Fixing Fraud and Failure in Federally Funded Homelessness Services

I'm sorry. Let me do that again. There you go. This hearing on the sub of the subcommittee on delivering on government efficiency will come to order. I want to welcome everyone. Without objection, the chair may declare a recess any time, and I recognize myself for the purpose of making an opening statement. Good afternoon. The plight of our nation's homeless tugs at our heartstrings. painful to see people living on the streets or in shelters. Those caught in the cycle of homelessness are often drug addicted, mentally ill or both. They need help. But the homeless services provided today in many of our largest cities are not working. In fact, they are making the problem worse. There are seven hundred and forty-five thousand homeless Americans according to a recent federal report. Two thirds live in emergency shelters and the and the other quarter million live on the streets. The situation is only getting worse. Homelessness is up twenty-seven percent since twenty thirteen, and street homelessness is up thirty-six percent. Why? It's not due to lack of funding. The federal government spends about eight billion dollars annually to prevent homelessness and states and localities spend even more. Yet homeless encampments keep spreading, especially in cities like Los Angeles and Seattle, where left-wing political leaders are digging in on failed policies. These jurisdictions enable crime and chaos, allowing public housing units to become more drug dens and even subsidizing the so-called safe injection of dangerous narcotics by ac- by addicts. Los Angeles is the epicenter of America's homelessness. It has the nas- the nation's largest homeless population, and it spends the most to combat the problem. Excuse me. Yet the number of homeless in LA has recently risen to fifty thousand people. Another seventy-five thousand homeless live in the surrounding L. A. County. L. A. Skid Row is a sad testament to the abject failure of this city's approach to homelessness. Under Mayor Karen Bass, law and order in the neighborhood has collapsed, addicts inject needles in open drug markets, controlled by gangs. The remaining business is typically small minority owned establishments, struggle to survive in the streets where lawlessness reigns. So he who benefits from the billions spent Combating homelessness in LA, look no further than the network of local nonprofits raking in federal, state, and local dollars to provide homeless services. Most of these entities got grants or contracts from the Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority, or LAHSA, a public authority jointly controlled by the city and the county of Los Angeles. LAHSA is the main LA area conduit conduit for public funds for homelessness services. And LASA is rife with corruption and financial mismanagement. This outfit is housed in a luxury high rise in downtown LA with a private helipad and a Mercedes Maybach car service for tenants. If you don't know, Maybach is the high-end of the Mercedes brand. Mayor Bass controls many appointments to LASA's government's board. She appointed herself to the board back in twenty twenty three, but has not shown up for most board meetings. Despite her poor attendance, Record. Her fingerprints are all over LASA. The authority gave a forty thousand dollar per month contract to a former Bass campaign manager who had then hired as its CEO. Once in charge, the advisor gave a two million LASA contract to her husband's employer, an LA-based non-profit. LASA also provided twenty-five million over five years to a non-profit whose CEO received one point six million in compensation over a recent two-year period. while living in Hawaii. Lassa recently doled out funds to an LA area non-profit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud by the Justice Department. This is the tip of the iceberg, folks. A court-ordered independent assessment of Lassa's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud. Yet the chair of Lassa's audit committee and advocate of greater scrutiny of Lassa's spending was recently removed post by Mayor Bass's hand-picked LAHSA Board Chair, Stephanie Graves, another former campaign advisor. Finally, just last week after invited her to appear at this hearing, Mayor Bass suddenly removed herself from the LAHSA Board. She also uh declined to appear at this hearing. She said this hearing and and document uh request was a waste of time and money. Mayor Bass seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off Her office has agreed to provide dates when she is willing to appear before our subcommittee this year because she knows I will work with Chairman Komer to use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate. Meanwhile, we are going to take a a good hard look today at homelessness on the streets of Los Angeles, and the big leftist-run cities. After this hearing, I will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, which requires federally funded housing services. to offer substance abuse treatment. But i- I've also introduced legislation to codify President Trump's work to end crime and disorder on American streets and insure our tax dollars only support housing services for US citizens. Before I close, I'm going to play a brief video clip of the reality of homelessness on Skid Row. This brown bag that's handed to people, homeless people, with American taxpayer dollars.

All right, back here on LA Skid Row, I went to several locations where they gave me these harm reduction supplies, including meth pipes, needles, all kinds of free drug paraphernalia.

Do you wanna hook you or a hammer?

