While California Gov. Gavin Newsom, San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie pay lip service to solving their homeless disaster, people continue to die in their “encampments.”
Such was the case of 46-year-old Lucrecia Macias who lived in a Westlake neighborhood encampment near downtown Los Angeles.
Her daughter, Amely Becerra brought flowers for her mother on May 10, the day before Mother’s Day. There was no sign of her so two days later, Becerra’s sister, Ariana Macias, said she was searching for their mother with a phone tracking app that led her to the homeless encampment.
It was there she found her mother’s dead body being eaten by dogs.
“It’s getting out of control,” Becerra commented later. “And to hear that this encampment has been there since forever, it’s like, what’s going on here? Are they allowing this stuff to happen?”
The family holds government officials responsible for not clearing problem encampments like the one where Barajas died.
Lucrecia Macias Barajas was an Army veteran and loving mother, said Becerra, the oldest of Barajas’ six children. Barajas was diagnosed with cancer three years ago and suffered from depression, but Becerra said she did everything in her power to support her family.
Barajas would bring clothes and food to unhoused people even if she didn’t have much money herself, Macias said. The last she heard from her mother she was going to bring food to an unhoused friend. Macias said that’s how she wound up at the encampment in Westlake.
“ My mom wasn’t a mom just to us,” Macias said.
According to the L.A. County medical examiner’s office, the body of a man identified as Fredy Pojoy Sajqui was found near Barajas in a tent on the sidewalk.
In May 2025, L.A.’s highest homeless services official, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, engaged in major misconduct, including hiring unqualified friends into powerful positions, trying to destroy public records and behaving inappropriately at a conference, according to two whistleblower claim letters.
LAHSA arranged for $800,000 to be paid to the whistleblowers — former chief financial and administrative officer Kristina Dixon and former top IT and data official Emily Vaughn Henry — to settle the claims before they became public lawsuits.
The settlement amount was equivalent to what it costs to shelter as many as 40 unhoused people for a year.
Vaughn Henry’s claim letter says Adams Kellum retaliated against her “for not being willing [to] hide the number of clients being served by Inside Safe.”
A LAHSA official repeatedly withheld accurate data about Mayor Karen Bass’ signature homelessness program, Inside Safe, “because (Adams) Kellum did not want Mayor Bass to look bad.”
With these findings and a series of audits, which included the first year of Adams Kellum’s time as CEO, they found waste in the city and county’s homeless spending with money missing and services not tracked. This is part of the reason why L.A. County voted to create a new county-run homeless services department with more accountability.
Adams Kellum soon announced she would be resigning with 120 days.
Work on the new department is underway and will be completed by July 1, 2026.
LAHSA’s relationship with elected officials came up at an April federal court hearing before Judge David O. Carter.
He said the agency has protected elected officials from responsibility in how billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on homelessness.
Referring to LAHSA, the judge said: “It’s a perfect shield for political responsibility.”
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By award-winning Texas author Cynthia Leal Massey.
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California is needing, and going to get, an inside-out, upside down shaking, to get back to rights. I just keep seeing this scene: a good woman like that, missing and dead for days, found being eaten by dogs, while out helping people with what she had to give. Thanks for telling her story.
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Thank for sharing this story, although it sure is horrifying on multiple levels.
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How horrible is this? Doing good and ends up killed. California is a third-world country, and it all started in the 90s with Clinton and the Mexican tribalism that has divided and ruined the state. No hope or wealth will be able to change. Best, fence it off and wait for the big earthquake to hit.
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