The Brief

When strong winds shattered the windows on the top floor of Nancy Busacca’s Pasadena home, Michelle Hollis knew it was time to go.

Hollis, Busacca’s caretaker for the past year, packed the essentials. She tried to remain as calm as possible so as not to frighten Busacca, who, weakened by esophageal cancer, could not walk.

As flames neared the home, Hollis first worried about smoke inhalation because Busacca used supplemental oxygen. At the same time, Hollis tried to figure out how she would lift Busacca into her SUV. Luckily, a second caregiver who had wrapped up her overnight shift had stayed to help.

Hollis recalled turning to the second caregiver: “I said, ‘Hey, do you have faith?’ And she was like, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Okay, we’re gonna get through this.’”

They did, but their experience in the wildfires that ravaged two Southern California communities last month served as another reminder of the threat that natural disasters pose for people with disabilities and limited mobility as well as their caregivers, who often take on the role of first responders in these situations.

These dangers have been apparent for decades, especially since Hurricane Katrina, the most deadly natural disaster in recent U.S. history, leveled the Gulf Coast in 2005. In California, the deadly fires that struck Sonoma and Butte counties in 2017 and 2018 resurfaced these issues. A state audit from 2019 showed that historically, emergency response by state and county agencies have struggled to properly assist people with disabilities and limited mobility.

Several of the people who were killed in the most recent Southern California wildfires were disabled and the majority were over 70, news reports identifying the victims show. The stories are tragic, but not surprising, aging and disability advocates say.

“Older adults and people with disabilities are often disproportionately impacted by wildfires due to factors like mobility limitations, chronic health conditions and social isolation, and that appears to be the case again in Los Angeles,” advocates wrote in a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature.

In the letter, a coalition of 126 organizations that included the AARP, Justice in Aging and the Alzheimer’s Association, asked the governor and lawmakers to prioritize disabled and older residents as the state distributes wildfire recovery funds. The request to the state is less about a specific dollar amount and more about creating a recovery process with this population in mind, said Hagar Dickman, director of long-term services and support advocacy at Justice in Aging.

Advocates and caregivers also want more resources and centralized planning to prepare for the next disaster. As climate change fuels more frequent and more devastating events, prompt action is key, they say.

County officials are still assessing the effect of the fires on people with disabilities and the elderly, said Laura Trejo, director of the Los Angeles County Aging and Disabilities department. Part of that work, she said, is checking in with nursing homes and assisted living facilities on their relocation and reentry efforts; it also involves calling and checking in on people who live at home and receive county services or participate in a county program, such as in-home help or transportation service.

The biggest challenge has been the scale of it all, Trejo said. “In over 35 years of doing this work in Los Angeles County, I have never had that many facilities evacuated at the same time," he said. "That was unprecedented.”

The January fires prompted some 2,500 people to be evacuated from nursing homes alone, according to Trejo’s department’s latest counts. Nursing home and assisted living residents were temporarily sent to emergency shelters, and later relocated to facilities where they could stay more long-term.

It is unknown exactly how many people with a disability or limited mobility who were living at home were displaced by the fires because there isn’t one centralized way to track them.

The governor’s office referred questions about resources and plans specific to this population to the California Office of Emergency Services. The office did not reply to questions from CalMatters. In a news release from last month, the governor’s office listed a number of efforts that state agencies are participating in, including wellness checks on people with developmental disabilities and facility inspections on nursing homes and assisted living centers to ensure a safe reentry.

Tailoring emergency response for unique needs

People with physical and cognitive disabilities have needs that aren’t usually met with traditional emergency response. Many cannot drive. Some may not fully understand the risk they face.

“The thing for people with disabilities is that the ability to, at the last minute, throw something together and get out of harm’s way, you cannot rely on that,” said Silvia Yee, policy director at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund. “That won’t happen. So the planning has to be there.”

In a 2019 report, the state auditor said that California was not adequately prepared to protect and respond to vulnerable populations during a natural disaster. A look at three counties — Butte, Sonoma and Ventura — showed deficiencies in wildfire evacuation warnings. It also found that none of the counties had done assessments of their respective populations’ needs or pre-arranged for evacuation assistance. “Inadequate preparation likely hindered the counties’ responses to the 2018 Camp Fire, the 2017 Sonoma Complex fires, and the 2017 Thomas Fire,” the report said.