Uh, hammer?

Hammer, yeah.

Yeah, thank you. This is exactly what Secretary Scott Turner was railing against at the press conference. Apparently this is a hammer. Secretary Turner says These harm reduction kits will no longer be part of the arsenal to fight the homeless drug crisis ravaging our streets. Turner says it's essentially enabling.

Thanks, thank you, my friend, I'm fine with this.

For the most part of these harm reduction facilities, you'll have workers giving out these drug supplies, no questions asked. But what they failed to do is ask if the addict wants any treatment or recovery. And that is the missing link to the street crisis right now that is unending in places like Los Angeles.

This is not the continuum of care that I'm looking for. It's not the continuum of care that Bobby is looking for. This is keeping people addicted and giving them a way to stay addicted. I have in my hand one of those packets and I just found a crack pipe in there, the first one I've ever held. Um, but with that, I will yield to ranking members.

All right, well. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do have to say that once again this committee has deteriorated over the last several months. I was hopeful at the beginning of my uh partnership with the chairman that we would actually move forward in a serious manner in addressing the issues that are affecting our country. to deal with real waste, fraud and abuse, to deal with real accountability of our government and the officials who are actually taking advantage of our federal system to actually reduce waste in our government and to actually improve the services and programs that actually serve our people. But instead, we are here once again after our last hearing on the Smithsonian in a deeply unserious and political show targeting the lowest income and most vulnerable people in the United States. And let me just make clear. Our people are not political props. Their dignity is not negotiable. Housing is a human right. And we are not gonna sit here while you use the housing and homeless crisis of this country to try to prop up whatever you're trying to do politically before the midterms. So I wanna know what this hearing is actually about. Ostensibly it's supposed to be about housing and homelessness, strangely in Los Angeles, as we sit here in our nation's capital. Ostensibly it's supposed to be about waste, fraud and abuse, as it was literally reported yesterday that the president's son had his wedding parties hosted by a Russian oligarch tied to Vladimir Putin. As literally we have not had a single public hearing on the Epstein files. As we have not even had Todd Blanch in front of this committee in a formal hearing. So what is this hearing actually about? We're two days before the speaker is gonna call it quits, before the midterms. And basically this hearing is being called to attack unhoused people? to talk about the failed policies of this administration? Because if you were actually serious about helping low-income people, you would not have passed the big ugly bill last year. Because what that bill and that policy is doing is making poor people even poorer. In fact, it increased taxes on the lowest income Americans out there. Like, that is not an exaggeration. The lowest earning Americans had their taxes go up under the big ugly bill. It gutted food assistance for millions of Americans, the vast majority of whom are seniors and children. It gut health insurance starting on January first, Medicaid and Medicare is going to be cut for tens of millions of Americans. It gutted educational assistance for students all over the country. And why? What was it done to give a permanent tax break to billionaires? Right now this country is experiencing the highest inflation it has experienced since COVID. Because your president, who you refuse to hold in check, is waging an unmandated, unfunded war in the Middle East that is driving up gas prices to the highest level they have ever been during a Labor Day weekend in the history of the United States, which is driving up housing costs, construction costs, food costs, transportation costs, literally every cost across the board. In fact, we're about to see an increase likely from the Fed in infl in uh our um interest rates because of skyrocketing inflation. And the only housing legislation that has passed this body of substance in years, in fact it was the most comprehensive bipartisan housing legislation passed probably in three decades in this body, just a few months ago, the President of the United States, Donald Trump refused to sign because he was having a temper tantrum. Now it took effect But it would not have happened if it hadn't have been from the leadership particularly of our Senate Democrats and the ranking member of the financial services committee here in the House. And so what is this hearing actually about? Can't be about the stellar housing policies of HUD. They've literally been gutting Housing First programs. Y'all have been gutting behavioral health programs to deal with addiction problems. In fact, Donald Trump proposed to cut a billion dollars in grants to help people that have addiction problems. And meanwhile, the grifter-in-chief is over there on the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, literally tweeting out AI images of himself insider trading and making money off the backs of the American people. That's the waste, fraud and abuse. So, if you're serious about housing, we invite you to work again on a bipartisan basis on affordable housing policies, on investments in behavioral health, and helping people who are struggling to actually reverse the harmful cuts that this administration has put into effect, to reverse the tax increases you put into effect that are harming our people to hold the president accountable and end this war, and actually help the people that you are trying to claim today you actually care about. Because housing is a human right. And we're gonna continue to fight for it. A yield back.

