Dr. Adams Kellum’s Leadership Saved Hundreds of Lives
Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum has announced her intention to step down as CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.
Dr. Adams Kellum has dedicated her life to helping the most marginalized and disadvantaged members of our society and she has saved hundreds if not thousands of lives here in Los Angeles.
She began her career helping former foster youth successfully transition out of the system and into stability. From there, she became CEO of St. Joseph’s Center. When she arrived, the non-profit helped nearly 100 people each year – Dr. Adams Kellum built it into a model service provider now serving thousands of unhoused Angelenos each year.
“After serving as CEO, Dr. Adams Kellum worked with my office to create Inside Safe – the first and only citywide program to resolve entire encampments and bring people inside,” said Mayor Karen Bass.
“Dr. Adams Kellum spent her career tackling the challenges of homelessness – silos, services, accountability, cost – and despite knowing that LAHSA was a broken system, she answered the call of service to serve as CEO of LAHSA because she knows that above all else, we must work to save lives. And despite this broken system, while homelessness rises across the country, Los Angeles is bucking that trend – street homelessness declined for the first time in more than six years, and early reports show that this progress continues for a second year. This would not have been possible without Dr. Adams Kellum’s leadership and bold vision for what’s possible.
“Dr. Adams Kellum’s leadership of LAHSA has helped us move the needle to save lives, restore neighborhoods and show that homelessness can be solved. She is an agent of change. I thank her for her work and wish her the best in all that she will do moving forward. We will continue to build on the foundation she has helped to lay so that we can move toward ending the humanitarian crisis of homelessness in LA.”
Inside Safe has launched operations at 80 encampments, many of them notoriously dangerous and entrenched, and has helped save lives of many by moving unhoused Angelenos off the streets. The County launched their Pathway Home initiative many months later, which is also modeled after Inside Safe and has addressed about half of that amount throughout the County.
Street homelessness in Los Angeles has decreased for the first time in years and for the first time in consecutive years since the crisis exploded.
According to the Mayor’s Office, “Los Angeles thanks her for her work to save lives and move this city forward and will continue to build on the foundation she has helped to lay so that we can move toward ending the humanitarian crisis of homelessness in LA.”
