A Conversation with Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum

Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum is the CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). LAHSA is the lead agency in the HUD-funded Los Angeles Continuum of Care and coordinates and manages federal, state, county, and city funds for programs providing shelter, housing, and services to people experiencing homelessness. Immediately before joining LAHSA, Dr. Adams Kellum spent a month consulting with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to shape the Inside Safe program.

Dr. Adams Kellum is perhaps best known for her time as President and CEO of St. Joseph Center, a social service organization offering outreach & engagement, housing, mental health, and education & vocational programs across Los Angeles County. The Center is a trailblazer in deploying integrated, multidisciplinary teams to help the most vulnerable homeless individuals obtain and maintain stable housing. Under her leadership, St. Joseph Center nearly quadrupled its staff, expanded its services, and broadened its geographic reach, becoming a recognized leader in homeless services throughout LA County.

Dr. Adams Kellum holds a gubernatorial appointment to the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s No Place Like Home Program Advisory Committee. She has also served on and continues to support the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness, as well as the National Alliance to End Homelessness’ Race Equity Network. She currently sits on the Housing California Board, Policy Lab Advisory Board, and the Board of Trustees for Mount Saint Mary’s University. Born and raised in Southern California, she received her B.A. from the University of Southern California and earned an M.A. from Ball State University before completing her Ph.D. at Stanford University.

Belinda Juran/Paige Warren: Prior to joining the administration of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass in February 2023 as CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), you served as President and CEO of St. Joseph Center. Under your leadership, St. Joseph’s led a highly publicized initiative that sheltered many homeless people who had been camping on Venice Beach. Can you briefly explain the situation, your approach, and what made it successful?

Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum: During the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous spaces were underutilized by the business community and they became heavily populated with people experiencing homelessness. The government was urging people to “shelter in place” to protect everyone’s safety and wellbeing. For an unhoused person, that came to mean living in a tent. There was a horrible sense of great struggle and desperation among the unhoused community — people were in great distress — including people suffering from severe mental illness and some young women who were sexually assaulted. It was a really complex situation. We noticed that when people picked up their tents every day, the encampments didn't grow or become as entrenched, but when people didn't take their tents down, they accumulated more items and the encampments grew. By 2021, here in Los Angeles, there was an encampment of about 200 people living on Venice Beach. Also at that time, news articles started coming out saying that older adults, who had lived in the Venice Beach neighborhood all their lives or who had planned to retire there, just weren't feeling safe and they didn’t even want their grandkids to visit.

At the time, I was the leader of the St. Joseph Center, which is the main service provider to homeless people for the area. It was our responsibility to try to address this situation — we needed people to no longer camp on the beach. While we had let people camp up to that point, there was a need to resume with regular beach hours so that the businesses could come back and people who want to go to the beach, both housed and unhoused, could experience that space again. So we relied on a beach closure law (Section 63.44 B14) that prohibits indefinite camping on the sand and boardwalk. We also had to get people to move out of their tents willingly.

One of my mentors in this space, Commissioner Mike Neely, taught me: “You've got to come up with something that people will want more than the privacy that they get in their own tent.” We had to give them something that will get them to say “yes, I’ll move” — something that each person will feel is better than their current situation. For some people who want privacy and solitude and who want the comfort that no one's going to steal their possessions, a shelter may not be better. It's different for each person. The bottom line: if we were going to go out to these encampments, we needed to have a proposal that people would say “yes” to.

We pulled a number of city departments together and proposed a budget for housing people in motels for up to six months and then transitioning them to permanent housing. Once we received all the approvals, we used drone technology to assess the conditions on the beach and the numbers of people in encampments. We segmented the beach by zone and proceeded to clear a zone each week, which equated to housing about 30 people a week. People started to see that we were actually making good on our promises and they moved.

We set a goal of six weeks to house everybody off Venice Beach. We had submitted a budget of $5 million to make sure that we could house everybody for up to six months in motels. We also went to LAHSA (the organization I now run) and obtained time-limited subsidies for each of the 200 persons on the beach. We leveraged our outreach teams, who were already connected to the unhoused people in the area. They communicated the timelines for beach closure, etc., but also communicated two main messages: that we've got a place for you now and that we're going to connect you to a permanent housing resource.

It was remarkably successful. We met the six-week goal with zero arrests. Now, almost two years later, about 70% of the people have retained permanent housing. I firmly believe that the success lay in the collaboration among service providers, the mayor's office, the council office, and various city departments, including sanitation and Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), which had never, in my recollection, been done before. We came together, huddled every single day in person, and tracked the data to make sure we were measuring our progress. The system of management we used was very intense and very precise. Six weeks later, it yielded profound results. We achieved a great result and delivered on what we promised we would do.