Thank you, ma'am. Without objection, representative Sessions of Texas, representative Tlaib of Michigan are waived onto the subcommittee for the purpose of asking questions at today's hearing. And I'd like to welcome our witnesses. First, we have Mr. Jonathan Cho. Mr. Cho is a senior fellow and journalist at the Discovery Institute. Thank you for being here. Next, we have Mr. Paul Webster. Mr. Webster serves the executive director of the los angeles alliance for human rights and a senior fellow at the cicero institute and lastly we have miss samantha batko miss batko serves as a senior fellow at the urban institute i want to thank you all for joining us i look forward to your testimony pursuant to committee rule nine g the witnesses will please stand up and raise their right hand affirm that the testimony that you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. So help you God. Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the firm to thank you, and you may take a seat. We appreciate you all being here today and look forward to your testimony. Let me remind the witnesses that will have read your uh read your written statement, and it will appear in full in the hearing record. Please limit your oral statements to five minutes. As a reminder, please press the button on the microphone in front of you. so that it is on and the members can hear you. When you begin to speak, the light in front of you will turn green. After four minutes, the light will turn yellow. When the red light comes on, you have five minute your five minutes have expired, and we would ask that you please wrap up. Okay. I now recognize Mister Cho for his opening statement. Hit your button.

My apologies. Thank you, sir, for this opportunity to talk about America's homeless drug crisis. Um, I'd like to begin by playing a short video before my testimony. The Lewis Dinscargo is an absolute failure of the housing first model, which essentially warehouses homeless drug addicts.

You saw the sentence already, we got out of that. Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. Mike, who's in your room?

Drug use inside the rooms are a regular occurrence. This they, it's a, this is a harm reduction place. This is harm reduction? Oh, well. Yeah, so they, they provide um, you know, a paraphernalia. Can I get some needles please, real quick? Needles, what? Needles, needles, supplies. Okay, that works. But but, you know, it's whatev Yeah. Thank you. Can I grab some needles here? What type of drugs do you do? Baton Rouge and heroin. You can easily get needles here. Yeah. What other supplies can you get? Any kind of supplies. What are you gonna

Um, some drugs, I guess. Here you go. Thank you. What just happened right now? I just bought some shipping from somebody. It's right there. Yeah. How much did that cost? Thirty dollars. Hey.

S O O Housing Corporation. Yeah, the very bad. This is the four one SRO, right? Yeah. Wants to sell his Feddy, we should ask him how much it is. OK, hang on a second. You got Feddy? Yeah, what do you mean? That's ten dollar. It's uh, look at that. OK. Now you, you'll come back man, I got more for you. Alright, when? Tomorrow? No, you, tonight, tomorrow, whatever, we're gonna move in, Man. do you live there? Yeah, two or six. SROs are completely unsupervised. It's a free for all. And the fact is there's no consequences, because that's the whole point of Housing First, is that you move in without any expectations whatsoever. Our tax dollars Once again, my name's Jonathan Cho. I'm a journalist and senior fellow at Discovery Institute, based in Seattle. I cover America's homeless drug crisis after spending more than twenty years in corporate media working for ABC, NBC, CBS, Tribune, and several other networks. If you did not know already, you just witnessed a snapshot of what happens in and around many of these housing first facilities across America, especially in West Coast cities like Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. And this is the PG thirteen version. Law enforcement data shows these facilities are magnets for crime, chaos, and death, triggering an inordinate amount of nine one one calls for drug overdoses, fights, and other disturbances. Once these men and women move in, there are no requirements to find jobs or enroll in drug addiction treatment. So for the addicts, most of most of them spend their day chasing the next high on the streets, in many cases committing crimes like stealing and then selling items for pennies on the dollar to get their next fix. Making matters worse, in some cases violent felons and notorious drug dealers end up as residents on the same floor as vulnerable people. And some women even become targets for sexual assault or human trafficking. One man I interviewed told me he felt like his housing first building turned into New Jack City a reference to a movie about a drug kingpin taking over an entire apartment complex in New York City. Problem is, life is now imitating art. And the cycle continues with more taxpayer dollars being wasted on questionable public health policies tied to housing first. Most of these buildings are considered low barrier. That means drug use is allowed behind closed doors and staff look the other way. Then on top of that, you can pick up these so-called harm reduction kits at the front desk. Let me show you briefly what's inside. Mister Birchit, you refer to the meth pipes that you can easily get. But this baggie given out at King County Public Health, just minutes from the Seattle Space Needle, is called a party pack. You can get a free meth pipe. You can get a tourniquet. You can get countless needles inside. You can get fentanyl test strips. You can get cookers. They're giving away free drug supplies like candy in the name of harm reduction. and preventing disease with zero oversight and rarely any offers for addiction treatment. In reality, critics say that this is enabling instead of helping. And now people are dying at higher rates behind closed doors of fentanyl overdoses.

