House Republicans Summon Mayor Karen Bass to Washington Over Former LAHSA Chief’s Husband Deal

HUD yanked a billion federal dollars from LA's homeless agency over rampant fraud this summer.

Now House Republicans are hauling Mayor Karen Bass to Washington to explain exactly where that money went.

A House subcommittee wants answers about a former LAHSA chief who steered a public contract to her husband's employer.

Burchett Wants Bass's Emails Going Back to 2020

Rep. Tim Burchett runs the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency.

He just summoned Bass to testify on September 15 at 11 a.m. in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building.

The hearing has a title that reads like an indictment: "Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services."

Burchett isn't asking Bass to just show up and talk.

He wants every email and communication between the mayor's office, LAHSA, and the LA County Board of Supervisors going back to 2020.

"Because Los Angeles officials have not adequately protected federal taxpayer dollars, it appears that many nonprofits to which those funds have been allocated are not using them for their intended purpose," Burchett wrote to Bass.

Then he twisted the knife.

"Homelessness has grown worse during your tenure as mayor," he told her directly.

He's not wrong.

Los Angeles County now counts 73,040 homeless people, with 45,194 of them inside the city Bass runs.

The Homeless Agency Bass Oversees Has a Nepotism Problem

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority has pulled in more than a billion federal dollars since 2021, including $220 million in 2024 alone.

Here's where that money actually went.

LAHSA's former CEO, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, reportedly signed a $2.1 million contract with a Santa Monica nonprofit where her husband held a senior leadership role.

Separately, one of LAHSA's largest contractors, 1736 Family Crisis Center, has pulled in $36 million in federal grants since 2008 – $25 million of that since 2021 alone.

Its CEO, Carol Adelkoff, collected $1.6 million in total compensation over two years, according to tax filings, while living in Hawaii.

Nobody at LAHSA can tell Congress what any of that money actually bought.

Federal Auditors Have Been Catching LAHSA Since George W Bush Was President

This isn't LAHSA's first rodeo with federal investigators.

A 2007 HUD Inspector General audit found the agency wasn't even conducting basic onsite fiscal monitoring of the groups it funded.

In 2019, then-City Controller Ron Galperin dug into a $54 million street outreach program and found a 4 to 6 percent success rate.

Auditors ruled the agency's own performance metrics "ill-defined and unverifiable."

By 2022, federal Judge David O. Carter was publicly accusing LA agencies of stonewalling his court over $600 million in missing homelessness funds.

The pattern held into last year.

A March 2025 forensic audit by Alvarez and Marsal examined $2.3 billion in LAHSA funding and found "nearly zero financial oversight or accountability by the city and county."

Of $50.8 million in emergency cash advances handed to homeless service providers, auditors verified only $220,000 had ever been paid back.

That's not a rounding error.

That's a taxpayer-funded slush fund with Karen Bass's name on the building.

HUD Already Pulled the Plug Once This Year

The Trump administration didn't wait for Congress to act.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner suspended nearly a billion dollars in funding to the LA Continuum of Care on June 11.

He cited false statements, missing documentation on roughly 2,300 supposed housing sites, and grant money spent before it was even received.

"HUD will fund results, not corrupt failure or the homeless industrial complex," Turner said.

Scott Brady, executive director of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, put it even blunter.

"For years, American taxpayers have been sending billions of dollars to Los Angeles to house the homeless," Brady said. "The result? Fraud and corruption. That ends today."

LAHSA's response to all of this was a shrug.

Agency spokesman Chris Yee claimed audits have "never found evidence of fraud or corruption" and that LAHSA has delivered "demonstrable progress."

Karen Bass's office wouldn't even return a reporter's phone call asking for comment.

Bass built her entire political career on compassion for the homeless.

In less than two weeks, she has to sit in front of Tim Burchett and explain, under oath, where the money actually went.

LAHSA already told Congress there's nothing to see here.

Burchett has the emails to say otherwise.

Sources:

• Bob Hoge, "Bass in the Hot Seat: House Republicans Want Answers on LA's Billion-Dollar Homelessness Bonanza," RedState, September 3, 2026.
• Tim Burchett, "Letter to Mayor Karen Bass," U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, September 2, 2026.
• U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, "HUD Cuts Off Fraud-Filled Los Angeles Homelessness Funding," HUD.gov, June 11, 2026.
• Jamie Paige, "LAHSA's 18-Year Record of Audit Failures on Homeless Spending Laid Bare in Federal Court," Westside Current, March 28, 2025.