The Brief

In one of the city’s largest and most high-profile eviction cases in decades, a judge has to answer a question that will decide the future of more than 100 Los Angeles renters: What exactly does it mean for a landlord to “go out of business”?

The evictions are playing out at Barrington Plaza, a 712-unit high-rise complex in West L.A. where many tenants pay below market-rate rents due to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance. Corporate landlord Douglas Emmett filed evictions against all of the property’s tenants in May 2023 with the goal of installing a new fire sprinkler system.

Many renters have already left. But about 100 units are still occupied, with tenants now suing the landlord over what they argue is an abuse of California’s Ellis Act.

“The Ellis Act cannot be used for renovations,” said Monique Gomez, one of the leaders of the Barrington Plaza Tenant Association. “If they get away with it in this lawsuit, I believe that there's going to be a lot of other people and a lot of corporate landlords doing the same thing.”

What the Ellis Act says

Landlords invoke the Ellis Act, passed by state lawmakers in 1985, when they want to vacate properties and take them off the market. The text of the law states its purpose is “to permit landlords to go out of business.” Sometimes that means completely demolishing an apartment building. In other cases it means converting rental units into for-sale condos.

This case is more complicated. At various points, Douglas Emmett representatives have said they plan to keep renting out Barrington Plaza apartments in the future. They argue the Ellis Act gives them the “unfettered right” to temporarily stop renting units in order to carry out extensive fire safety upgrades.

The property was built at a time when the city did not require fire sprinklers in high-rise buildings. Two large fires have damaged Barrington Plaza in recent years. The most recent fire in 2020 resulted in the death of a 19-year-old resident.

“Two fires in seven years. A life lost,” John Gibson, an attorney for Douglas Emmett, said during closing arguments on Monday. “It’s time to vacate the buildings in Barrington Plaza.”

People stand outside Barrington Plaza after a damaging fire on Jan. 29, 2020.

(

Frederic J. Brown

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

Going out of business… but for how long?

Gibson argued the Ellis Act does not require landlords to “permanently” go out of business in order to evict tenants, nor does it state a specific amount of time landlords must halt operations.

“You can go out of business temporarily,” Gibson said.

Frances Campbell, the attorney for the Barrington Plaza Tenants Association, said that goes against the plain meaning of the law. When customers see a sign for a “going out of business” sale, Campbell argued, they understand that to mean the business will soon cease to exist.

“They are simply remodeling with the intent to re-rent,” Campbell said during closing arguments. “[The Ellis Act] gives them the unfettered right to stop being landlords. That is not what’s happening here.”

Campbell said Douglas Emmett has always had the option of installing sprinklers without resorting to evictions. They could have temporarily relocated tenants through the city’s Tenant Habitability Program, she said. Tenants argue they’ve never opposed fire safety upgrades.

“Our fight is actually not going against fire sprinklers,” said Gomez with the tenant association, who notes that the landlord allowed her to move in after the deadly 2020 fire. “Our fight is being able to leave our units, do the work you need to do and then bring us back.”

The Barrington Plaza wrongful eviction case is being carried out at the L.A. County Superior Courthouse in Santa Monica.

(

David Wagner/LAist

)

Douglas Emmett representatives have said installing sprinklers in stages is not feasible, and neither is paying to relocate hundreds of tenants for work that could take years.

Tenants say they’re fighting for the whole city

Barrington Plaza represents one of the largest mass evictions in L.A.’s history. It has become a political flashpoint — in part because the building’s age makes it subject to the city’s rent stabilization ordinance. City council members have condemned the decision to evict long-term tenants paying below market rates in the middle of a housing crisis. The fight has spilled into election politics, with Douglas Emmett spending $400,000 on an unsuccessful campaign to oust the council’s housing committee chair, Nithya Raman.

Some long-term tenants say the cost of finding a comparable unit on L.A.’s Westside is prohibitive. Pischy Izady moved in just about six years ago. She said if she’s forced to leave, a similar apartment nearby could cost double what she’s paying now. She said many tenants have lived at Barrington much longer than her, and some simply cannot afford to move.

“They have been here for 30 years, 20 years,” Izady said. “They’re paying these low rents. And they are older. They cannot go get a second job or a third job. I really want us to win this case. Not for me personally — I would move out tomorrow if I have to — but to set a precedent for the city of Los Angeles, and for the other tenants that are really in need of these rent controlled places.”

