The Brief

Just over a year ago, the U.S. Department of Education abandoned key oversight of the companies that run the federal student loan program, according to a new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

GAO investigators found that, in February 2025, the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) stopped reviewing the accuracy of loan servicers' records. FSA also stopped reviewing recordings of calls with borrowers to make sure they're being given accurate information.

Without this oversight, the report warns, borrowers could feel the consequences.

"If servicers' records are inaccurate, borrowers could, for instance, be placed in the wrong loan repayment status, billed for incorrect amounts, or not have a refund processed in time," the report says. "Similarly, FSA has not monitored calls since February 2025, so there is a risk that borrowers have received or will receive incorrect information and poor customer service."

The investigation was requested by the ranking members of the House and Senate education committees, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

"Instead of providing relief to 43 million Americans who are drowning in student debt," Sanders said in a statement to NPR, "the Trump administration has made it harder for them to understand how much they owe and how long it will take to pay back."

What the administration has to say about GAO's findings

The Office of Federal Student Aid is supposed to conduct quarterly reviews, according to its contracts with loan servicers.

These reviews include comparing loan servicers' borrower records with FSA's own records, to screen for gaps or discrepancies, as well as "targeted reviews" of borrowers in specific situations, including those who request temporary relief from their payments.

The assessments that were stopped are more labor-intensive than other types of oversight that have been automated, GAO says. According to the report, agency officials told the government watchdog they stopped these reviews in early 2025 "due to lack of FSA staff capacity." That's around the same time the Trump administration began dramatically reducing staffing levels at the Education Department.

According to the report, FSA began 2025 with 1,433 staffers; by December, it had 777 — a 46% reduction.

In a written response accompanying the report, Richard Lucas, FSA's acting chief operating officer, disagreed with GAO's recommendation that FSA resume the reviews. While he confirmed that FSA had, indeed, stopped the oversight in question, Lucas wrote, "FSA determined that a better approach is to provide substantial oversight through additional activities that measure the accuracy of servicer data and the quality of their performance." Those activities include regular reviews of borrower satisfaction surveys.

Melissa Emrey-Arras, who led the GAO study, says FSA's "better approach" isn't better.

"While reviewing those satisfaction surveys may be helpful, they don't directly assess the quality of the information given to borrowers. A borrower may indicate they were satisfied with a call, not realizing they were given completely wrong information by their servicer," she says.

The last FSA review found problems with loan servicer accuracy

Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, which represents the servicers working on the federal student loan program, says servicers also police themselves.

"[Servicers] internally are monitoring far more than any of our regulators ever could or would. Because it is in our best interest to make sure those errors are fixed. And because we have contracts, and if we have major issues that have become clearly apparent, then people will say, 'We'll find someone else to do it.'"

At the end of 2024, before the Trump administration cut oversight, GAO's review of servicer recordkeeping found that "four of the five servicers did not meet the accuracy performance standard and faced associated financial penalties."

In fact, recordkeeping at two servicers was troubled enough to merit the maximum financial penalty allowed.

And GAO notes that the Education Department's independent financial auditor reported as recently as January 2026 that the department "continued to have a material weakness related to the reliability of its student loan data."

What's more, Emrey-Arras says, scaling back oversight at FSA has also meant scaling back efforts to hold servicers financially accountable for their performance. This accountability, she says, "is critical. Without it, the government risks overpaying for poor performance."

For borrowers, servicer mistakes can lead to very real problems, said Rep. Scott in a statement to NPR. "Borrowers can either overpay or be placed in the wrong student loan repayment program. [The Education Department's] refusal to conduct oversight of student loan servicers is a dereliction of duty."

Scaled-back oversight of big student loan changes

These cutbacks in staff and oversight come as millions of federal student loan borrowers will need help transitioning into new repayment plans. The Biden-era SAVE plan is in turmoil, with borrowers now being charged interest and the plan due to be closed by 2028 at the latest. Another 12 million borrowers are either in default on their loans or on their way there.

What's more, in July, a raft of new, potentially challenging changes to the student loan program will begin — courtesy of Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act — including the introduction of two brand-new repayment plans and the phasing out of others.

GAO warns that these changes will affect millions of borrowers who "will need accurate and complete information when they call for help," yet, for the time being, the Education Department can't be certain that's what borrowers are actually getting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

David West raised four kids in Los Angeles working as a Hollywood cinematographer — no mean feat in such a pricey city. But a few years ago, his life took a hard turn.

"Everything went south. Divorce. My brother died," he said. "My dog died."

On top of that, a string of clients who'd hired him for decades also passed away.

Before long, he'd burned through cash and damaged his credit. He moved to Fresno, and now, at 72, West is in a situation he never imagined at this stage of life but one that more and more older people are facing: renting a room in the home of a complete stranger.

