The Trump administration has blocked federal funds for the homeless in Los Angeles

from Marissa KendallCalMatters

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

The Trump administration has barred Los Angeles County’s main homeless agency from accessing federal funds while it investigates alleged “reckless mismanagement of public funds.”

The move puts at risk nearly $200 million that service providers in the Los Angeles area rely on to help California’s largest homeless population.

In a a letter On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development accused the Los Angeles agency of fraud while also accusing it of failing to reduce homelessness. The agency failed to record when people left their motel accommodations, misused state money by using it to pay for services provided under another contract and failed to provide documentation to prove the existence of homes it was responsible for, according to HUD. The Los Angeles agency has been suspended from participating in federal funding competitions until HUD’s Office of Inspector General completes its investigation.

“Taxpayers will no longer fund an organization that puts its own interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in news release.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority is a joint city census agency that has led the Los Angeles area’s fight against homelessness since 1990. It faces a countless problems recently, leading even local officials to withdraw their trust – and their money – from the agency. After two critical audits found that the Office of Homeless Services was not properly tracking its costs or results, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors pulled its money and moved it to a newly created county agency. The head of the beleaguered homelessness services authority, who has been criticized for signing contracts non-profit related to her husband resigned. In April, the government fired 284 people.

But despite this turmoil, the Office of Homeless Services is still officially the lead homeless agency in the Los Angeles region and receives federal homeless funding on behalf of the city, county and nonprofit service providers.

Last year, the authority received almost 200 million dollars in federal funds through the Continuum of Care program – the largest source of federal funding for homelessness.

Blocking that funding could jeopardize the work the agency has already done to combat homelessness by putting thousands of formerly homeless people back on the street, the Los Angeles Office of Homeless Services said in a statement.

“This seems like a blatant attempt to pull more resources from Los Angeles, a city they have targeted time and time again, when it is clear that LAHSA has either corrected or is in the process of correcting almost all of the issues raised,” spokesman Ahmad Chapman said in a statement

The authority is fixing its internal controls, modernizing its financial system and doing a better job tracking its work, Chapman said. His immediate priority is to “explore all available options” to ensure federal funds keep coming to Los Angeles.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said that while she shares HUD’s concern about the homeless authority, threatening its funding does nothing to house people.

“In the end, people will lose their lives,” she said in a statement. “We urge HUD to work with the City of Los Angeles to provide the necessary funding to reduce homelessness.”

Homelessness has actually started to improve recently in Los Angeles County, with the number of unhoused people dropping out in 2024 and 2025, according to the current census. As of last year, there were about 72,000 homeless people in the county.

Still, the Trump administration is trying to overhaul how Los Angeles and other places in California deal with homelessness. The administration wants to shift funds from permanent housing to temporary shelters and prioritize housing programs that require sobriety.

Earlier this month, HUD opened this year’s application for federal homelessness funding through the Continuum of Care program that laid out these changes. The National Alliance to End Homelessness evaluates these changes could cost California nearly $238 million in permanent housing funding, which could mean nearly 15,000 people would lose their homes.

California sued because of a previous attempt by the Trump administration to make such changes. This case is still ongoing.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.