Barrington Plaza tenant Pischy Izady stands in front of the Santa Monica courthouse just after closing arguments in a case she says could impact renters across the city of L.A.

(

David Wagner/LAist

)

What’s next?

During closing arguments, L.A. County Superior Court Judge H. Jay Ford III repeatedly pressed attorneys on both sides about their interpretation of what it means for a landlord to “go out of business.”

Near the end of the hearing, Ford said figuring out the answer to that deceptively simple question won’t be easy.

“I’ve got my work cut out for me,” he said.

Ford said he expects to issue a ruling sometime in the next two weeks.

Mellody Hobson, businesswoman and Lucas Museum co-founder, has stepped down from the LA28 Board of Directors, LA28 confirmed to LAist Wednesday.

In an email reviewed by LAist, Hobson said that the demands of steering the newly-opened Lucas Museum were too great to continue serving on the 35-person board, which is led by Casey Wasserman.

The move comes after pressure from local activists who sought to meet with Hobson to raise their concerns about the Olympics and Paralympics, including how the Games would affect South Los Angeles where the Lucas Museum is located.

Reverend Gary Bernard Williams, a pastor in South L.A., told LAist before the news that Hobson had resigned that he believed “she could be a person that could be a counterbalance to the other members of the committee that really do not have the same kind of care and concern for what happens to our people,”

Williams, a member of a coalition of labor and community groups called the Fair Games Coalition, said he saw Hobson as the group’s best shot at influencing the LA28 Board, which includes a number of allies of President Donald Trump as well as some city appointees.

Hobson did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

California’s High Speed Rail Authority paid nearly $600,000 in unallowable travel expenses to “questionable locations that appear unrelated to state business,” including trips to gyms, a nightclub, an escape room, a tiki bar and a cigar lounge over a two-year period, according to an investigation released Tuesday by the inspector general that oversees the agency.

The report found that the agency routinely reimbursed consultants for trips that were unauthorized or poorly justified. Some consultants flew first-class and were reimbursed without questioning, in violation of contracts and state policies. One consultant flew his private plane from Washington, D.C. to California and was reimbursed for a premium fare.

“Paying for travel when it is not necessary or when it exceeds what is allowed by state regulations or the contract terms is waste of public funds and is behavior inconsistent with the Authority’s role as the steward of public resources,” the Office of the Inspector General report reads.

Matt Rocco, spokesperson for the high-speed rail authority, said in a written statement that the agency “takes these findings seriously” and will work with the inspector general’s office to fix the issues.

“In response, the Authority will strengthen internal controls around consultant travel, implement more rigorous documentation and approval requirements, and recover any improper costs identified,” he said.

Voters in 2008 approved a plan to build a high-speed rail line stretching from San Francisco to Los Angeles by 2020 at a projected cost of $33 billion. Since then, its route has been significantly scaled back, and the cost has ballooned to at least $126 billion. No tracks have been laid.

The inspector general reviewed $1.15 million out of more than $2 million in travel reimbursements to four outside consulting firms between 2024 and 2026. The OIG said the firms are KPMG LLP, a global financial consulting firm; Nossaman LLP, a national law firm; AECOM-Fluor Joint Venture, which manages and coordinates the authority’s projects, and SYSTRA/TYPSA Joint Venture, which provides tracks and systems design.

None of the firms immediately responded to CalMatters’ requests for comment.

The report found the high-speed rail authority greenlighted at least $685,000 — roughly 60% — in payments without first approving the travel. In some cases, agency staff didn’t even know about the trips until they received invoices.

Even for approved trips, the report found the agency failed to sufficiently vet the requests and lacked records to justify the need for the travel.

The authority frequently approved expenses with vague justifications, such as “typical M-F week” trips, and approved travel at the request of executives without asking why. One consultant flew to California from Denver 20 times during the two-year period to “meet with the executive team” or attend executive meetings, without explaining why the meetings couldn’t have been remote, the report says.

One legal consultant was paid $40,800 in travel reimbursements and an additional $86,500 in “travel time” for 30 trips between Denver and Sacramento in a year. The same consultant “frequently booked flights on the same day the traveling occurred,” the report said.

When questioned about whether he needed to attend the meetings in person, the consultant said the authority’s chief executive, Ian Choudri, had requested his presence so he did not need to justify it and that it would not be appropriate for him to question Choudri’s direction, “as other consultants in other Authority offices are learning the hard way.”

