LA Alliance for Human Rights claims to hold the “homeless(ness) industrial system” accountable, a mission that appeals to the majority of people in Los Angeles, (espescially readers of @roofless!) regardless of housing status.

Audit The Government recently wrote about a City defense attorney’s conflict-of-interest in the LA Alliance case, claiming on a Substack livestream that homeless people are deprived a voice in court, as well as access to basic resources.

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

I agree, which is why I write roofless…

How did Alliance treat an unhoused person to whom they actually owed care and attention?

Six years after their original complaint was filed on March 10th, 2020, LA Alliance, to me, are just another nonprofit making millions of dollars off the struggle of the unsheltered.

“The L.A. Alliance is our best hope”

—Unattributed Testimonial on LA Alliance’s website

In an illegible 2024 990 filing, Alliance admitted to the Internal Revenue Service that they assist zero people, and they do so at a great expense to the public, costing $6.825M in plaintiff attorney fees and at least $8.5M for outside defense.

The City’s hired defense attorneys, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP claim they are working at a “discounted” rate of $1,295 from their usual hourly rate of up to $2,650/hour, making them some of the most expensive attorneys in the universe.

GDC may be retained to defend the City, but they are not defending its unhoused population.

Theano D. Evangelis Kapur, the lead attorney fighting Alliance on behalf of the City, successfully argued for the City of Grants Pass, Oregon to criminalize resting in public at the U.S. Supreme Court in case 23-175, City of Grants Pass v Gloria Johnson.

In 2024, Alliance forced the City to purchase a $3M audit* and in 2021 they agreed to put a court monitor on payroll for nearly $1M, bringing the total for attorneys, the audit and a monitor to $19.325M, or 426 pounds of $100 bills, 100% covered by taxpayers.

-$19,325,000

= attorneys + audit + court monitor

*Full Disclosure: Zachary Ellison and I met with Alvarez & Marsal’s audit team to consult on their 2025 report (uncompensated) and inform our journalism.

The amount that has been spent on Alliance could pay rent for 900 households for one year.

City Controller Kenneth Mejia would have been happy to audit for free, backed by the trust and support of the people who elected him. No one in Los Angeles voted for LA Alliance for Human Rights or U.S. Judge David O. Carter, yet they are controlling homeless policy behind closed doors with no public participation, and sticking us with the bill.

Most of the politicians that originally aligned with Alliance are no longer around. Joe Busciano, Nury Martinez, Mike Bonin, Mark Ridley-Thomas, Mitch O’Farrell, Gil Cedillo, Eric Garcetti, Ron Galperin, Mike Feuer, Herb Wesson, Kevin de León, Paul Koretz and Rick Cole are all history, as are many high-ranking officials in the City Attorney’s office.

Promotiona [sic] nd [sic] engageement [sic] to and by the citizens [sic]…of Los Ange [sic]…

Explaining Alliance’s purpose “in a clear and concise manner,” Executive Director Paul Webster offered the IRS lorem ipsum.

Promotion and engagment [sic] to and by the citiens [sic] of Los Angeles…to demand accountabilty [sic],

policy, and program change in the Los Angeles region regarding homelessness and the humanitarian crisis it created.

Support for ongoing lawsuit and settlement monitoring against the City and County of Los Angeles.

—IRS EIN 87-1471488 2024 Form 990-EZ ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer

The settlement between LA Alliance and the City was illegally modified in 2024 to demand the demolition of 9,800 tents and recreational vehicles—a scale of dwelling destruction that surpasses the 9,418 structures burned by the Eaton fire.

I wrote about Alliance’s “Milestones” encampment reduction plan:

It is no surprise—to the IRS, or the unhoused—that another homelessness-themed nonprofit became multimillionaires off a scheme to make our desperate living conditions much worse.

LA Alliance’s “HUMAN SHIELD”

Initially, LA Alliance claimed to have unhoused member-plaintiffs—homeless people to whom their attorneys and the Court would have owed a fiduciary duty. One of the individually named member-plaintiffs of Alliance was Gary Whitter. Mr. Whitter’s name appears on 163 docket entries (400 when 8 related cases are considered) starting with the caption of Dkt. 1.

Take a look:

LA ALLIANCE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, an unincorporated association, JOSEPH BURK, HARRY TASHDJIAN, KARYN PINSKY, CHARLES MALOW, CHARLES VAN SCOY, GEORGE FREM, GARY WHITTER, and LEANDRO SUAREZ, individuals, Plaintiffs

2:20-cv-02291-DOC-KES (3/10/20)

Mr. Whitter’s name also appears throughout a 2026 appeal by the City to the Ninth Citcuit as a “Real Party in Interest,” despite the fact that he died without legal representation in 2025.

Who’s Gary Whitter?

Mr. Whitter is described, in great detail, as a destitute man who is sleep-deprived and under the influence of alcohol daily while struggling with multiple severe health issues.

GARY WHITTER has been homeless on and off in the Los Angeles area for the last 13 years. He struggles with alcoholism, depression, bipolar disorder, chronic back pain, and hypertension. While he was living on the streets, he would sleep wrapped up in a blanket, usually on hard cement or a blanket. He could not get more than an hour or two of sleep at a time because of fear of attacks, noise, people asking him to move, physical pain, or exposure to the elements. Sleep deprivation caused his mental state to spiral, exacerbating his depression, bipolar, and hypertension conditions. The hard sleeping conditions and constantly carrying all his belongings everywhere he went lead to severe back pain.

The facts of the complaint were never challenged in Court because there was no discovery, and, unfortunately, there are no direct quotes from Mr. Whitter describing his own situation, so this description is all we have.

Was Mr. Whitter capable of providing the informed consent necessary to be named in federal litigation?

To use medical terminology, it can’t be determined whether Mr. Whitter is “oriented to time and place” or a “reliable narrator.” He was never given an opportunity to demonstrate that he “possessed insight” as to his own situation, because he never got to speak for himself.

The complaint describes a generic experience that rings true to the life of an unsheltered person. It seems real enough, except that we get no sense of who Gary is.

Is he funny or serious? Is he sharp or incoherent? Is he flamboyant or stoic?

Our enigmatic plaintiff is described as deeply affected by society’s superficial preoccupation with appearances. Embarrassment and shame are at the forefront in the only information we have about him.

The stress of the stigma of being homeless was also significant, adding to his depression and hypertension. As hard as he tried, he understood that he always looked and smelled terrible. It was impossible to keep his hygiene up and as a result he was constantly sick. Due to his unpredictable living and sleeping conditions, he lacked regular medical and dental care.

He frequently encountered persons attempting to scam him or victimize him in some way.

All of this caused his mental and physical state to further decline.

If Mr. Whitter could consent to being named in litigation, did he?

Were the lawyers steering Alliance among the

“persons attempting to scam or victimize him in some way”?

Did Alliance attempt to notify Mr. Whitter of court events? Where did they send notices? Were they returned?

It appears that Mr. Whitter did not sign any documents in the LA Alliance docket and my research has uncovered no proof that he participated in drafting the complaint, attended any court hearings, or ever participated in settlement negotiations.

Was Mr. Whitter’s identity outright stolen?

There’s no real way to know when Mr. Whitter’s participation ended if it never legitimately began.

Mr. Whitter’s story continues.

In the middle of March 2019, he entered into a program at the Union Rescue Mission, and has now been there for almost a year. He is able to get a full night’s sleep which has significantly increased his mental stability and reduced his hypertension. Sleeping on a bed, and not having to carry his worldly possessions on his back has helped his back pain tremendously and he can move uninhibited which has itself improved his mental stability and hypertension. He now has regular access to medical and mental health clinics, and his mental and physical health has improved markedly. This is the third time he has been through Union Rescue Mission’s program and he is unsure about what will happen in the future once he graduates. He is aware that permanent housing is difficult to find, but he is fearful of living on Skid Row or returning to living on the streets.

It may be the case that Mr. Whitter was viewed by his lawyers and fellow plaintiffs as a dependent of a non-plaintiff who is prominently named in the complaint, Reverend Andrew Bales, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, board member of the Central City East Association and an LA Homeless Services Authority Commissioner. When I checked with the County Office of the Public Administrator, they said Mr. Whitter was not under any conservatorship or guardianship that they had record of. But all three of the unhoused plaintiffs named in the complaint are said to reside at URM under Bales’ control.

Plaintiffs Charles Van Scoy and Charles Malow are described as being participants in URM’s Ambassador Program for two and three years each, whereas Whitter is said to have arrived off the streets in March 2019, making his tenancy the most precarious.

I know from staying at URM myself in 2017 that unless Whitter was sleeping on the floor of the chapel and/or staying less than 30 days, he would have been paying URM any income he had, such as General Relief or Social Security, for “savings.” I confirmed my recollection of this practice in a public interaction with Rev. Andy Bales in which Bales blocked me before eventually answering. I have discussed URM’s policy with multiple people who stayed there around the same time, who also said they were charged $150/month, effective by their second month staying there.

One floor, our 2nd floor Gateway Program, pays program fees and saves $2 per day

—@abales to @rooflesser on Twitter (now X) on 4/25/21

Supporting the assertion of a financial relationship between URM and all named unhoused Alliance plaintiffs is an entry on the State’s Unclaimed Property Division website that documents a 68¢ unredeemed gift certificate owed to Mr. Gary Whitter with the address of URM.

The undisclosed financial relationship between Rev. Bales and the unhoused plaintiffs is relevant as it can be seen as an issue of “undue influence.” Bales is essentially landlord, employer, spiritual leader and more to those sleeping at URM.

Plaintiff Whitter’s narrative continues with an explanation of life on Skid Row.

Staying on Skid Row has its own dangers. He often has to walk in the street because the sidewalks are completely blocked with tents and possessions. Even when there is room to walk on the sidewalk, he often must walk in the street anyway or risk harassment for walking in a person’s “backyard” (the area in front of the tent). Other than walking to Rite-Aid to pick up his prescriptions or to the Department of Public Social Services office to get his General Relief check, he stays inside because he is too afraid to leave the building. At night he can hear gunshots and sirens all night long, and on the roof, it isn’t uncommon to witness people getting attacked on the street, including women getting beaten or raped.

Amended and Supplemental Complaint Dkt. 361 CA C.D. 2:20-cv-02291-DOC-KES pp. 91-2 (11/1/21)

While there is no evidence whatsoever that Gary Whitter understood that he was named as a plaintiff, he was absolutely the star of the oral argument in front of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

On July 7th, 2021 in Honolulu, Hawaii, a three-judge panel peppered Alliance attorney Matthew Donald Umhofer with questions about the facts of the case, which were never subject to discovery. The arguing parties mention the mysterious Mr. Whitter eight times and do not discuss the other seven plaintiffs.

[3:55] Justice Michelle Friedland: “Could I bring you back to the beginning, to the standing issues? Could you explain why Gary Whitter, who is one of the individual plaintiffs, lacks standing, in your view?”

County counsel Jennifer Mira Hashmall of Miller Barondess LLP: “Because he has stated that he is in a shelter.”

“But…he has been in and out of homelessness, and the shelter is temporary?”

“He has.”…

“Isn’t he at imminent risk of being unsheltered again?”

“I think everyone in the emergency shelter environment may, at some point, may be at risk of being back on the street…”

In the oral argument at 25:30, when Ninth Circuit panel Justice Jacqueline Nguyen asks Alliance’s attorney Matthew Umhofer to address the issue of the factual record, Umhofer incorrectly refers to his client as “Whittier.”

Justice Nguyen asks Umhofer to address the issue of standing.

Nguyen: “Can I have you circle back and address the standing issues, particularly the associational standing of Alliance, and Mr. Whittier…?”

Umhofer twice mispronounces Whitter’s name as “Whittier” in his answer to her.

Umhofer dances around the fact that his plaintiff is not participating by offering statements from additional allegedly unhoused members of LA Alliance who are not named as plaintiffs individually and do not appear in the complaint.

[42:42] Friedland: “At the PI stage, you submitted declarations from multiple people but not Mr.—I thought it was “Whitter”, but everybody saying ‘Whittier,’ so whether it’s ‘Witter’ or ‘Whittier’—”

“Why is there no declaration from Mr. Whitter?”