Mr. Chair, we're gonna have to cut it off there at five.

Okay.

Thank you, sir. Mr. Webster.

Thank you.

I apologize.

Thank you, Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Stansbury, members of the subcommittee. Thank you very much for holding this hearing. It's long overdue. Last year's point in time count found nearly seventy thousand homeless people in Los Angeles. Forty four thousand were unsheltered. Twenty seven thousand were chronically homeless. And six of them die on the street every day. No region in America has more unsheltered people. And no region receives more federal homeless assistance. Los Angeles has taken in two billion dollars in federal funds since two thousand and five including two hundred and twenty million dollars in twenty twenty-four in continuum of care awards its awards are up two hundred and thirteen percent the city and county have budgeted another four billion of their own money since twenty twenty-two. Here's what that bought. Since two thousand nine the year the hearth act reformed federal homeless assistance programs overall homelessness in Los Angeles doubled unsheltered homelessness grew a hundred and thirty percent, chronic homelessness rose twenty percent, and homelessness among people with serious mental illness rose ninety percent. There is more money than ever before, more capacity than ever before, and more and sicker people on the streets than ever before. That is the record. Why homelessness grow, why homelessness grew is not a matter of funding, it's not about adopting the favored evidence-based approaches, LA has tons of money and adopted all the data-driven approaches. Why homelessness grew and is growing is about accountability, and there is absolutely none. The Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority, LASA, is the region's continuum of care. A twenty twenty-four audit found LASA has wasted millions, has unreliable contract and service records, and cannot verify whether the services it paid for had been delivered. It got worse. A May twenty twenty-six review found LAHSA could not produce complete financial statements had not properly recorded a hundred and forty-five million dollars in county advances and carried duplicate entries, overstating cash by forty-seven million dollars. LAHSA has not completed an internal audit in several years. HUD is right in suspending funds f- funds for LAHSA. But it's not just untraceable funds paid for units and beds go empty or corrupt CEOs that feed the homeless instant ramen governed by an imaginary board of directors and use taxpayer dollars to enrich themselves. It's not just sweetheart deals from Mayor Bass's office that greenlit two hundred and twenty seven million dollars I'm sorry twenty seven million dollars in taxpayer grant funds to buy a property from a business purchasing almost simultaneously for eleven million dollars. It's not just Loss's own chief executive that signed point one million dollars in contracts with a non-profit that employs her husband after telling the public she was completely recused from such dealings. It's the poorly crafted, expensive and unworkable system Congress created that was supposed to end homelessness in twenty twenty three. This is what happens when billions flow to a network of non-profits over which no state or local government has authority, that measures, inputs, beds, salaries and services build, rather than on whether anyone left the street. It took HUD roughly a decade to determine that Los Angeles was wasting its awards. Thousands of homeless people died in the meantime. Suspe suspension after ten years is not oversight. I urge subcommittee members to reform the continuum of pro care program in three ways. First, stop funding and empowering entities that voters cannot reach.

Mm.

through states and their agencies which answer to an electorate, rather than through unaccountable regional nonprofits. Nonprofit consortiums have failed to solve homelessness for the last ten plus years, and when challenged demand more money to continue their ineffective research-based programs. Second, direct HUD to monitor and to act. Audit findings of mismanagement should not sit for a decade. Performance should be demanded annually because lives Third, fix the definition. Federal law and regulation redefines a person as no longer homeless when their names appear on a subsidized lease. Advocates claim they know how to end homelessness, but it is this definitional gimmick that is the basis for that claim. Ending homelessness should mean earned income, sobriety, mental health stability, family reunification, and completing rehabilitative programs in progress towards self-sufficiency. not a signature or eligibility for a government program. Los Angeles is not an outlier. It is the poster child for an expensive, socialist, no conditions attached right to housing agenda that can only work by raising taxes, ending private property, and implementing a guaranteed basic income scheme, while turning a blind eye to addiction, untreated mental illness,

Thank you.

crime and civil disorder.

