The Brief

Trouble at the small apartment on Vernon Avenue had been brewing for months by the time things came to a head this spring.

For Kevin Diaz Lopez, his housing problems began around October. That’s when his brother and two nephews moved out from the one-bedroom South Los Angeles apartment they all shared, moving to be closer to work in the Long Beach area.

That left Diaz, who works in a packing warehouse, stuck with $1,600 monthly in rent. By January, he was falling behind.

No rental agreement

Diaz says he promised the manager he’d pay within a few days. But he says when he came home one day, he’d been locked out. Some of his things were sitting outside. A neighbor called police, along with a tenant rights group, and Diaz was allowed back in.

But the message he got from the manager was this: “That I was not on the (rental) contract,” Diaz said in Spanish, “and I could not be here.”

Only his brother and nephews were on the rental agreement. Diaz says he tried negotiating, asking to be put on a new rental contract, but was told this would increase the rent. He started to get worried.

“Renting another place like this requires a lot of money,” he said. “I thought I’d have to end up sleeping in my car.”

Then, in what seemed like a stroke of luck, Diaz heard from two old friends from Guatemala via social media. The couple had arrived in the U.S. as asylum seekers last year. And now, they were struggling to stay housed.

Kevin Diaz Lopez outside the apartment where he lives on Vernon Avenue.

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One of his friends, Yamileth Mejicanos, said she and her husband had initially been bused from Texas to New York, where they knew nobody. So they made it to Southern California, where they rented a room from someone else as they tried to find work. So far, only she had found a job — at a restaurant, working just three days a week. It wasn’t enough.

“Covering the rent sometimes, to be honest, we did not have enough to cover food, the basics,” Mejicanos said in Spanish. “We would adjust for the rent but we would be left without food, sometimes two or three days without food. We either paid rent or we ate.”

Diaz offered to let them move in, and in February, they did. Her husband found work at the same packing warehouse and they all agreed to split the rent.

Diaz was optimistic: He would help his friends stay housed, and in turn, they could help him keep his apartment.

But the couple wasn’t on the rental contract either, and eviction attempts intensified.

A risky living situation

By March, things were getting ugly: At one point, they came home to find some of the plumbing torn out, including the toilet. Shortly afterward, police arrived early one morning; the tenants learned they’d been reported as trespassers.

Yamileth Mejicanos shows the interior of the apartment bathroom where the drain pipes were removed from under the sink.

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Brian Feinzimer

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A neighbor, Denise Rivera, said she saw their things taken out of the unit “three or four times in total, from January to March.”

Rivera connected them with a tenant rights group, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE. One afternoon shortly after the toilet and other plumbing were removed, ACCE lead organizer Nancy Villanueva visited to survey the damage. She had seen similar situations before.

“This,” Villanueva said in Spanish, “is a good example … of how people wind up on the street.”

Villanueva’s group works with low-income renters, including many Spanish speakers. She said she started to see more families doubling up as they were walloped by the economic effects of the pandemic.

But even before the pandemic, doubling up was a common fallback in local Latino communities. A UCLA study released last December concluded that between 2016 and 2020 in L.A. County, Latinos made up 76% of those who self-identified as experiencing doubled-up homelessness.

Researcher Melissa Chinchilla, who worked on the report, said this represents a less visible side of the growing Latino homelessness crisis in L.A.

“I think part of the challenge is that for many years, because we didn't see Latinos entering the homeless service system at the rate that we would expect given their economic and social vulnerability, or at a rate comparable to other vulnerable populations, we kind of thought like ‘oh, OK, well, they don’t need as much support,’” Chinchilla said.

“But … oftentimes what tended to happen in these communities is that Latinos rely heavily on social support, which can be really great — and at the same time can also have negative repercussions in other ways,” she said.

‘The tip of the iceberg’

Doubling up can create additional financial stress for the host family, especially if they’re also low-income, Chinchilla said, along with other stressors like overcrowding and substandard living conditions. And this common problem: people who move in but are not on the lease. Studies have suggested those not on the lease are more likely to become unhoused.

“What are the risk factors? If you're doubled up and you're not a leaseholder, you have no rights,” Chinchilla said.

Chinchilla is a city-appointed commissioner with the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA. In recent months, city and county officials have shifted greater attention to unhoused Latinos as their local numbers have grown.

