The Brief

Three top L.A. homelessness officials have left their jobs in recent weeks, LAist has learned.

The exits at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) include the executives who oversaw finance and data. Public announcements were not made about most of the changes.

The departures are prompting questions about why people are leaving and whether there’s now a leadership vacuum that affects oversight of homeless services, according to interviews with city and county officials.

LAHSA’s leadership “parted ways” with two of the three executives “after careful consideration,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement to LAist.

The staffing shakeup comes as homelessness continues to dominate as a key issue for the public, including in the March 5 election. The city council has authorized unprecedented spending to try and address the problems, and has acknowledged major data gaps that hinder the city’s ability to track its progress.

About 33,000 people live outdoors in the city of L.A. as of the latest count that’s available — a number that has spiked sharply in recent years, and that L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has pledged to reduce.

Who’s out

The recent known departures started Jan. 22 with LAHSA’s top finance official, Kristina Dixon.

A few days later, on Feb. 1, came the exit of the agency’s data chief, Emily Vaughn Henry. She had a key leadership role over the agency’s crucial point in time counts.

And in recent days, the agency’s director of access and engagement, Brittnee Hill, departed.

“These are high-level, important positions,” said L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez, who’s on the council’s homelessness committee. She said she’s sorry to see these executives go, including Hill, whom Rodriguez said was working closely with her staff to connect people to housing.

Asked if LAHSA had informed her about the impact of these vacancies, Rodriguez said no.

“I have no indication or information that would help inform me what the circumstances or the impacts are going to be,” she said.

“There's always a lag when you have new people starting,” she added. “I have no clear insight on that.”

Vaughn Henry told LAist the loss of her job took her by surprise.

“It was devastating,” she said. “I did not expect this.”

The other recently departed executives — Dixon and Hill — could not immediately be reached for comment.

“[LAHSA CEO Va Lecia] Adams Kellum is committed to building a new LAHSA and looks forward to continuing to work with all of our partners to achieve our shared vision of bringing our unhoused neighbors home,” LAHSA leadership said in a statement provided by spokesperson Ahmad Chapman, regarding Dixon and Vaughn Henry’s departures.

Chapman said he was unable to say why LAHSA management parted ways with the two executives.

A nationwide search is underway for the top finance position, with Deputy Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey Samson filling in on an acting basis in the meantime, according to the statement.

Data management will temporarily be overseen by Bevin Kuhn, a senior advisor for IT and data, while the agency looks for a permanent replacement, the statement added.

The departures come as the county is preparing to audit LAHSA’s finances and its annual point in time count of people experiencing homelessness, with an eye toward possibly restructuring the often-criticized agency.

LAist also reached out to spokespeople for the top local officials overseeing homelessness and LAHSA: L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, county Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, and Supervisor Kathryn Barger, all of whom sit on LAHSA’s governing commission; as well as the five L.A. city council members on the council’s homelessness committee: Nithya Raman, Bob Blumenfield, Rodriguez, Marqueece Harris-Dawson and John Lee.

The only elected official who commented was Rodriguez.

A Bass spokesperson said the mayor did not have a comment. Raman's spokesperson said the council member didn't have a comment because she's not involved in day-to-day operations at LAHSA. Barger declined to comment through a spokesperson, and Blumenfield's spokesperson referred comment to Adams Kellum "as she builds her executive team."

County plans audits

Two areas that were under the purview of the recently-departed officials — finance and the annual point in time count — are set to be the focus of outside audits recently approved by county supervisors.

“As Los Angeles County continues to combat the humanitarian crisis that is homelessness, every entity that plays a role in ending the crisis must be challenged, evaluated, and supported to ensure optimal performance,” states a motion by Horvath and Barger to have county auditors examine LAHSA’s finances. It was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Board of Supervisors.

Horvath and Barger noted that the agency will be getting new financial leadership, and said the audit is meant to be helpful.

“The intention of this audit is to provide a clear and accurate picture of the financial health and practices of LAHSA to best inform incoming financial leadership and staff,” the motion states.

