Transcription
The Trump administration cutting off tens of millions of dollars in federal funding for a Los Angeles agency that provides services to the homeless. It's part of the administration's wider crackdown on fraud.
For decades, California has poured billions of dollars into fighting homelessness with less than encouraging results. And the premise was simple. Spend more money, offer more services, and hopefully help somebody get off the street somehow. We don't really know how. But sadly today the homeless are in an even worse position than they were just a few years ago. And since the federal government helps California combat homelessness, the American people are starting to ask, "What happened to all our money?"
LA's homeless crisis could get even worse. The Trump administration announced it's cutting off funding for LASA, LA's homeless services authority, which took in a billion dollars in federal aid over the last five years.
Wild new video tonight out of Sacramento County shows police pursuing a driver in a stolen patrol vehicle. This all started with a caller telling police a homeless man threw a bucket at her car, and police say when officers tried to detain that man, he escaped and drove off in a marked police cruiser.
"We're strengthening and we're tightening up our efforts around the accountability frame."
Saying this after an audit showed California spent nearly 24 billion dollars on homelessness and housing over the last five years, but essentially failed to track any progress.
"HUD has uncovered evidence of LASA's repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest."
So the IRS is seizing money headed to some of these nonprofits that might be profiting themselves over the needy. And what nobody's talking about is this right here is just the opening act when it comes to the consequences of fraud California is about to experience as this state and its leaders are now investigation central for the federal government who is looking into everything from illegal immigration fraud to hospice fraud to homeless services fraud and even to alleged non-profit fraud committed by the governor and his wife. And the law-abiding in California wake up every single day with more questions and even fewer answers wondering where's our money? What happened to it? Who's in charge? Is anyone in charge? And now the rest of America's asking the same questions. Why are we as a country paying tens of billions of dollars to California organizations that use the needy as an excuse to rob us all from coast to coast while doing absolutely nothing to help the very people the homeless crisis is named after. And what sense does it make for Americans living in a state like South Carolina or somewhere on the East Coast to be guilted into supporting fraudsters living on the other side of the country who do nothing but enrich themselves instead of those in poverty. But that brings us to the real reason these investigations are now heating up. Now that the federal government is pulling money out of Los Angeles, local agencies that also spend government money, they're starting to do the same. Because finally leadership is taking the helm combating illegal activity. But you see the fraud industrial complex is not happy about this and they're not going down without a fight. Oh, no, they're digging in their heels right now saying that the 72,000 homeless living in Los Angeles need even more help because things are even worse. Well, failing to mention that the unaffordability in California is totally self-inflicted due to a lack of housing, super high taxes, which is destroying what's left of California's middle class. Meanwhile, if you live in a tent and are on the streets of one of these cities, nobody's coming to help you, even though that's what everyone in our country wants to see happen and is paying for right now.
Investigation is underway, according to a 13-page letter first obtained by Fox News. LAHSA has received nearly $1 billion from HUD in taxpayer money since 2021.
The letter goes on to quickly point out that Los Angeles County has withdrawn funding for the agency. The city of LA is considering doing the same.
According to the letter, turning over billions of dollars from American taxpayers to an organization under investigation and suspected of gross misuse of federal funding and obvious fraud does nothing to reduce homelessness. Indeed, diverting dollars from worthy programs to LAHSA merely makes the homeless crisis worse. The homelessness is a real problem in LA and
"It does make the homeless crisis worse. If you're going to take good money and throw it after a bad cause that does nothing and give it to an organization that's under investigation and has allegedly been lying and misrepresenting every single thing that they do, how are you helping people who actually need that money and now can't get it? If anything, there is now less money around for those who are in need and are accessing organizations that are run by folks that are actually trying to help people and are not skimming our entire country and the people who need help the most."
Parts of California became a central focal point for Republican mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt's campaign. Though he ultimately was defeated at the polls, Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for governor, also focusing on that crisis across the state. By the numbers, $953 million allocated in fiscal year 2025-2026, 43
"That's crazy. Look at this. We're talking almost a billion dollars here. If you can spend a billion dollars and the image on the screen here is what the streets of your city look like. This $22,000 per resident. It's obviously not getting there. It's obviously not doing what it's supposed to do. And as we heard from Spencer Pratt, he made it very public that in California, you don't actually have homeless people because every single person who's living on the streets has a home that has been built for them to live in. There is a place for every single person to go, but the problem is for some reason not everybody wants to go to those places. But that's perfectly okay with the socialists running this place because to them every single individual living on the streets is a crisis that nobody wants to let go to waste and that means that if you've got people who look as if they need help, you've got an excuse to ask for more of the public's money to bring them that help, even if it's your plan not to do that, even if it's your plan to build things that nobody ends up living in. Here's an example, 250 tax-funded LA apartments are sitting empty. Why is that? There are thousands, tens of thousands of homeless in California. How come 250 people can't get a place to live that people have already paid for? You see, nobody funding these things cares if anyone lives in them. In fact, that's actually bad cuz now there would be 250 less people off the streets who could be a visual example for why more of the public's money needs to be taken away and given to some of these nonprofits so they can build another 250. But that's why America has now decided to stop funding programs that do not work. And as you're about to see, this entire thing is fraudulent from head to toe."