The issues that people with disabilities face in emergency situations have been widely known for some time, but the urgency to improve plans seems to come and go, Yee said.

“Periodically, something happens,” Yee said. “People are appalled. Advances are made, and then we just fall back. We don’t advance in terms of implementation and enforcement.”

County officials and advocates have a number of improvements they’d like to see.

Dickman at Justice in Aging said one of her concerns during the January fires was the seeming lack of preparation in evacuation centers to accommodate disabled and older adults. When nursing home residents were taken to the Pasadena Convention Center, for example, news reports showed a shortage of cots and basic supplies, such as respirators and incontinence products.

“These are individuals who need a significant amount of support and durable medical equipment,” she said. “Shelters or emergency centers need to be prepared to receive individuals from all kinds of areas with all kinds of needs.”

Trejo, with the Los Angeles County’s Aging and Disabilities Department — a fairly new agency — said she’d like to expand emergency education efforts and take the “vial of life” protocol to scale. A vial of life refers to a packet that includes all of a person’s medical information. The state’s Department of Aging has an emergency preparedness guide that includes a vial of life that people can print and fill out. Ideally every home would have one, Trejo said.

She’d also like to create a tool for people who want to self-identify as having unique needs. That way local agencies know where these people live even if they’re not enrolled in a county program or service. Some disasters, such as earthquakes, hit without warning, but fires may allow for more thought-out evacuations.

“If we’re pre-evacuating an area, then we would know ‘in this area we have 25 people that live alone who are mobility challenged and who we need to assist earlier,’” Trejo said.

Janie Whiteford, president of the California In-Home Supportive Services Consumer Alliance, is 80 years old and a quadriplegic. In the past she has relied on her local fire department in Los Gatos to help her or her husband.

“I think it is super important that your local fire department knows who you are,” Whiteford said. “Our guys know me well because I’ve fallen out of my wheelchair a couple of times and I’ve called them when I can’t get back up. I’ve said ‘Put me on your list. If we have an earthquake and it’s a bad one, I want you guys to call me or come and check on me.’”

Whiteford imagines a system where first responders or a separate local agency can immediately call people with disabilities to check in. “In a perfect world, you would have an organization that would have vehicles that could go out to help these people, or would know exactly who to contact,” she said. “Some type of rapid response taxis.”

In large events, first responders may not be able to check in on individuals right away. For that reason it is also important for people and their caregivers to build their own response team of nearby family and friends or neighbors who know about people’s limitations, said Yee at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

“You have to build the community around you to survive this kind of situation,” Yee said, “Because it’s not always going to be the police or the fire department riding to the rescue.”

Training caregivers for the next disaster

Hollis didn’t have an evacuation plan in place as the Eaton fire approached, but more than 30 years of experience as a caregiver both in California and in her home state of North Carolina prepared her to think quickly and keep calm in the face of the Eaton Fire.

Her original plan was to get Busacca in the car and drive to a hotel. But as she packed, she and the second caregiver flagged down a police officer who was ordering residents to evacuate. The officer called for Emergency Medical Services to pick up Busacca. After about a 30-minute wait, Busacca was taken to the hospital for evaluation, Hollis said.

Caregiver Michelle Hollis stands in front of her patient Nancy Busacca’s home in Pasadena, on Feb. 3, 2025. Hollis and another caregiver helped Busacca evacuate during the Eaton Fire that reached her neighborhood.

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Zaydee Sanchez

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CalMatters

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Hollis feels grateful they were able to get out safely. Busacca died of cancer on Jan. 31; she was able to come home for her final days.

While difficult to plan a smooth evacuation, Hollis believes emergency training for caregivers could be of significant value in thinking through different scenarios.

In many ways, caregivers are also first responders, but emergency training for them is often overlooked. Some training courses for caregivers exist, although the availability of these can vary by county and depend on funding.

The Center for Caregiver Advancement creates and provides training programs for caregivers, including those who work in nursing homes and those who provide care at home. One of its courses focuses on climate change and emergency planning.

The organization is currently offering its emergency planning course to workers of the In-Home Supportive Services program in San Bernardino County as part of a partnership with the labor union SEIU, which represents caregivers. Corinne Eldridge, the chief executive at Center for Caregiver Advancement, said her organization has so far provided the emergency planning course to about 4,000 In-Home Supportive Services workers across the state since 2021 — that’s out of approximately 600,000 caregivers in this workforce.