"I tried to move, like, an apartment's worth of stuff into a room," he said with a laugh at how impossible it seemed. "You know, how do you do that? I still haven't figured it out."

West looked into a housing subsidy, but his income is just over the limit, so he's grateful for the cost savings of a house share. His roommate, also an older man, covers Wi-Fi, utilities and cable. West volunteers his photography skills at the church where the man is involved and shares his Costco membership.

"It's that give-and-take thing," he said. "It's trying to help each other out as much as possible."

Roommates are skewing older

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

"They're not the biggest group of roommates, but they're by far the fastest growing," said the site's communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

"Maybe 10 years ago they'd have looked at a one-bed or a studio and thought, 'Well, I'll rent that,'" Hutchinson said. Now "they're looking at prices and going, 'There's no way I could afford that.'"

Baby boomers have been aging as housing costs across the U.S. have spiked. In 2023, more than a third of households headed by adults 65 and over struggled to pay housing costs, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the share is even bigger for women living alone.

"Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age," said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. "It's climbed up the income scale. So more and more, you know, middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before."

Older adults are also more likely to face major life events that can lead to financial strain. Caezilia Loibl, chair of the Consumer Sciences Program at Ohio State University, has researched the financial toll of chronic disease and the loss of a spouse at an older age.

"The shock is enormous," she said, "and we see it very clearly in our data how the debt burden goes up and financial vulnerability goes up." People were more likely to fall behind in debt payments, for example, see their credit score drop, file for bankruptcy and face foreclosure.

The upside of learning to live with less

Saving money may be the top reason that more older people are house-sharing. But some see other benefits.

"Oh, I think it's wonderful. Maybe more of the way people used to live," said Darla Desautel, who's 74 and has rented with roommates for years, though she's currently house-sitting in Minnesota.

She loves the flexibility of not being tied down and being able to move where she wants, and she thinks not living alone is healthier. She got along especially well with one roommate who also was an older woman.

"We had a lot in common, and that's pretty special when that works out," she said.

To be sure, there can be annoyances. One place was kept too cold in winter and too hot in summer. There can be smelly cat litter boxes or a roommate who talks on speakerphone in a common area. "Noise is huge. A lot of people think they're quiet when they're really not," she said.

If she could afford it, Desautel said, she would rent solo, though "with a short-term lease." But that would eat up more than half her income. In addition to receiving Social Security, she still works occasionally as a leadership consultant and coach, and she is a licensed secondhand dealer selling "other people's junk."

Desautel is proud that she has learned to whittle down possessions and live with less. "Right now I can move across country with 10 boxes shipped USPS and take a plane," she said.

For now, that's her plan, driving this time, to continue her house-sitting gig in Arizona for the summer. And when that ends, she'll find her next roommate.

In Los Angeles, the soundtrack is familiar. Car horns, the whine of leaf blowers.

But in the middle of Chinatown, another sound cuts through the din: the rhythmic hum of washers and dryers from a trailer parked outside the Alpine Recreation Center.

Chinatown hasn’t had a laundromat for as long as anyone around can remember. This mobile setup – run by the nonprofit The Laundry Truck LA – has become the neighborhood’s de facto laundromat, offering the service for free to locals, twice a week.

For 70-year-old Sam Ma, it’s been a relief.

Ma, a retired construction worker, picked up freshly-laundered items — two pairs of pants, a hat, and some socks, bundled in a white garbage bag for the bus ride home.

He usually washes his clothes by hand. But about two weeks ago, he was hit by a car. Bruises and cuts cover his hands, making it difficult to scrub heavier items.

“The things I can wash, I wash,” he said in Mandarin. “But these are too thick. It’s too hard.”

Rebel Fox of The Laundry Truck L.A. hands a garbage bag filled with newly-laundered sheets to a local.

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Nearby, Laundry Truck employee Rebel Fox checked him out with a clipboard after handing him his load.

“We help a lot of seniors out here,” Fox said. “And we offer folding services, too. It really helps people who don’t have the dexterity in their hands.”

The Laundry Truck started out in 2019 providing laundry services to people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles and has expanded to high-need communities, like Eaton Fire survivors.

In February, the nonprofit started operating in Chinatown under a year-long contract with Council District 1, showing up every Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.

A sink or bathtub

Chinatown advocates say the lack of a laundromat is especially hard on low-income tenants living in older, neglected buildings.

“These landlords aren’t doing much to keep it updated,” said Sissy Trinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance.

Maintaining laundry rooms may require major plumbing upgrades and hookups that many landlords avoid.

Newly-constructed residential buildings are typically being constructed with in-unit laundry.

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Advocates say in buildings that do have shared coin-operated machines, they may be broken or in constant use. Many residents decide to launder clothes by hand — in sinks or bathtubs.