—Ninth Circuit Justice Michelle Friedland (7/7/21)

Umhofer: “Those allegations…we can satisfy our our standing requirements through other declarations or allegations in the complaint, of course, and so we have very detailed allegations in the complaint from Mr. ‘Whittier’ and that, plus these additional pieces [statements] were the basis of the district court’s factual findings that the association…”

[43:30] Nguyen: “How are their interests germane to the organization’s purpose? You still need to show that, for purposes of associational standing, assume that Mr. Whitter has his own standing because he suffered an injury-in-fact. That still creates a problem in terms of associational standing. There’s a mismatch there.”

“There’s no mismatch at all because the LA Alliance exists to address homelessness in Los Angeles to try to find meaningful solutions to homelessness in Los Angeles. So Mr. Whitter’s participation in that, and everybody else’s participation is germane and directly connected to why the LA Alliance exists.”

Ninth Circuit Case No. 21-55395 oral argument (7/7/21)

According to the Ninth Circuit, the District Court found merit in 6 of the original 14 claims. But the Ninth Circuit said only one of the six actually holds water. Justice Nguyen confirmed Mr. Whitter’s importance to the only valid claim in a September 2021 written opinion, in which the court’s jurisdiction to hear the case is attributed solely to Whitter’s inclusion:

Plaintiffs also have not clearly shown that any individual Plaintiff has standing to bring the state-created danger claim that the district court fashioned. The district court grounded its state-created danger claim in a risk of premature death of those living in encampments.

“Only Plaintiff Whitter may have suffered a relevant injury-in-fact….”

—Ninth Circuit Justice Jacqueline Nguyen (9/23/21)

…because he has been chronically unhoused and is merely temporarily sheltered at a Skid Row mission. However, neither Plaintiffs nor the district court have explained how the relief ordered would help Whitter. For example, the Order requires that the County and City offer “shelter or housing” to unhoused individuals in Skid Row within 180 days, but Whitter is already in a shelter and nothing in the record suggests he will lose his shelter in time to receive an offer. See Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 561 (1992) (observing it must be likely, not merely speculative, that the injury will be redressed by a favorable decision). Thus, Plaintiffs have not made the required “clear showing” that any individual Plaintiff has standing to bring the district court’s version of the state-created danger claim. Yazzie, 977 F.3d at 966.

…The fact that LA Alliance may have broadened its membership after filing this action to include currently unhoused individuals—even ones who were unhoused at the time of the Complaint—does not factor into the standing calculus. See Morongo Band of Mission Indians v. Cal. State Bd. of Equalization, 858 F.2d 1376, 1381 (9th Cir. 1988)

LA Alliance… v. County of Los Angeles, 14 F.4th 947 (9th Cir. 9/23/21) Nguyen, J.

21-55395/55404/55408 Written opinion pg. 26, footnote 9

The Ninth Circuit rejected Alliance’s request for associational standing, cementing Whitter as the “jurisdictional hook.”

When Did Mr. Whitter Go Missing?

The Ninth Circuit vacated U.S. Judge David O. Carter’s preliminary injunction, cancelling an order that everyone on Skid Row be offered housing within 180 days. They remanded the case back to the District Court, and the parties ended up announcing a settlement on April 1st, 2022.

The first version of the settlement explicitly preserved the claims made by Gary Whitter, but the final settlement contained a footnote that he did not participate in the settlement.

Most disturbingly, the final version indemnifies the City against Mr. Whitter’s claims, should he ever manage to bring them to court again.

Plaintiff Gary Whitter is not participating in this agreement. LA Alliance for Human Rights agrees to indemnify the City against any damages, attorneys’ fees, and/or costs incurred by the City in the event Plaintiff Whitter pursues his claims against the City.

Dkt. 421-1 Settlement Agreement p 15 fn 3

Why would Mr. Whitter’s attorneys voluntarily indemnify the City against their client’s claims, when those claims were the strongest ones in their entire case?

A Sloppy Switcheroo

Absent from the final settlement between Alliance and the City is a signature from Mr. Whitter. Curiously, another unhoused man, Wenzial Jarrell, a Black disabled Air Force veteran, is included as a signatory, despite not being named in the caption.

Mr. Whitter was never properly substituted for Mr. Jarrell and for this reason Mr. Jarrell is owed no fiduciary duty by the Alliance attorneys. His introduction on the final City settlement appears to be a smokescreen designed to obscure Mr. Whitter’s disappearance. But unhoused people are not widgets that can be swapped for one another without following the proper procedures granting them the protection which valid parties are owed in the legal process.

Whitter Left CA, Conflicted PI Concludes.

On May 27th, Umhofer and Mitchell formally informed the Court that they would be out of the country and unreachable for three weeks (Dkt. 431) from June 19th–July 9th.

Plaintiffs hereby provide notice that plaintiff’s counsel will be out of the country with very limited access to e-mail or cellular reception on the following dates:

* Elizabeth Mitchell: June 19 until July 7, 2022

* Matthew Umhofer: June 28 until July 9, 2022

Plaintiffs respect that any and all dates and deadlines set hereinafter be set prior to or after said dates.

On June 1st, 2022, leading LA Alliance lawyer Elizabeth A. Mitchell, along with private investigator Paul Bonin, of Irvine-based Paul Bonin & Associates, got in contact regarding Mr. Whitter.

How could Mr. Whitter’s anttorneys establish contact with Mr. Whitter if they were not reachable themselves due to taking an international vacation?

Case 2:20-cv-02291-DOC-KES Document 450-2 Filed 07/11/22

DECLARATION OF PAUL BONIN

I, Paul Bonin, do state and declare as follows:

1. I make this declaration under oath and could and would so testify if called upon to do so.

2. I am a California licensed private investigator and have been so since September 2015. I am the owner, operator and President of Paul Bonin and Associates, Inc. From 1995 until 2015 I was a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Prior to that, from 1985 until 1995, I was an Officer and pilot with the United States Marine Corps.

3. On June 1, 2022, I received an email from Elizabeth Mitchell from Spertus, Landes & Umhofer, LLP requesting that I assist with finding information on a client of the firm who is, or was, experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles, California. Ms. Mitchell indicated that she had called his mobile telephone several times, emailed him several times, and had sent hard copy letters to all of his last known addresses. She indicated that she had not received a response to any of her attempts to contact him.

4. Based on the email address that Ms. Mitchell provided from which she had previous been able to communicate with Mr. Whitter, I was able to determine that he was born in 1957 and that his full name is Gary Wayne Whitter. I found what appears to be his current address which is outside of California. I also found three other email addresses potentially belonging to Mr. Whitter, and provided that information to Ms. Mitchell.

5. I called the number identified for his current address but was told he does not reside in that location; however, the person I spoke to did appear to be able to contact Mr. Whitter. I left a message requesting an immediate call back to myself or to Elizabeth Mitchell, but I have not received a response and to my knowledge neither has Elizabeth Mitchell.

6. Through my research, I discovered seven individuals who appeared to be related to Mr. Whitter. I spoke to two individuals who both confirmed they are related to Mr. Whitter, but both indicated they have not spoken to or been in contact with Mr. Whitter in years, nor did they have current contact information for him. I left messages but the other five individuals but did not receive return phone calls.

7. I discovered one social media account I believed belonged to Mr. Whitter and confirmed with one of the relatives that was Mr. Whitter’s photograph. I provided that account to Ms. Mitchell.

8. I also discovered several other email addresses that appeared to be connected to Mr. Whitter. I provided those email addresses to Ms. Mitchell.

9. As of today’s date, I have not been able to locate Mr. Whitter, nor have I received any return phone calls from him. To my knowledge, neither has Ms. Mitchell.

I declare under penalty of perjury under the laws of the United States of America that the foregoing is true and correct, and that this Declaration was executed on July 8, 2022, at Irvine, California.

Paul Bonin

On July 8th, 2022, the day after Ms. Mitchell returned from out of the country, Bonin signed his statement. July 11th, 2022, Ms. Mitchell made a statement about Whitter.

Mr. Whitter’s counsel withdrew from representing him Bonin, and Mitchell claimed they couldn’t get in touch with Mr. Whitter, despite calling him 20 times in two months, presumably the two months from May 11th–July 11th.

As an unwashed, intoxicated unhoused person, Gary Whitter would likely not be allowed to go into their offices in-person. Mr. Whitter is unlikely to run into his attorneys on the street and they won’t recognize each other if they happen to cross paths because they never met.

Did Mr. Whitter’s attorneys leave special instructions the security guards in their office buildings to alert them of any unhoused visitors?

What if he attempted to reach them and was turned away or escorted off the premises?

Bonin and Mitchell’s statements, submitted two days after the attorneys returned from traveling internationally, concluded that Mr. Whitter most likely permanently left the state of California, with Ms. Mitchell’s statement oddly being signed on

this 29th day of July 11th.

On July 22nd, Judge Carter approved an ex parte request from July 11th (Dkt. 455) for Mr. Whitter’s attorneys to withdraw from representing him (Dkt. 458).

The attorneys seemingly do not consider the legal implications of severing their case’s Article III standing, which they seem to have only ever viewed as an obstacle and not a requirement that keeps the facts of the case rooted in reality and representation.

The Alliance case has thus barreled on for six years like a runaway train, without the participation of a legitimately affected plaintiff, but plenty of funding and political support. The inequity in our judicial system is that valid complaints brought by cooperative, affected but indigent plaintiffs have the reverse problem. They lack visibility and funding, therefore justice remains out-of-reach for those who need it the most.

These sworn statements reveal that Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Umhofer probably never met with Mr. Whitter. Mr. Bonin claimed to have identified Mr. Whitter’s birthday and verified a photo through a distant relative he was able to track down. If Mitchell and Umhofer had no clue what he looked like, and needed to hire a private investigator to find out in 2022, then it is unlikely that they ever met in-person, and it is quite clear that they never even learned how to pronounce his last name from the transcript of the oral argument, when the Ninth Circuit justices corrected his own attorney.

Santa Ana Conflict

Another issue with the selection of Mr. Bonin was his contract with the City of Santa Ana at this time. This undisclosed conflict-of-interest lies with Judge Carter’s “Special Master” (a terrible title, in my opinion) Michele C. Martinez, who unsuccessfully ran for Mayor of Santa Ana in 2018 and served as an elected councilwoman and vice mayor of the Orange County City from 2006-18.

INSURANCE NOT ON FILE • WORK MAY NOT PROCEED

CLERK OF COUNCIL DATE • CAO (David Quintana)

CITY OF SANTA ANA CONSULTANT AGREEMENT N-2020-199 Page 1 of 8

THIS AGREEMENT is made and entered into on this 23rd day of October, 2020 by and between Paul Bonin & Associates, Inc. a California corporation (“Consultant”), and the City of Santa Ana, a charter city and municipal corporation organized and existing under the Constitution and laws of the State of California (“City”).

…

1. SCOPE OF SERVICES

a. Consultant shall perform private investigation services including but not limited to, witness interviews; locating witnesses; background checks of witnesses or parties in criminal/civil litigation, administrative hearings or other quasi-judicial hearings; drafting reports regarding services performed; conducting surveillance; serving hard to locate witnesses or parties to criminal or civil proceedings; and gathering information necessary for prosecution of criminal/civil matters or defense of civil matters, administrative hearings or other quasi-judicial proceedings.

b. Consultant will be retained for specific matters via a letter or email from the City Attorney or her designee containing sufficient information to describe the nature of the services requested and the name or description of the matter.

c. Consultant agrees, subject to reasonable notice from the City, to make himself available as needed to testify in court or any administrative hearing regarding services performed pursuant to this Agreement.

2. COMPENSATION

a. City agrees to pay, and Consultant agrees to accept as total payment for its services for City, the rate of $250 per hour plus expenses (for example: travel, photocopies)

U.S. Judge Carter’s federal courthouse is located in Santa Ana, and from there, he oversaw a series of homelessness-related lawsuits in Orange County in which the City of Santa Ana was a defendant. Martinez was Carter’s uncompensated “Special Master” in those cases and claimed in a Forbes interview that she conceived the idea to be sued so her City would control the resulting settlement.

When Michele Martinez saw three cities in Orange County being sued for not providing adequate services for the homeless, she brainstormed a radical idea.

