A Cultural Anthropologist Ran LAHSA’s Finances While a ‘High-Risk’ Vendor Cashed In

Los Angeles officials approved millions of dollars in taxpayer contracts to a now-defunct homelessness nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, after their own compliance team labeled it “High-Risk” and delinquent, and they kept writing checks even after obtaining evidence of possible crimes. Alex Soofer, the CEO of Abundant Blessings, now faces federal charges that he pocketed at least $10 million. 

The findings come from a detailed investigation published Tuesday by LAist reporter Nick Gerda. According to LAist, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) designated Abundant Blessings “High-Risk” on May 6, 2024, after the group billed for services while reporting no enrolled participants on some contracts and failed basic billing and performance requirements. Yet, LAHSA commissioners still approved $2.6 million in renewals later that month. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass appointed herself and four others to the 10-person commission. Additional contracts followed in June and August 2024, including Inside Safe work directed by Mayor Karen Bass’s office. LAHSA canceled the contracts in October 2024—more than a year after billing without serving people on at least one deal. 

Prosecutors allege Alex Soofer, who led Abundant Blessings and a related for-profit contractor, Abundant Blessings From Above, siphoned at least $10 million through a fake board and a shell construction company. The money allegedly paid for a $7 million Westwood house, a $125,000 Range Rover, private-school tuition, private-jet travel, and luxury-resort stays. Soofer has pleaded not guilty. Combined, his entities received more than $5 million directly from LAHSA and more than $17 million as a subcontractor. LAHSA later settled with the group for $1.25 million without an admission of wrongdoing. 

Auditors found LAHSA broke federal law by waiting eight months to alert HUD and the HUD inspector general after obtaining credible evidence of possible crimes. Payments continued after that evidence existed. 

A cultural anthropologist as CFO

Overseeing much of the contracting and compliance apparatus was Janine Trejo, LAHSA’s chief financial officer. Her résumé and cover letter list a bachelor’s degree in cultural anthropology. LAHSA’s own CFO posting required a bachelor’s in accounting, finance, or management, plus an MBA and/or CPA and accounting coursework. Trejo had none of that. 

Amy Williams, a former LAHSA director of compliance, told LAist that Trejo was “not very well-seasoned” and “got thrust into this position as the CFO” with far more responsibility than she had previously held. Yet, CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum promoted Trejo after firing the prior CFO; the agency later paid that predecessor $450,000 to settle claims that included allegations of under-qualified hires. 

Despite the “High-Risk” designation, Trejo signed off on an August 2024 contract increase of about $770,000 for Abundant Blessings’ Inside Safe work. She left the agency in July 2026 after an extended leave of absence. Employee complaints about her treatment of staff appear in HR records. 

Public payroll records show Trejo herself collected $242,100 in base pay in 2024, plus other pay and benefits bringing her total compensation to nearly $300,000. 

Where the LAHSA CEO went—and her husband’s role

Adams Kellum led Mayor Bass’s transition team and designed Mayor Bass’s Inside Safe program per a no-bid $10,000/week consulting contract and signed multiple Abundant Blessings contracts as LAHSA CEO.

Transparent California payroll data show she earned $338,241 in total pay and benefits in 2023 (a partial year after starting in March) and $491,908 in 2024: $442,055 in base pay, $475 in other pay, and $49,378 in benefits. 

She announced her resignation in April 2025 and stepped down in July 2025 after Los Angeles County pulled its service dollars from LAHSA over oversight failures. Despite her failures, Bass publicly praised her leadership and “bold vision.”

In contemporaneous interviews she said she had not taken a new job but intended to remain in homeless services. No subsequent public appointment has been widely reported. 

Her husband, Edward Kellum, served as a senior executive, Director of Operations and Compliance, at Upward Bound House, a Santa Monica nonprofit that received LAHSA contracts. Adams Kellum signed a $2.1 million federal-funded contract and related amendments with that organization after stating she was recused. State conflict-of-interest rules generally bar officials from participating in contracts that financially benefit a spouse. LAHSA called the signatures an inadvertent error. 

The State Fair Political Practices Commission has examined the matter, but has yet to release their findings. HUD later cited the episode when it moved against the agency. 

The larger pattern California Globe has documented

This is not an isolated scandal. It sits inside years of LAHSA financial chaos that California Globe has covered as the homeless industrial complex consumed billions while street conditions worsened. Why solve homelessness if solving it would cause your unemployment and loss of a near $500,000 position and millions in contracts funneled to a homeless nonprofit that employs your spouse? 

City Controller Kenneth Mejia found Los Angeles left $513 million in homelessness funds unspent in fiscal 2024 and another $473 million the following year—nearly a billion dollars sitting idle across two cycles while encampments flourished. After those findings, his office then lost vacant audit and accounting posts in citywide deficit cuts, and a charter-reform proposal would shift most of the Controller’s day-to-day financial powers to a mayoral appointee — a move Mejia called an attempt to gut independent oversight.

County audits found LAHSA advanced tens of millions to providers without proper repayment agreements and could not verify thousands of housing sites. Bookkeeping was so fragmented that outside reviewers described payment processes as broken. The agency went years without completing internal audits. 

In June 2026 the Trump administration’s HUD, under Secretary Scott Turner, suspended federal funding to LAHSA pending an inspector-general investigation into false statements, missing conflict-of-interest safeguards, inability to account for housing sites, and related mismanagement. Turner has said HUD will not keep bankrolling “corrupt failure.” A federal judge later paused parts of the cutoff. County supervisors had already yanked their service dollars. 

As we reported on August 12, Turner declared the days of funding the homeless industrial complex over. Federal Continuum of Care dollars to Los Angeles rose 178% since 2013 while homelessness doubled. California has spent more than $37 billion statewide on homelessness since 2019 with little to show for the cost per person. 

KPMG’s spring 2026 review of LAHSA finance systems found fragmented processes and breakdowns that made vendor payments hard to track— the exact environment in which a high-risk contractor could keep receiving money after being flagged.

Soofer’s trial is scheduled to begin November 10, 2026. The LAHSA Commission next meets August 28. Interim CEO Gita O’Neill now leads an agency that has already lost its county funding stream and is fighting in court to keep federal dollars. 

Despite attempts to cover up or destroy public records, the facts are clear. Taxpayers funded the contracts. A cultural anthropologist signed off on the finance side. The CEO who executed the deals is gone—after her signature landed more than $2 million on the homeless nonprofit where her husband was a senior executive. A vendor LAHSA itself labeled “high-risk” is now federally charged, accused of treating homelessness money like a personal luxury account.

That is not a series of honest mistakes. It is a Democrat-led system that paid first, asked later, and protected its own. In Los Angeles, this kind of failure rarely ends a career. As illustrated by the LAHSA, documented failure is recycled, appointed, promoted, and protected by taxpayer dollars.