Cal DOGE, Jenny Rae La Roux, Steve Hilton, stand in front of empty renovated Project Homekey apartment building. (Photo: stevehiltonforgovernor.com)
CalDOGE Uncovers $745M Spent on Newsom’s Project Homekey Homeless Housing in LA, and it’s Empty
Why isn’t the California Attorney General prosecuting any of these cases?
By Katy Grimes, March 24, 2026 5:00 am
When so many watchdog journalists like Nick Shirley, James O’Keefe and CalDOGE’s Jenny Rae LaRoux are on the front lines locating and exposing significant state fraud, Congress just announced it is launching an investigation into California hospice fraud, citing millions in taxpayer losses, CBS just reported Monday.
Why isn’t California Attorney General Rob Bonta prosecuting any of these cases?
Instead AG Bonta has filed more than 55 vanity lawsuits against President Donald Trump, most of which he loses. That’s not a responsible return on investment for California taxpayers – as if we had any choice.
But Bonta is part of the Newsom administration, and Gov. Gavin Newsom has spent $37 billion on homelessness since 2019, yet undercounts the homeless, according to the California Legislative Analyst’s Office 2025-2026 budget overview.
According to the state’s California Interagency Council on Homelessness (Cal ICH), California’s 44 Continuum of Care Programs collectively provided services to about 337,000 homeless people (unduplicated) during calendar year 2023, and 310,000+ people in 2024, although complete data for 2024 was not yet available.
In 2019 when Governor Newsom took office, California had roughly 134,000 homeless people living on the streets, amounting to one-quarter of the nation’s total homeless population. He managed to increase the “unhoused” population to nearly 350,000 homeless drug addicts.
337,000 homeless drug addicts living on California streets is the size of California’s 11th largest city.
Most recently, California DOGE uncovered a dubious homeless housing project in Los Angeles. The developer bought the land for $337,000. Re-development cost $18 million. The developer then sold it back to Los Angeles for $48.9 million pocketing over $30 million “That is a scam, and it’s just one building,” according to gubernatorial candidate Steve Hilton.
According to Jenny Rae Le Roux who heads up CalDOGE, “California spent nearly $24 billion on homelessness in five years. During that time, the number of people living on the streets rose 53 percent.”
No matter how man billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent, many buildings sit empty.
CalDOGE exposing the homeless industrial complex in action—the WASTE, FRAUD & ABUSE California taxpayers have been funding for years under the current regime!
The Atlas Building scam:
Developer buys land for $337k → spends $18M 'developing' → flips it to LA for $48.9… https://t.co/mAKCEi5Mil— Steve Hilton For Governor (@TeamSteveHilton) March 22, 2026
“$3.78B of that funding flowed through Project Homekey, a state program launched in 2020 that used emergency executive authority to buy and convert hotels, motels, and other buildings into homeless housing. Gov. Gavin Newsom championed Homekey as a signature initiative.”
By 2022, Project Homekey provided local governments about $2.8 billion total to sustain 12,676 housing units across the state. Homekey really was more of a low-income housing program.
La Roux reported that the state’s own auditor found that California funds more than 30 homeless programs but tracked outcomes for almost none of them. The state stopped counting in 2021.
She said “Of the $3.78 billion California awarded through Project Homekey, more than $1.3 billion went to Los Angeles alone — and more than half of the housing it bought sits empty. An estimated $745 million in taxpayer funds is tied up in vacant units with no accountability for filling them and no measurable reduction in homelessness.”
“This is a bipartisan issue – Democrats and Republicans alike think it is inhumane and lawless for homeless encampments to flood our streets,” La Roux told the Globe. “Now that we’re finding out that billions have been spent on units for the homeless that sit empty, the only reasonable response from every Californian is outrage.”
CalDOGE explains:
LA County spent $550 million on 32 Homekey buildings. More than 71 percent of the rooms are vacant — 1,538 empty rooms out of 2,157, representing roughly $392 million in idle spending.
The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA) spent more than $810 million to buy roughly 2,750 units across 38 buildings. More than 1,200 of those units were still vacant two years after purchase — another $353 million sitting empty. That’s an estimated $745 million in properties sitting empty, with no accountability for filling them or reducing the number of homelessness
In August 2024, the California Department of Housing and Community Development reported on Project Homekey spending:
Since the program’s inception in 2020, Homekey has awarded $3.6 billion to support 259 projects that will include 15,850 homes, projecting to serve more than 172,000 California households over the life of the projects.