She wanted her city to be sued, too.

It was 2018, and Martinez had been on the Santa Ana City Council for 12 years, the last two of which she’d spent as vice mayor. Now that her term was coming to an end, she’d have to act quickly if her plan was to become a reality. And so, at her urging, Santa Ana City voluntarily entered the lawsuit, leading to a snowball effect with far-reaching consequences. Three years later, an additional two dozen cities have volunteered to be sued, too, culminating in a pivotal moment, as the country’s homelessness crisis finds footing at the federal level.

Martinez herself has managed to become the right-hand woman to Judge David O. Carter, the powerful federal judge who presided over the Orange County case. He has since begun overseeing an unprecedented case in Los Angeles City and County, that could become an example of how to improve homelessness nationwide.

—“To Help End Homelessness In Her City, She Had A Radical Idea: Sue Us” by Allison Norilan in Forbes 7/21/21

After suing Santa Ama and Orange County, did Ms. Martinez then have the idea to sue other Cities, like Los Angeles?

Bonin’s $50k contract with Santa Ana was for the specific purpose of locating parties engaged in civil litigation. Based on redacted invoices obtained from the City of Santa Ana per a California Public Records Act request, it appears that the work done under the contract occurred in October 2020, before the contract was even in place. However, I did not find any communication between the Santa Ana City Attorney’s office and Mr. Bonin in the same timeframe from a massive disclosure of emails I received.

Is it possible that the search for Gary Whitter began and ended within the first eight months of the LA Alliance litigation?

The documents are redacted, so we can’t know if the work done in Santa Ana was related to Mr. Whitter. Maybe it is unrelated. But all of the Alliance parties except the unhoused plaintiffs’ were already in agreement about their intentions to enter into a settlement that “manages” visibly unhoused people, as they did in Santa Ana. Alliance Attorneys Matthew Umhofer and Elizabeth Mitchell made $1.8M upon finalizing this settlement with the City of LA. Michele C. Martinez was put on payroll in the City of LA immediately following the settlement and has made $713k since, according to the Controller’s open data. There was no incentive for these parties to delay the settlement, despite the disappearance of the jurisdictional anchor, Mr. Whitter. There was a lot of money to be made by sealing this deal without him.

Mr. Whitter died on March 9th, 2025, exactly on the eve of the five-year anniversary of the filing of the original Alliance lawsuit.

After Mr. Whittier turned up in March 2025 deceased behind a business in the Westside, Mr. Umhofer, Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Bonin were never held to answer for their perjured statements on the record regarding Mr. Whitter’s whereabouts. He can’t have permanently left California, as they implied, if he died in a Los Angeles alley. They should not have indemnified the City against his claims, settled without him, dropped him from their representation, removed his name from the caption, implied that he approved of the settlement, or dropped his claims if he was still in LA. They should have notified the Court of his death, but did not and still have not.

To add insult to injury, Mr. Whitter’s cremated remains have not been retrieved from the County’s storage for the unclaimed dead. His ashes will be “disposed” in an annual ceremony in December 2028 if no one picks him up before then.

Mr. Whitter came back…

On February 9th of this year, 2026, a new, related case titled City of Los Angeles v United States District Court for the Central District of California, Los Angeles (26-784) was filed in the U.S. Ninth District Court of Appeals, with Mr. Whitter named as a Real Party in Interest throughout the docket. It is an appeal filed by the City’s special counsel, Theano D. Evangelis Kapur of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, seeking to remove U.S. Judge David O. Carter from his role presiding over the LA Alliance litigation.

But when it was time to argue in front of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Evangelis-Kapur had a scheduling conflict. She must have forgotten that about a May 22nd vacation she paid for in advance, telling the court on February 9th

to avoid irreparable harm relief is needed in less than 21 days’ time.

Two weeks later, she remembered her vacation and she told the court on the 25th that she wouldn’t be able to make it because of

prepaid travel arrangements.

So, rather than arguing in front of the U.S. Ninth Circuit on May 20th, as scheduled, the City and LA Alliance for Human Rights came to yet another settlement agreement which installs Judge Carter in an oversight position for several additional years, even though the purpose of the appeal was to get him removed entirely.

The $2.2M cost of this new settlement is more than the $1.8M it would have cost the City to lose the appeal.

More Conflicts Uncovered

Alliance’s actions in and out of court paint a picture of an incestuous group of wealthy, connected businesspeople determined to oppress their homeless neighbors at any cost.

The events that followed the filing of the 2020 Alliance complaint on the cusp of the COVID-19 pandemic were heavily obscured by press manipulation, partly because an employee of the City working for CD11’s Traci Park, Jamie Paige, who runs a major local news outlet, The Westside Current, and now writes for the California Post, was simultaneously Alliance’s Chief Financial Officer and director; roles Alliance attorney Ms. Mitchell now holds.

Ms. Mitchell herself is a rogue Deputy City Attorney III who defended Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck on the elite Police Litigation Unit of the City Attorney’s office, civil division, specifically receiving congratulations from City Attorney Mike Feuer after the family of Cameroonian Charly “Africa” Keunang settled with the City for $1.95M. Charly Africa was shot by LAPD outside of Union Rescue Mission on March 1st, 2015, and the court determined LAPD were responsible for his wrongful death. I uncovered their email, dated the day following the announcement of the settlement, in a CPRA request, and I believe the congratulatory nature was in reference to the low amount the family was convinced to accept, despite the City being at fault. Initially, they had sued for $20M. She quit working for the City in August 2018, but intervened in another case about LAPD abusing homeless people on Skid Row, Carl Mitchell v City of Los Angeles, in 2019, less than a year after leaving City employment. The City did not seek her disqualification or seemingly consent to being sued by their former in-house defender.

Alliance’s ability to rope a federal judge into a mission to monetize civil rights rollbacks and get taxpayers in the City and County to fund every side of the crusade is something that I believe will be studied and discussed in the future, and why I feel it is important to try to understand how this all was allowed to happen.

What are we paying for?

Alliance uses fees awarded by the Court not only to fund continued post-settlement litigation at a premium, but also to finance multiple commercial leases in business improvement districts downtown and on the Westside, blocks from where Mr. Whitter’s body was found in a Westwood Village alley, apparently behind a CVS.

I didn’t know Mr. Whitter and don’t know what justice for him looks like. But I know that there is a problem with the way attorneys felt entitled to exploit his suffering for profit. Mr. Whitter had no funeral and no grave while he is stored by the County among unclaimed decedents for a period of three years. It is apparent to me that this court allowed him to be used to establish jurisdiction and then aided in the disposal of his claims, only to resurrect him to the Ninth Circuit when it was convenient for the parties to create the illusion that the Article III issues raised in 2021 had been resolved.

Accountability grounded in objective truth is universally empowering. Homeless people in Los Angeles desperately need accountability from housing providers. But “accountability” detached from reality produces its own industrial system built around meeting meaningless metrics just to satisfy collusive settlement mandates. This is happening at the ultimate expense of the people the system is supposed to help.

Maybe that’s the difference between the accountability we all want, and Alliance’s “accountabilty [sic]”.

Written entirely on the streets of Los Angeles by Ruth

Edited by Zachary Ellison

PACER documents provided by Ryan Thompson

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

This article was written by Ruth, who lives on the streets of LA.

🆘 Councilwoman Nithya Raman has targeted me for yet another sweep on Monday, 8/3 🚜

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

🚐 If you can help move my belongings into a van on Sunday 8/2 after 5pm, I would really appreciate it! 📦

✍️ Edited by Zachary Ellison, who was displaced by the Eaton Fire. 🔥

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, January 20th–22nd, five-thousand volunteers put on high-visibility vests and set out to count the unsheltered of the Greater Los Angeles area.

To use a pandemic metaphor, the counters were hoping to observe more evidence that the “curve” of homelessness in LA is still “flattening,” like those reductions seen in the 2024 and 2025 counts.

Six months after carrying out the 2026 Greater Los Angeles Count of homelessness, also called the Point-In-Time “PIT” count, the results are in.

The counters did, in fact, observe a reduction in visible shelters, because the number of vehicles and tents went down for the fourth year in a row.

10,761 dwellings were counted.

Although the total number of dwellings (tents + vehicles) is slowly but surely decreasing, the number of makeshift shelters, which can include a sleeping bag, shopping cart, umbrella, tarp, or anything else used to survive outdoors, is on the rise.

Despite the decline in the number of dwellings counted in the City, unsheltered homelessness increased.

In the entire Greater LA “Continuum of Care,” which includes the County and City of LA, but excludes Glendale, Pasadena and Long Beach, 10,483 presumed unsheltered people were counted outside in 2025 and 11,084 were people observed in 2026, a +6% increase.

“Multipliers” move goalposts.

The dwelling “multiplier” has been increased every year since 2023. In 2025, it was raised to 1.75 from 1.71 in 2024 and in 2023, it was 1.56. The 2026 demographic survey determined that more people are living in each dwelling, so the “multiplier” was increased to 1.86 estimated people per dwelling.

The decision to increase the multiplier is allegedly backed up by demographic survey data, which has not been released for 2026. The 2025 demographic survey data and questionnaire are available through Economic Roundtable.

More people living in dwellings have been a trend over at least the last four years…

Year • Multiplier

(estimated number of people per dwelling)

2023 • 1.56

2024 • 1.71

2025 • 1.75

2026 • 1.86

[Slide 22]

In 2019, 2020 and 2022 (2021 was cancelled due to COVID-19), multipliers were calculated for each of the five dwelling types and each of the eight Service Planning Areas, and a separate set of multipliers were calculated to represent members of families living in dwellings, as opposed to individuals. For these years, total of 80 different multipliers were calculated.

In 2023, this nuanced technique was replaced by one universal multiplier (1.56 people per dwelling).

If one must have an unsheltered neighbor, is it not better that they at least have a tent or vehicle of their own?

Un-Sheltering

Tents and vehicle dwellings are targets for constant removals, such as the 9,800 “Milestone Goals.” Also called the “encampment reduction plan,” these sweeps were secretly ordered by City Council in an illegal amendment to the LA Alliance for Human Rights’ settlement with the City.

I wrote about the Alliance and their “Milestone” removal “goals” earlier this month, as I was being removed by City workers myself:

During the week of the 2026 PIT Count, I was personally targeted for an encampment removal in Council District 4. Because of this, I almost certainly did not get counted, nor did my neighbors.

I am again being removed, for the fifth time this year! LA Family Housing is supposed to be helping me get a voucher while the City repeatedly attempts to sabotage with sweeps this monumental personal progress toward housing.

Phoenix Tso at Los Angeles Public Press referred to the modest “uptick” in homelessness as “bad news” and a “regression,” while also drawing a connection to “encampment sweeps.”

The 2025 PIT didn’t detect displacement after #LAFires.

The 2025 PIT was supposed to occur on January 23–25, 2025, but it was delayed to February 18th–20th because of the Palisades and Eaton fires. Therefore, the 2026 PIT was conducted only eleven months after the 2025 PIT.

But how is it possible that after the physical destruction of over 12,000 structures and deaths of two dozen housed people, the 2025 PIT showed a reduction in homelessness?

Is our annual counting ritual useless for detecting displacement due to disasters?

300 fewer people experiencing homelessness (“PEH”) in LA County died in 2024 compared to 2023, a reduction of nearly one death per day.

On paper, numerical reductions look the same whether people exit homelessness to permanent housing or permanent death. County data released in March shows fewer people dying on the streets compared to prior years, for the first time since 2014, which seems worth celebrating.

The latest report by the Department of Public Health - Center for Health Impact Evaluation has the freshest data available concerning deaths of people on the streets of Los Angeles County. From Data to Action • Lives Lost: Mortality Trends and Prevention Opportunities For People Experiencing Homelessness in LA County, 2015-2024 was released by “DPH-CHIE” on March 10th.

Paris Barraza wrote an article for USA Today covering CHIE’s newest findings on the same day the report was released, noting the remarkable 21% reduction in drug overdose deaths. This is likely the intended consequence of tripling naloxone (Narcan) distribution between 2021 and 2023, as noted in the 2025 press release of the report which contained death data for PEH from 2023.

Age

• The number of adults (18-54) experiencing homelessness decreased by 1.1%.

