VA Lecia Adams Kellum, head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Bureau, announced his resignation Friday a few days after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to deprive its agency of more than $300 million and hundreds of workers.
“It is the right time for me to take the key responsibility from Lahsa to La County,” Adams Kellum said in a letter to the agency’s committee on Friday afternoon.
Adams Kellum’s agency has slammed for months, pledging to stay for 120 days or more if needed.
Adams Kellum took over the helm of the institution in March 2023, when it was in the midst of historical growth, with new finance entering homeless programs but linkless criticism of separating services, poor accounting and ultimately unable to reduce the number of people on the streets.
As a former head of the Venice St. Joseph Center who helped transform it into a major provider of homeless services, Adams Kellum brought an experience to the work that has historically been in the hands of professional bureaucrats and vowed to address the agency’s record flaws.
She has a reputation for solving problems to manage the management of large-scale homeless camps developed on Venice Beach and Boardwalk during the pandemic. Based on that experience, she designed the internal security camp demolition plan for Mayor Karen Bass.
Yet, even as she claims to have successfully accelerated the agency’s contract process, improved data management and ensured a decrease in street homelessness over the past two years, her agency was the subject of strict audits, which in turn caused a buzz of growing structural changes.
Adams Kellum said in an interview with Times that she did not hold a new position but that she would remain in the homeless service.
“That’s my life mission,” she said. “I am firmly committed to addressing homelessness and helping prevent it and making sure it is rare, short-lived and no longer happening.”
Adams Kellum said she had hoped that at the last minute, her agency could “continue to sync with cities and counties and focus on promoting homeless people and reducing the omniscient homeless people with collaborative and real focus.
“I always hope we can continue to do this, but do it better and be different,” she said.
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Supervisors voted 4-0 to pass LAHSA funds on Tuesday and included it in a new county homeless bureau. The county provides $348 million (about 40% of the LAHSA annual budget) and pays an estimated 470 workers.
Under the board’s timeline, most of the money, and all of these workers, will be moved into the new county agency by July 1, 2026.
In recent weeks, Adams Kellum touted the work of her agency, including the county’s street homelessness cut by more than 5%, and the city last year exceeded 10%.
Before the vote Tuesday, the county supervisor gave her little chance to defend her agency. Chairman Kathryn Barger did not extend her detailed speech as a visiting official, but rather, Adams Kellum had done it frequently.
After she said 90 seconds, her microphone was cut off. “We fulfilled our promise,” she said.
Adams Kellum and her agent have been under fire for months. In response to the critical audit, she repeatedly acknowledged its flaws and described her mission as one of the reform issues she inherited from her previous government.
In her resignation letter, she outlined six achievements, including a master leasing program that quickly gained 772 units of housing support, a prepayment model to allow providers to obtain upfront funds and create a shelter retention system planned to launch in July.
“For years it has been called a problem in the system, not knowing where the opening is and how it affects the recommendations,” she said in an interview.
In November, the county’s auditor controller released a report that concluded, Lax accounting procedures Poor written contracts prevent Lahsa from recovering the millions of dollars it provided to the contractor for the 2017-2018 fiscal year. (Lahsa officials responded that full repayment will not be paid until 2027.)
Another audit requested by a federal judge involved in homeless services found Lahsa Lack of adequate financial supervision Ensure that their contractors provide the services they pay for. This makes the agency vulnerable to waste and fraud, the audit said.
Judge David O. Carter, who commissioned the audit, said she was in Boston and would not attend, and Carter said that it was “unacceptable to me.”
Adams Kellum sent a letter to the court outlining reforms to improve financial and contract supervision by his institutions.
Carter said at the hearing that Lhasa made a “meaningless” commitment. “Frankly, I can care less,” he said. “If they were to do that, they should, or now they should give you a roadmap…how they will do it.”
Adams Kellum also raised criticism for signing a $2.1 million contract between her agency and the nonprofit that hired her husband.
Bagh said Adams Kellum’s handling of the issue was “sloppy”, while others called it an obvious conflict of interest.
Adams Kellum said her contract signed in May 2024 was sent to her for mistakenly thinking of her electronic signature. LAHSA officials said the agency’s 10-member committee had signed the contract nine months ago. According to the minutes, Adams Kellum walked out of the room when the item appeared at that meeting.
