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Va Lecia Adams Kellum, director of the Los Angeles Department of Homeless Services, announced his resignation Friday days after the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to strip the agency of more than $300 million in workers.
In a letter delivered to the agency committee on Friday afternoon, Adams Kellam said, “A shift in key responsibility from Lahasa to LA County is the right time to step down as CEO.”
Adams Kellam, who has been firing for several months by the agency, has promised to stay for more than 120 days, if necessary.
Adams Kellum took the helm of the agency in March 2023 when new funds flowed into the homeless program when it was in the middle of historic growth, but criticism has been growing for its inability to reduce the number of people on the streets, with segregated services, poor accounting and ultimately.
As the former head of St. Joseph’s Center in Venice, who helped her transform into a leading provider of homeless services, Adams Kellam has vowed to bring experience to work that has historically fallen into the hands of career bureaucrats and address the well-documented flaws of the institution.
She has given her reputation as a problem solver for managing the cleaning of large-scale homeless encampments that have grown on Venice’s beaches and boardwalks during the pandemic. She was believed to have designed Mayor Karen Bass inside the safe camp based on that experience.
But even if she succeeds in speeding up the agency’s contract process, improving data management, and ensuring reduced street homelessness over the past two years, her agency has been subject to a sharp and important audit, resulting in an increasing cry of structural change.
In an interview with Times Friday, Adams Kellam said she has not achieved a new position but will remain in the homeless service.
“That’s the mission of my life,” she said. “I remain very immovable in my commitment to dealing with homelessness, preventing it and helping to make sure it is rare, short and non-repeated.”
Adams Kellum said her agency was hoping to remain in sync with cities and counties, with a focus of supportive and true integrity in driving homelessness and reducing unsheld homelessness.
“We were hoping to continue doing that, but we were able to do better and different things at the end,” she said.
That wasn’t the case.
On Tuesday, the supervisor cast 4-0 votes to steal funds from Lahasa and put them in the new county homeless agency. The county will provide $348 million, or about 40% of Lahasa’s annual budget, paying an estimated 470 workers.
Under the board’s timetable, most of that money, and potentially all of those workers, will be moved to the new county agency by July 1, 2026.
In recent weeks, Adams Kellam has been promoting her agency work last year, including a decline in street homelessness in the county by more than 5% and a decline in city by more than 10%.
Before Tuesday’s vote, the county supervisor gave her the opportunity to protect her agency. Rather than extending her the courtesy of lengthy speaking as a visitor that Adams Kellam had previously done frequently, Chair Kathryn Berger only allowed an extra 30 seconds as a member of the public.
After she spoke for 90 seconds, her microphone was cut off. “We kept our promise,” she said after the county stopped broadcasting her words on their audio system.
Adams Kellam and her agency were under attack for months. In response to a critical audit, she repeatedly acknowledged the flaws and characterized her mission as one of the issues of reforms she inherited from her previous administration.
In her resignation letter, she outlined a half-dozen achievements, including a master lease program that quickly secured 772 units of supportive housing, a provider earning advances in funding and creating a shelter reservation system scheduled to be launched in July.
“This was known as a problem in a system where we didn’t know for years where the opening was or how it would affect the introduction,” she said in an interview.
In November, the county auditor ruler issued a report that concluded that the LAX accounting procedures and inadequately written contracts prevented Lahsa from recovering the millions of dollars it provided to contractors as a progression for the 2017-2018 fiscal year. (Rahasa officials responded, saying that full repayment is not planned until 2027.)
Another audit, requested by a federal judge overseeing cases involving homeless services, found that Rahasa does not have sufficient financial oversight to provide the services that are paid for by contractors to provide. This left agents vulnerable to waste and fraud, the audit said.
US District Judge David O. Carter, the judge who asked for the audit, criticized Adams Kellam for not showing up for the hearing that was discussed. She said she was in Boston and didn’t attend, Carter said it “can’t accept it for me.”
Adams Kellum sent a letter to the court outlined the reforms by the institution to improve financial and contract oversight.
At his hearing, Carter said Rasa had offered a “meaningless” promise. “And frankly, I couldn’t care much,” he said. “If they were going to do that, they should have done it, or they should have given you a roadmap now… how were they going to do that?”
Adams Kellum has also been criticised for signing a $2.1 million deal between her agency and Upward Bound House, a nonprofit that employs her husband.
Berger said the handling of Adams Kellam’s issue was “sloppy,” but others called it a clear conflict of interest.
Adams Kellum said the contract signed in May 2024 was sent to her for Electronic’s signature. Lahsa officials said a 10-member committee of the agency had already taken up the contract nine months ago. When the items came out at the meeting, Adams Kellam came out of the room, according to meeting minutes.
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