He uncovered wasteful LA homelessness spending. He was just demoted, without explanation

Since joining the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s governing commission nearly two years ago, Justin Szlasa has pushed — often uphill — for stronger auditing, transparency and oversight of the troubled agency.

He visited an approved camping site for unhoused people — and discovered the agency, known as LAHSA, had spent more than a year paying a nonprofit to serve twice as many camping spots than actually existed.

He organized a day-long summit focused on how L.A. could shift its funding of homeless services so that contractors are paid for positive results. And for the past year he served as chair of LAHSA’s audit committee, where he pushed for more independence for internal auditors and pressed LAHSA to finish a years-long audit into its failure to spend $7 million in federal grants.

Last week, Szlasa was removed as chair of the three-member committee, without explanation. The move has generated criticism at a time when LAHSA remains under strict scrutiny — and the threat of losing federal and city funding — just two months before the general election.

“Justin has been the lifeline for any viable future for LAHSA,” said Rick Cole, a former top deputy in the L.A. City Controller’s office, which audits city tax dollars.

“He’s pushed for the kind of transparency and accountability that everyone has wanted from that agency for 30 years,” Cole added. “And the absence of it is what has led to its imminent downfall.”

Although he is no longer its chair, Szlasa remains a member of the three-person audit committee. Losing the position means he no longer has authority to decide when and whether proposals will be scheduled for discussion and action. Szlasa said the chair also takes the lead in overseeing LAHSA’s internal audit staff in between the monthly committee meetings.

In an interview, Szlasa said he asked to stay on as audit chair, and was denied without being given a reason.

“I’m disappointed,” he said. “ I really took a very athletic approach to my work as chair. If we did a good job on that committee, we would be stepping towards the transparency, the accountability, the operational excellence that LAHSA really needs and the citizens of Los Angeles really deserve — whether they're housed or unhoused.”

No explanation for the removal

Szlasa was removed from his post as audit chair at the request of Stephanie Graves, an appointee of L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

Graves is the new chair of LAHSA Commission, whose 10 members govern the agency. The audit committee is a subset of the larger commission, and its members are tasked with overseeing an annual federally-required audit, as well as internal audits meant to root out oversight problems.

Graves recommended Szlasa’s removal as audit chair last week as part of her request for new committee assignments. The full commission approved her recommendations Friday.

LAist asked Graves why she recommended removing Szlasa. She said it was her “prerogative” as chair of the full commission. She has not explained her reasoning.

“Szlasa continues to be on the Audit Committee and his insights are valuable,” Graves said in a text message.

Stephanie Graves, the newly-selected chair of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) Commission, speaks at the press briefing for the 2026 homeless count results in Los Angeles on July 24, 2026.

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A spokesperson for Bass echoed Graves’ response, saying the appointments in question “are determined by the LAHSA Commission Chair and subject to the confirmation of the full Commission.”

Neither the Mayor’s Office nor Graves have answered whether Bass directed Szlasa’s removal or discussed it with Graves before she made her recommendation.

Bass has directed LAHSA outside of public view in the past, including by ordering it to contract with one of her mayoral transition advisors — Va Lecia Adams Kellum — as a $40,000-per-month consultant to design the mayor’s homelessness program Inside Safe.

Adams Kellum became LAHSA’s CEO just after the consulting contract ended in 2023. She left LAHSA last summer.

Graves also was on the mayor’s transition team and attended a meeting of Bass’ re-election campaign’s finance committee last year, according to a campaign disclosure. Graves runs a PR firm that has taxpayer-funded contracts overseen by Bass and her appointees.

Cole, who also serves as a Pasadena City Council member, said Szlasa’s removal is part of a “cover-up” of dysfunction at LAHSA.

“Mayor Bass hand-picked her choice to head LAHSA, who led directly to its downward tailspin,” Cole said, referring to Adams Kellum. “So it’s not surprising that her appointee [Graves] would be continuing the ongoing cover-up of dysfunction at the agency.”

LAist reached out to both Bass and Graves for reaction to Cole’s comments, but has not received a response.

Fixing 'dysfunction' at LAHSA

Cole said Szlasa has been trying to fix the dysfunction that has led to problems at LAHSA.

