Waste of the Day: Throwback Thursday – Helping Beverly Hills’ Low-Income Community

Topline: If the federal government wants to address homelessness, Rodeo Drive might not be the best place to start. That hasn’t stopped Beverly Hills — with no qualified low-income areas — and nearby Santa Fe Springs from receiving Community and Development Block Grants for years to fund homelessness services and job creation.

Beverly Hills claiming a low-income community? Seriously?

City officials knew their neighborhoods were too wealthy for the grants back in 2012. They left the money untouched for years before eventually selling $206,426 in grant funds to other cities. The money would be worth $298,000 today.

That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses. 

Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.   

Coburn’s Wastebook 2012 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $18 billion, including the unnecessary homelessness funding.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Key facts: The Department of Housing and Urban Development sent the grant funding to Los Angeles County, which then disbursed it to individual cities.

Beverly Hills could not find a use for the money and let it pile up for years. Once the city was sitting on a balance of $675,000, it sold some of the grants to the City of Hawaiian Gardens for 70 cents on the dollar. Beverly Hills lost money on the sale but was freed of the legal requirement to spend the grant on its (almost non-existent) low-income population.

They admit it

Beverly Hills officials explained in a City Council memo,

It can be particularly difficult for cities such as Beverly Hills, which does not have any qualified low-income areas, to find [grant-eligible] projects … Staff has been researching promising projects, but none are ready to fund.

Santa Fe Springs, which at the time was estimated to have 74 homeless people, made a similar deal with La Mirada and sold its grant funds for 71 cents on the dollar.

Congress banned cities from selling their grants in 2014.

Background: Beverly Hills continues to receive Community Development Block Grant funding, including $181,360 last year. There were an estimated 17 homeless people in Beverly Hills in 2025.

Santa Fe Springs got $131,146 this year, but homelessness is slightly more prevalent in the city today. In contrast to the 74 homeless people listed in the 2010 U.S. Census, today there are an estimated 260 people.

Congress allocated $3.3 billion to fund the grant program nationwide this year.

Summary: There are certainly better ways to help low-income families than sending money to a city known worldwide for its high-class lifestyle.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.