(The Center Square) – The chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority resigned days after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors defunded the super-agency to create its own homelessness department.
LAHSA had failed two recent audits in recent months, and CEO Va Lecia Lecia Adams Kellum was found to have “inadvertently” signed millions of dollars of contracts to the nonprofit her husband works at, violating the organization’s conflict-of-interest policy.
With a new $1 billion per year countywide sales tax hike for homelessness programs to be distributed across the county on the basis of the number of homeless individuals, the county would be able to use this new funding and $300 million it would have spent on LAHSA on the new agency.
“With the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors implementing the 2020 Blue Ribbon recommendations, shifting key responsibilities from LAHSA to LA County, now is the right time for me to resign as CEO,” said Adams Kellum in a statement.
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass opposed the county’s move to defund LAHSA, saying it would reduce joint resources for homelessness services.
“Dismantling LAHSA will deprive the City of Los Angeles of essential resources, including recent voter-approved Measure A funding, and would severely stunt the City’s ability to oversee existing programs that provide holistic solutions to individuals with complex needs,” wrote Bass in a letter opposing the vote. “The City of Los Angeles represents 60% of Los Angeles County’s homeless population, and we have invested in tens of thousands of shelters and permanent housing units for the homeless – your decision will have an impact that is impossible to overstate.”
While homelessness in Los Angeles County is estimated to have declined by 0.27% in 202 to 75,312 individuals, much of that decline was from reductions in the city of Los Angeles, where the homeless population declined by 2.2% to 45,252 individuals. After last year’s count, California Gov. Gavin Newsom praised the city while threatening to take away funding from the county if it doesn’t get its act together.
