House Hearing on Homelessness Funds: Bass Declines to Testify Citing Schedule Conflict as Chairman Keeps Subpoena Option Open
A subcommittee of the U.S. House Oversight Committee held a hearing in Washington on September 15, 2026, titled "Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services," examining how the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) handled federal money. Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles in Los Angeles County, California, who had been invited to testify, did not attend, citing a schedule conflict, and the hearing proceeded without her.
The hearing grew out of a September 3 letter from the panel's chairman, Rep. Tim Burchett, a Republican, to Bass. The letter asked Bass to testify on September 15 and to produce documents and communications dating back to 2020 related to what it called "corrupt contracting and grant-making" by LAHSA; it raised concerns about alleged self-enrichment among people at nonprofits that received LAHSA funds, and said homelessness "has grown worse" during Bass's tenure as mayor. The committee said LAHSA had received more than $1 billion in federal funds since 2021, including $220 million in 2024 alone. A committee staff memorandum dated September 10 set the hearing for 2:00 p.m. on September 15 in Room 2154 of the Rayburn House Office Building, with the stated purpose of examining waste, fraud, and failure in federally funded homelessness services.
Bass's side made clear before the hearing that the mayor would not appear. Her legal counsel, David Michaelson, wrote to the subcommittee that the mayor was "not available on that date"; Bass said in a television interview that she had a schedule conflict. The mayor's office said the city was cooperating with the congressional request for records. Burchett's side warned that if Bass did not cooperate, he and the Oversight Committee's chair would use every tool at their disposal to secure her appearance; a spokesman for the chairman said a subpoena was among "all options on the table."
On the day of the hearing, Bass was in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles for a groundbreaking event for a community recreation center project, alongside developer Rick Caruso and others. She said publicly: "Let's call this what it is: the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress," noting that a federal judge had blocked the administration's attempt to strip Los Angeles of its homelessness funding. In his opening remarks at the hearing, Burchett noted that Bass had removed herself from LAHSA's governing board the week before, after being invited to testify; she had appointed herself to the commission in 2023. The subcommittee said the city had not handed over all of the documents it had requested.
At the hearing, testimony was given by Paul Webster, executive director of the Los Angeles Alliance for Human Rights, and Jonathan Choe, a senior fellow and journalist at the Discovery Institute. Their testimony centered on allegations of fraud and mismanagement at LAHSA, including claims that it could not be verified whether federal dollars were paying for empty hotel rooms.
The backdrop is HUD's June suspension of LAHSA's federal funding eligibility, with the department's inspector general investigating alleged fraud and mismanagement. LAHSA denies wrongdoing, says it welcomes audits, and says it has found no evidence of fraud or corruption. Bass herself has expressed "grave concerns" about LAHSA but criticized the federal funding suspension as a threat to efforts to reduce homelessness. According to a source familiar with the investigation, as of the morning of September 14 the mayor's office had not yet submitted the requested documents, which were due by close of business that day.
Source: GSM America
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 位于华盛顿的雷伯恩众议院办公大楼，9月15日听证会在该楼2154室举行。CC BY-SA 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。 / The Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, where the September 15 hearing was held in Room 2154. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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- 2026-09-15House Hearing on Homelessness Funds: Bass Declines to Testify Citing Schedule Conflict as Chairman Keeps Subpoena Option OpenThis story
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