Thank you, Mr. Webster.

Thank you.

Miss Matko, you're recognized.

Chairman Burchett, Ranking Member Sandsbury, and the members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Samantha Batko, I'm a senior fellow and I lead the Preventing and Ending Homelessness team at the non-partisan Urban Institute. For more than two decades, I have researched and evaluated homelessness programs and worked with communities trying to reduce homelessness. The views I express today are my own and should not be attributed to the Uni- Urban Institute, its trustees or its funders. I wanna begin with a point on which I believe that we can all agree, which is that the status quo is unacceptable. As was noted earlier, more than seven hundred and forty-five thousand people experienced homelessness on a single night in twenty twenty five, more than two hundred sixty-six thousand were living outside in cars or in other places not meant for human habitation, and that included more than twenty-two thousand children living outside on a single night. Communities are spending enormous amounts of money managing this crisis. Voters are upset that there are s- people sick and sometimes dying outside on their streets and sidewalks. Taxpayers rightfully expect that resources spent on homelessness will produce visible, measurable results. Grantees should be held accountable for the resources that they receive, and federal policies and programs should be guided by evidence of what works. Decades of rigorous research show that homelessness predominantly driven by challenges extremely low income households have affording housing. And affordable housing trends have been worsening, putting more households at risk and increasing the number of people entering homelessness. Rises in cost burden for renters have been observed over the last five years in forty-four states. And one in five renters, ages eighteen to sixty-four, reported that they did not pay the full amount of rent or were late with a rental payment at some point in twenty twenty-five. yet only about one in five households eligible for federal housing assistance receives it. As has been discussed today, mental health disorders and substance use are serious concerns for some people experiencing homelessness, and access to treatment must improve. But they do not explain homelessness by themselves. Research also shows that many people experiencing homelessness work. More than half of people in shelters and about forty percent of people living unsheltered had earned income during the year they experienced homelessness. The fundamental problem is that too many people cannot sustain housing and once homeless cannot re- re-enter the private rental market. So what should the federal government do? Ultimately, ending widespread homelessness will require more affordable housing, rental assistance, adequate incomes, and accessible health care and treatment. In addition to that, the federal government should learn from communities producing visible measurable reductions in homelessness. I lead the evaluation of Denver's All in Mile-High initiative. Denver has reported a sixty-four percent reduction in unsheltered homelessness over three years. Our evaluation found a ninety-three percent reduction in encampments in downtown Denver. Denver did not achieve this by mandating treatment, passing an anti-campaign ban, shifting from focusing on permanent housing to transitional housing, or by moving people from one block to another. The city used real-time data, coordinated across agencies and service providers, expanded accessible shelter, connected people to housing, and maintained cleared encampment sites. Other communities, including Dallas, Philadelphia, Houston, San Diego, and Indianapolis are also reporting reductions in unsheltered homelessness using similar strategies. Federal policy should be guided by and incentivize these effective practices, not undermine them. Over the last forty years, federal homelessness programs have evolved through local innovation, rigorous evaluation, and congressional action. That process has produced interventions with substantial evidence behind them. By contrast, for many of the strategies discussed so far today, I'm aware of no rigorous, replicable studies that they reduce homelessness. Treatment should be available and accessible to people who need it, but the homelessness system cannot substitute for lacks in availability or effectiveness of substance treatment, and mandatory treatments cannot uh correct a shortage of affordable housing. Congress and federal agencies should require clear performance measures, careful monitoring, and meaningful consequences when grantees misuse funds or fail to perform. At the same time, major policy changes should be tested and evaluated before being implemented nationwide. But communities do not have to wait to make progress. they can reduce homelessness today by helping more people return to housing, prevent avoidable entries into homelessness, and improve access to treatment and employment. As I conclude my remarks, I want to reiterate that we do not have to live with widespread homelessness. We should invest in strategies that visibly and measurably reduce homelessness. Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

Thank you, ma'am. I will now recognize uh Representative Cloud of Texas for his questions.

