Congress Asked LA Mayor Karen Bass to Explain a Billion Dollars in Homeless Spending.
Her Office Said She's Not Available.
On September 2, 2026, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN), chairman of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, sent a four-page letter to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D). It asked for records by September 14 and for Bass herself to testify September 15 at a hearing titled “Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services.”
On September 7, RedState reported the mayor's answer. Bass's legal counsel, David Michaelson, told the committee: “Unfortunately the mayor is not available on that date.” No further explanation. No rescheduled date offered.
The request was for voluntary testimony, not a subpoena, so Bass is under no legal compulsion to show up. But the money the committee wants explained is real, and so is the paper trail: a homelessness agency that HUD itself says made “repeated false statements,” a $513,000,000 pile of unspent budgeted funds, and nonprofit executives paid well into seven figures while the city's homeless count keeps climbing.
- $1,000,000,000+ — in federal funds LAHSA has received since 2021, including $220 million in 2024 alone · Source: House Oversight Committee, Burchett letter
- $513,000,000 — in budgeted homelessness funds LA failed to spend in fiscal year 2024 · Source: LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia audit, Nov. 2024
- $1,600,000 — combined 2023–2024 compensation for 1736 Family Crisis Center CEO Carol Adelkoff, including a $495,000 bonus in 2023 · Source: LA Times, Aug. 6, 2026
- $300,000,000 — in county grant funding LA County voted to divert away from LAHSA in 2025 over “glaring financial management deficiencies” · Source: LA County Board of Supervisors
- Sept. 15, 2026 — date of the House Oversight hearing Bass's office said she isn't available to attend · Source: RedState, Sept. 7, 2026
Burchett's letter went out on committee letterhead carrying the names of full committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and ranking member Robert Garcia (D-CA). Subcommittee ranking member Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) sits on the panel as well — this is not a one-party effort, even if the letter itself came from a Republican chairman. The hearing is scheduled for 11 a.m. in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building, over a week after Bass's counsel gave the committee its answer.
LAHSA — the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, a joint City of LA and LA County agency — issued its own statement to ABC7 on September 4, saying it “welcomes a congressional review” and that “previous investigations found no evidence of fraud.” Bass's office has not said whether or when she will appear. What it has said, through counsel, is that September 15 doesn't work.
HUD delivered the harshest verdict on LAHSA's own bookkeeping. In a June 11, 2026 letter suspending further federal funding, HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew Hughes told LAHSA CEO Gita O'Neill that the agency showed “repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest.” The conflicts weren't hypothetical: LAist reported in February 2025 that then-CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum had signed a $2.1 million LAHSA contract with Upward Bound House — the organization that employs her husband, though an outside investigation LAHSA itself commissioned later found no wrongdoing tied to that specific contract.
The pay at the top of one grantee drew its own scrutiny. The LA Times reported August 6, 2026, that 1736 Family Crisis Center — which has drawn more than $36 million in federal grants since 2008, including $25 million from LAHSA since 2021 — paid its CEO, Carol Adelkoff, who lives in Hawaii, $1,600,000 combined across 2023 and 2024, including a $495,000 bonus in 2023 alone. LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia (currently registered Green Party) found a different problem the same season: his November 2024 audit determined the city failed to spend $513,000,000 of its own budgeted homelessness funds in fiscal year 2024, even as the crisis on the street continued.
A court-ordered audit by Alvarez & Marsal, commissioned under federal Judge David O. Carter's oversight of the city's homelessness spending, examined $2.4 billion in city funding and found LA “failed to verify whether the services invoiced were provided” — meaning the city couldn't confirm it got what it paid for. LA County reached its own conclusion independently: in 2025, the county Board of Supervisors voted to divert $300,000,000 in grant funding away from LAHSA, citing “glaring financial management deficiencies.”
“There's no question that taxpayers need to understand where their money has been going.”
Steve Hilton, California gubernatorial candidate, quoted by The Gateway Pundit
Two other legal threads involve LAHSA money but are not part of Burchett's inquiry and shouldn't be read as if they were. Judge Carter has separately, in the unrelated L.A. Alliance for Human Rights lawsuit, partially blocked HUD's funding suspension with a preliminary injunction — a different case, on a different track. And the Justice Department has criminally charged a nonprofit leader unaffiliated with LAHSA's leadership, from an organization called Abundant Blessings, with pocketing roughly $10 million in LAHSA-adjacent funds — a separate prosecution of a separate defendant, useful only as evidence of how loosely the money has moved through the system, not as a charge against Bass or LAHSA's own executives.
Burchett's letter makes an argument beyond the paperwork: it says homelessness has grown worse during Bass's tenure even as the city and county keep funding “Housing First” and harm-reduction programs that Republicans on the subcommittee say don't address why people end up on the street in the first place. That's the committee's framing, not an independently audited figure in this reporting — but it's the case the chairman is making for why oversight of the spending model, not just the bookkeeping, belongs in the hearing room.
Mayor Karen Bass (D) — Mayor of Los Angeles; declined the committee's September 15 hearing date through counsel.
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) — Chairman, House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency; sent the Sept. 2 letter.
Rep. James Comer (R-KY) — Chairman, full House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) — Ranking member, full House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) — Ranking member, DOGE subcommittee.
Kenneth Mejia (currently registered Green Party) — LA City Controller; his Nov. 2024 audit found $513 million in unspent budgeted homelessness funds.
Congress asked a mayor overseeing more than a billion dollars in federal homelessness spending to come explain, on the record, where it went. Her answer was that the date doesn't work. Nobody has been charged with a crime over LAHSA's books — but HUD itself says the agency made false statements, the city's own controller found half a billion dollars sitting unspent, and the county has already started pulling its money out. Skipping the hearing doesn't make any of that untrue.