“Especially as executive financial leadership at LAHSA is changing, this audit will give incoming officers a head start on where to focus. We must dig into the details to expedite the homelessness solutions our communities deserve,” Horvath added in a statement Tuesday.

Adams Kellum, the LAHSA CEO, said she welcomes the audits.

“LAHSA is proactively making adjustments, including in key leadership positions, that will transform LAHSA’s financial infrastructure,” she said in a statement to LAist, adding they look forward to “working collaboratively and in partnership with the Auditor-Controller’s Office to improve our financial practices to serve our unsheltered neighbors better.”

‘Horrifying’ data problems

Problems with getting accurate data from LAHSA have long frustrated L.A. council members.

Vaughn Henry, as the agency’s former data chief, fielded questions from council members at a heated discussion about it in August.

During that meeting, council members learned the city may be paying for services that were never used, such as motel rooms that sat empty under a program they approved for $300 million.

“It’s just insanity,” Councilmember Rodriguez said at the time. “There's a fundamental problem with getting some very basic information here, and it's costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

Council members were particularly frustrated by missing data points about people who leave Inside Safe, a signature motel shelter program launched by Bass shortly after she took office in December 2022.

The nonprofits that serve unhoused people are supposed to log when unhoused people exit the motel room program. But that requirement was not enforced by LAHSA, which contracts with the providers and manages the data system. The agency’s system allows staff to “bypass” disclosing whether a person has left the program, Vaughn Henry told council members.

That means the city might not know if it’s paying for empty motel rooms after people leave, council members were told by Mercedes Marquez, who at the time was the mayor’s top homelessness advisor.

“That's horrifying,” Councilmember Blumenfield said at the meeting.

“So we could be paying for weeks for an empty room, when somebody left two weeks earlier, and we could be using that room to house somebody?” he asked.

Marquez acknowledged that could be the case.

“If there was nothing else that was being done, you would be absolutely correct,” Marquez said in response to Blumenfield’s question.

Council member says data problems remain 'merry-go-round from hell'

In an interview with LAist on Tuesday, Rodriguez said the same type of data problems remain unresolved.

“I'm still on the merry-go-round from hell,” she said, repeating a term she used at the August meeting.

“I think there's still a lack of really clear, measurable outcomes that we can concretely say, in terms of measuring the costs associated with it,” Rodriguez added.

“That has been a really big challenge and frustration of mine, to just get very clear data points, on what we're paying for.”

Two weeks from the midterm elections, Democratic Party leaders are suing in federal court to block President Donald Trump’s administration from usurping states’ authority to administer elections or trying to intimidate state and local election officials into complying with illegal demands.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Washington, seeks a court order barring the administration from purging legally registered voters from statewide voter registration lists or denying ballots to legally registered voters.

The plaintiffs, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, also ask for a ruling that the administration has illegally threatened state election officials with prosecution before the Nov. 3 election.

The lawsuit cites the Justice Department’s recent actions in California, where it sued to block state election officials from counting mail-in ballots cast by people whom the federal government has identified as “likely” noncitizens until their immigration status can be confirmed.

“For over a decade now, President Donald J. Trump has bombarded the American people with lies and misinformation about American elections and voter fraud,” the suit says. “While these lies have been debunked at every turn, that has never deterred the President from employing them as a pretext to seize control over elections, even as courts overwhelmingly reject that effort.”

The Justice Department said in a statement that election integrity is a top priority for the administration and the department’s actions on that front are grounded in law and under court litigation.

The Democratic leaders’ lawsuit was assigned to Chief Judge James Boasberg, who has been vilified by the White House for rulings against the Trump administration since the start of the Republican president’s second term.

The suit’s other plaintiffs are the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Governors Association. Its named defendants are Trump, the Justice Department, Attorney General Todd Blanche, the Department of Homeland Security and DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must continue providing gender-affirming care to transgender inmates in federal prisons.