“In one building, the sinks were so small, people had to cut their sheets in half just to wash them,” Trinh said. “They’d wash one half, then the other.”

A reversal of access

Those who could benefit from a laundromat include seniors on fixed incomes, and workers living paycheck to paycheck, including garment workers and home health aides.

“You’re talking about low-income, financially-stressed households,” Paul Ong said.

Ong, who studies urban inequality at UCLA, says Chinatown reflects a broader pattern: as neighborhoods change, basic services can disappear.

Each pile of dirty clothes is labeled with customers' names.

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The neighborhood’s last full-service grocery store closed in 2019 after the property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, new market-rate housing has gone up, catering to higher-income residents with amenities like parking and in-unit laundry.

“The irony is that historically, laundry was bread and butter for the Chinese community,” Ong said.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants built livelihoods around laundry work — one of the few industries open to them at the time.

Nowadays, laundry options have become hard to come by.

Seeking a lasting fix

Residents without access to machines have to leave the neighborhood entirely to find a laundromat in Lincoln Heights or Echo Park, which has seen its own laundromats disappear.

Laundry can be spotted drying on balconies across Chinatown.

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“The long-term, permanent solution is that a laundry service opens up,” in the neighborhood, said Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Chinatown.

Hernandez says constituents have asked for a laundromat from the time she was knocking on doors as a City Council candidate.

Hernandez, who is up for re-election this year, says the neighborhood could benefit from a community-run laundromat offering affordable services.

“If private industry is not making that investment in Chinatown then perhaps it’s up to the city – and the people of that neighborhood – to build something for them,” she said.

In the meantime, Hernandez has directed about $250,000 from her district — using TFAR payments from developers building larger projects — to cover a year of mobile laundry services.

The contract with the Laundry Truck runs through next February.

After that?

“We’ll keep filling the gap until we get to a permanent solution,” Hernandez said.

Could that solution be combined with housing?

Some community advisors to a new affordable housing project being developed on the northwestern edge of Chinatown have been pushing for a self-service laundry that would be open to other neighborhood residents, says Eugene Moy who sits on the advisory board of New High Village.

But any fix will take time. That project, Moy said, could be two years out from even breaking ground.

Taking a load off 

Back at the truck, the machines continue to spin. By mid-afternoon, nearly 18 loads of laundry are done.

The trailer for the LA Laundry Truck is set up outside the Alpine Recreation Center, across from Castelar Elementary School.

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Two months in, there are kinks to work out. How to get more residents to take advantage of the unit's capacity? Its machines can churn out 40 loads per shift.

There is also the question of whether some seniors are physically able to transport their laundry even a few blocks.

But the service is starting to get regulars. One woman on her second visit stood by the trailer, cradling just-washed clothes in her arms while clutching her daughter's teddy bear, now a sparkling white.

"If it keeps going, I'll keep coming," said the woman who gave her last name as Mo. "It's very convenient."

Her apartment building doesn’t have a laundry room. Sometimes she asks a friend next door if she can use theirs. With three children, the cost adds up quickly.

Thinking aloud, she calculated how much she saved that day.

About $8, she estimated — money she said could now spend on her kids.

There’s a fair amount of recreational activities Angelenos can do in and around the Los Angeles River like biking, walking, even kayaking, but did you know you can also dance in the dry river bed of a Los Angeles icon?

Adam Weiss, founder of the Gratitude Group leans over and DJs a set at his Los Angeles River dance party.

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Dancing in the sun

Adam Weiss is the founder of the Gratitude Group, a club that hosts various events across Los Angeles like dance parties at the River, a screen-free reading club at the Central Library and meditative sound baths at Elysian Park. That’s just this weekend alone.

Weiss has been hosting the free dance parties for about two years now. The locations vary. Previously he’s held them at the Elysian Park helipad.

“Everybody wants to dance, they're just waiting to be invited to dance, and then if you're a good DJ, you just keep the floor packed,” said Weiss, who also deejays these events. Lately it's been a lot of disco, funk and soul. Weiss also likes to keep the gatherings dry, meaning no drugs or alcohol. He thinks it makes people engage with each other more.

“So the focus really is on connection and dancing,” Weiss said.

Attendees of the Los Angeles River dance party move to the music.

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Ariana Valencia lives in Burbank and attended last month's dance party, also at the L.A. River. She says dancing in the middle of the concrete riverbed made the city feel like a playground that she could explore.

“I’d never been to the L.A. River prior to that. You think it’s just a little swampy little pond, but it was actually really full,” said Valencia. “I would have never thought that was in the middle of the city.”

Uniquely Los Angeles

Weiss says part of the appeal is not just getting people outside but to get them to experience Los Angeles differently.

At the last event, people walking or biking along the river path joined on a whim — some even brought their kids. Weiss says that’s exactly the kind of reaction he hopes for.