LA's homeless crisis could get even worse. The Trump administration announced it's cutting off funding for LASA, LA's Homeless Services Authority, which took in a billion dollars in federal aid over the last 5 years. A spokesperson for the Department of Housing and Urban Development says HUD has uncovered evidence of LASA's repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest.
"So, why would you give money to a group of people that are repeated liars, are incredibly irresponsible, fail to accomplish anything, have zero financial management, zero internal controls, and do absolutely nothing to combat the idea of a conflict of interest creeping into America's piggy bank. How can you spend money on that? If an individual had all of those character traits, would you keep giving them money? Of course not. You'd cut them off right away. Here we have a group of individuals doing the exact same thing. What an absolute scam this idea is that the government can lie about what it does with your money and nobody's ever held accountable for this. While at the same time they keep saying, "Look, there are so many people who need help. There are so many needy. Oh, if only we had the resources to help them." Well, the resources are there. It's just they're not making it, which is why California can spend ever-increasing amounts of money on a problem that doesn't seem to get better."
Mark Hood is the CEO of the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.
"To me, the shift in funding, got to be careful. We we don't increase homelessness, but I don't think there's anybody in LA or California or this nation that would not agree we got to do something different."
"Huh. So, here you have somebody who runs a rescue mission and actually houses the homeless. And he says, "Look, we can't just, you know, do something in a haphazard way that makes the problem worse, but everybody knows this isn't working." And he's in this. He's on the streets here every single day actually running a place that is supposed to help people. Now, when you start hearing from the people who are down in the trenches and are actually doing good work that things are a problem, you know it's time to listen. Because you see the issue here is money isn't the problem. Homes for the homeless are not the problem. There's plenty of resources out there. It's just those resources are getting into the hands of people who've used these crises as a way to scam the American public. And this is exactly what we've seen with every single type of fraud going on in California. We've got all the hospice fraud, we've got the immigration fraud, we've got these homeless services fraud, we've got autism fraud. If there's a crisis out there and scammers can say that they're here to help that crisis and nobody's going to hold them accountable, they will get money from the government and that's what we're looking at here. This is an offshoot of it here happening, but wait till you hear this."
A spokesperson for LAHSA blasted the Trump administration's decision to suspend funding saying this appears to be a blatant attempt to pull yet more resources from Los Angeles, a city they have targeted time and again when it is clear that LAHSA has either corrected or is in the process of correcting nearly all of the issues raised.
"Oh, so here we are proven liars, proven cheats, proven conspirators, but we are either in the process of stopping to be those things or we've already stopped. How dare you take away our money? It's clear that we're either in the process of no longer lying or we've stopped lying. How could you do this to us? If a person said that to you and demanded more of your money, would you give it to them? Do you think that would be a good idea? Is that the right kind of attitude that we should be seeing here? We don't even have a sign on this place that says under new management. No, we just have people say, "Hey, we've changed or we're in the process of it. Regardless, you need to pay us."
"process of correcting nearly all of the issues raised."
"Nearly all, so they missed a few."
Served on the LA City Council and as an LA County Supervisor for many years. His concern is for those who might end up back on the streets.
"The federal government's constructive approach has always been uh we're going to come in and address the problem and fix it and help you fix it and make you fix it, uh but we're not going to hold the people who are the recipients and the beneficiaries of these programs uh hostage to uh to the problem."
LAUSD has been under fire for years. In spring of 2025, LA County supervisors gutted the department, voting to seize control of most of LAUSD's funding and key functions over claims the agency lost track of billions of dollars.
"So, who are the beneficiaries of the billions of dollars they're getting? And how are those beneficiaries being held hostage if they don't exist? Because the money never made it to them. That's the reality of the situation here. The reality of the situation here is you have a crisis on the streets that the leaders of these organizations are pointing at are saying, "See, all these folks out there, it's so expensive in California. No one can afford to live here. We need more money." Yet, the money never shows up. There are no beneficiaries. Cutting the funding to a fraudulent organization that does not distribute the money it gets hurts nobody. It just hurts the fraudsters who shouldn't have access to the money. And in fact, what it does is it helps people who are working with different organizations that also get this government money because now it's available to go to organizations that are doing the right thing. But now the question is, how did California get this way? This is a state that has so many natural resources and so much potential and so many smart people. I mean, you got Silicon Valley over there. They got great weather. People wanted to live here for a long time. People came to California to dig gold out of the ground at one point. And they've still been doing that, starting businesses, generating all this money. How can a state with so much wealth be such a disaster with so many fraudsters running everything? How did that happen?"