Stories of the victims in the L.A. fires show that more preparedness is needed, said Nairi Issagholian, an instructor with the center. The emergency course she teaches gets providers to assess their skills, abilities and communication plans. It helps them go over scenarios they may come across in an emergency, such as losing electricity and with that access to an elevator or ventilators.

The course also teaches providers how to recognize the signs of trauma following an emergency. The idea is to help caregivers feel more prepared and self-assured before, during and after, Issagholian said.

“When the emergency happens, just that sense of a little control can make you feel like ‘I’m prepared. I know what I’m doing,'’’ she said. “It can give you that confidence.”

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

The number of homicides in the city of Los Angeles fell by 19% last year, the lowest level in decades, according to a police department report that cited several factors for the decline, including violence reduction strategies and partnerships with community organizations.

There were 230 homicides in the city in 2025, 54 fewer than the previous year, said police Chief Jim McDonnell at a Thursday morning news conference.

The report also shows fewer people were shot citywide, including those who were injured but not killed. Shooting victims were down from 981 to 889, an 8% drop.

Gang-related homicides were down 4%.

The chief credited more effective policing for the crime drop, but acknowledged it's not the only factor.

“Policing plays a critical role in public safety but it is one of a much larger system,” McDonnell said. “Crime trends are influenced by many factors beyond policing, including economic conditions, population changes, substance abuse, homelessness, legislative decisions and access to services.”

Traffic deaths decline

Homicides involving unhoused people remained a major problem, rising 20% last year to 61, according to the LAPD.

The department reported 290 fatal traffic crashes, a decline from the 302 the previous year. Of those, 97 were vehicular manslaughter cases, according to the Police Department.

The report notes traffic deaths are still outpacing homicides across the city.

Citywide, property crimes also fell last year. There were 85,170 theft and other crimes last year compared to more than 205,000 forty years ago.

While crime is generally down, the LAPD has the fewest officers it has had in more than a decade. But its budget still comprises more than half the general fund budget.

“When we invest in our law enforcement, we see safer neighborhoods and real results,” said City Councilmember John Lee, who joined McDonnell at the news conference.

L.A.’s crime picture follows state and national trends. After a spike during the early days of the pandemic, homicides are down nationwide.

LAist has reached out to criminologists for comment, but so far has not received responses.

Reaction to immigration raids

During the news conference, McDonnell addressed concerns that immigrant communities would be less inclined to report crimes and cooperate with police given the tactics of federal immigration agents.

That was “our fear,” McDonnell said.

“While there may have been some lack of reporting, I think we’re on track going in the right direction and trying to regain support in communities that may have waned or been lost,” he said.

While he did not comment directly on the killing of two people by federal immigration agents in Minneapolis, the chief was critical of ICE tactics.

“What we’ve seen since June here in Los Angeles and seen across the country, we’re as frustrated as everybody else about the way that’s being done,” McDonnell said.

He said the LAPD will continue its policy prohibiting cooperation with immigration authorities.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Jan. 29, 2026.

Jonathan Hale has been painting crosswalks at some of the city’s most dangerous intersections for over a year, turning neglected streets into quiet acts of protest and prevention. That work led to his arrest last fall on vandalism — a moment caught on video that went viral.

So far, the city isn’t pursuing a misdemeanor charge, and the incident gave Hale a chance to present his vision for a safer Los Angeles to Mayor Karen Bass’ office. Now, he’s proposing an unusual way for the city to make his guerrilla crosswalks legal: permitted painting parties.

“We’re arguing for a legal mechanism. We should be able to permit street closures, as if you were permitting a block party, and then we can actually do the thing,” Hale told The LA Local. “We can make these (crosswalks) while the street is closed. We can add these compliance lines, and it would be like some sort of city-sanctioned street art program. We really want this to be like an alley oop for the city.”

He met with the mayor’s office to discuss this proposal in December as the lead of the pedestrian advocacy group People’s Vision Zero. His ultimate goal is to find a legal pathway for residents like him to paint crosswalks.

His group’s name is a play on the Vision Zero initiative, launched by then-Mayor Eric Garcetti in 2015 to eliminate traffic deaths over the next decade.