“ I want it to be family friendly. I want it to feel welcoming. I want it to be inclusive,” Weiss said. “My main thing is I just want people to actually dance. I think it feels good to dance.”

A woman and two children join in on the dance party.

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For Valencia that inclusiveness is part of the draw. She says she’ll be joining again this Sunday.

“Even though it wasn’t advertised as a dry event I think the fact that it was a family friendly kind of thing was appealing to me,” said Valencia.

Join the party

After the last dance party went viral, Weiss says more than 1,500 people have RSVP-ed for tomorrow's event. This compelled him to close reservations.

Weiss plans to hold the event every other week this Spring and Summer — taking place either at the River or the Elysian Field Helipad with its amazing view of the city.

Weiss wants to start branching out too, and is eyeing the Culver City Stairs as a possible location.

“ I just wanna bring people to cool interesting places to dance,” Weiss said.

At Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, a mural depicts the now-disgraced farm worker leader from the waist-up, in a serene, almost Buddha-like pose. To his left, a lady justice figure holds the scales of justice and on the right, there are images of farm workers toiling in a field. Chavez looks like a saint.

One of five murals at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona, painted by Paul Botello.

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“And that's what people thought he was,” said Pomona Mayor Tim Sandoval as he stood in front of the mural.

But after several women stepped forward accusing the late labor icon of sexual assault, that view has radically changed. Now there are calls to remove his image from public spaces, widely impacting Southern California, which has a large concentration of murals, plaques, street names, and statues dedicated to him.

But do the entire murals have to be removed, or can there be a more nuanced approach to the re-evaluation of Chavez’s legacy — a re-evaluation that doesn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater?

This week, the artist Paul Botello, Pomona Mayor Sandoval, and Pitzer College Emeritus Professor José Calderón, a former activist who was involved in getting the murals painted, met up at the park, in the shadow of the busy 57 freeway, to discuss how to go forward.

The story behind the murals

In the early 2000s violence between Black and Latino gang members gripped Pomona.

“When a young Latino was killed, we actually did a march all the way from City Hall to what is now this park,” said Calderón.

Calderon helped organize that march. He said activists were inspired by something Chavez liked to say, that when you get angry, don’t take it out on others — organize.

So they lobbied for the park, which was filled with trash and syringes, to be cleaned up and made family friendly. And because they used his quote, it was named Cesar Chavez Park.

Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona was dedicated after activists lobbied the City of Pomona to help curb gang violence.

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Muralist Paul Botello was chosen to create five murals at the park that depicted Chavez from youth, through his service in the U.S. Navy during World War Two, to key moments during his farm worker activism.

Today, while he feels betrayed by Chavez, he’s also keen to preserve parts of the murals which tell the bigger story of the exploitation of farm workers and the fight to improve their conditions.

While California state law says an artist must be consulted if there are any proposed changes to a mural, the ultimate decision will be made by Pomona City Council.

Sandoval said he has not received calls or emails at City Hall. But people in his various social and civic circles have told him, he says, that Chavez’s images should be removed.

Paul Botello holds mock-ups of changes he'd like to make to his murals of Cesar Chavez at a park in Pomona.

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Botello had brought mock-ups of the alterations he’d like to make to each mural. For the mural which depicts Chavez in a Buddha-like pose, for example, he wants to replace his face with the face of a farmworker wearing a hat.

He also wants to keep much of another mural, which depicts Chavez as a teenager in a suit surrounded by boys and girls sitting on rows of tilled soil. His one change is to turn the image of Chavez into a Zoot Suiter, a rebellious Mexican American youth from the mid 20th century.

A mural by Paul Botello depicts Cesar Chavez and children on a farm.

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“ 95 percent is going to be there because it just represents all the youth who also toil in the field to help their parents,” he said.

Calderon agrees with these more targeted changes. He fears painting over the murals entirely would erase the neighborhood activism that led to the creation of this park.

He’s also concerned their removal would give fuel to people who oppose Latino activism and the growing movement in public education to require the teaching of Latino history.

“The right and the white supremacists are already using it to say, ‘see this is what we told you about Cesar being anti-immigrant’”, he said. “But now they're going a little bit further and they want to wipe out ethnic studies”.

A mural at Cesar Chavez Park in Pomona.

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While Botello wants to keep the mural of Chavez serving in the U.S. Navy, because he believes it's important to show that Latinos have contributed to this country's military, he’s keen to make a change in the fifth mural.

It depicts a young man and woman above the phrase “Sí se puede,” the famous farmworker slogan, “yes, we can.”

The young man is clearly Chavez. Botello says he wants to replace it with the face of Dolores Huerta, the woman who led the United Farm Workers with Chavez and has accused Chavez of rape.

Mayor Sandoval says he plans to bring up Botello’s proposals at the next city council meeting.