The homeless crisis is worsening in California. And the Democrats who run the state there have a familiar excuse for why their state is in a constant state of decline. It’s all Trump’s fault.
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Homelessness in Los Angeles grew by about 3.4 percent over the last year. A survey conducted the previous year found about 44,000 people living on the streets, and 72,000 people across L.A. County.
L.A. Mayor Bass recently blamed the president for exacerbating the homeless problem.
“The Trump Administration has driven up the cost of gas, groceries and rent, pushing more families to the edge, and slashed critical safety net funding,” Bass said in a statement.
Bass pointed to cuts in federal housing assistance by about half last year, which cost the city around $70 million.
“For two years straight, we drove down homelessness by historic margins, but as expected, last year our efforts ultimately couldn’t keep up with policies and funding cuts at the federal and state levels that pushed more people onto the streets,” the mayor claimed.
Beyond the blame game, the inescapable point is how rife with corruption — and how politically beneficial — the homeless racket has become in California.
Bass made “fighting the homeless problem” a top priority in 2022, when she took office. She launched a $250 million Inside Safe program whose stated mission was to move unhoused residents into permanent housing.
Despite the seemingly noble intentions, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) has been hammered with blistering audit and fraud investigations that have laid bare how susceptible these programs are to corruption.
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Federal funding for the LAHSA was suspended after an investigation revealed widespread fraud and mismanagement.
The Housing and Urban Development (HUD) investigation uncovered that LAHSA was riddled with “false statements,” “irresponsible actions,” and “failures.”
“Despite receiving more federal homelessness funding than any other jurisdiction in the nation, Los Angeles remains the epicenter of the nation’s drug-fueled homelessness crisis,” HUD said in a statement.
Even Mayor Bass acknowledged there was a problem with the homeless programs.
READ MORE: Spencer Pratt Mercilessly Mocks Karen Bass After Her Absurd Explanation for Homeless Meth Use
“Audits and the courts have now made plain what too many Angelenos already saw: the money wasn’t tracked, providers went unpaid, and public trust eroded,” Bass said. “I’m not going to defend a broken system. The city must build something better, results-driven, transparent and centered around the people we’re trying to help, not the bureaucracy.”
Indeed, L.A. spends about $3 billion a year on homelessness, yet somehow it only gets worse. It isn’t a mystery why, however.
One case study is illustrative of the core problem: Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are looting taxpayers while trying to “solve” the problem.
A Los Angeles homeless nonprofit called A Step to Freedom, which rapidly expanded using taxpayer funds to house people coming out of jail, paid more than $1.7 million over three years to two for-profit companies owned by its own chief executive, Kenya Croom.
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The conflict of interest is obvious: If an NGO starts solving the problem, the money goes away.
L.A. mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt posted an “I told you so” message on X.
SHOCKER…the LA homeless count is going UP!
I warned you guys: the more homeless people, the more money Nithya Raman and Karen Bass can launder through their corrupt NGOs. You will NEVER fix this problem by electing people who profit off it.
pic.twitter.com/8rTNrOcrRG— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) July 23, 2026
But the conflicts of interest don’t stop there. Homeless people are a prime target of radical Democrat ballot harvesting.
This isn’t just a right-wing fever dream. The Justice Department announced in May that it had charged a California woman for paying homeless individuals on Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles to register to vote.
Thousands of homeless voters were registered to vote at shelters, despite many not living there or those shelters having no beds, another investigation found.
Nearly 1,200 people were registered to vote at one homeless shelter on Skid Row with 132 beds, while 185 more were registered at another location with no beds at all.
DSA-backed mayoral candidate Nithya Raman undoubtedly gained from a potent combo of homelessness paired with ballot harvesting and untracked mail-in ballots. She improbably surged over the course of post-election week to overtake Spencer Pratt in the L.A. mayor’s race.
It was so blatant that the FBI even descended on Skid Row in early June to sort out the mess.
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The bottom line is that Karen Bass is a lot of things, but she isn’t a dumb politician.
She knows that the One-Party State of California allows her a certain amount of license to go on foreign trips while her city burns down, and throw in cahoots with communist dictators and still escape the wrath of voters unscathed.
It is of minor inconvenience to Democrats that California, widely known as the Golden State, is no longer called such for the precious metals in the Sierra Nevadas as much as the urine puddles on the streets of San Francisco.
So, when the L.A. mayor lashes out at President Donald Trump over worsening homeless numbers in California, we can glean a few things.
Bass is not so much interested in solving problems as assigning political blame.
Because if there were anyone able to help solve this problem, it would be the President of the United States.
Elected officials who want to solve problems don’t light every bridge on fire with the politics of demonization and pointless finger-pointing.
But that’s exactly what communists like Karen Bass do.
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