“I got the idea because I’m a pedestrian — we all are,” Hale said. “I started painting crosswalks to see whether this could be a way to raise awareness around the issue and create lasting change. It’s gratifying. You get to be outside and meet people in your community and organize.”

In their proposal to the mayor’s office, People’s Vision Zero presents a “block party” model for installing crosswalks, led by residents who could follow specific state standards, as a low-cost way to address dangerous streets while working with city agencies, rather than waiting years for formal infrastructure projects to move forward.

“I think they see the momentum in the moment,” Hale said about the city. “We really want this to be like an alley-oop for the city. But I think it’s going to be unbelievably hard. It’s going to require the coordination of so many different bureaucratic organs. But we want to do it.”

Sergio Godinez, a spokesperson for Mayor Bass, confirmed that the mayor’s office has met with Hale and city departments “to explore solutions that are innovative and will expedite crosswalk installations across Los Angeles.”

“Mayor Bass believes that streets and sidewalks should be safe and accessible for all Angelenos, no matter how they travel,” Godinez said. “The City will continue to install crosswalks that comply with federal, state, and local regulations.”

Hale argues that Los Angeles’ official Vision Zero program has failed to meet its goal. In 2024, there were 303 traffic deaths in Los Angeles and 290 last year, according to the latest data from the Los Angeles Police Department.

Hale started his advocacy work with the activist group Crosswalk Collective LA, which taught him most of what he knows about crosswalks, including how to design them within city code and use them to raise awareness about safer streets.

“We would love to see some sort of official sanctioning of this within guidelines,” Hale said. “That would be the ultimate goal because crosswalks alone aren’t going to change anything. We’re just adding a crosswalk for drivers to more easily see pedestrians, but that’s not going to solve traffic violence on its own.”

For years, various groups have been calling attention to Los Angeles’ most dangerous intersections. They called out the city’s slow response, such as the intersection of New Hampshire Avenue and 4th Street in Koreatown, where a driver killed 9-year-old Nadir Gavarrete last summer. The city installed a temporary traffic circle, signage and crosswalks years after securing funding and after the boy’s death.

The High-Injury Network from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, a map of streets with disproportionately high rates of collisions and fatalities, makes it easier to identify these dangerous areas. Activists like those in the Crosswalk Collective have emphasized the urgent need for both community-led interventions and meaningful city action to make streets safer.

The group has drawn increased attention on Instagram in recent weeks after Hale was arrested and cited in December for painting a crosswalk in Westwood. In the video that went viral, Hale is seen being handcuffed by an officer as bystanders shout, “Let him go, he’s not doing anything.”

Hale was cited for “vandalism on city property” and received a misdemeanor for the offense that was later dropped.

Not long after, Hale also started building benches that he wants to place around the community.

Michael Jenkins, an attorney and lecturer at USC Gould School of Law, said that since the city of Los Angeles owns the street, nobody can make a permanent marking on it — only the city government can authorize that.

Jenkins added that crosswalk installation is governed by a formal city process and professional traffic safety standards, not individual judgment. “Governments don’t install crosswalks willy-nilly. They don’t just do it based on a whim,” he said, noting that traffic engineers evaluate whether a crosswalk is necessary and appropriate based on established criteria.

As a result, residents “cannot simply decide in their judgment that they believe the street is dangerous to pedestrians and then paint a crosswalk on the street” outside the required approval process. Those who painted an unauthorized crosswalk largely conceded their actions were illegal, Jenkins said, describing it as civil disobedience or political protest, but added the action was “obviously not allowed.”

For now, Hale has paused painting crosswalks, but he hasn’t stopped advocating for safer streets.

Crosswalks alone won’t solve the city’s pedestrian safety problems, he says, but he thinks they can make a meaningful difference — and he has other ideas as well.

“Imagine using something like daylighting — the red-curb areas near intersections — and adding planter boxes to narrow them. That would make the intersections themselves narrower and safer,” Hale said.

Hale can envision a safer version of Los Angeles. He just needs to convince the city it will take a group effort.

If you've ever found yourself in Santa Monica at dusk, cruising along the intersection of Olympic Boulevard and Lincoln Boulevard, there's a good chance the bright baby blue glow of Mel's Drive-In has caught your eye.