• The number of older adults (55+) experiencing homelessness increased by 13.5%.

Age group • 2025 • 2026

Children (0-17 years) • 6,428 • 5,605

Adults (18-54 years) • 45,718 • 45,225

Older Adults (55+ years) • 15,631 • 17,746

[Slide 31]

LAHSA’s 2026 PIT press release notes a reduction of homeless children and families, but a 13.5% increase in the number of older adults (55+) experiencing homelessness. While an elderly homeless population is not exactly something for our City to be proud of, if it’s indication that the streets are slightly less deadly, then it’s bittersweet news, especially considering that LA’s unsheltered population was struggling to make it to age 50, even before the onset of the pandemic.

Overdoses are declining while vehicular killings of PEH have skyrocketed 248% in a decade.

Until March 2027, when the CHIE report containing last years’ deaths is going to be released, the most recent data about mortality among PEH in LA County is from 2024, when a total of 2,208 deaths were recorded, nearly six per day.

While it is a shocking statistic, and double what it was before the pandemic, it is still a measured improvement compared to the 2,508, or seven per day, from the prior report containing 2023 deaths, released in March of last year.

Who oversees the preparation of PEH death data?

Over 2,000 people who died homeless in LA County from January 1st, 2000 to May 28th, 2007 were recorded in a report by the Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness, Dying without Dignity: Homeless Deaths in Los Angeles County 2000-2007. The names of the deceased make up the last thirteen pages of the 44-page document.

Death Data Delays

Los Angeles County’s DPH-CHIE published their first of three “issue briefs” on homeless mortality throughout 2018 in October 2019, when the data was ten months old.

But mortality data for PEH in LA County is now lagging by over a year, with the report containing 2024 deaths coming out 15 months after the end of that year. On the other hand, annual PIT data are calculated and ready for public release within a matter of six months.

16,197 deaths of PEH in LA in a decade (2015–2024)

No public data seems to exist for the period from May 29th, 2007 to December 31st, 2012 and California Public Records Act requests to the LA County Medical Examiner’s office did not produce any additional information.

Deaths of PEH in LA County increased to two per day in 2014, and three per day in 2017. Average daily deaths of PEH leapt to five per day in 2020, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Comparison: 256 PEH died of COVID-19 in LA from 1/1/20-11/1/21

DPH-CHIE attributed 179 deaths of PEH in 2020 to the COVID-19 virus, and an additional 44 in 2021, for a total of 223 in 2020-21 combined. A different report by Kuhn Porter of University of California Los Angeles, Benjamin Henwood of University of Southern California and Chang Brosnan from LA County DPH, published by JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association, found 256 deaths of PEH in LA County due to COVID-19 from January 1st, 2020–November 1st, 2021.

COVID-19 doesn’t fully explain why deaths continued to accelerate from five to six per day in 2021 and six to seven per day in 2023.

Thankfully, pandemic programs like Project Roomkey gave way to non-congregate hotel shelters, like LA Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe and challenger Nithya Raman’s CD4 Roadmap program at Hollywood’s Highland Gardens hotel. However, without ongoing funding commitments, people end up sitting in hotels for years at a time, at double the cost of housing them.

Many “permanent housing exits” are not permanent.

Even though housing is cheaper than shelter, it’s also not consistently funded.

Lack of funding for Rapid Re-Housing vouchers, also called Time-Limited Subsidies, are the primary reason LAHSA provides for the increase in homelessness in 2026. RRH/TLS are considered “permanent housing” because they pay the majority of market-rate rents on qualified private units for up to two years. Unlike federal Section 8 vouchers, they are not permanent.

The story of the Homeless Count is mainly the story of TLS.

* A Time-Limited Subsidy (TLS), formerly known as a Rapid Rehousing, is a low-barrier, short-term re subsidy that helps unhoused households quickly move into affordable housing.

* Participants are provided rental assistance for 24 months.

* TLS pairs rental assistance with housing-focused case management and stabilization services.

Goal after 24 months: help participants become housing self-sufficient of transfer them to another permanent housing subsidy that meets their needs.

[Slide 7]

Loss of TLS funding forced a program pause. TLS is still frozen.

* Starting in 2022, TLS was a major factor in the increase of people in permanent housing .

* Funding reductions forced a pause on new TLS enrollments.

* As a result, the number of new TLS move-ins dropped by. 3,718 in 2025.

Data source: HMIS - LAHSA System Key Performance Indicators

Year • Newly Housed Using TLS

2022 • 7,329

2023 • 8,286

2024 • 10,308

2025 • 6,590

[Slide 8]

The critical shortage of TLS resources and other factors contributed to a 5,093-person drop in the number of people housed in 2025.

98,204

People Permanently Housed since 2022

2022 • 21,849

2023 • 24,198

2024 • 28,625

2025 • 23,532

Note: Data provided courtesy of LA County Department of Housing and Homeless Services. For the first time, permanent housing data shows people instead of placements.

[Slide 9]

Formerly homeless participants who can not fully take over their leases are left without any additional support and some ultimately end up back on the streets. Participants who manage keep up with their portion of the rent apparently also end up back on the streets due to lack of TLS funding.

300 families were displaced from housing they obtained on vouchers from nonprofit service provider Special Services for Groups “SSG” HOPICS Homeless Outreach Program Integrated Care System under the leadership of former Democratic Congresswoman representing the Santa Clarita Valley Katie Hill, who was later promoted to the LAHSA Commission.

LAHSA says the story of the increase in homelessness in 2026 is that of TLS. But the displacement cycle caused by two-year subsidies expiring is not necessarily detectible in this annual count, and we might not see the full consequences of defunded TLS until the 2027 PIT. If TLS are still not funded, then we can only expect numbers to get worse.

Additional data is not necessarily more accurate or useful.

LAHSA conducted the first PIT count in an “even year” in 2016, marking the start of LAHSA pulling off annual counts. Even-year PIT counts go above and beyond the federal requirement of biennial counts (every two years). There’s no real reason why LA does twice as many PIT counts as the federal government requires. The counts are a logistical undertaking, sometimes recruiting 8,000 or more volunteers, plus they each cost millions of dollars and have involved the development of multiple specialized mobile apps for digital data collection.

Census-type data is notoriously best-suited for observing macro-level trends over time, which is why the U.S. Census takes place only once per decade. Repeating the survey more often would waste resources without adding accuracy and cause hysteria over statistically insignificant fluctuations, ultimately working against the Bureau’s mission:

to serve as the nation's leading provider of quality data about its people and economy.

The disparity between LAHSA’s over-production of PIT data and DPH-CHIE’s sporadic and delayed release of PEH mortality reports is an encapsulation of LA’s preoccupation with aesthetics over actual human welfare.

Want ALL the raw PIT data?

Economic Roundtable has a repository at Economicrt.com

You can request anything you don’t see there from [email protected]

Reach out if there’s anything you can’t get, because I may have it!

Special thanks to Peter Connery of Applied Survey Research for taking me through designing and carrying out the 2005 GLAC!

😒 Who’s ready for good news? 😏

🎉🥳 It’s Zach’s birthday! Happy 40th birthday, Zachary Ellison! 👏🎈

💥👫 Zach is getting married to his incredibly supportive longtime partner! 👰‍♀️🤵‍♂️

💍 Congratulations to the beautiful bride and groom! 🎊

Data visualizations made with Flourish and illustrations made from prompts with Gemini and Grok for iOS (all free versions)

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

Homeless people of Los Angeles “audited” #LAAllianceforHumanRights.

We discovered a back-dated amendment to the City’s 2022 settlement agreement which essentially put bounties on our dwellings.

For the City and County of LA to comply with LA Alliance for Human Rights’ 2022 settlement agreement, the City and County must make certain data available to court monitors selected by U.S. Judge David O. Carter.

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Among the Alliance court’s chosen monitors are:

* Carter’s “Special Master” (a terrible title, in my opinion), former Santa Ana Councilwoman, Michele C. Martinez, of Emergent P4 Advisors. Martinez has been on the City’s payroll since 2022, earning a total of $713,135.57 so far. It’s unclear if MCM is being paid additionally by the County, but she is monitoring compliance by both the City and County;

* Carter’s other “Special Master,” retired Judge Thomas M. Goethals, of Alternative Dispute Resolution “ADR,” Inc., is monitoring compliance by the City;

* retired Judge Jay Ghandi, of Philips ADR Enterprise “PADRE,” was monitoring the County’s compliance for $200,000/year, offering the first year free. However, Ghandi recused himself after he lost his home in the #LAFires and decided to take legal action against the City;

* most recently, Nardello & Company were appointed to monitor compliance of a new 2026 agreement between Alliance and the City for $150,000/year, through 2029.

In the context of the Alliance court, the City’s data is expected to reflect adherence to certain commitments, such as the number of new “beds” opened in accordance with the agreements. The data itself must prove to be accurate, as the job of the monitors is to verify data and author periodic reports.

2024 Amendment & Audit

In 2024, the Alliance agreement was quietly changed to order the destruction of nearly 10,000 homeless constituents’ tents and vehicle dwellings. It was at this time that the City was forced to purchase an outside “audit*” of homelessness spending. One of these things got significantly more media attention than the other (the “audit” overshadowed the “sweeps”).

*Alvarez & Marsal’s $2.91M “audit” was not a forensic one, so “audit” is in quotation marks.

Full disclosure: Zachary Ellison and I spoke to “A&M” for approximately one hour in late 2024 to inform our reporting on LA Alliance and to consult on their “audit.” We were asked about Inside Safe intakes and the City’s “Interim Housing - Homeless Services” account. I had published a Substack article about how the IHHS account had been converted into an LAPD overtime slush fund that October.

2024 Alliance Award

Another element of the amendment between the City and LA Alliance that got little attention was Alliance’s $725k fee for changing the original settlement. The City had already paid Alliance $1.8M to settle the case. Alliance was also paid $2.4M for the 2023 County settlement and an amendment, and Alliance have been paid additionally since. A recent appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals resulted in yet another $2.2M settlement between the City and Alliance and the Intervenors. For all we know, this litigation may only just be getting started.

All Alliance Awards = $6,825,000

If you were keeping track, Alliance got nearly $7M in attorney fees, with the total amount potentially still growing, and all of it paid by LA taxpayers, by order of the court. The cumulative $6.825M total does not include Alliance’s 2025 $6M fee request, which included a multiplier that was rejected by the court.

Alliance’s award amounts also do not account for the cost of the $2.91M A&M “audit,” mediators’ pay (Nardello is making $150k/year through 2029 and MCM has been paid a total of $713k by the City since 2022); intervenors’ attorneys (LAFLA were paid $300k out of the total $2.2M award in an agreement which settled an appeal by the City against Alliance earlier this year), or any defense attorneys. The City’s special counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, claim to make up to $2,650/hour, but offer the City their services at a discount, charging “only” $1,295/hour.

According to documents obtained per a California Public Records Act request, LA County paid attorney Brandon Young of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips LLP $1.02M to participate in the Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness. The Blue Ribbon Commission also included Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP’s Theano D. Evangelis Kapur, who currently defends the City against Alliance, and successfully argued against the rights of homeless people in the City of Grant’s Pass, Oregon at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2024.

…with advocates like these, who needs enemies?

Yes, the City and County are paying some of the most expensive attorneys in the universe to fight Alliance, who the City and County are also paying, by order of the court. The City is additionally awarding intervenors, monitors, “auditors”, mediators such as Richard T. Copeland, who the City paid several thousand dollars in May 2022, according to City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s open data.

A runaway train of a lawsuit

When taxpayers are forced to pick up the tab for every side of runaway litigation, as in Alliance, there’s no possible justification for keeping the public in the dark about the substance of a settlement. Unhoused people are left unknowing about where in the City we are allowed, when our possessions will be subject to immediate destruction, and who to call to try to access housing. An entity like Alliance, which claims to be about accountability, should be illuminating the public on their objective findings, much like the City Controller does.

In closed sessions and private meetings, Alliance attorneys illegally implemented a Court-enforced scheme to destroy dwellings.

City Council approved the 2024 modification of their agreement with Alliance in closed session, in violation of the Ralph M. Brown Act, shielded from public participation, feedback or publication.