Juran/Warren: On her very first day in office in December 2022, Mayor Bass issued a Declaration of Local Emergency regarding the crisis of homelessness in the city and county of Los Angeles and introduced her “Inside Safe” program. Can you please provide a description of the Inside Safe program, comparing and contrasting it to the Venice Beach Encampments to Home project?

Adams Kellum: Inside Safe is an expansion of the initiative we did in Venice Beach. The approach of collaboration and funding, with regards to both interim and permanent housing, are essentially the same. But the scale is entirely different and Mayor Bass brings a practitioner’s mindset to Inside Safe; that makes it different and very special.

At Venice Beach we housed about 35 people per week. The pace and the scale of Inside Safe is significantly bigger. The mayor's goal was 1,000 people over 100 days. In addition, Mayor Bass has honed in on enhancing the experience in the interim housing. She has mandated that everybody see a doctor within the first 48 to 72 hours to receive both a physical and mental health checkup. Many of these homeless persons have not been to the doctor in some time. Mayor Bass is making sure that there's true support, both clinical and mental health support, in the interim housing space so that people get what they need.

Juran/Warren: Where do things stand in terms of the goal of housing 1,000 people? Please also explain how you are addressing some of the challenges you faced.

Adams Kellum: We reached the goal in March 2023 when the mayor was in office for 100 days. But we’re not done. Mayor Bass has a new goal of housing 17,000 people in her first year. Now we are focused on ensuring that we have the resources to scale up. Mayor Bass is being very intentional in the process. Where are the motels? Do we have enough, and do we have enough resources to get people from shelter to interim, or interim to permanent, housing? It's going to be really important for us to get people moving well through the system from interim into permanent housing so that we can open up those beds for people coming out of tents.

During the implementation of Inside Safe, we noticed early on the challenges in finding available affordable housing resources, capacity of service providers, and timing from when we received the green light to when an effort started. It involved tight turnarounds and a heavy lift of all involved, but I will say that what made it so unprecedented was the collaboration of all entities. We brought together all stakeholders in one place to streamline resources and service delivery in order to quickly move people indoors. This included the sanitation workers working hand in hand with outreach staff, the network of motel groups coming together and spreading the word on this need. It was the willingness of service agency staff to push their limits. And it was a collective understanding that, if we’re going to eradicate homelessness, then it’s going to take a shift in how we approach the work. Now, we have motels calling us to be involved, we have smaller community agencies wanting to play a role, and we have an infrastructure that is built on expeditiously moving people experiencing homelessness to inside, safe, and on a path to permanent housing.

Inside Safe has also highlighted the pain points in our system. These challenges include timely data entry that reflects the full scope of work, locating and securing affordable interim housing sites, lack of available permanent housing units, and gaps in case management, housing navigation and mental health support in the motels.

Juran/Warren: How is the Inside Safe initiative different from what had been done before?

Adams Kellum: The distinction lies in the difference between encampment sweeps, which were more typical in the past, and Inside Safe. A sweep means “you have to move because we're going to clean” or “you have to move because we're going to build a development.” But the resources provided are not always clear or concrete. With Inside Safe, we're saying, “This is a housing intervention, not a cleanup.” We’re not sweeping people away or making them invisible. We are working to inspire the homeless to say “yes” to housing and we are offering both a safe place for them to go right now and working with them to obtain permanent housing.

Juran/Warren: In December 2022, President Biden also announced his national Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness. Does Los Angeles’ plan scaffold off of this plan and share any of the same headline goals?

Adams Kellum: While Inside Safe is our own plan, it aligns very nicely with the plan put forth by the Biden administration and United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). Their plan believes that equity, data, and collaboration are foundational to the work of ending homelessness. Its solutions are prevention, crisis response, housing, and support. In my presentation at Harvard University’s Advanced Leadership Initiative deep dive on health and homelessness about our work to date, I also called out these approaches as important, but I didn’t emphasize prevention. Prevention is somewhat outside of the purview of LAHSA but it's not outside of the continuum of work that it's going to take to solve homelessness. Because as we house people, we have to make sure other people are not falling into homelessness. Unfortunately, people are currently falling into homelessness faster than we can house people. There always has to be a prevention component that looks at the reasons people are becoming homeless. Are there some ways that we can begin to predict which individuals and families are at greatest risk of falling into homelessness and begin to treat those issues?

I particularly like the concept of using data and tools to predict who might fall into homelessness and trying to intervene to prevent it. There's some really great research being conducted at the California Policy Lab. The work we are doing needs to happen in concert with the prevention work. We'll never get out of the hole if we keep having people falling in.