That’s roughly an average of $227,130 per Project Homekey “home.” Imagine the treatment a homeless drug addict could have received for even half of that amount.
And, as CalDOGE reports, the typical apartment vacancy rate across Los Angeles County is roughly 5 percent. The Homekey vacancy rate is more than ten times that at around 55 percent.
La Roux continued:
The program was exempted from local permitting and environmental review under AB 83, allowing the state to move money quickly — but with virtually no oversight in place to track where it went. The typical apartment vacancy rate across Los Angeles County is roughly 5 percent. The Homekey vacancy rate is more than ten times that at around 55 percent.
Across Los Angeles County, the pattern is the same: taxpayers paid top dollar, years in advance, for buildings that now sit empty. Why isn’t housing that was paid for in full, that is sitting empty, not housing the homeless?
Where this gets interesting is in the numbers:
- At 1654 W. Florence Ave., a developer bought the land in 2017 for $337,000.
- Housing Authority City of LA paid $48.9 million for the building on that lot built by developer Linc Housing.
- The five-story building has 127 total apartments, including 60 for chronically homeless renters and 66 for those at risk of becoming homeless.
- The criteria for determination is unclear. Moreover, the property was initially meant to just be a standard development with 13 affordable units developed by Haroni Investments.
Experts consulted by the Westside Current said construction costs for comparable buildings average $150 to $250 per square foot, bringing the valuation to around $18 million. Even at $400 per square foot, the Santa Monica benchmark, the developer would have cleared a comfortable profit given the location, minimal land costs, no subterranean parking and exemption from environmental review.
LaRoux said they calculated that $18 million was spend renovating the Florence Ave project based on construction costs during this period.
She also noted that the homeless in LA could have been housed in existing housing, rather than the Florenace Avenue boondoggle.
As CalDOGE reports, the empty buildings are not just bad deals. Project Homekey is lining the pockets of developers with no accountability.
CalDOGE reports that in April 2025, Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli launched the Homelessness Fraud and Corruption Task Force. It covers seven Southern California counties. The FBI, IRS Criminal Investigation and the HUD Inspector General are all part of it.
Three arrests have been made so far. Essayli has described the cases announced as “the tip of the iceberg” and said his office is tracking “billions of dollars of public money” across the region.
Where in the world is AG Rob Bonta? Because as every voter knows, the California Attorney General is responsible for ensuring that state laws are uniformly enforced, serving as the chief legal counsel for the state, and overseeing the California Department of Justice.
Visit CalDOGE frequently for updates and new fraud reports.
A California native and Navy mom, Katy lives in Sacramento, CA.
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Argghhh. Tired of these stories of abuse and waste, especially as we pay out of this world property and income taxes while our governor parades around the sycophant media.
Did I read that right? WE provided homeless services to twice as many homeless as exist in the state? How in the world can these people look themselves in the mirror?
PUH-LEEZ with the “Project Homekey” and the rest of it. People who were paying attention knew from the beginning that this was an absurd, ridiculous, and nonsensical response to street homelessness, long known to be approx. 90% addicts and mentally ill. And I don’t believe that any citizen action against this crap would have made a bit of difference.
When this B.S. began there were plenty who were calling it out, as I recall, and there was even press coverage exposing it, as I recall. Our city, county, and state “leaders” went barrelling ahead anyway, heedlessly and unstoppably, buying up motels, building ‘homeless housing,” and the rest of it; meanwhile knowing full well that putting drug addicts and mentally ill out of sight and out of mind is clearly not helpful to them and does NO GOOD whatsoever, unless one considers lining the pockets of scumbag developers and similar to be a GOOD thing. But this obvious criminal operation engaged in by politicians was addicting to THEM, there was always too much money in it for THEM.
Wishing success to Steve Hilton’s campaign and his exposure, with Cal DOGE’s La Roux, of this unholy, disgusting, corrupt, crooked mess. And of course it’s only one mess of so many many many in California.