With its imposing, tuxedo-wearing penguin perched atop the neon sign, the iconic Southern California diner is a vivid example of mid-20th-century Googie-style architecture. It also marks the official terminus of historic Route 66, the famed roadway connecting Chicago to the Pacific Ocean, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary.

The history

The building dates back to 1959, when it housed the Penguin Coffee Shop, serving cheeseburgers and malts — hence the penguin sign — to hungry travelers. In 1991, it was converted into a more mundate dental office, until 2016, when the Weiss family — third-generation owners of the Mel's Drive-In diner chain founded in San Francisco — purchased and restored the property.

The original Mel's Drive-In, started by Mel Weiss in 1947, was one of the pioneers the American drive-in concept, offering carhop service where food orders were delivered directly to customers in their vehicles. The restaurant made a lasting impression on many, including director George Lucas, who featured it prominently in his 1973 film American Graffiti.

Colton and Chasen Weiss, grandsons of Mel, recall hearing from their grandfather that Lucas "was always a big Mel's fan" and asked to film there. Their grandfather was reluctant but agreed.

"It made Mel's famous and made him famous," Colton said, immediately cementing the restaurant's place in Southern California's cultural landscape. There are now Mel's Drive-In locations in Sherman Oaks and West Hollywood.

Googie explained

Architectural rendering of the Penguin Coffee Shop at Lincoln and Olympic boulevards by architects Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, September 8, 1959. The Weiss family used original plans to guide their restoration.

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The style is named after the Googie coffee shop designed by the same architects, Louis Armet and Eldon Davis, in downtown Los Angeles in 1949. Ruthann Lehrer, an architectural historian and member of the Santa Monica Conservancy, describes the style as featuring "dramatic cantilevered roofs and plate glass windows...designed to attract passing motorists."

Of the 4,000 buildings Armet and Davis designed with glowing neon and angular forms, only a handful survive, most notably Norm's in West Hollywood and Pann's in Westchester.

The Penguin Coffee Shop illuminated at night in the 1960s. The building's dramatic Googie architecture was designed to attract passing motorists with glowing neon and angular forms.

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Courtesy Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives

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The aesthetic echoed the era's car design. "If you look at an old '55 Chevy...those big tail fins...you get that same kind of look and feel as a Googie building," Colton explained.

"Los Angeles really wanted to be a city of the future," said Nina Fresco, also of the Conservancy. Googie was the city's playful answer, distinct from Route 66's roadside vernacular elsewhere.

The restoration

In 2016, after the dental office closed, the Weiss family bought the building. They'd known about the Penguin Cafe's history because they had often driven past the building and seen the penguin sign.

But after 25 years as a dental office, "the whole infrastructure of that building was not a restaurant anymore," Colton said, with super-low ceilings and white stucco walls. It wasn't until someone used a sledgehammer to break through the drywall that they uncovered the original rock facade, which he described as "like unearthing some ancient artifact."

Realizing what they had, the Weiss family enlisted the help of Googie experts and preservationists Adriene Biondo and Chris Nichols, who secured the original plans for the Penguin Coffee Shop. This allowed them to restore as much of the authentic design as possible, including the iconic ball-and-teardrop light fixtures in the dining area and the exterior landscaping.

The original Penguin Coffee Shop interior featured a dramatic rock facade and teardrop lighting fixtures. During restoration, the Weiss family discovered this rock wall hidden behind drywall, describing it as "like unearthing some ancient artifact.

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Courtesy Santa Monica Public Library Image Archives

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The restoration took two years. Upon opening in 2018, the restoration immediately drew attention from preservationists and the community, earning the Santa Monica Conservancy Historic Preservation Award in 2019.

According to Lehrer, Mel's is one of the only remaining Googie buildings in Santa Monica — what Fresco calls "the last bird standing" — as others have been demolished to make way for mixed-use development.

"So many locations are getting torn down...building high rises...it's losing a lot of its aesthetic. It's sad to see," Colton said. In Los Angeles, small-scale buildings face an uncertain fate as the land beneath them becomes increasingly valuable.

Full circle

The diner has since become known for its high-quality diner food, and as a photogenic stop for tourists taking selfies at the end of Route 66. When the Weiss family first arrived, there were no signs marking its unique location. The city installed them after Mel's opened — as if the official terminus had been waiting for the right destination. Now, through a partnership with the Route 66 Society, the diner hands out certificates of completion to road trippers who've made the journey from Chicago.