The decision, in an emergency appeal, maintains a lower court's injunction on a federal Bureau of Prisons' policy that would terminate hormone therapy and other treatments for trans inmates.

The unsigned order offered no explanation behind the decision. It simply read, "The application for stay presented to The Chief Justice and by him referred to the Court is denied."

It also said Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito would side with the Trump administration and would grant the application for stay.

As the federal judge's injunction remains in place, the legal battle over the policy continues.

In January 2025, upon assuming office, Trump issued an executive order banning the use of federal funds that "promote" gender ideology. And prisoners brought a class action seeking reinstatement of the decades-long health policy. It contends that the Trump policy violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

A federal district judge barred the BOP from implementing its policy this summer.

A second court, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, also rejected the administration's request to pause U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth's order.

That's when U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

As the federal judge's injunction remains in place, the legal battle over the policy continues.

Li Nowlin-Sohl, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union and a lawyer involved in this case, said the organization believes there are more than 2,000 people in BOP custody who identify as transgender. (The BOP stopped publishing data reflecting transgender inmates after Trump took office in 2025. It only records male or female individuals incarcerated in the federal system.)

Kingdom v. Trump represents 1,000 inmates who have a gender dysphoria diagnosis, Nowlin-Sohl explained. Of those, the ACLU believes there are about 800 who have been prescribed hormone therapy and many who are also receiving social transition accommodations, Nowlin-Sohl said.

In its request for an emergency stay on the earlier rulings, the Trump administration argued that providing this care poses several risks, including for recipients of this specialized care, who it argued would become "targets for attacks." They also said that it raises "fairness concerns" as it would "breed resentment" with other inmates.

Access to gender-affirming care is considered medically necessary to treat gender dysphoria, a medical term used to describe the deep discomfort caused by a mismatch between a person's assigned sex at birth and their gender identity. Without it, individuals can struggle severely with mental health issues such as heightened anxiety and depression, with some turning to self-harm and suicide.

Gender-affirming care can include "...hormone therapy, and gender-affirming surgeries among others," according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health. (In its filings, the Trump administration questioned WPATH's standards of care, which were developed by experts in transgender health and used by organizations across the world.)

Some people who are transgender may require hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgeries; others may not require any of these interventions.

The BOP has treated people diagnosed with gender dysphoria since at least 1992, the ACLU said in response to the government's filings to the Supreme Court.

"Had BOP's doctors found this treatment unhelpful or harmful to patients or had the agency found that the treatment compromised security, surely BOP would have mentioned it in the administrative record," the ACLU wrote.

This is a "glaring omission" and appears to indicate that the government's arguments now are simply "contrived," the ACLU continued.

NPR previously covered the impact of the loss of hormone treatments on people who are incarcerated. One woman said she experienced severe physical and mental anguish when she lost access to hormone treatments.

The Supreme Court's decision is at odds with other rulings that support the Trump administration's anti-trans policy agenda.

Last June, the court ruled that states can ban transgender girls from participating in sports at publicly funded schools. And in 2025, the court upheld state laws that make it illegal for doctors and other health professionals to provide gender-affirming care for minors.

In one of his first executive orders of his second term, President Trump targeted the trans community with a declaration that his administration recognizes just two sexes, male and female. This order has been the basis for a host of anti-trans policies throughout the administration.

But at least for now, the emergency request on the prison policy was to no avail.

Waiting in the wings at the Supreme Court are other cases on transgender rights. Most prominently, the Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-trans group, has filed an emergency petition at the court on behalf of a mother and her teenage daughter who contend that the daughter was "unknowingly" forced to face a transgender opponent in girl's high school wrestling. Later this year, the court will hear oral arguments in a case testing whether a religious preschool can receive state funding while excluding LGBTQ families. In a separate case, the justices will examine whether parents have the right to challenge a state law that allows runaway teens to receive gender-affirming care without parental consent.

NPR Legal Affairs Correspondent Nina Totenberg contributed reporting.

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