Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced a flamethrower to Los Angeles Tuesday, blasting town’s homelessness system as a taxpayer-funded failure and warning that the Trump administration will reduce off federal money to applications that don’t get individuals off the streets.
“We can not resolve homelessness by funding methods that perpetuate it,” Kennedy mentioned on the LA Dream Middle.
“We’ll fund applications that get individuals off the streets, into remedy and restoration, and again to self-sufficiency.”
After which he delivered the underside line:
“If a program’s metrics present they’re simply sustaining individuals on the streets as a substitute of curing the underlying dependency, their federal funding stops instantly.”
Kennedy additionally unloaded on former HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, accusing him of dismantling federal oversight and opening the door to huge fraud.
Kennedy claimed Becerra transferred 76 of the 80 oversight staff chargeable for monitoring $2.2 trillion in annual HHS funds.
That, Kennedy mentioned, was “an invite for the fraudsters to come back in and steal every thing.”
He blamed the dearth of oversight for permitting scammers to invoice the federal government tens of billions of {dollars} in Los Angeles alone by means of fraudulent autism providers, faux medical tools and phony hospice accounts.
“He let the individuals steal the cash” and “regarded the opposite approach whereas fraud, waste, and abuse exploded,” Kennedy mentioned of Becerra.
The HHS secretary vowed the Trump administration would tear up what he known as the established order.
“We’re going to carry an entire halt to the business-as-usual method that treats homelessness as a everlasting trade.”
Kennedy appeared alongside Housing Secretary Scott Turner because the administration threatened to tug roughly $240 million in federal homelessness funding from the Los Angeles Homeless Providers Authority.
“Our goal is that LAHSA doesn’t obtain one other greenback till it has accountability,” Turner mentioned.
The administration suspended LAHSA from submitting purposes due Aug. 26 for roughly $240 million in federal homelessness funding for service suppliers throughout the area.
HUD has as a substitute informed these suppliers to use on to the federal authorities.
LAHSA is difficult the suspension earlier than US District Decide David O. Carter.
The Trump administration can be pushing to shift federal homelessness spending towards recovery-focused transitional housing and away from the “housing first” mannequin, which gives everlasting backed housing with out requiring remedy or different situations.
Kennedy and Turner pointed to the LA Dream Middle, a former hospital now working as a faith-based residential remedy heart, for instance of the recovery-focused method they need Washington to assist.
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Turner additionally displayed a brown lunch bag he mentioned was being handed to homeless individuals with taxpayer cash.
“It is a bag that I discovered they’re giving our homeless neighbors with American taxpayer {dollars},” he mentioned. “That is drug paraphernalia that’s on this bag. This brown bag that’s handed to individuals, homeless individuals hooked on medication.”
“The playbook that they’ve been working, that’s a foul playbook,” Turner mentioned.
He additionally cited a federal indictment accusing a homeless-services supplier of fraudulently billing $23 million.
The administration’s funding push faces a separate court docket hurdle.
A federal choose in Rhode Island has blocked the funding shift for now, discovering HUD modified its 2025 funding supply with out finishing a required overview course of.
On Friday, the choose additionally put aside HUD’s 2026 funding supply.
