While Americans tried to figure out how to pay their bills and also pay taxes, and as homeless people filled the streets of Los Angeles in sleeping bags and tents, fraudsters allegedly applied taxpayer-provided homelessness money to their own indulgent entertainment whims.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner on Thursday again highlighted cases of extreme misuse of taxpayer dollars related to housing programs. The clip from NewsNation featured a reporter talking to Bill Essayli, first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, about how the property purchases with some homelessness money were not for putting a roof over street dwellers’ heads, but to further the dreams of criminals.
Housing First is a failure. Developer Steven Taylor bought a Cheviot Hills property for $11 million, then sold it to the City of LA for $27 million in taxpayer money for “homeless housing.” It’s still empty. Still under construction. Zero homeless people housed. This is the scam. We are ending it.
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) November 5, 2026
Democrats have covered up for a massive network of waste and abuse. “And something that's just upsetting when you're talking about homeless people and then you've got, you know, these fraudsters buying homes in Greece, living in $7 million mansions,” the NewsNation reporter exclaimed. “One guy opened a nightclub in Inglewood,” Essayli interjected.
NewsNation explained further, “The SixSevenFive Lounge in Inglewood. The Feds say a million in homeless funds [were] spent to dance the night away, while outside the homeless sleep on the street. Nonprofit founder Michael Young indicted in this scheme. U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, Bill Essayli, says this is all just the tip of the iceberg.”
The reporter asked, “Do you think this is still happening? I mean, you've, you know, you're prosecuting some of these people, but how much of this is happening that you don't even know about?”
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Essayli began laughing at the question before stating, “There is never a shortage of fraud. I mean, whether it's in the healthcare space with the hospice and all that stuff that you've been seeing, or in the homeless funds, if there's government money, if there's a pot of government money somewhere, you can be sure fraudsters are figuring out how to get it.”
Fraudsters bought homes in Greece and lived in $7M houses while the homeless slept on the street. One opened a nightclub with $1M in homeless funds. @WHFraudTF is rooting this out. https://t.co/CIWDjqCk7I
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) November 5, 2026
Interestingly, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who was funneling money to homelessness NGOs and shelters that were providing free drug paraphernalia to addicts, and who benefited from votes bought off homeless people, is projected to lose her reelection bid. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority alone reportedly laundered some $75 million in funds.
However, Bass’s opponent is socialist Nithya Raman, who also sits on a homelessness committee in Los Angeles. Don’t expect the integrity or financial responsibility of the city government to increase under her.