LAHSA Chief to Resign This Friday

Leadership Transition at LAHSA

Three months after submitting her resignation, Va Lecia Adams Kellum will officially step down as chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) on Friday. This announcement came on Monday, marking the end of an era for the joint city-county agency. Adams Kellum was appointed as the head of LAHSA in March 2023, but she announced her resignation in April, just days after the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to strip LAHSA of over $300 million and create a new county department focused on homelessness.

On July 11, the LAHSA Commission directed staff to begin pre-hiring procedures for an interim CEO. In her resignation letter, Adams Kellum stated that it was the “right time” for her to step down following the implementation of recommendations from the 2020 Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness. These recommendations called for shifting key responsibilities from LAHSA to a centralized department.

“I am incredibly proud of LAHSA’s talented and dedicated staff and deeply grateful for their tireless work. I thank them and the Commission for the opportunity to serve as CEO and for our partnership in reducing homelessness in our region,” Adams Kellum wrote in her letter.

Wendy Gruel, Chair of the LAHSA Commission, emphasized that when the commission hired Adams Kellum in 2023, it was with the expectation that she would be an “agent” of change. In a statement, Gruel highlighted that Adams Kellum has delivered “significant improvements” in areas such as transparency, contracting, provider payments, and accountability.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass credited Adams Kellum as the architect of Inside Safe, a program designed to resolve street encampments and bring people into temporary housing. Despite the challenges of the current system, Bass noted that Los Angeles is bucking the national trend of rising homelessness, with a decline in street homelessness for the first time in over six years.

Under Adams Kellum’s leadership, the agency reported a reduction in unsheltered homelessness for a second consecutive year. The annual point-in-time homeless count showed a 4% decrease in homeless people across the county, while in the city of Los Angeles, there was a 3.4% drop. The 2025 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count revealed a 9.5% decline in unsheltered homelessness in the county compared to the previous year, with a 14% drop over the last two years. Additionally, there has been an 8.5% increase in unhoused individuals entering interim housing.

In the city of Los Angeles, unsheltered homelessness declined by 7.9% in 2025, with a 17.5% drop over the last two years. LAHSA reported a 4.7% increase in unhoused individuals entering temporary housing in the city. The homeless count was conducted over three days, Feb. 18-20, after being postponed in January due to devastating wildfires that affected parts of L.A. County and the city.

The new county agency is expected to be in place by Jan. 1, with Measure A — the 2024 half-cent tax to fund homelessness and housing efforts — funding pulled from LAHSA and transferred to the new department by July 1, 2026. Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Janice Hahn have led efforts to establish this new department.

In response to the 2025 homeless count, Horvath acknowledged the progress made but stressed the need for more action. “But 72,308 people are still living without permanent shelter. We can, and must, do more,” Horvath said in a statement. She emphasized that the county’s new homelessness department will meet the urgency of the moment, aiming to streamline services, break through bureaucracy, and deliver results across all 88 cities and unincorporated communities.

Homelessness in the county in 2019 stood at 58,936 people, with the city of Los Angeles accounting for a majority of that figure with 35,550 individuals. In 2024, LAHSA recorded 75,312 homeless people in the county, with 45,252 of them in the city. In 2025, those figures further dropped to 72,308 homeless people in the county, with about 43,669 of them in the city.

LAHSA was created in 1993 to address homelessness in Los Angeles County. It was the lead entity to coordinate and manage federal, state, county, and city funds for shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness throughout the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, which encompasses all cities in the region—except for Long Beach, Pasadena, and Glendale.

The agency has faced criticism for its lack of transparency and spending millions without effectively addressing the homelessness crisis. These criticisms intensified following scathing audits. Recently, L.A. city officials questioned some last-minute revisions in the 2025 count after the agency disclosed that several hundred interim housing units were incorrectly tagged as being in the city’s jurisdiction by LAHSA’s new housing inventory system.

Audits have also found that the agency provided dollars to nonprofit service providers in past years without formal agreements to determine how and when the funds would be repaid. LAHSA has taken steps to recoup that money. A court-ordered audit found that the agency made it impossible to accurately track spending or the performance outcomes of its vendors. The agency has committed to improving data tracking and has released tools on its website to do so.

LAist also reported on alleged ethics violations by Adams Kellum when she signed off on a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer. Adams Kellum has denied any wrongdoing. The agency contracted Norton Rose Fullbright as outside counsel in March to conduct an independent review of allegations. Norton Rose Fullbright concluded its three-month review and determined that Upward Bound House was already a LAHSA subcontractor, specifically for U.S. Housing and Urban Development Continuum of Care programs, before Dr. Adams Kellum became LAHSA’s CEO. LAHSA officials have disputed the findings of these audits and urged officials to continue their partnership.