Katy, you are correct in that this program has enjoyed bipartisan support. There have been City, County and State officials involved in this program. If these allegations as described by Cal Doge are fully investigated as described by the attached video in your article lots of people up and down the State will be implicated in this corruption. Since 2020 there have been 259 hotels in the State of California renovated to the tune of 3.6 billion dollars. This is just not a Los Angeles problem. keep exposing the grift
Katy Grimes didn’t say that program has enjoyed bipartisan support, it was Jenny Rae Le Roux who heads up CalDOGE that told the Globe that it was without providing any support to back it up. Democrats control the state government and all of the cities in California where homelessness is a major problem, and if they thought it’s inhumane and lawless for homeless encampments to flood our streets, then they wouldn’t allow it in the first place? They would have ensured that taxpayer money allocated for the Homekey program was tracked and spent appropriately?
Katy Grimes asked where in the world is AG Rob Bonta? He’s too busy attacking constitutionally protected 2nd Amendment rights while protecting criminal thugs, pedos and illegal aliens. He’s another corrupt Democrat lawyer with ZERO ethics who is too busy pushing the deep-state globalist agenda.
TDS Bonta is too busy harassing ICE to look into the California criminal abuses happening right under his own nose. His future had early promise, but his own partisan hubris took himself down. He put party loyalty – Democrats can do no wrong – ahead of doing what is right for the taxpayers of this state.
Mental Health Services Act (MHSA) was passed by voters years ago, raising billions of dollars.
This was sold to Califonria voters to compensate for the ACLU-forced closure of our remarkable string of state care institutions which had long kept many of this current “homeless” population the streets and into treatment.
Where is our full accounting for those MHSA funds voters dedicated to get this group of “homeless” off the streets? Who got that steady flow of tax dollars, and when do we get ll that money back for failure to accomplish as single darn thing? Only thing I had heard was it was funding yoga lessors, to relieve the stress of those threatened with homelessness.
Show us the money, Newsom. Show us the results. Show us the lessons learned. Show us the best practices. What happened to the Mental Health Services Act billions of dollars collected after its passage?
Take these wasted billions of dollars and buy up the entire abandoned town of Trona, California. Anyone “unhoused” in California is offered the opportunity to reside in Trona. End of discussion. Take it or leave the state.
Cal DOGE using AI oversight of all state programs, means no more health care benefits and pensions required for this new wave of AI “government over sight employees”. Paper pushing drones who produce unaccountable work products, are the first to be replaced by a super-efficient and non-complaining machines.
Just need some electricity and occasional maintenance. And when the AI machine “retires, their only cost is their dump disposal fees. California pension bomb crisis solved – use AI to replace the hordes of totally ineffectual government overnight employees. Health insurance companies using union represented government employees as their their private cash cows, plummets too.
Talking to AI has already been proven to be more competent, warm, friendly and helpful than getting dumped into an Indian Call Center doom loop and wasting hours being placed on hold……..” due to a high volume of unexpected calls”
Katy Grimes didn’t say that program has enjoyed bipartisan support, it was Jenny Rae Le Roux who heads up CalDOGE that told the Globe that it was without providing any support to back it up. Democrats control the state government and all of the cities in California where homelessness is a major problem, and if they thought it’s inhumane and lawless for homeless encampments to flood our streets, then they wouldn’t allow it in the first place? They would have ensured that taxpayer money allocated for the Homekey program was tracked and spent appropriately?
Katy Grimes asked where in the world is AG Rob Bonta? He’s too busy attacking constitutionally protected 2nd Amendment rights while protecting criminal thugs, pedos and illegal aliens. He’s another corrupt Democrat lawyer with ZERO ethics who is too busy pushing the deep-state globalist agenda.
Government employee union member “social justice warriors” screaming on demand for more, more more, are the equivalent of the Hecklers Veto. Using noise and theater to get their own demands paid off. in full.
Anit-ICE Ready Response teams, funded by “someone” is just more of the same old same old. The Hecklers Veto.
Patrick Bateman aka Gavin Newsom is not done wasting all of our hard earned tax dollars!
He has an unquenched thirst to bleed us dry! It will never be solved and more money will be wasted.
We have had to endure this fool and his supermajority for years!
When will enough be enough?
Don’t forget about the billions Gavin sank into community college housing projects for homeless students. The money dried a couple of years ago – before many of the new dorm construction projects were completed. Even in state chancellor Sonya Christian’s home district – the Kern Community College District – the board of trustees shifted budget dollars that could/should funded classes and faculty to cover construction costs for a dorm at Bakersfield College that will house a mere 100-200 students (of the 20,000+ who attend Bakersfield College).
It’s one of Sonya Christian’s pet projects she used to get her job as state chancellor.