Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been asked to testify before Congress for an investigation into \u201cpotential waste, fraud, and abuse\u201d of federal homelessness funding.<\/p>\n
The House of Representatives Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency sent a letter to Bass Wednesday<\/a> about its concerns with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, specifically \u201creports of blatant corruption\u201d in LAHSA\u2019s contracting process and “potential misallocation” of federal dollars.<\/p>\n \u201cHomelessness in California is a long-standing problem, most notoriously in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles,\u201d the letter signed by chairman Tim Burchett states. \u201cThe problem has grown worse during your tenure as mayor.\u201d<\/p>\n LAHSA told LAist it consistently welcomes audits and external assessments to continually improve its work, and “none of these reviews have ever found evidence of fraud or corruption.”<\/p>\n Learn the ins and outs behind L.A.’s housing crisis.<\/p>\n Sign up for Building Your Block, a seven-issue newsletter course from LAist that explains the obstacles around housing development in L.A. and what you can do to make things better.<\/p>\n “Both internal and independent audits have recommended operational enhancements, and LAHSA has delivered demonstrable progress,” agency spokesperson Chris Yee said in an email. <\/p>\n Bass\u2019 office didn\u2019t immediately respond to LAist\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n What does the letter say?<\/p>\n The mayor is being asked to testify Sept. 15 on Capitol Hill for a hearing called “Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services.\u201d<\/p>\n The subcommittee is also asking for years worth of documents, including specific communications between the mayor\u2019s office, LAHSA and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors<\/a> going back to 2020.<\/p>\n Two of LAist\u2019s articles were cited in the letter, including last year\u2019s reporting on LAHSA\u2019s former top official Va Lecia Adams Kellum<\/a>.<\/p>\n LAist discovered through public records requests that Adams Kellum signed a $2.1 million contract<\/a> and two other<\/a> contract amendments<\/a> with Upward Bound House, the Santa Monica-based nonprofit where her husband worked in senior leadership<\/a>. A LAHSA spokesperson told LAist at the time that the contracts had inadvertently ended up in front of Adams Kellum to sign.<\/p>\n The backstory<\/p>\n Earlier this year, federal prosecutors announced<\/a> a fraud case against the leader of a service provider who they accuse of pocketing at least $10 million in homelessness funds that flowed through LAHSA. <\/p>\n Top L.A. homeless service executives awarded at least $3.5 million in taxpayer contracts to the nonprofit even after their agency\u2019s compliance team flagged the group as high-risk for failing to do its job, according to an LAist review of public records<\/a>.<\/p>\n LAHSA and the Trump administration are also in a legal battle over federal homelessness funding<\/a>, after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity in June, citing<\/a> alleged mismanagement by the agency.<\/p>\n A federal judge granted<\/a> a preliminary injunction<\/a> on the suspension last month, with HUD Secretary Scott Turner vowing on social media<\/a> to \u201cfight this legally.\u201d<\/p>\n A trial is scheduled to start in February.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has been asked to testify before Congress for an investigation into \u201cpotential waste,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452686,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[1493,48,52,178854,51,6390,47,50,49,178855],"class_list":["post-452685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-homelessness","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-mayor-karen-bass","tag-la-news","tag-lahsa","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-the-house-of-representatives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}