According to LAHSA, the number of Latinos experiencing homelessness increased by 26% between 2020 and 2022; Latinos represented 43% of the unhoused population in LAHSA’s 2023 point-in-time count.

Chinchilla said as local officials try to better understand and serve Latinos experiencing — or on the edge of — homelessness, it’s critical to understand the precarious housing situations that doubled-up renters find themselves in.

“When we look at the homeless service system and we look at the point in time count, we're only really looking at the tip of the iceberg. There’s a lot that's getting missed,” Chinchilla said.

‘I just want a place to live’

Fortunately for the occupants of the Vernon Avenue apartment, they’re getting help. Villanueva and her tenant-rights colleagues at ACCE learned that Diaz and his friends had not received a formal eviction notice, a necessary step. Villanueva reported the missing plumbing to the city as a code violation, and it was replaced.

Eviction is a legal process in which steps must be followed, Villanueva said, including tenants being given a formal notice.

“It’s not legal for them to lock you out just like that, without notice,” she said.

According to L.A. County’s Consumer and Business Affairs Department, it’s illegal for a landlord to lock a tenant out, remove doors or windows, change locks or cut off utility services.

Villanueva said renters like Diaz and his friends do have some rights in these basic protections against illegal eviction — and it’s important to understand them.

Tenant rights organizer Nancy Villanueva, left, and neighbor Denise Rivera, right, have been helping the tenants in the Vernon Avenue apartment.

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These rights “are few, but they are there,” Villanueva said, “and people have to learn how to use those protections and those laws that exist.”

Illegal evictions should be reported to police, she said. Villanueva also encourages renters at risk of losing their housing to seek out community groups that can help them, and to reach out before it’s too late.

“They don’t have to reach out when they are already in the street,” she said.

She said that as of this week, the Vernon Avenue occupants have not yet received a formal eviction notice. LAist reached out to the apartment manager, who didn’t want to discuss the matter.

Meanwhile, Diaz is still there. His two friends recently found a new place and moved out, but one of his brothers has now moved in. He says he still hopes he can negotiate a new rental contract.

“I don’t want any problems,” he said. “I just want a place to live.”

The Orange County Board of Supervisors “undermined” the public’s trust when they granted themselves a 25% pay increase, according to the latest OC Grand Jury report released on Monday.

Since 2005, supervisors were set to make 80% of a Superior Court judge’s salary. That changed in June, when the board approved a 25% pay hike, increasing their salaries by about $49,000 to at least $244,000.

The pay increase raised eyebrows over the summer, sparking the Grand Jury investigation. A Grand Jury is a panel of citizens who investigate local government and public agencies. Members serve one year and look into several issues during that time.

It came just weeks after former Supervisor Andrew Do was sentenced to five years in federal prison for accepting more than $550,000 in bribes. The county itself is also financially in hot water following the Airport Fire, which has racked up hundreds of millions of dollars in damage claims against the county.

“The timing was especially troubling as the County of Orange (County) has been facing hiring freezes and budget constraints,” the Grand Jury reported. “This decision was not only tone-deaf — it reflected a deeper disconnect from the Board’s duty to serve the public with transparency and fiscal responsibility.”

What does the Grand Jury say? 

The Grand Jury questioned how the item was presented to the public and whether it was purposefully buried within the county budget agenda item.

“The Board added their salary increase into the $10.8 billion 2025-2026 Orange County Annual Budget adoption process. This resulted in a minimal description in the agenda and minimal opportunity for citizen input,” the Grand Jury reported. “Therefore, the Grand Jury investigated: why did they want to conceal their salary increase, was it warranted at this time and who initiated it?”

The board’s vote, the Grand Jury stated, signifies that the board prioritizes personal gain over accountability and public trust.

“Elected officials are entrusted to serve, not to enrich themselves. When this happens, the foundation of representative democracy is undermined,” the Grand Jury said. “The people of Orange County deserve better, and the people must demand it.”

How are officials responding? 

OC Supervisor Katrina Foley — the lone dissenting vote on the raises — said she was not surprised by the Grand Jury’s findings.

“I think most people felt that it was poor form for that to happen at that time, and given our current economic instability due to what's happening at the federal and the state level,” Foley told LAist.

Following the criticism, Supervisors Vicente Sarmiento and Doug Chaffee said they would donate their increased pay to charity.