Juran/Warren: The Biden administration’s plan specifically is built on the philosophy of “Housing First,” which delinks the provision of housing from conditioning it on the requirement of services (e.g., mental health, substance treatment, etc.). How does “Housing First” fit into what LAHSA is doing in Los Angeles?

Adams Kellum: I am absolutely supportive of and believe in Housing First. It's not housing only; it's just housing first. Housing First takes a low barrier approach to access. We lean into the belief that everyone deserves to have a shot at housing and they shouldn't have to earn their way into it. Even if someone has an addiction or a mental health concern that's untreated, it doesn't mean that they're not worthy of housing. That belief brings more equity to the system and it keeps us from having a different set of rules for different groups of people.

Juran/Warren: People become and/or remain homeless for various reasons, for various frequencies, so a one-size-fits-all approach to addressing homelessness isn’t realistic. Are there any key approaches, not referenced above, that are critical to both short-term and long-term solutions, especially given that there are some people who are episodically or infrequently homeless versus chronically homeless?

Adams Kellum: This question about solutions brings to mind the concept of guaranteed income, which has gotten some discussion and gained some interest. Often, when you intervene with cash programs, the challenge is determining how much help would be enough and figuring out how much money would truly get them out of the crisis. I don't think we know enough about that yet and we're going to have to use data to track and measure. Even with time-limited subsidies, which are typically for two years, after that time period many people still can't afford to pay for permanent housing. But perhaps that has more to do with skyrocketing rents and the fact that, when we put cash into the system, we actually drive the costs up. Another solution could lie in workforce development efforts. Also, are there wealth-building opportunities, particularly with transition age youth, to decrease the risk that they become homeless as they grow older? With respect to all of the above, there are predictive models we should be investing in over the long-term. Maybe it is guaranteed income or maybe it’s intervening immediately when people have received a three-day notice to vacate. We know that we need more research, but we also need to be leveraging existing findings into our practice.

In Los Angeles, people are saying “yes” to coming inside when we have a housing resource in hand and an opportunity for a lifetime of moving away from living in a tent. So the secret sauce is not so secret, right? It’s what we all want. I do realize that this does challenge the notion that some people just want to stay outside. And there are certainly people who are severely mentally ill that can’t get to “yes” without help. Would their mental illness even allow them to feel comfortable to say “yes” to me? And if the answer is “no,” what can we do to help those dear people who don't even know how to help themselves?

Juran / Warren: On December 13, 2022, the LA Times ran an article about a national commercial real estate developer who decided to redevelop the Cecil Hotel as permanent supportive housing for the homeless rather than as market-rate apartments. At that time, the hotel had been open a year and was significantly vacant. If implemented properly, it would seem that focusing private capital on this issue, in partnership with public resources, may offer the promise of nationally scalable solutions. Can you provide any perspective on what can be learned from this?

Adams Kellum: That is a great example of something that has been underutilized up to this point. In this case, the mayor's office is partnering with the county to use the vacant rooms and to make sure they're allocated. The plan is to make them available for people needing additional support — what we call higher acuity — which includes those who might need wraparound services in concert and in partnership with the county of Los Angeles and the department of Health Services. But the state of emergency and the mayor's actions, including the county Board of Supervisors locking arms with the mayor, has produced some solutions, including a focus on not letting these apartments remain idle.

In another example, the mayor just moved forward on bringing under her jurisdiction some units held by Skid Row Housing Trust, which was facing bankruptcy. The city is going to take on a number of buildings to ensure that we don't lose stock. If you end up losing affordable stock and it goes into the general unsubsidized market, you lose traction. The fact that Mayor Bass is going to maintain those in a subsidized space is very encouraging. We simply can't afford to lose anything that's already in the low income and affordable stock.

Juran/Warren: In the December 2022 The Atlantic published an article provocatively entitled “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness” with the subtitle of “And why everyone’s ignoring it.” The author acknowledges an “interplay between structural and individual causes,” but pulls from the analogy of the kids’ game musical chairs to conclude that homelessness is fundamentally an affordable housing undersupply issue that is rooted in NIMBYism. In your view, is that accurate or too simplistic? 

Adams Kellum: I didn’t read that article, but I do have a view based on what you just shared. Of course, the supply of housing matters, but not if affordability isn't maintained. There are some vacancies in Los Angeles, but they're generally on the higher priced end, so that won't help the situation. It will only help if affordable and accessible housing is built more swiftly and ideally if that housing can be on a master lease. Systemic discrimination still occurs in leases. What happens if a white person goes to rent an apartment versus if a black person? What's the likelihood of the black person getting accepted versus a white person? We know that people of color are disadvantaged because investigations have been conducted. So, when LAHSA is able to master lease, it's easier to house someone with a previously homeless background that a property manager may otherwise be skeptical of. And if we master lease the whole building, we can house people pretty quickly without having to go through all the barriers that keep certain people out. In my opinion, building more housing alone is not enough. There have to be policies around it that take into consideration people who are unhoused.