The interior of Mel's Drive-In features restored ball-shaped light fixtures and terrazzo floors that echo the original 1959 Penguin Coffee Shop design.

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Gab Chabrán

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Colton recalls a sunburned man in his 70s who'd driven the entire route in his 1960s Corvette Stingray, bucket list complete, beaming as he received his certificate. "It's a really special place, and it is special to me," Colton said. "So that definitely means it's special to everybody else."

That baby blue glow is still doing exactly what it was designed to do all those years ago: catching the eye of passing motorists.

A taxpayer-funded program that provides unhoused people with tents, meals, bathrooms and around-the-clock security in a South L.A. parking lot will close on Jan. 31, according to the nonprofit that operates it.

Urban Alchemy is terminating a $1.2 million contract with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority to run the program through the current budget year, which ends in June.

The San Francisco-based nonprofit says it’s not getting enough funding under that agreement to keep the site open.

“The economics of the contract don’t work,” an Urban Alchemy representative told LAist. “It reached a point where we started losing money on it, and we had to make the decision about what’s best for our organization.”

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village on South Central Avenue was one of only a handful of similar government-sanctioned tent encampments operating around the state.

Regional homelessness officials and a federal judge raised concerns about the Safe Sleep Village last year after observers found the site was operating at half capacity while the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, was paying it to operate at full capacity.

Urban Alchemy said a portion of the site was closed in 2024 because LAHSA and the city of L.A. instructed it to do so.

Now that the program is closing down entirely, city and LAHSA officials are scrambling to transfer remaining residents to other shelters.

People living at the site first learned of the impending evictions late last week, according to multiple residents interviewed by LAist. One of them, Miles Johnson, said he’d been living there with his girlfriend for 10 months.

“ We just got moved,” he said. “We just got put out. All our stuff is still in bags.”

LAHSA says it has been working to secure alternative shelter placements for 25 people who were living at the Safe Sleep Village.

Ahmad Chapman, a spokesperson for LAHSA, said the agency expects to make housing offers to all remaining participants before the closure.

The main entrance to the Lincoln Avenue Safe Sleep Village, located in a parking lot in South L.A.

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Aaron Schrank

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Residents displaced

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village is located near the intersection of South Central Avenue and East 25th Street in a parking lot next to the historic Lincoln Theater. It’s in Councilmember Curren Price’s ninth district.

A South L.A. nonprofit called the Coalition for Responsible Community Development purchased the property in 2020 using state Project HomeKey funds. It has plans to build a 60-unit affordable housing complex there soon.

Price’s office told LAist this week that news of Urban Alchemy ending its contract to run the site came as a surprise.

“Until this recent news, our expectation was to transition any remaining residents by the end of this year,” Price’s communications director Angelina Valencia-Dumarot told LAist. “This sudden change disrupts that plan and creates uncertainty for unhoused neighbors currently at the site.”

On Tuesday afternoon, city of L.A. crisis response teams were transporting several residents and their belongings from the Safe Sleep Village to other nearby open shelter beds.

“They dumped me off at a place and I almost didn't get a bed,” James Rudy told LAist. “This was all last minute. I was afraid they were going to screw me.”

He said he was forced to throw away most of his clothing and belongings during the move. Rudy is now staying at a shelter 5 miles away called Testimonial Community Love Center, where clients are required to leave each day between 8:45 a.m. and 12:30 p.m., he said, adding that he preferred the tent village.

“The place we left wasn’t that bad.” Rudy said. “I was in a tent, but at least I was able to do what I needed to do. Here it’s not really practical.”

Tracy Wallace told LAist on Tuesday that her husband had been transported to another shelter, and she was waiting to reunite with him there.

“We're gonna be apart, not sleeping together,” she said. “Because one side is for men and the other side is for women, but that's still fine.”

Urban Alchemy said it was making former residents’ well-being a top priority. The organization estimated that, as of this Wednesday, there were seven residents still waiting on alternative placements.

“As we wind down our operations at this site, we appreciate the efforts underway to help guests move to safe, supportive places.” spokesperson Jess Montejano said in a statement.