Thank you, Mister Chairman, and I wanna thank you for holding this hearing. Uh, once we, again, we find ourselves discussing an important topic, uh, and the focus of this committee has been really on waste, fraud, and abuse, and I appreciate what we've kind of come we thought this was gonna r- really be a bipartisan effort. Everybody has long said we're against waste, fraud, and abuse, but as we begin to dig into these issues, what we find is a common theme is much of what's been going out as taxpayer dollars is being funneled through funneled through these NGOs uh and they're unaccountable many of them uh we're finding a lot of waste fraud abuse and it's really turned into what we found to be almost the largest money laundering scheme uh in human history and uh does that mean every person working at these is uh negligent or no there's probably some people doing some good work but but what we've seen is a lot of waste fraud abuse in this and once again uh, kind of get to pat themselves on the back by how much money they send out as opposed to are we accomplishing the goals and initiatives and objectives that we set them out to accomplish you know one thing that's clear from the data and I'll admit the data's kind of sketchy that's probably one of the things we can talk about, is how to improve the data on this uh but there's no direct correlation to spending more money and more people uh coming off the streets and not being homeless. Uh you can look at just comparing the entire state of Texas to Los Angeles. Los Angeles gets uh twenty million dollars more than the entire state of Texas, yet has roughly three times the homelessness popul- or problem. Uh, and so, yeah, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. Mister Cho, you didn't get a a s- chance to finish your opening statements. Could you speak to c- finish speaking to what our tax dollars are going to? You would think that it would be a pretty broad agreement that tax dollars should not be going to fund dread use in paraphernalia. But yet that's not what's happening, is it?

Yes, sir. Um, our position is that you cannot build your way out of this crisis. And a common theme that we're seeing is the total lack of accountability. Uh, it is an absolute free-for-all in many of these West Coast cities that I cover, such as Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Uh, a lot of this money, once it is doled out, ends up in a black hole and you don't know where the dollars end up going. And the lack of measurable results is stunning, and that must change immediately.

Yeah, and in Texas, I know we work to provide a business-friendly environment, which means bringing jobs in. We tend to find that that's a better path forward. Getting people jobs helps them uh provide for a home, for their families, and those sort of things, as opposed to LA who's handing out drug paraphernalia. Mister Webster, one o- one of the issues is how the data is collected. And part of it is how we define success, how we define homelessness. Uh, sometimes the def- definition of c- of solving homelessness is actually when you kind of become a ward of the state, in a sense, like the federal government's paying for you to exist, but you're not really having any sort of forward momentum in life. You're not, you know, growing up or becoming more prosperous. You're not, you know, being able to p- lay down a legacy for your family. Are these things that we would hope for people? Could you speak to some of that and and what we could do to improve that.

Yes sir, thank you for the question. I think one of the challenges is what the objectives are for the continuum of care program uh the continuum of care program had uh certain purposes for example to uh coordinate a region-wide response to homeless to prevent homelessness and uh uh to and to do some other things I think one of the challenges is that there's there's kind of a a a difference in terms of what we're trying to measure. On the one hand, uh there's a whole host of research uh that really tries to measure housing stability, whether or not people are gonna be able to stay in the housing that uh is provided them. But then there's other folks who were interested in an objective to say, is the money that we're spending to reduce homelessness, is it actually reducing homelessness? And so the challenge is when you get very uh difficult um uh uh to read data sources when you have uh pretty complex kinds of reporting from hud about demographics instead of how many people are actually coming off the street or how many people are actually in permanent supportive housing the main uh uh uh uh intervention for housing, and how many of them and i and i know that miss batko has has actually studied this, will actually stay in that housing. And the challenge is is that we're just not connecting the dots between the money that we spend the the services and the provisions that we provide and what that impacts in terms of actual people who are living and dying on the streets, and what kind of behavioral health, what kind of economic challenges, what kind of earning potential, what kind of criminality, all weaves into this thing. So I agree with you, I think we need much better uh accountability and much better measures that we actually monitor.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Webster. Thank you. Mr. Lynch, you're recognized from Massachusetts.

Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Um, you know, if this hearing was really about I I I wanna talk about homelessness and and and substance abuse and the problems we got in this country but but to do so under the you know the premise that w- this hearing is about wage fraud and abuse, uh is is ridiculous. If we we we if we were really after waste, fraud and abuse and money laundering and uh scams, we I I know the address. I know where we could go. You know, Fraud Central, Scam Central. You know, over two billion dollars raked in oh since January of twenty twenty five. And that that address is sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue. And uh and the main perpetrator is Donald Trump. So if we were really interested in in in that that line of investigation and oversight, then it would be really easy. But uh this Congress does not have the appetite to do that under its current leadership. Um The oth- the other point about accountability, uh most people forget that President Donald Trump granted a full and complete pardon to former Herder- Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez who was convicted in the US of Tra- uh he he was convicted on drug trafficking and weapons charges, bringing drugs into this country. And and the president of the United States gave him a a sweet-heart deal. If if we were gonna hold people accountable, that was a good place to start. Uh, someone who h had already been convicted, and instead of holding them accountable, They got a they got a pardon, a complete pardon by by the president. So um there there are a lot of instances here where I think we could have introduced accountability and we failed to do though. Failed to do that. Um, Miss Batko, I'm really interested in you talked about the success that Denver has had in reducing unsheltered homelessness. And and I in my own district in in the Boston area, um I've actually founded a couple of uh residential uh drug rehabilitation facilities, one of them for for children actually because the the kids were so young we couldn't co- co-locate them with adults. Um I'm just wondering what percentage or or what element of uh you know drug rehabil- rehabilitation uh and and substance uh abuse uh services How much of that did played in the success of of what you did in Denver?

To clarify, I'm evaluating Denver's work, not the person actually doing it is Denver.

Okay.

Um, but um

Well, in your evaluation, what do you think?

In our evaluation, yeah.

How do you think it went?

Um, I just to speak to um something that Mister Webster mentioned about how many people have been housed, they Denver is housed over nine thousand people um since twenty twenty three and and is tracking housing. Um, uh a num uh i don't have the numbers directly in front of me on the percent of people that in dunvar had substance use challenges but uh they do have a robust response for substance use including their roads to recovery program and also residential available residential treatment programs for people

i see that's that's one of the key pieces you know we've we've had a couple of these homeless enclaves uh mass and cast is the one that is closest to my district that's on the border between myself and Miss Presley. And um, you know, there's a lot of open drug dealing on the street while that's going on. And we're trying to we're trying to get out the homeless issue and and uh it's been very, very difficult. We have struggled. We have struggled, multi-year struggles in trying to trying to clean that up. And I was just trying to figure out if there's any any um lessons learned for us in Boston from what you went through or what you evaluated in Denver.

Sure, um I I think that one of the most important things is that there are people who are struggling with homelessness and there are people who are struggling with substance use and sometimes there are people struggling with both um and people who are struggling with substance use need a treatment intervention that's effective and people who are struggling with homelessness needs a housing intervention and that is one of the things that we've learned and also that in Denver um a tangible offers of resources to people who are living outside, including shelter and real housing,

Yeah.

help people to move in and serve as a platform for working on other things in their lives, like substance use and employment.

Yeah, there's, we, I don't have time, but there's also the mental health issue where we have, you know, de-institutionalized a lot of things and through cost reasons, but uh that's another element to this as well. Uh thank you for your your testimony, Mister Chairman, I yield back.

Yeah. Thank you, sir. Now, I can recognize uh, Mr. Burleson from Missouri.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanna start with a simple question. Is the program working? Uh, we're forty trillion dollars in debt, and we're trying to evaluate every, how every dollar is spent. But I think what we're recognizing here is that the more money we spend, we're not getting any better outcomes out of this. Um, if you spend more money every year, add more beds every year and hire more people every year, unfortunately the streets seem to get worse and the program isn't working. Um in Los Angeles a federal continuum of care awards have risen two hundred and thirteen percent since two thousand and five. The city has budgeted about four point four billion since two twenty twenty two and there's been little to almost no accountability. The system pays for inputs, beds, salaries, contracts. We know that there's waste and there's fraud and that it's widespread. Um, S- Spencer Pratt, who ran for mayor, showcased this on a national stage. He said that every dime of homeless that of the homeless industry complex is money laundering, and the people are getting rich off of misery. This is backed up by data. It's backed up by reports by Cicero Institute and their review of form nine nineties, showing provider compensation among the continuum of care awards nonprofits grew about a hundred and eighteen percent from the year twenty thirteen to twenty twenty four. So to put that in context, during that same period, inflation only grew thirty-four percent. So this so these entities grew in their revenue nearly four times inflation. So it's clear companies are making money off of off of this um off of other people's misery. And to that, Mr. Cho, I wanna ask a question. Um you've mentioned that um we have a homeless industrial complex. Would you agree with that state? Would is that what you've said but in the past?

