HUD Secretary Scott Turner Puts California’s Homeless Industrial Complex on Notice

U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner delivered a blunt message this week: the days of federal taxpayers bankrolling California’s failed and unaccountable homelessness bureaucracy are over.

In a video posted to X late Tuesday, Turner declared, “Today, HUD put the homeless industrial complex on notice.” The post accompanied footage of the secretary speaking at a press conference held at the faith-based Los Angeles Dream Center alongside Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“Today, we witnessed the heartbreaking realities of LA’s drug-fueled homelessness, and enough is enough,” Turner said. “Despite receiving billions in federal funding, homelessness in California has skyrocketed. Organizations like LAHSA that abuse taxpayer dollars to put its self-interests ahead of the vulnerable Americans it is supposed to serve will be held accountable. Under the leadership of President Trump and Vice President Vance, we are rooting out corruption and ensuring that those who need care are truly getting it. The days of funding corrupt failure are over. The Trump administration will not fund the Homeless Industrial Complex and longer.” 

Today, HUD put the homeless industrial complex on notice. pic.twitter.com/DJ4nItWMLC

— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) August 11, 2026

Turner emphasized the numbers that have defined Los Angeles’s crisis for years: in the last decade, HUD funding to the region nearly tripled while homelessness doubled. Federal Continuum of Care funding to Los Angeles has increased 178% since 2013, yet homelessness rose 100%. LAHSA, the joint city-county agency that has long served as the lead homelessness coordinator, has received more than $1 billion in federal taxpayer dollars since 2013 (nearly $1 billion in the last five years alone) while remaining the epicenter of the nation’s drug-fueled homelessness crisis. 

“They will not receive another cent of American taxpayer money until they can account for every single dollar,” Turner stated. “The numbers don’t add up. The very organization tasked with ending homelessness and equipped with billions of dollars shamelessly wasted them on corruption and mismanagement.” 

He cited LAHSA’s inability to verify nearly 2,300 housing sites it claimed responsibility for, failures to track spending on empty hotel rooms, conflict-of-interest issues involving a former CEO who directed more than $2 million to her husband’s nonprofit, and other documented mismanagement.

 Kennedy reinforced the administration’s shift away from systems that perpetuate dependency. “We cannot solve homelessness by funding systems that perpetuate it,” he said. “We will fund programs that get people off the streets, into treatment and recovery, and back to self-sufficiency. We will demand results, hold failing programs accountable, and fund what works.” 

Kennedy contrasted the Dream Center’s model—serving roughly 600 people in recovery for about $7,500 per person annually—with Los Angeles County’s estimated $185,000 annual cost to house one person. 

The press conference builds directly on HUD’s June 11 action suspending federal funding to LAHSA pending an Office of Inspector General investigation into alleged false statements, inadequate financial controls, conflicts of interest, and mismanagement. That suspension has already triggered litigation from the agency. 

This federal accountability push arrives against a backdrop California Globe has documented extensively. In July, this outlet reported that street homelessness in the City of Los Angeles surged nearly 8% in the latest annual count (overall homelessness up 3.4 percent), even as the city continues pouring roughly $1 billion a year into programs. The total homeless population in the city rose from about 43,699 in 2025 to approximately 45,194. 

City Controller data has repeatedly shown the city budgets more than $1 billion annually yet routinely underspends by hundreds of millions—nearly $473 million unspent in FY 2025 alone. Statewide, California has spent more than $37 billion on homelessness since 2019 under Governor Gavin Newsom—roughly $200,000 per homeless individual—while still accounting for one-quarter to one-third of the nation’s homeless population. 

Project Homekey funneled $745 million into Los Angeles-area projects, many of which sat empty. Audits have flagged waste, fraud, and poor controls at LAHSA and related entities for years. Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe program found it widely disliked by those it was meant to help, with many describing temporary hotel placements as dehumanizing way stations offering little path to recovery, jobs, or permanent housing. 41% of participants had returned to the streets. 

Turner made clear the administration’s preferred path prioritizes results over the status-quo “Housing First” model that has dominated California policy: combining housing with addiction and mental-health treatment, and reopening the door to effective faith-based providers long sidelined by ideology. 

“It’s not just housing. It’s not Housing First,” he said. “It’s the continuation of caring for men, women, children and families. … We’re interested, only interested, in real results, and that’s actually helping our fellow Americans get off the streets, out of addiction and on a path to self-sufficiency.” 

For years, California’s homelessness industrial complex has expanded bureaucracy, enriched criminals and nonprofits, and delivered tent cities and open-air drug markets in return for tens of billions in taxpayer dollars. Secretary Turner’s message this week was crystal clear: that era of unaccountable federal funding is ending.