Urban Alchemy told LAist that five of its 15 workers were laid off this week. Ten have been transferred to work in other Urban Alchemy projects, and the organization is working to connect the laid-off employees to other jobs, Urban Alchemy said.

The nonprofit bills itself as a social enterprise, hiring mostly formerly incarcerated people.

Some displaced residents from the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village were transported to alternative shelters on Tuesday.

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Cutting ties with LAHSA

LAHSA had contracted with Urban Alchemy to operate the Safe Sleep Village since 2022. Annual funding for the site was reduced from $2.3 million last budget year to $1.2 million this year.

The latter amount was supposed to pay for 46 tent spaces. But Urban Alchemy said the contract didn’t cover its fixed costs.

“We have to provide the staff no matter what, per the terms of the contract, whether it’s one person or 46,” an Urban Alchemy representative said. “We tried to work with [LAHSA] often, to try to find a way for it to pencil, and it just wasn’t the case.”

Urban Alchemy said LAHSA “arbitrarily changed its funding formula,” resulting in the nonprofit losing nearly $1 million on the contract.

The nonprofit first notified LAHSA on Dec. 22 that it planned to terminate the contract, both parties confirmed to LAist.

According to LAHSA payment records, Urban Alchemy spent about 69% of its budget on personnel for the 2022-23 budget year. Payroll records for February 2024 showed an average of eight staff members working at the site around-the-clock.

Last Thursday, one month after notifying LAHSA about the closure, Urban Alchemy’s director of operations in L.A. emailed city and LAHSA staff, demanding help rehousing residents.

“Given the urgency of the closure date, ongoing uncertainty places guests and frontline staff in an untenable position,” Tim Kornegay wrote in a Jan. 22 email. “Leadership action is critically needed now to prevent avoidable harm.”

The next day, LAHSA representatives told Urban Alchemy about a transfer plan for the people still living at that Safe Sleep site, the agency said.

Early this week, Mayor Karen Bass’s office and Price’s office told LAist they were aware of the situation and supported LAHSA’s work to prevent people from winding up with nowhere to go.

City of Los Angeles crisis teams helped transport residents to new shelter locations before the closure.

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A federal judge weighs in

Months before Urban Alchemy announced it would shut down the South L.A. site, questions about its funding and capacity made their way to a federal judge.

The situation emerged as the city of L.A. is under a court order to provide more shelter for unhoused Angelenos and LAHSA is under scrutiny for having failed to properly manage hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with service providers like Urban Alchemy.

Last year, LAHSA paid the nonprofit $2.3 million based on inaccurate data about the site’s capacity, records show. On paper, Urban Alchemy had 88 available beds on site. In reality, half that many were available.

Officials from the Homeless Services Authority had instructed the nonprofit in April 2024 to close down operations in one of two converted parking lots, according to emails reviewed by LAist. Dozens of plywood tent platforms were removed, but LAHSA did not update the capacity data or funding for the site until more than one year later.

The city of L.A. and LAHSA continued to report outdated capacity data about the South L.A. tent program to a judge overseeing a settlement that requires the city to open 13,000 new shelter beds by next June.

In November, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter described the situation as “obvious fraud.”

Michele Martinez, a special master appointed to help enforce the terms of the settlement, visited the site in June and found that it appeared to be operating at half capacity. She then tried to verify the number of beds available at the site with city officials, but did not get an answer, Carter said at a November court hearing.

The city of L.A. corrected the information reported to the judge after one member of LAHSA’s governing board, the LAHSA Commission, visited the site and reported what he saw there.

Commissioner Justin Szlasa said he had voted to approve millions in funding for Urban Alchemy last year with the understanding that the South L.A. space could accommodate 88 people. But when he visited in May 2025, he saw that half of it was closed.

Szlasa filed a public records request with LAHSA in September to obtain the contracts and payment details for the Urban Alchemy site, but he has not yet received a full response, he said.

He told LAist he’s been asking for an evaluation of the contract to be put on the LAHSA Commission’s agenda.

Urban Alchemy does not have any remaining contracts with LAHSA, but the organization runs a tent village in Culver City and has some other contracts with the city of L.A.

The organization recently pulled out of operating a large homeless shelter in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district after the nonprofit said it did not feel "supported" by the city amid scrutiny over shelter finances.