The Milestones amendment is back-dated to July 1st, 2022, perhaps indicating that it was an unpublished component of the original settlement?

How can a settlement demand removals occur two years before the agreement allegedly existed?

Was the City paying for monitoring of additional items which were not in the original agreement?

Why would the Alliance Court not want unhoused people to be aware of impending removals?

Who came up with the “Milestones” agreement, and when?

Who was aware of this removal plan, and for how long?

What do/did the alleged unhoused plaintiffs in LA Alliance think of this plan?

Was the “sweeps” mandate intended all along?

Are there any other secret agreements the public should know about, such as arrest quotas?

What else occurs in these closed sessions? How can we trust the Court or the City?

Despite the motivational “Milestones” label, removals are sudden displacements where peoples’ belongings are summarily destroyed on-the-spot.

I’m not here to talk about the Fourth Amendment.

—City worker Danté (refused to provide his last name or his supervisor) in May 2023 at an unnoticed encampment removal in CD4

In May 2023, City workers, who refused to identify themselves or their supervisors by name, were recorded at a surprise “sweep” saying they

aren’t here to talk about the Fourth Amendment.

The unidentified City workers then violated the Fifth by claiming they

don’t have to give notice.

and

This is your notice.

The City workers proceeded to destroy a Jackery solar power station, which enables off-grid phone charging and other survival and sentimental items.

At the time of this removal, which occurred in the period between the 2022 settlement and the 2024 amendment, the affected unhoused people had a matter of minutes to prepare. Their requests for reasonable accommodations, such as more time, or a designated location where their things could be retrieved, which is supposed to be part of the City’s standard operating procedure for removals, all fell on uncaring ears.

How Alliance manipulated City leadership into adopting a political agenda favored by a handful of business interests, principally funded by Spring Street developer Izek Shomof, and aligned with heavy policing, is something the public can only imagine. We are sometimes informed by glimpses behind the curtain, like we got in 2022, when the #LAFedtapes leaked.

The “Encampment Reduction Plan,” also called “Milestone Goals” was approved in a closed session on January 31st, 2024, which concluded

no action to report,

a move Big Brother contestant and Judge Curtis A. Kin has since determined violated the Brown Act.

Because the “Milestones” encampment reduction plan mandates elimination of 9,800 makeshift shelters, such as tents or recreational vehicles beginning on July 1st, 2022, it seems as though they were implemented along with the 2022 City settlement, not in the 2024 closed session where there was “no action to report.”

What if there was “no action”?

Floating the alternative theory that the 2024 amendments were actually part of the original 2022 settlement between the City and Alliance, unbeknownst to the public, it makes sense that there was nothing new to report from City Council’s 1/31/24 closed session.

Indeed, on December 5th, 2023, “city milestones” were referenced by Judge Carter in a text-only scheduling notice for a December 14th hearing in LA Alliance for Human Rights v City of Los Angeles.

If there was an action, what was the action?

If the Milestones agreement was really passed in 2022 and amended in 2024, but City Council failed to report their acceptance of the amendment, it looks badly on City Council for either conceding constituents’ civil rights to businesses, or being careless with the rules of parliamentary procedure and the exception that allows politicians to meet privately during a public meeting, as long as they report the events to the public afterwards.

Proof, if it exists, of a secret settlement between Alliance and the City could potentially reflect poorly on Alliance, and maybe even Judge Carter, if he was aware, or if he should have been aware, that the 2022 published settlement was not comprehensive of the entire agreement.

Because the public are footing Alliance’s ever-growing bills, with the poorest paying in pennies, papers, and personal property, and the rest through municipal taxes, it is crucial that monitors be accountable to us.

What does 10,000 “sweeps” mean on the street?

There are only 2,588 tent-dwellings in the City of Los Angeles. A large portion are located on Skid Row, where sanitation operations occur every two weeks. The frequency with which a person on Skid Row is placed in a permanent supportive housing unit pales in comparison to the frequency by which the documents needed to obtain housing are destroyed. Alliance’s “encampment reduction” “Milestones” intended for each tent-dwelling to be destroyed by the City once per year, for four years, with no restitution, guarantee or redeemable benefit owed to the tent-owner.

Year • Tents

2017 • 1,937

2018 • 1,864

2019 • 2,679

2020 • 3,465

2021 • no data

2022 • 3,346

2023* • 3,274

2024 • 2,988

2025* • 2,588

*’23 & ‘25 obtained via California Public Records Act requests

Sources: LAHSA & USC annual dwellings reports + CPRA

There are 2,588 tent-dwellings in the City.

The material losses incurred by those of us with the least to lose aren’t soothed by the idea that someone, somewhere in LA may have finally gotten squishy “services.” The Milestones require annual removals for four continuous years, but we get removed much more frequently than that, and while one person secured housing through the County and a handful benefited from a temporary hotel stay several years ago, these are exceptions to the majority of removals which occur with no contact by outreach, or are proceeded by outreach who simply inform us of the sweep while saying they have nothing to offer us.

If the majority of voters were so heartless as to agree with the policy of so frequently and intentionally abusing the unsheltered, Alliance would pass a ballot measure rather than move in the way they do. But Alliance knows their positions aren’t nearly as popular as they’d like to believe, which is why they have to push them so hard.

By finding a way to profit off deprivation, destruction and court-enforced, collective punishment of the unhoused, Alliance has made everyone in LA less free and less safe.

⚠️ 6/29 UPDATE

On Monday, 6/29, LA Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA” sued Donald Trump, the President of the United States, over a federal decision to pull over $200M of annual funding for the region from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development department “HUD”’s Continuum of Care “CoC” program. U.S. Judge David O. Carter is presiding.

The same day, the City Attorney requested City Council approve an amendment to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s contract to include the federal action and raising it by an amount not to exceed $250,000.

⚠️ 6/30 UPDATE

The 4-year encampment reduction plan, also called “Milestones” (as explained in article) was supposed to naturally expire on Tuesday, 6/30.

⚠️ 7/2 UPDATE

Judge Carter issued a stay continuing HUD funding to LAHSA during the litigation.

⚠️ 7/6 UPDATE

As I was writing the above article on Monday, my closest neighbors got notice of an encampment removal from City workers.

I shouted out to the workers to gain clarity about the abatement zone and schedule.

Hey!! Do you have a notice for me?! What’s going on? Is there anything I need to know??

None of City workers acknowledged or interacted with me at all before they left in a municipal vehicle.

I determined that I, too, needed to relocate after I read a paper notice of the cleaning operation which was scheduled to take place at 8am on Tuesday.

⚠️ 7/7 UPDATE

The comprehensive removal did occur today, unlike the last one, which was noticed by the City and LAHSA outreach workers on Election Day, Tuesday 6/2, and was supposed to take place on Wednesday 6/3.

Unlike today’s removal, the 6/3 removal did not occur, but unhoused constituents were prevented from voting. Other CD4 encampments were removed on 6/2, and I heard reports of a pre-dawn LAPD raid in which unhoused people with warrants were arrested. I did not personally witness a raid or directly speak to anyone who got arrested on Election Day, but I did attempt to speak to LAHSA, who completely ignored me, got in their vehicle and left.

🆓🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩

This article was written entirely on the streets of LA by Ruth and edited by Zachary Ellison. Solar-powered by Rashiim. I love my neighbors.

Illustrations made with free app Gemini for iOS.

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With her face framed by giant Labubus, and possibly a Funko figurine wearing a colorful hat, Mayoral candidate and District 4 Councilwoman Nithya Raman sat side-by-side with popular Los Angeles-based Twitch streamer Hasan Piker to promote the Council District 4-elect’s late decision to launch her own Mayoral Campaign.

UPDATES:

* Last updated 9 hours ago: The New York Times has the latest analysis on the LA Mayor’s race, called on 6/8 by Associated Press. NYT claim >95% of the votes have been counted, AP claim 99%.

* Posted 1 day ago: Nithya Raman appears on Talk Easy podcast (discussed below)

* Published 2 days ago: The Los Angeles Times announce LA County’s certification of 2,227,461 ballots, 24 days after the polls closed on 6/2.

Nithya Raman believes in government.

Raman was primarily up against current Mayor Karen Ruth Bass, who Raman endorsed in this race last year, before deciding to run against her. Raman also endorsed Bass when she entered the 2022 Mayor’s race after representing Los Angeles as Speaker of the House in the State Assembly and the U.S. House of Representatives continuously since 2004.

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“Like, I really believe in government.”

In the 2022 election, community organizer and LAUSD mom Gina Viola* ran from outside the establishment and finished nearly tied with CD14 (Metro) City Councilman Kevin de León.

*Full disclosure: I did graphics for Gina Viola’s Mayoral campaign.

Together, Viola and the disgraced de León, as third and fourth runners-up, got 14.65% of the votes in the primary. In the runoff, Bass would end up defeating billionaire developer-career commissioner Rick Caruso.

This election, The Hills’ villain Spencer Pratt, Pastor Rae Huang, Adam Miller, Juanita Lopez and Griselda “Pinche Grizzly” Diaz (as a write-in) filled out the ballot. Pastor Huang’s platform was the most refreshing, with thoughtful positions such as a hard pivot from interim to permanent housing and a promise to make Metro even more affordable. Meanwhile, “Grizzly” Diaz claims the City rejected over 100 of the 600 signatures she gathered to qualify for the ballot, and is still crying foul on Instagram.

Hasan Piker: “CAN WE TRUST HER?”

Particularly adept at unseating Democratic incumbents from the left, Raman’s demeanor on Hassan’s stream wasn’t as energetic as she may have been in 2020. Piker and Raman refrained from mutually stroking their progressive egos like the challenger Councilwoman and host did six months ago, on Evan Lovett’s LA in a Minute.

“Yes, I do think Israel has the right to exist.”

—CD4 Nithya Raman, Mayoral Candidate on Hasan Piker

Hasan Piker clearly did his homework, and is acutely aware of local politics, bringing challenging questions right out of the gate, and he kept up this pace. Nithya’s answers were delivered in her quiet, self-assured way, but their substance failed to connect with the audience at many turns.

Nithya Raman believes in [the Zionist Entity].

In response to Piker’s pointed question about the Zionist Entity, in which Raman was given the opportunity to specifically condemn its current state, she did not take the opportunity to align with a nuanced anti-Zionist statement. Raman instead chose to validate the Entity by claiming it has rights, which no state officially has, because only humans have rights.

The chat booed. 👎

Coming from the candidate most closely conflated with Zohran Mandami, Raman’s response was a global disappointment. Raman didn’t bother making promises, such as pledging to have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested if he should arrive at LAX, like Mandami did in NYC, a move that was universally popular, even if the promise isn’t one he will be able to keep. Raman agreed with Piker describing the Entity as an apartheid. She sheepishly trudged on…at the end answering “YES” to Piker’s “Free Palestine?”

Nithya Raman believes in police (not ICE).

Perhaps Raman’s approach on Piker was more strategic than it was inspiring. She may have been speaking only to people with the ability and intention to actually vote in Los Angeles, ignoring the temptation to go for more widespread likability.

Probably due to a mix of racism, misogyny, and nepotistic advantage, neither Bass nor Raman are unanimously considered “likable” compared to former Mayor Eric Garcetti and California Governor Gavin Newsom. Unlike both establishment suits, neither Bass nor Raman have expressed a desire to run for higher office, and Bass, who held her elected seats in the State Assembly and U.S. House of Representatives continuously for 18 years, had said in 2022 that she intends on retiring soon.

“I do believe ICE should be abolished. Absolutely…”

“This is a City of immigrants.”

Raman’s answers again frustrated when she invoked her status as an immigrant but said she would not be participating in foreign policy as Mayor. The point about jurisdiction may be true, but it feels like a cop-out to people who are disturbed by ongoing genocides in Palestine, Sudan and the Congo, like constituent Khaum Shaikh who expressed this sentiment in a 2023 written public comment in response to an item about rent control. For those looking for assurances that our electeds won’t govern us into a genocide of our own, even “progressive” LA leaders disappoint.

“I think we have to enforce laws that are in place to protect Angelenos.”