California is one of the most dynamic places on the planet. It has Silicon Valley, Hollywood, world-class universities, extraordinary agriculture, ports, talent, and natural beauty. But it is a case study in how a rich society can spend more and more while producing less and less of what its ordinary citizens need. The paradox of California today is a successful economy attached to a failing model of governance. Consider the fiscal record.
"Yeah. Billions of dollars given to organizations that don't know what happened to it. It's like you have people living in a place and they are so prosperous and they have so much wealth that for some reason they stop thinking about where all of those things came from and just elect idiots and elect people who are so incompetent that at a minimum that incompetence enables crime to take over and if these individuals are diabolical, are in on the fraud themselves. That's what's happening here. The state is being plundered by its elected officials who are in charge of everything. You don't have Republicans in charge of anything here. Now, are the Republicans perfect? No, but there are some candidates who came out with some very common sense messages and have been doing very well. People are responding to common sense in California because they haven't heard it for so long."
Since 2000, California's population has grown by roughly 15%.
But the state's general expenditures have grown more than 200% from 78 billion to about 248 billion dollars.
"A scam."
General spending per person has risen from about 2,300 to about 6,000 dollars. The number of state employees has grown by more than 50% by one count. Does anyone think that California government and its benefits have gotten 200% better in the last 25 years?
"Not. They haven't and that's why common sense arguments are starting to ring true in the ears of people who look outside and see a crisis they're told they need to do more to help with every single day which never seems to improve. Meanwhile, we got fraudsters running around getting access to billions of dollars and they don't even know where it is. And the fascinating thing about this is that the recent success of common sense political candidates in a place that doesn't have any common sense totally defies expectations. Now, this isn't going to be true everywhere, but apparently have enough people in California who are not immune to the idea of common sense that when they hear it, they can respond to it. They are not so radicalized against America as founded and against capitalism that there is zero way to get through to them and say, "Hey, look, we're wasting money. We should be more responsible. We should do something that actually helps people on the streets and lowers the cost of living for people here, which doesn't require endless amounts of your money that shows zero results."
Housing is the central failure. California has long spoken the language of compassion while building a system of exclusion. Alicia Finley writes in the Wall Street Journal that from 2021 to 2024, the LA metro area with nearly 13 million people issued only 118,000 building permits for new homes. Atlanta with about half that population
"This is stupid. 118,000 building permits for new homes when population's growing much faster than that and when you've already got a massive housing crisis. This is just stupid. If you've got a problem with how much homes in your area cost, building more of them will lower the price of those homes, but nobody wants to do that for some reason and that proves that the problems we have here in California are entirely self-inflicted, but there's another aspect to this that people aren't talking about. The price of homes has nothing to do with whether or not the homeless have a place to live. Now, of course, average people are made to think that expensive homes result in more homelessness and more encampments on the streets, but as you're about to see, that's a fraudulent connection."
63,000. With about half that population, issued 163,000. California has made it too hard, slow, and expensive to build. The result is predictable. Home prices soar, rents rise, workers commute farther, homelessness grows, young people leave.
"Ah, okay, but here's the problem with that idea, because we're spending billions of dollars on homelessness. So, we might have expensive homes, but we also have an expensive crisis here that keeps getting lots of money. We've got hundreds of thousands of people who need a place to live in California. Yes, we've got tens of thousands of people who live on the streets and are declared permanently homeless, and we're building all of these places for them to live, and those places are sitting empty. The price of homes is a middle-class problem. That's a problem for people who want to buy homes. The price of a home isn't a problem for somebody who lives on the streets and has the government construct homes for them to live in and refuses to live in those homes. That's a totally different problem right there. That has nothing to do with the cost of a house that you or I might want to buy in a place like California. But, this idea that if you can't afford a home, nobody else can, either, makes sense in the minds of people who look at someone living on the streets and feel bad for that person. And that's how these fraudsters are getting away with stealing from America. They allow a crisis to persist, and then they guilt the law-abiding and the well-meaning into paying endless amounts of their own money, driving up unaffordability for them, so that these scammers can just access to this money and do absolutely nothing with it. That's why nobody on the streets of California is getting help. That's why nobody on the streets of California sees any of the money the rest of America, including the federal government, is paying to some of these agencies, which has now stopped. And this idea that, "Oh, if you cut off the funding, it's only going to get worse." Look, if the money's not making it to the very people who need it, cutting off the funding isn't going to make anything worse, because the money's not getting there. It's already getting worse by virtue of zero money helping these people. What do you think about all that? What do you think about the connection between home prices and homelessness? The more I look at this, the more I think there is zero connection, because we're building homes for people, but as Spencer Pratt told everybody, for some reason, not everybody wants to live in those places. Let me know. I'll see you in the next video."