The other elements at play here that cannot be ignored are the structural and systemic issues facing homelessness. We need to be talking about the individual issues that make a person vulnerable for homelessness in the first place — whether it's mental health issues, family dynamics, kids growing up in foster care, incarceration, or people in poverty — which represent a large percentage of people who fall into homelessness. And black and brown people are over-represented in some of those realities. Some of the systemic issues in our country simply make it more difficult for people of color to make it and to be self-sufficient. And it’s compounded by disparities in health care. This is seen when people who have good jobs get injured or lose their jobs, and don't have the support systems to be able to fight through that, so they end up losing stability and end up living in their cars and, next thing you know, they're in a tent.

I believe that throughout the system, those working in this space are doing a much better job at accounting for these factors now. Previously, we really did ascribe to the idea that anybody could become homeless. We weren't talking about the fact that homelessness is happening at a greater rate to black and brown people. Its incidence is very disproportionate to their numbers within the general population. So with all of that said, there is something systemic afoot, and we need to consider that as well, not just the undersupply of housing units.

Juran/Warren: There’s a debate about the best term to use to refer to people in need of housing: homeless, unhoused, unsheltered, houseless, rough sleepers. To what extent do you think terminology is important, and does using one of these terms in particular help address the problem or just become a distraction or a euphemism?

Adams Kellum: I think that we, and I'm going to include myself, should be asking the unhoused population what they feel is important, because I'm guessing there's as much variance among them as there is among us about which terms we should be using. I think that hearing more from lived experts in this moment when we're trying to get our footing and trying to be effective and be sensitive is important. It's good to ask them. I'm going to heed my own advice. I'm going to try to do that more because it probably changes with each individual.

Juran/Warren: Any concluding thoughts?

Adams Kellum: I think that we're all desperate to find a solution. This humanitarian crisis has to be seen as a crisis that's in the making. We're all part of both the problem and the solution. Whether we've turned our heads, whether we've thought only about our own family's well-being, whether we've thought about homelessness as an individual problem versus a systemic problem — we all have a hand in the making of the crisis. So we also have to have a hand in the solution. I do believe there's a role for everyone, even if it comes down to smiling and nodding at a new neighbor that you may have heard was previously homeless. Make them feel welcome and see them as your dear neighbor. Many have never had anything stable in their entire life. That’s hard. Many feel very isolated and lonely. We have to agree to be community to people that are beyond our friends and family. It’s a role that we can play and that we should all be playing.

About the Authors:

Belinda Juran was a 2020 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) Fellow whose social impact is focused on her adopted hometown of Lowell, MA. Prior to ALI, Belinda served as partner at WilmerHale, a global law firm where she co-chaired both the technology transactions and licensing practice group and the life sciences practice group. Earlier she was a software engineer, engineering manager and consultant at various software and hardware companies. Belinda is a board member of both the International Institute of New England, which supports refugees and immigrants in the eastern Massachusetts and New Hampshire areas, and the Pollard Memorial Library Foundation, which raises funds to support Lowell’s public library. She also serves on the advisory boards of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, the University of Massachusetts Lowell School of Education, the Lowell Early Childhood Council, UTEC (which helps proven-risk young adults achieve social and economic success), and the Free Soil Arts Collective (which amplifies the voices of artists of color).

Paige Warren is a 2021 Harvard ALI Senior Fellow and senior editor for the Social Impact Review. Paige had a distinguished career in financial services at the nexus of business, government, and neighborhoods. Over the course of her 17 year tenure in the commercial debt side of Prudential Financial’s investment management arm, Paige served in various senior roles including Global COO and Head of Strategy, President, and Portfolio Manager. Much of Paige’s career was spent in affordable and public housing development and finance. Prior to joining Prudential, she served in the Federal Government to build an organization focused on restructuring the government’s affordable multifamily housing debt. She has served in various other private sector roles, including that of developer, investor, and feasibility consultant. Paige is currently the vice chair of the board of trustees and chair of the finance subcommittee at The Washington Center, a non-profit, higher education adjacent organization whose mission is to enhance the pipeline of diverse talent and to build more equitable, inclusive workplaces and communities. She is an ESG FSA Credential-holder and holds a certification in ESG Investment from the CFA Institute.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.