Speaking of cops, or cop-outs, Raman received backlash after initially taking office for voting in favor of installing LAPD in public housing outside of her district after aligning with 2020’s calls to defund LAPD. Raman then issued an apology but left the vote intact, leaving people even more confused about what she stands for, and what goes on behind the scenes with City Council, and we finally got some answers about the latter question with the #Fedtapes leak in 2022.

In an interview posted on YouTube yesterday, Raman explained to host Sam Fragoso on Talk Easy that she jumped into the running at the last minute, “flabbergasting” Mayor Bass, who took it as betrayal.

There’s been no talk about who will step up to govern Council District 4 if Nithya Raman gets elected. Maybe that’s because there’s been no phone-in public comment at City Hall since the end of 2024, and no one has promised to restore it.

“I feel like people have a sense of alienation from City government right now.”

On a personal note, I spoke to people who witnessed pre-dawn LAPD raids on encampments in CD4 followed by Sanitation operations on Election Day, 6/2. I am also in possession of written announcements of encampment removals which were posted on 6/2 with the removals scheduled to occur on 6/3 (they did not occur) preventing some unhoused constituents from voting for any candidate.

Maybe people wouldn’t feel so alienated by City government if City departments weren’t actively destroying their vehicles and belongings, and if they knew they could make themselves heard…if not to their leaders, then at least to each other.

“The market will not provide housing for everybody…that’s where the government needs to step in…”

“I love public housing…I support efforts to shelter people in housing that is dignified.”

I plan on comparing data for Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program and Nithya Raman’s Highland Gardens Roadmap in an upcoming article about the LA Mayors’ candidates homelessness strategies. Let me know what questions you have in a comment! 👇

Written by Ruth from the streets of LA…🆓🇵🇸🇸🇩🇨🇩Edited by Zachary Ellison, who was displaced by the Eaton Fire

Edited by Zachary Ellison, who was displaced by the Eaton Fire

Illustrations made from prompts on the free version of Gemini for iOS.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

I’m Ruth and I live outside in Los Angeles.

This article follows-up on one I wrote in October 2023:

🔗 All data is linked at the end of the article, so you can check it out and draw your own conclusions! Please let me know what you think in a comment.

66% of people who enrolled in Inside Safe are indoors.

4,994 Participant Statuses:

* 3,305 indoors

* 1,606 outside

* 83 deceased

Nearly 5,000 people enrolled in Inside Safe by New Years’ Eve and an additional 346 people enrolled in January. As of January 31, 5,340 participants have enrolled in the Inside Safe program “ISP”.

21%* 12% of Inside Safe participants moved into permanent housing.

As of the end of last year, 609 people had moved from Inside Safe to permanent housing “PH”:

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* 288 people are on subsidies like Section 8 housing choice vouchers “HCVs”,

* 283 moved to permanent supportive housing “PSH” units, like those built and financed through the City’s Measure HHH, as they become available. PSH units are subsidized by Project-Based vouchers “PHVs”.

* 38 people got market-rate “MR” (unsubsidized) housing. It’s unclear if the Inside Safe program “ISP” assisted these participants in securing private leases.

In addition to the 12% who are permanently housed, 54% of Inside Safe participants are sheltered.

* 2,552 participants enrolled in ISP are in interim housing “IH”/shelter.

* 1,846 Inside Safe participants are in hotels and motels (37%):

* 1,432 people are staying in motels that have booking or occupancy agreements with the City.

* 414 participants are in The Mayfair Hotel, a City acquisition in Eunisses Hernandez’ District 1

* 448 people are housed with Time-Limited Subsidies “TLS”*, which are also called Rapid Re-Housing “RRH” (9%). *TLS typical duration = two years. I’m uncomfortable calling this subpopulation “permanently housed” like the City does. In 2013, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” re-classified people on this kind of subsidy as “housed”, which made homeless counts appear to improve. Unfortunately, many households on TLS end up homeless again, like 300 families Byrhonda Lyons and Jeanne Kuang reported on in Calmatters a year and a half ago.

* 204 people are in Interim Housing “IH” - “other IH” (4%). There is no explanation on what this housing is. Maybe it is “halfway” housing by the Office of Diversion and Re-entry “ODR”, SHARE! nonprofit, market-rate housing, or something else?

Additional “sheltered” statuses:

194 participants had other outcomes (4%) but many of them still probably need housing:

* 89 people are incarcerated,

* 31 people accepted transportation out of LA through “reunification” programs

* 15 people are in medical or psychiatric hospitals, and

* 5 people are in substance abuse treatment facilities,

* 21 people are in A Bridge Home “ABH” congregate shelters,

* 33 people are in “villages” of Pallet Shelter tiny structures.

32% of enrollees are on the street, with one-third in touch with providers.

* 1,714 out 5,320 participants “returned to homelessness”

* 586 remain in touch with service providers

* 61 people enrolled for zero days (1%).

I wrote more about serious issues in Inside Safe here:

Total enrollments +494% in 22 months.

* March 2023 • 1,077

* January 2025 • 5,320

Enrollments have been tightly controlled to stay within budget constraints while focusing on highly-visible “encampments”. One of the top issues I encounter is qualified unhoused people who want to access ISP, but can’t. The bottleneck in “throughout” is lack of available housing and subsidies for permanently exiting participants.

I am not enrolled in Inside Safe. My neighborhood was targeted for an Inside Safe operation last year, but it got cancelled. I wrote about it here:

49% of participants have documents; await housing placements.

* 2,441 Document-ready (Avg. 411 days)

* 2,553 Not yet documented (Avg. 136 days)

The longer people stay enrolled, naturally, the more get their documents and they are less likely lose them.

Participants spent 1,767,138 nights enrolled in Inside Safe in the first two years.

Average enrollment: 355 nights (≈ 1 year)

According to the data I obtained from the City Administrative Officer “CAO” Matt Szabo, 16 participants have been in Inside Safe for over two years continuously, which isn’t a great sign that housing placements are moving along expeditiously.

But the fact remains: the program has retained them, as Mayor Bass promised. In Project Roomkey, hotels were constantly being “demobilized” to switch service providers, removing participants, and cause staff to have to seek unemployment. Inside Safe seems to be a more stable environment.

83 people are known to have passed away (2%).

🕯

0.8% Annualized Program Mortality

83 Inside Safe participants were known to have perished as of the end of 2024 (1.7%). That means the mortality rate of the first two years of Inside Safe is 1,662 per 100k. In 2023, the annualized mortality rate of people experiencing homelessness “PEH” in Los Angeles County was 3,326 per 100k, using figures from the Department of Public Health “DPH” and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA”’s point-in-time “PIT” count. Inside Safe seems to significantly improve mortality, slashing rates for participants to levels closer to that of the general housed population.

Disappearing Dwellings

* 3,465 tents in 2020

* 2,589 tents in 2025* *draft

After reaching an all-time high of 3,465 tents in 2020 (this was technically a pre-pandemic count because it was in January), the number of tent-dwellings has been slowly but surely decreasing. The draft 2025 count, obtained from LAHSA through CPRA, indicates fewer than 2,600 tents City-wide, coming directly from tally sheets collected by point-in-time “PIT” volunteers. It is unclear if or when it will be publicly released. Meanwhile, other homeless populations, like people in emergency shelters, are on the rise.

I wrote about LAHSA’s choice to withhold 2023’s dwellings counts here:

I don’t celebrate reductions in makeshift shelters because, to me, tents represent survival and independence. 1,846 people are in Inside Safe motels and The Mayfair, with most having given up their survival supplies to redeem that opportunity, and their continued status indoors probably depends a lot on the Mayor getting re-elected.

Outside Safe?

Homeless victims of homicide:

* 2022: 92 (per LAPD data via my CPRA).

* 2023: 56 (per LAPD Homicide Report).

* 2024: 8* (using MO code 1218) *preliminary from open data; not complete

A sustained reduction in homicides with homeless victims is cause for applause. My 2024 data isn’t complete, but the difference of 36 fewer homicides in 2023 compared to 2022 is confirmed and significant. Inside Safe participants are technically still homeless until permanently housed, but their sheltered status likely contributes to safer conditions.

I wrote about 2022’s 92 homicides with unhoused victims here:

In November 2022, voters in the City of LA saw Karen Bass as the leader equipped to address the top issue of homelessness over her well-connected, wealthy competitor, Rick Caruso, who had the endorsement of the LA Police Protective League “LAPPL”, on which he is a commissioner. Maybe this achievement is what earned Mayor Karen Bass an endorsement from the police for her re-election, over Los Angeles Police Protective League Commissioner-challenger Rick Caruso.

Considering Bass’s considerable achievements in public safety and shelter, it makes sense for Caruso’s own co-commissioners to endorse the incumbent mayor so early. But gaining the support of LAPPL is not the same as keeping the favor of the voting majority. What more would people like to see from the Mayor and her Inside Safe program before they feel confident re-electing her?

What can you do?

* Ask your council person what is delaying the opening of Homekey acquisitions

* Introduce your neighborhood council to residents and staff at City-run shelters

* Demonstrate around vacant housing units to demand immediate occupancy

* Identify affordable rentals to facilitate “throughput” of shelter participants

Raw ISP participant status data:

* Click here for January 2025 PDF

* Click here for December 2024 data

* Click here for October 2024 PDF

* Click here for August 2024 PDF

* Click here for March 2024 data

* Click here for September 2023 data

Obtained through California Public Records Act “CPRA”/Freedom Of Information Act “FOIA” requests on the City of Los Angeles’ NextRequest portal, lacity.nextrequest.com.

The data I analyzed for this article is from December 31, 2024 because the 2025 data is a PDF. I’m certain an AI is capable of converting it into a usable format such as .CSV, but I have not found a free one that is up for the job. Please let me know if you have the solution (besides for tailoring multiple different requests to the City, which is what eventually worked).

Wombo dream.ai (illustrations) • Canva (graphics) • Flourish Studio (map)

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70-year-old Benito Flores uses a square frame in his tidy, green front yard as a mini-billboard to oppose state violence:

“KEEP FAMILIES TOGETHER.”

—Reclaimer Benito Flores’ sign

PRESS RELEASE

Mr. Flores has no rent debt.

He has no behavioral issues.

He has a codified right to purchase the home he’s occupied for over five years, which he would like to rightfully own.

With all of these factors in his favor, as far as eviction cases go, Benito is easy to defend.

His lease agreement with the housing authority says he will vacate the premises eventually.

But the Housing Authority promised permanent housing placements, and they haven’t delivered.

What will it take to redeem his right to buy?

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Affordable Sales Program

By law, Surplus Residential Property is disposed according to Government Code Article 8.5 [54235-54238.9]. A current low/moderate-income occupant (like Mr. Flores) has the highest priority for purchase, second only to a current occupant who is a former owner of the home.

The law hasn’t stopped Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. This week, they extracted three similarly-situated neighbors from their Caltrans homes on Shelley Street in El Sereno’s sleepy 710 Corridor.

If Benito is removed from the home, he will become a former tenant, and lose his priority to purchase the property at an affordable price. How shameless can the City, County and State be to work together to come between a peaceful elder and his legal right to own his dwelling?

710 Corridor

How 600 homes in El Sereno and South Pasadena got condemned by the State Department of Transportation “Caltrans” just to be seemingly forgotten for decades is the type of nonfiction that sounds more like Los Angeles lore. Homeowners in the Caltrans Corridor were forced to accept buyouts through a legal freeway expansion process that began with the State acquiring the properties through eminent domain in the 1950s and 60s. Plans changed and changed again, and the 710 stub never got connected to the rest of the highway system as planned. The “just compensation” homeowners were paid didn’t replace single-family homes they were forced to relinquish. Many of them had to downsize and/or leave the State altogether.

Renters would’ve had to seek leases elsewhere, and some would not be able to afford similar accommodations, especially when were competing with other desperate, displaced neighbors. Local landlords took advantage by raising rents. Families, many of whom were immigrants, some living with multiple generations under the same roof, resented loss of the stability they carved-out in El Sereno. Without support of neighbors, marginalized households’ economic injuries didn’t heal the same as they might’ve for more resilient, privileged households, who actually benefit from redevelopment. Generational resentments toward the State over the harm their families endured for this failed freeway project was passed down family trees.