Yes, sir, and so has uh HUD Secretary Scott Turner.

what what first what in your firsthand investigations what are you what are you seeing in that in that way

could you repeat your question one more time

so in your investigations are you seeing people like are you seeing entities or or these these these nonprofits are they getting rich off of off of providing these services

you absolutely uh especially their top ceos and executives many of them are making high six figure salaries and the staff are also making six figure salaries and they're holding fundraisers, uh, where they're raising millions of dollars, yet, uh, as this, uh, commission's noted, uh, we don't see the results. There's record homelessness on the streets, record drug overdose deaths. Uh, meanwhile, these nonprofits, uh, are lining their pockets. And of course, uh, there are good ones out there as well, especially the faith-based nonprofits, uh, where they take a different approach from housing first and harm reduction. And the focus, again, should be more on recovery and treatment. Uh, and that is where we're seeing a lot of success on the streets.

Right. Um, Mr. Webster, I'm gonna ask you a, uh, I'm gonna name this quote and I'm just gonna ask if you know who said it. "Since nineteen eighty-seven, when I first proposed an overhaul of the welfare system, I have argued that welfare recipients should be required to work." Any guesses?

I'm gonna pick Bill Clinton for two hundred.

It was Joe Biden. But you're close. Um, Bill Clinton said in um in in both campaigns in ninety-two and ninety-six, he said, " Real reform should impose time limits and require work and provide provide child care so that people can actually can go to work without hurting their children." Um, is that is that the view today of the Democratic Party?

Well, I ca- I can't speak for the Democratic Party, uh, and I don't want to, but I d- I do think that, uh, what we're missing in the continuum of care program is, uh, a more robust, uh, and accountable answer to these kinds of wrap-around services that actually meet people where they at and move them f- to a different place. Uh, I do wanna be fair though, uh, there are a number of continuums of care that are showing results and that are doing a good job uh I think that when you understand that you know more than fifty percent of all the homelessness is in the west coast uh Oregon Washington and California, we have some uh some some real challenges over there that dwarf the successes of some of the uh more local and smaller organizations and and efforts. And uh and and I think that that all those wrap around services are a part of it.

Is is handing people these drug care packs, is that helping them achieve their goal of getting a job?

Not in my view.

Thank you.

Mister Walkinshaw.

Thank you, Mister Chairman. Well, this Democrat believes the American people are working pretty damn hard. They're working hard, they're paying more. and they're getting less. And unless they're members of the Trump family, they don't have Russian oligarchs to fund their weddings or taxpayer dollars to fund their tungsten mines in Kazakhstan. Uh, mister Cho, just a question for you and we'll go down the line. When housing becomes more expensive, do you agree that more Americans are then at risk of becoming homeless? Yes or no? Mister Cho?

No.

Mister Webster, when housing becomes more expensive, do you believe that makes more Americans at risk of becoming homeless?

Potentially.

Okay. Miss Batko, yes or no?

Yeah.

Okay. I think it's basic economics. If housing is more expensive, more people are gonna be unable to afford that housing. And right now, housing is way too expensive. People in this country who do everything right who work hard, play by the rules, are struggling to rent or buy a home. Young people in this country don't believe they will ever be able to buy a home. High interest rates, which are skyrocketing as we speak, exacerbated by the obscene, obscene deficits, this Congress has run up, lock people into existing homes, and lock other people out of the market completely. So yes, we should root out the waste, we should investigate the fraud, it's too bad the actual doge, the namesake of this committee, failed so abysmally to do any of that, as the GAO has recently documented. But if we care about homelessness-ness, why are we making housing more expensive? President Trump's tariffs are adding seventeen thousand five hundred dollars to the cost of a new home. The result of that is four hundred and fifty thousand fewer homes being built. Fewer homes being built, more homelessness. Think about it. Just when we need more housing, and all of our witnesses today have expressed their concern about homelessness. Just when we need more housing, President Trump and this Congress are making more expensive. The lumber and steel tariffs are a tax on housing. We're taxing the thing we most need at the moment we most need it. And if we want fewer people to be without a home, maybe we shouldn't make the homes more expensive. A simple thought. Uh, Ms. Bakul, I wanna just delve into one of the topics that I think is inherent in all of the testimony we've heard today, and it's the connection between housing costs, substance abuse, or other challenges people are facing, and - and homelessness-ness. Are there parts of the country, are there states, are there communities that have high rates of substance abuse in low rates, relatively low rates of homelessnessness?