Washington Boulevard into homeless housing.
“As of this week, the Ramada is still empty,” Turner said.
Turner also held up a bag he said nonprofits distribute to homeless people and pulled out drug paraphernalia.
“This isn’t compassion,” Turner said.
Turner and Kennedy offered the Dream Center as their alternative.
Before the press conference, the two cabinet secretaries toured the sprawling faith-based facility, where hundreds of people live while participating in addiction recovery and other programs.
Kennedy said roughly 600 men and women are rebuilding their lives at the Dream Center for about $7,500 per person annually.
He contrasted that with what he said was an approximately $185,000 annual cost for Los Angeles County to get a homeless person off the street and into housing.
“They’re doing it better than us,” Kennedy said, “and we need to start recognizing that.”
Turner said the administration wants to bring faith-based organizations back into the federal homelessness system and steer money toward providers that combine housing with addiction and mental-health treatment.
“It’s not just housing. It’s not Housing First,” Turner said. “It’s the continuation of caring for men, women, children and families.”
Then came his starkest warning for LAHSA.
“They will not receive another cent of American taxpayer money until they can account for every single dollar,” Turner said.
HUD suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity in June after an inspector general investigation raised allegations of false statements, inadequate financial controls and conflicts of interest.
But the administration’s effort to freeze LAHSA out of federal funding has already triggered a court battle.
US District Judge David O. Carter is weighing LAHSA’s request to block the suspension after hearing arguments last week, as Los Angeles approaches its next round of federal Continuum of Care funding.
Carter is expected to decide on the case in the coming days.
But regardless of the outcome, Turner made the administration’s direction clear: Washington wants to stop funneling federal dollars through a system it argues has failed and instead steer funding toward organizations that can show results.
“We’re interested, only interested, in real results,” Turner said, “and that’s actually helping our fellow Americans get off the streets, out of addiction and on a path to self-sufficiency.”