Even though the property transfers were fully legal, and most homeowners were compensated with real checks in amounts considered “fair”, the former residents of El Sereno missed the homes they knew, the neighbors they had, and the community to which they belonged. They told their children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews, and for decades, the houses sat like time capsules, portals to better days and living reminders of when they were doing better, things were less expensive and life was simpler.

March 2020 • COVID-19

Slowly, some displaced descendants eventually returned to their old homes in the Corridor, accompanied by other local families needing adequate housing for themselves and their children during the pandemic.

They call themselves Reclaimers.

Former owner-occupants are legally recognized by law as having the highest priority to purchase back their homes at a reasonable price. Next in line are low-income occupants like Mr. Flores. Then, occupants who make up to 150% median income. Occupants with incomes 150% median or less are to be offered the homes at lower, affordable prices. Finally, public and private “housing related entities”, current tenants and former tenants get a chance to buy the homes at fair prices. All of this happens before the public has a chance to bid on the dwellings at an auction.

11/26/20 • Thanksgiving

On Thanksgiving in 2020, everything was calm in the 710 Corridor until the police showed up to break up a community gathering of reclaimers and remove new occupants of surplus homes by force.

When homeless families and elders occupied these government-owned homes during the pandemic, they began the hard work of improving long-neglected properties, allowing children to socially distance in their own bedrooms. As reclaimers and their network of neighbors were enjoying dinner, California Highway Patrol “CHP” violently extracted a mother and hogtied her teenage child in the middle of the street that splits the corridor.

Earlier that day, the reclaimers had been thankful to be thriving in a global pandemic. Now, red-and-blue strobes illuminated an eerie, mostly-empty residential street, animating an advancing army. The onslaught of uninvited State police were ironically forgoing their own families’ festivities for overtime tearing their fragile households apart. The feast was forgotten and fear rightfully froze them. Even their new Councilman, the now- embattled Kevin de León, officially called the images of the CHP raid that circulated in the media “heartbreaking”. They were.

The dizzying lights, shiny guns, clipping walkee-talkees, and shock of instant separation…it all felt devastatingly familiar.

Witnessing the Reclaimers’ roller coaster of re-housing and immediate displacement play out on social media, I was instantly triggered by the similarities to my first ejection from stable housing. When I was in middle school, police detained my dad and told my mother, brother and I to leave our home indefinitely. We had just moved in that year, and it was a school night, and I had homework and planned to hang out with my friends that weekend.

I wanted to support and protect these brilliant, resilient strangers, the Reclaimers, but didn’t know how.

My For more on-the-ground perspectives from the Thanksgiving CHP raid, listen to the Thanksgiving 2020 Special of iheartradio’s “We The Unhoused” podcast (Episode 36) by clicking on the image below.

WTU is produced by host Theo Henderson, who once lived in a public park in the City of Los Angeles, and Jamie Loftus.

The people have spoken…WTU was a double-winner in the 2025 Webby Awards! Thank you for voting in support of Theo’s well-deserved wins.

Full disclosure: I am honored to have spoken as a guest on WTU a handful of times, including last year with my sometimes-Substack co-writer, Zachary Ellison and most recently about my partner J’s legal woes.

2021 HACLA Lease

Mr. Flores and other reclaimers signed agreements with the Housing Authority of LA that said they would vacate the premises in a few years, so the homes could be returned to Caltrans. But, for their end of the deal, the Housing Authority promised to help Reclaimers secure permanent housing, and it didn’t follow through for many.

Benito fears that if he leaves, the “offer of a lifetime” which he is clearly entitled to, by law, will never come. That’s why he won’t leave.

Broken promises

Now, the Housing Authority was moving the goalposts, telling media all they technically have to do to live up to their end of the bargain was pass along referrals. If those referrals were full, unaffordable, inappropriate, or otherwise unavailable, well, that wasn’t their problem. That was basically the illuminating position of LA’s Housing Authority.

One reclaimer, Ruby, did get a sustainable permanent supportive housing unit and another family got a Section 8 apartment. But there were dozens of reclaimers in several homes, and one single-room occupancy “SRO” unit plus one apartment wasn’t enough housing for all of them.

HACLA never did come to the table with suitable replacements or federal vouchers for the rest. But the press covered the individual successes without questioning why universal offers weren’t made to all reclaimers, or why their right to purchase under Roberti wasn’t being acknowledged at all.

It felt wrong to me for the City’s Housing Authority to threaten to remove 70-year-old Benito from his reclaimed, government surplus home of five years without making good on HACLA’s promise to permanently house him elsewhere. It wasn’t simply knowing the diabetic sores on his feet wouldn’t heal on the streets, or the understanding that he would never find a place in Los Angeles on his fixed income of Social Security.

I found it deeply offensive that the Housing Authority would move in a way that is likely cause injury to elder Benito, in order to protect emptiness, enforce displacement, embrace waste and buckle down on the racist redlining restrictive real estate policies of decades past…all while we are in a homelessness state of emergency in the City and County. Seven people are dying on the streets of Los Angeles per day. When Mr. Flores moved in, the same statistic was three daily deaths.

May 2022 • 710 cancelled

The highway extension ultimately got cancelled for good in 2022. It should have been good news for The Reclaimers, whose occupied homes were no longer in its path. That hundreds of residential properties sat vacant for over half a century situated right in the middle of Los Angeles, oblivious to the largest unsheltered homeless population in the nation is probably the most literal metaphor for “the Los Angeles way of doing things”.

2023 • LAHD

The City’s Housing Department, LAHD is supposed to manage affordable housing, whereas the Housing Authority manages public housing and federal subsidies. A tenant can’t be evicted unless they’ve been properly noticed by the landlord.

One would think that an eviction that is being carried out by the City’s own housing department would follow all the rules. But Mr. Flores’ notice hasn’t appeared on the Housing Department’s website. Despite the oversight, three reclaimers, Tina and Sandra and Elitania were violently removed from their Caltrans homes on May 21st:

“On Wednesday May 21, the sheriff’s deputies violently displaced the Reclaimers, Tina, Sandra and Elitania out of their homes.”

—Benito Flores 5/21/25 statement

2025 “NOTICE TO VACATE”

It’s now been five years from when he first occupied his reclaimed home, and Benito Flores has poured love, resources and sweat into making the unit in the older El Sereno duplex into a real home. He wants to exercise his right to become the legal buyer. He wants to become a homeowner, not homeless, or living in a vehicle once again, like he was immediately before moving in.

The Notice to Vacate posted on Benito’s door by LASD was dated Wednesday, May 7th. He also has a pending affirmative case against the Housing Authority about his right to purchase under Roberti, but it is moving at a much slower pace than the efficient removal process.

One week after the date on his vacation notice, Benito was due in court. He showed up to the Stanley Mosk Courthouse with supporters wearing red shirts to show tenant solidarity. The judge rejected his attorney Arturo Gomez 300+-page filing meticulously outlining the many injustices in removing the reclaimers. Though no fault of his own, Benito had lost, but he is still inside his reclaimed home…for now.

Why does a transportation department get to possess housing, but a qualified constituent in need does not? What would happen if the housing department came to possess an abandoned highway?

The surplus residences are finally realizing their purposes as occupied homes full of families, and our authorities are now violently demanding they be kept in a vacant, useless state. The homes are like “offerings” to Gods of real estate or sacrifices to the demon spirits of capitalism in the name of enforced deprivation. It is such a true Los Angeles tragedy.

Help Benito resist removal by signing up for rapid response and showing up for him when the time comes.

* Call elected officials like CD14 Councilwoman Ysabel Jurado, County District 1 Supervisor Hilda Solis, Representative Jimmy Gomez, and Senator Maria Durazo, and demand they meet with Mr. Flores to offer him the opportunity to purchase his home at an affordable price.

* Call the Sheriffs to persuade them not to get in the middle of the City and State.

* Post about the Reclaimers on social media and tag @reclaimingourhomes on Instagram

* Call the media to tell them why Mr. Flores’ story matters: Anyone who owns real estate in LA can be targeted for eminent domain acquisition and have their property taken for public projects that never materialize.

Thanks for reading roofless! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

I’m Ruth roofless. I’ve been unsheltered in the City of Los Angeles continuously since 2017. I write about corruption and housing policy from the streets and host live Displacement X Spaces discussions on Sundays at 7pm PST on Twitter, where I’m @rooflesser.

Federal Housing Choice Vouchers “HCVs”, also called “Section 8” are our country’s #1 “safety net” against mass homelessness. In the City of Los Angeles, a planned opening of the decade-long waitlist for housing subsidies turned into a trap that left applicants, including my partner and I, in even worse shape than we were in before.

After applying for Section 8, our private data was in the hands of professional hackers demanding a ransom, making us virtual hostages.

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2017 Lottery

“We are very pleased to be opening our Section 8 waiting list after 13 years…”

—Douglas Gunthrie 10/2/17

When we applied for Section 8 in October 2022, J and I had been living together in the City of LA’s outdoor public spaces, such as under the highway and underground in storm drains continuously since October 2017, which also happens to be the previous time the City’s Section 8 waiting list opened. Before 2017, the City’s Section 8 waiting list had been closed since October 2004.

The 2017 occasion, celebrated by Mayor Eric Garcetti and HACLA President and Chief Executive Officer “CEO” Doug Gunthrie, seems like it was nearly identical to the 2022 opening.

“The application for the waiting list lottery is scheduled to open starting Monday, October 16, 2017 at 6:00 AM until Sunday, October 29, 2017 at 5:00 PM. Applications are available only online through hacla.hcvlist.org.”

There doesn’t appear to be much public information about the 2004 event. But on August 4th, 2017, LA Sentinel’s Sentinel News Service reported CVP Associates, Inc. (CVP) won a competitive bidding process to handle an estimated 600k incoming applicants and manage the City’s Section 8 waitlist. CVP seems to be Customer Value Partners, Inc. (CVP), a consulting firm that boasts partnerships with Amazon Web Services “AWS” and Google Cloud.

“At the end of the application period, HACLA will use a computer-randomized lottery to select up to 20,000 applicants for placement on the Section 8 Waiting List. As funding is available, HACLA will contact applicants for program eligibility determinations.“

—HACLA.org 10/2/17 announcement

Anirudh Kulkarni is the founder and CEO of CVP and previously worked as a founder at Answerthink $HCKT . CVP acquired Atlas Research (Atlas) in 2021. Atlas, founded in 2008, boasts the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs “VA” as a client, where it won a role in fulfilling a 10-year, $1B Veterans Health Administration’s “VHA” Integrated Healthcare Transformation “IHT” contract.

2019 VASH cut off

“A preference for assistance will be given to applicants who live or work in the City of Los Angeles and to applicants who are veterans or have a household member who is a veteran, released from such military service under conditions other than dishonorable.”

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 statement

Last year, I wrote about how the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing “HUD-VASH” vouchers for veteran families evaporated in 2019 in “Somehow at some point”, which was originally published by CityWatchLA.

When Heidi Marston left the Veterans Administration “VA” for LA’s Homeless Services Authority “LAHSA” in February 2019, a program in Echo Park that had helped veterans utilize vouchers shut down and reopened as a LAHSA family shelter. Since that happened, the HACLA has not met HUD’s VASH utilization requirement of 70% or higher, and therefore the City of Los Angeles has been effectively cut off from receiving new HUD-VASH vouchers. The HACLA received only one allotment of 250 vouchers since 2019, or 50 vouchers per year, on average.

The HACLA and LACDA, LA County’s Development Authority, combined, used to get over 800 vouchers per year, on average. Had the HACLA managed to lease-up more veteran households on VASH in 2019, Los Angeles could have received enough vouchers for every homeless veteran in LA to have permanent housing on the private market by now, assuming there was enough physical housing.

“The opening of HACLA’s Section 8 Wait List lottery will help thousands of families who struggle to pay for housing on a fixed-income.”

—Doug Gunthrie, The HACLA’s then-president and CEO

Too often, government departments like the VA and our PHA seem to work with each other to deprive beneficiaries of entitlements. For example, until recently, veterans’ benefits counted as “income”. This caused veteran families to be ineligible for subsidized housing, and may have contributed to the low HUD-VASH utilization rate.

