Trump’s budget singles out L.A. homelessness agency as he proposes housing cuts

WASHINGTON— President Trump is touting the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority as a cautionary tale of Democratic mismanagement of publicly funded programs, using it to justify proposed cuts to homeless outreach services across the country.

Trump’s proposed budget For the next fiscal year, it was released Friday and asks Congress to eliminate the Continuum of Care, a federal program that funds housing and services for homeless Americans, citing concerns about “fraud and corruption” among the local agencies that administer it.

The White House points to LAHSA, which manages many homeless services for the city and county, as an example of why the program should continue.

The agency has faced criticism for years at the local level for a lack of proper oversight, and the county is in the process of transitioning programs to an internal department.

“LAHSA has an abysmal record of reducing the highest number of street homeless individuals in the United States, and an independent audit conducted in March 2025 found that the authority failed to accurately track billions of Federal and local dollars,” the budget says.

The local institution backtracked by making a statement after the budget was announced.

“Cutting this funding or destabilizing the Continuum of Care program will directly result in more tents on our streets, not fewer,” said Gita O’Neill, the agency’s interim CEO, adding that under her leadership, unsheltered homelessness in Los Angeles has dropped 15% and 90% of the program’s funding goes “directly to rental assistance.”

Local officials are already grappling with cuts to homeless services at the state and county level due to budget constraints, and LAHSA warned that Trump’s proposal would make things worse.

“To maintain our current momentum, we need additional funding to cover increased costs, not less,” the agency said in a statement Friday.

The funding dispute for homelessness services is one front in the Trump administration’s broader budget attack on California programs.

Trump’s proposal also calls for Congress to eliminate millions in funding from government initiatives that the White House calls wasteful, ineffective or “woke.”

If enacted, the cuts would cancel $4 billion in unspent funding for the state’s high-speed rail project, which the White House has called a “blessing,” and cancel grants from the Northern California Fair Housing Advocates, which the budget has criticized for “actively working to dismantle systems of power and privilege that favor whites.”

The White House also has smaller items in its sights: a Los Angeles ice cream festival, a dance building in Santa Cruz, which the White House calls “one of the wealthiest cities in the country,” and a $3 million grant for a playground attached to an unspecified performing arts center in California.

Trump’s proposed cuts to California projects are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to reshape federal spending priorities, largely by trading social programs for a massive military buildup.

The president wants Congress to approve $1.5 trillion for defense and cut $73 billion from domestic programs; This is a massive restructuring that would force states, including California, to absorb costs that Washington is no longer willing to bear.

Trump laid out that vision clearly at a private Easter dinner at the White House on Wednesday, telling guests that the federal government should no longer be responsible for funding the social programs that many Americans rely on.

Trump said, “We cannot take care of day care. We are a big country.” “We are fighting wars. We cannot handle the nursery business.”

Trump said if states want to provide these services, they need to raise taxes to cover them.

“Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things, they can do it on a state-by-state basis,” he said. “We must pay attention to only one thing: military protection.”

The proposed budget reflects that priority for lawmakers as they grapple with the rising costs of the Iran war and the economic ramifications of a military operation that has left Americans paying for more items, including at the gas pump.

As part of the proposed budget, Trump also plans to make some investments in California projects.

For example, the White House is asking Congress for $152 million to redevelop Alcatraz into a maximum security prison; It’s an idea the president has been talking about for several years.

He also called on Congress to establish a National Warrior Independence Center at the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center.

Times writer Andrew Khouri in Los Angeles contributed to this report.