WP_Query not returning custom post type

I’m using the below code to try to return the count of custom post types but the query isn’t finding anything. I change the post_type to project and it works fine. This is also being used outside of the loop if that makes a difference?

 function get_user_posts_count($user_id, $post_type) {
    $args['author']     = 1;
    $args['post_type']  = 'project';
    $args['posts_per_page'] = -1;
    $args['post_status']    = 'any, trash';

    $ps = new WP_Query( $args );

    echo var_dump ($ps);

}