Since the government is responsible for paying many “fixed incomes” like VA benefits, Social Security, disability and welfare, public housing authorities “PHAs”should be the voice of their tenants and applicants. PHAs could lobby for higher payments that allow recipients of benefits to afford rent without having to rely on multiple bureaucracies.

2021 3,365 EHVs

“Rental subsidy programs reduce poverty, housing instability and homelessness...”

Until 2021, Section 8 had never specifically sought to relieve recipients of homelessness by bringing people from the street indoors. Then 2021’s American Rescue Plan “ARP” funded 70k HUD Emergency Housing Vouchers “EHVs” targeting unsheltered households. Los Angeles received more than 5,000 with 3,365 coming to the HACLA on July 1st, 2021, and they had to be assigned to a household for leasing by September 30th, 2023. EHV applications were not accepted by HACLA directly and had to come from LAHSA, subjecting them to gatekeeping of nonprofit service providers, whose workers claim they are housing insecure themselves.

Ultimately, the vouchers got leased up, but not quickly enough, causing Los Angeles to forfeit its chance at getting another allotment. EHVs are supposed to expire on September 30th, 2030.

Last month, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” sent a letter to public housing authorities around the country explaining that final payments would be made this month and they will likely last through the end of 2025. It explains that the funds don’t technically expire until September 30th, 2035, but that no more money will come in after this last payment, so landlords are going to stop getting paid, possibly in 2026, and people are going to be evicted.

✉️ Read the letter from HUD.

2022 LAUSD ransom

On March 10th, 2022, LA Unified School District “LAUSD” released a memo about multi-factor authentication “MFA”, but failed to implement it for six months. On Labor Day, September 5th, 2022, LAUSD was subject of a ransomware attack. Later that week, it decided to finally implement MFA. Ransom negotiations went on for about a month, with LAUSD flatly refusing to pay and the hackers eventually publishing a limited amount of data, giving the appearance that they were exaggerating the amount of information they possessed. It could be said that this attack led to positive changes within the department, and the solution was a practical one which isn’t likely to open a new “back door” for hackers.

2022 Lottery

“It’s been five years since we last opened our Section 8 waiting list and the need for rental assistance has grown…Our goal, with the reopening of HACLA’s Section 8 Waiting List Lottery is to help thousands of families who are struggling financially to find stable housing.”

In October 2022, my partner J and I applied online for the City’s Section 8 “lottery” on my iPhone, which we charged off a 12v car battery. I heard about the lottery on Twitter (now X).

“…We’ve ensured that the online application is convenient to access and easy to apply. There are step-by-step videos to assist applicants on how to apply and frequently asked questions that applicants may have about the program and their eligibility.”

—Doug Gunthrie

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles “The HACLA”, under then-President and Chief Executive Officer “CEO” Doug Gunthrie, had decided to again open its federal housing choice voucher “HCV” waiting list, closed since 2017.

“No applications will be handed out or accepted in-person, by mail, email, or fax at any HACLA office. Applicants will be required to have a valid, working email address.”

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 press release

For two weeks, from 6 a.m. on Monday, October 17th through 5 p.m. on Sunday, October 30th, to much of former Mayor Eric Garcetti’s excited style of fanfare and media buzz, the possibility of a future in stable, subsidized housing was just one online form away at HACLA.HCVList.org.

We lost.

In December, we were notified via email that we were among over half-a-million “losers” who had not been lucky enough to secure one of 20,000 or 30,000 “slots” (the number was inconsistently reported) for subsidized housing that were expected sometime in the next decade. That means The HACLA, which manages roughly 50,000 vouchers, plans on processing 5.5 vouchers per day for the next 10 years.

From July 1st, 2021 through September 30, 2023, The HACLA also had 3,365 Emergency Housing Vouchers “EHVs” available from the American Rescue Plan. That’s 4.3 EHVs per day, in addition to 5.5 Housing Choice Vouchers “HCVs”, for a total of 9.8 vouchers for the HACLA to process per day. The EHVs are no longer available, but why can’t HACLA keep up that same pace?

Public data from the HUD’s HCV dashboard show The HACLA utilizing 82% of its HCVs, with 44,169 out of 52,645 in use as of December 31st, 2023. 85% or 44,772 out of 52,471 HCVs are in use as of December 31st, 2024, a slight improvement in utilization but only because there are 174 fewer vouchers than the year prior. How are we losing vouchers?

HUD considers public housing authorities “PHAs” with utilization rates under 95% “failing”. HUD wants to see utilization rates of 98%. The anticipated average output of 5.5 vouchers/day is disappointing, especially from a department that has a budget of >$1.9B annually, mostly coming from federal sources, supplemented by rents paid by low-income tenants.

Our housing authority needs to be performing more lease-ups daily just to outpace deaths from poverty.

#7adayinLA 🕯️

Seven people are dying on the streets of Los Angeles daily, according to information available from the LA County Medical Examiner. Los Angeles is utilizing death as its main permanent housing outcome and primary escape from poverty.

“Rental assistance programs like these fight against poverty and help reduce homelessness.“

—HACLA.org 10/11/22 press release

I spoke to one family of Section 8 lottery “winners”, who were very grateful and extremely deserving after dealing with a flooded apartment for several years. They were slightly disappointed to learn they’d be waiting by the phone for up to ten years for their permanent subsidies to be ready. The overall effect this lottery had on the public was not a massive sigh of relief, as it should have been for the massive and growing housing insecure population of LA.

When the lottery was over, no one was kissing the ground because it didn’t greatly improve the lives of any of the many needy participants. There was no token winner jumping up and down, being handed a giant coupon redeemable for the lions’ share of their rent on a safe LA home, surrounded by balloons and camera flashes.

Unbelievably, the City’s Section 8 lottery made many of our lives a little bit harder.

2023 “NOTICE OF DATA BREACH”

Less than six months after applying for Section 8, in March 2023, J and I received identical letters to our shared P.O. Box informing us that our data had been breached by HACLA, which had collected our private info in October for the Section 8 lottery.

✉️ Read the entire letter.

The three-page letters offered us one year of free credit monitoring as a consolation for having our data exposed publicly. Examining the letter, it seemed to have been sent from outside of Los Angeles, which was suspicious. It was from a P.O. Box in Pennsylvania. We both decided not to enroll in the free credit monitoring. The offer to call a number and give them the information we were trying to guard felt like a trap.

▶️ Listen to my audio diary from March 2023:

“How are we supposed to know that this isn’t the scam?” 🙃

I asked J, who replied,

“…does it ever end?” 🥴

In the months following, we were called by bill collectors who knew our names. We didn’t engage, but imagined it was probably related to the breach, but we couldn’t definitively prove it. We screened our calls and became wary of answering unfamiliar numbers.

The overall impression I got at the time was that we were somehow being blamed for personal negligence in sharing our private personal information with The HACLA in the Section 8 lottery, while the undetected hackers apparently had access to their system. If we can’t trust our housing authority, one of the oldest in the country, operating since 1938, with our information, how are we supposed to be able to trust them with our housing, if we’re ever lucky enough to become tenants who rely on them to cover a portion of our rent each month?

“What happened?”

—The HACLA, 3/10/23

Contemplating the timeline of events raises more questions. It seems convenient for the waiting list to open like a fire hose of data as hackers were present in the HACLA’s system. Was the entire lottery engineered to extract more personal information from the system for the hackers? Was HACLA.HCVList.org (which no longer exists) compromised? Why didn’t CVP, Inc. become aware of the infiltration sooner? Why did hackers think recovery of our data was worth anything to The HACLA, when they had already decided who was and wasn’t getting assisted from the next voucher allotment? If the whole lottery was engineered to be a scam using the bait of affordable housing, I guess we were suckers.

2023 SBSD Ransom

The following month, the San Bernardino Sheriffs Department “SBSD” paid out over half a million dollars as a ransom payment in response to a cyber attack. On April 8th, 2023, SBSD said their insurance covered half of the $1.1M ransom. Whenever ransoms get satisfied, it increases the value of this disruptive style of hacking. It’s interesting that the police coughed up the cash in order to protect themselves, but school districts and housing departments, who typically have smaller budgets, couldn’t afford to. Do they have a higher deductible on their insurance?

2024 Cyberattack

On Halloween, a tweet on X announced a second incident targeting The HACLA’s system. Lars Daniel wrote for Forbes that 900GB of sensitive data was “exfiltrated” by a named “ransomware gang”, a different named entity than the initial incident, including:

* Personal identification information

* Database backups

* Financial documents

* Executive and employee records

* Customer information

* Internal corporate communications

On May 18, 2023, Attorney Ryan Clarkson of Malibu’s Clarkson Law Firm filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Los Angeles. Like my partner and I, plaintiff and class representative Michael Azar applied for a subsidy through the HACLA’s open lottery.

Who houses the hackers?

In 2022, LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvallo told LAist the hackers were located in Russia, but gave no further proof or explanation. I’m choosing not to speculate on the origin or name either group of hackers. I don’t want to amplify them unless and until I understand their intentions. If these hackers end up exposing illegal tenant removals, denial of housing on any scale and/or shedding light on the inner-workings of the often-opaque, State-mandated City Housing Authority, I’ll appreciate their work. For example, what do the “internal corporate communications” say?

While renewal of federal housing assistance, administered by local public housing authorities “PHAs” like The HACLA, is uncertain, as it currently is, and it appears our City is actually losing coveted subsidies on its own, without outside interference, relief feels farther away than ever. I would like to be wrong, but these data breaches feel like part of a larger assault on tenants and those qualified to reside in subsidy-stabilized housing in general, not rebellion or liberation.

How many identities must be stolen until none of our personal information has any value? Would that be bad, or possibly a good thing?

TL;DR

Types of U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department “HUD” (federal) vouchers:

* HCV • Housing Choice Vouchers “Section 8” come directly from a public housing authority “PHA” waitlist.

* LACDA • LA County Development Authority

* HACLA • Housing Authority of the City of LA

* VASH • Veterans Administration Supportive Housing referrals come from nonprofits working for the Veterans Administration “VA” at the Soldier’s Home

* VASH PBVs are for permanent supportive housing “PSH” units located at the Soldier’s Home

* EHV • Emergency Housing Vouchers funded by American Rescue Plan “ARP” targeted at unhoused households; applications must come to PHA from LAHSA

* PBV • Project-Based Vouchers are for PSH; they are non-portable; tenants may move out on HCV after one year; referrals come to PHA from LAHSA, DMH, DHS through the co-ordinated entry system “CES”

HACLA Timeline:

2004 • October • 20k HCVs

2005-07 • HACLA waitlist closed

2008–16 • 4,275 VASH including PBVs

2017 • 10/16–29 • 20k HCVs; 340 VASH

2019 • 0 VASH

2020 • COVID-19; 0 VASH

2021 • 3,365 EHVs; 0 VASH; CVP acquires Atlas (VA contract)

A timeline of the attack was published last year in Forbes. It appears below, with additional events added by me, Ruth, with a *:

2022 • 250 VASH*

* 1/15 • [Hacker] gained initial access to HACLA’s systems.

* 3/10 • LAUSD Multi-Factor Authentication “MFA” document*

* 9/6 • LAUSD ransom attack • *9/12 • LAUSD MFA rollout*

* 10/17–30 • 20k HCVs*

* 12/31 • HACLA’s IT team discovered their systems had been encrypted, prompting an immediate server shutdown.

2023 • *0 VASH

* 1/27 • [Hacker] published the stolen data after ransom negotiations failed.

* 2/13 • An investigation revealed the true scope of the breach.

Additionally:

* 3/10 • “Notice of Data Breach”

* 4/7 • SBSD attack • 4/8 • $1.1M ransom paid

* 5/18 • Class-action lawsuit

* 9/30 • EHVs sunset; Exp. 9/30/30.

2024 • 10/31 • 2nd HACLA cyber attack

2025 • 3/6 • HUD EHV letter

2026-35 • EHVs expiring

Ruth is unsheltered in the City of Los Angeles and writes about corruption as it relates to homelessness and mismanagement of funds within Los Angeles. She wants people to know that homeless people aren’t what is broken about our re-housing system.

Also please check out The Homeless Hacker by Andrew Weisbeck, who is homeless with his fiancé.

Illustrations created from prompts with Wombo’s free dream.ai app for iOS

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit roofless.substack.com