Among those problems was $10 million in LAHSA funds alleged to have been illegally pocketed by the leader of a service provider, according to federal prosecutors.

Last week, LAist reported that LAHSA approved at least $3.5 million in taxpayer contracts to that group — Abundant Blessings — even after LAHSA’s compliance team flagged it as “High-Risk” for failing to do its job.

“The failures that [LAist has] been exposing…Justin [Szlasa] has been trying to fix those things since he got appointed,” said Cole, who was high up at the City Controller’s Office when it launched a fraud investigation into a tip that Abundant Blessings was failing to provide the required three nutritious meals per day in Bass’ Inside Safe program.

The Controller’s Office investigators found that “the only food items at these sites were things like Ramen noodles, cans of beans, and breakfast bars,” according to the federal criminal complaint filed this year.

“He’s not a grandstander,” Cole said of Szlasa. “He’s not holding press conferences.  He’s not exposing individual people to ridicule. He’s trying to implement basic systems of data and financial management that a billion-dollar agency desperately needed, and which were grossly lacking.

“To isolate, ignore or punish Justin is so short-sighted."

Commissioner Justin Szlasa at a LAHSA Commission meeting on Friday, April 25, 2025.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Szlasa said there’s a big difference between being chair of the audit committee and being just a member.

“The chair sets the agenda. And the responsibility and the power to set the agenda sets the tone of the committee activity,” he added.

 “If you're a member of a committee you can make recommendations for what you'd like to see on the next agenda,” he said. “But it's at the chair's prerogative to decide whether or not to put those items on the agenda. So it makes a big difference.”

Szlasa was appointed to the LAHSA Commission by L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. His replacement as audit committee chair is Charles Stringer, a Bass appointee.

Stringer has not responded to a request for comment.

Pushing for accountability

One habit that has set Szlasa apart: checking things out for himself.

Last year, the commission was asked to renew a contract with a nonprofit to provide meals, security and other services for people at an approved camping site in a parking lot. The morning of the vote, Szlasa visited the site and discovered that for over a year it had only half the capacity LAHSA was paying for.

That judge, David O. Carter, later called the situation “obvious fraud.”

Szlasa asked multiple times for a full commission discussion of what happened with those payments, and that LAHSA’s last two commission chairs did not schedule it.

The two prior chairs — Wendy Greuel and Amber Sheikh — have not responded to requests for comment.

 "We have to really make sure that we're getting what we're paying for, and I want to see more accountability in that area,” Szlasa told LAist. “When it doesn't work, I want to look at it carefully to understand why it's not working.”

Szlasa raised similar concerns last summer about "master leasing," which Bass championed as an approach to help move unhoused people inside quickly. It involves leasing an entire apartment building — making LAHSA the lease-holder — and then subleasing those units to people who have lived on the streets.

Szlasa said he visited a newly-built site where he was told disabled residents were carried up and down stairs because of broken elevators, with no clear responsibility for who should fix them.

He said he asked LAHSA executives for an accounting of the program, but they never provided one.

It later emerged that more than 250 taxpayer funded units — a third of the total — were sitting empty.

When he hasn’t gotten answers to his questions from LAHSA’s management, Szlasa has filed public records requests.

A February request — into whether LAHSA has been improperly using one funder’s money to cover another’s bills — got no real answer. Six months later, LAHSA said it was still checking whether records exist about the practice, which auditors flagged in 2024 as “misuse” of funds.

LAHSA can’t “produce what I would consider basic financial statements,” Szlasa said.

LAist asked LAHSA management why the records haven’t been provided, and has not received a response.

A spokesperson said LAHSA checks if funds “are available from an appropriate funding source" before paying bills without saying whether the money-mixing has stopped.

Questions continue

At a meeting last week, Szlasa asked LAHSA Interim CEO Gita O’Neill why he hadn’t been told of a $1.2 million settlement last fall with Abundant Blessings — until LAist reported it last week.

O’Neill responded that she’d answer later.

She and her chief of staff have not responded to LAist’s questions about whether commissioners authorized the deal.

Separately, outside reviewers from the accounting firm KPMG told commissioners last week that LAHSA can’t easily track its own vendor payments.