“I am open to considering the recommendations in the report for changes to the pay ordinance and how future increases are approved, and I have been open to reconsidering the pay increase,” Sarmiento said in a statement.

A county spokesperson and Supervisor Don Wagner declined to comment. Supervisor Doug Chaffee and Janet Nguyen did not respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What’s next? 

The report made a handful of recommendations, including that the board rescind the pay raise and salary changes by next March “to restore institutional trust and demonstrate a genuine commitment to transparency and accountability.”

It also recommends that the board adopt procedures for proposing, reviewing and approving future supervisor salary changes that include public hearings.

The county has 90 days from the release of the report to respond to the Grand Jury, according to a county spokesperson.

The increase of federal immigration sweeps in Southern California this year made one thing clear to street vendors without authorization to be in the U.S. — running a business outside was risky.

In response, L.A. nonprofit Inclusive Action for the City ramped up an existing program that trains street vendors to work in private catering.

“One of the big successes of the year was the growth of our Hire a Vendor program, where our business coaches essentially became brokers for our street vendors and other entrepreneurs so they can get catering jobs,” said Rudy Espinoza, the group’s CEO.

The program was created in 2024 but the group expanded it this year after the increase of immigration sweeps. The group said in its annual report that 34 small businesses were trained for catering this year and more than 350 catering jobs came to those trainees this year.

The training program includes menu design and pricing, electronic sales systems and marketing

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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“Everywhere from the mayor's house to a small backyard party,” Espinoza said.

The group’s effort is part of actions taken by individuals and groups across the region to help people targeted for detention keep sources of income.

That help has included buyouts of daily inventory of fruit and flowers, as well as the awarding of grants to street vendors who lost income because they stayed home.

Advocates said the loss of income through detentions — many carried out through violent means — often affected family members who were U.S. citizens and has created a humanitarian crisis as families have lost the means to pay bills and buy food.

Street vendors in a Hire a Vendor session organized by Inclusive Action for the City.

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Courtesy Inclusive Action for the City

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The vendor training program sought to alleviate that.

“Sometimes, challenges force us to think, be creative and think about how to adapt,” Espinoza said. “The Hire a Vendor program is just an example of how some entrepreneurs really dedicated themselves to build out a different line of business for themselves.”

How it works

The Hire a Vendor program is free to people who seek and receive micro-loans from Inclusive Action for the City.

Four of the program’s nine sessions are "office hours" in which a business coach works one-on-one with the business owner.

The trainings cover:

• Catering basics such as delivery, set-up and presentation
• Invoicing and electronic sale systems
• Menu design and pricing
• Marketing through social media

The trained vendors are free to pursue their own catering jobs but also get catering work through a portal created by Inclusive Action for the City.

Espinoza said one full-time employee oversaw the program this year, and he’d like to add another full-time worker to expand the trainings in 2026.

The Trump administration will resume garnishing wages from student loan borrowers in default in early 2026, the U.S. Education Department confirmed to NPR.

The move comes after a years-long pause in wage garnishment due to the pandemic.

"We expect the first notices to be sent to approximately 1,000 defaulted borrowers the week of Jan. 7," a department spokesperson told NPR. The spokesperson said wage-garnishment notices are expected to increase on a monthly basis throughout the year.

A borrower is in default when they have not made loan payments in more than 270 days. Once that happens, the federal government can try to collect on the debt by seizing tax refunds and Social Security benefits and also by ordering an employer to withhold up to 15% of a borrower's pay. Borrowers should receive a 30-day notice from the Education Department before this wage garnishment begins.

Betsy Mayotte, the president and founder of The Institute of Student Loan Advisors, says even though borrowers have expected this, the timing is unfortunate.

"It will coincide with the increase in health care costs for many of these defaulted borrowers," she said, referring to the premium increases for Affordable Care Act health insurance that kick in in 2026. "The two will almost certainly put significant economic strain on low- and middle-income borrowers."

About 5.5 million borrowers currently are in default, according to a recent analysis of the latest federal student loan data published by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a public policy think tank.

Another 3.7 million are more than 270 days late on their payments and 2.7 million are in the early stages of delinquency.

"We've got about 12 million borrowers right now who are either delinquent on their loans or in default," Preston Cooper, who studies student loan policy at AEI, told NPR.

That's more than 1 in 4 federal student loan borrowers.

Cory Turner contributed to this story.

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