Nearly $600,000 of the $1 million in travel expenses violated state travel policies or the contracts, the report found.

The questionable expenses included:

• Premium Uber and Lyft rides to and from a restaurant, bar, and nightclub between 9:40 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. that “clearly appear to be for personal enjoyment rather than for the benefit of the state;”
• Numerous meals in Folsom, where CEO Choudri has a home; 
• Repeated reimbursed ride-hailing trips to Planet Fitness gyms in and around Sacramento, even after a supervisor wrote that "the state does not cover ride share[s] to gyms";
• $118,000 in international travel despite the contracts explicitly barring international travel;
• A nearly $40 Uber Black luxury car charge for a trip of less than one mile in downtown Sacramento.

Financial adviser KPMG was the consulting firm that billed the authority for trips to the nightclub, the tiki bar and the cigar lounge, Deputy Inspector General Amanda Millen told CalMatters.

“It is important to remember that the critical issue here is not why the consultants visited these locations, but why (High-Speed Rail Authority) consultants included rideshare costs to these locations in their travel claims and why HSRA paid the cost of rideshares to these locations without questioning the business need for these costs,” Millen said in an email.

The report sparked instant outrage from Assembly GOP Leader Alexandra Macedo of Visalia, who called the spending “wasteful and unallowable.” She has been a vocal critic of the project even though Visalia sits along the planned route of the high-speed rail tracks.

Construction on the high-speed rail project over a ramp above Highway 99 in south Fresno on March 3, 2023

(

Larry Valenzuela

/

CalMatters/CatchLight Local

)

The investigation is the latest wrinkle in the high-speed rail authority’s already troublesome history. The office of inspector general warned in a scathing July report that the agency could run out of cash by December 2027, raising doubts about its ability to finish its planned segment connecting Merced to Bakersfield.

Lawmakers this year approved Assembly Bill 1608, which would strengthen the inspector general’s oversight of the agency. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto it.

In the new investigation report, the inspector general’s office made several recommendations to help the authority better enforce its travel policies. The authority should require travel expenses to be cost-effective, capped at state employee reimbursement rates and only for state business, the office says. The agency should also send a memo from the chief executive reiterating that all travel be approved in advance, even when the executive requests it, and that the agency review the expenses for the four contractors and seek reimbursement for unjustified travel.

In response, authority officials agreed to adopt some recommendations and partially adopt others by March 2027, including that it would send a memo from the chief executive clarifying travel expectations by February 2027 but it would be issued “‘at the appropriate executive level’ indicating that it may not come from the CEO.”

But the authority insisted it didn’t need to justify each consultant’s trip, prompting the inspector general to reply: “We explained to the Authority that this interpretation is fundamentally incorrect.”

The office will conduct another evaluation after March 2027.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Santa Ana employees are prohibited from obtaining outside employment that involves federal immigration enforcement activities. The City Council unanimously adopted the policy on Tuesday night.

What does this mean?

It means an employee’s outside employment can’t involve immigration enforcement duties, such as investigating, arresting, detaining, transporting, or deporting people for federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement or private contractors assisting federal enforcement. The policy does not prohibit employees from getting outside jobs with the U.S. Armed Forces or with the Department of Homeland Security, according to city records.

Why it matters

Santa Ana is home to the largest concentration of Latino residents in Orange County. It's also the county's only self-proclaimed sanctuary city, a designation that limits local cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Last summer, ICE raids rattled the city and sparked growing protests.

It’s not immediately clear how many city employees this policy will affect. The effort mirrors a similar law currently being considered at the state level that prohibits California peace officers from moonlighting as ICE agents. The city of Los Angeles adopted a similar policy in March.

What does the policy say?

The ordinance states that outside employment that involves immigration enforcement duties “creates an actual and perceived conflict of interest, exposes the City employee to divided loyalties between their city duties and outside compensation, and undermines community trust in city government generally and in the Santa Ana Police Department in particular.”

What’s next?

A second vote on the policy is required at the next City Council meeting on Oct. 6.

A slim majority of likely California voters are backing a proposed tax on billionaires, according to a new poll, but voters are also lining up behind two competing November ballot measures that could nullify the billionaire tax.

Voters will weigh in Nov. 3 on Proposition 40, which would impose a one-time, 5% wealth tax on billionaires who lived in California as of Jan. 1, 2026. The tax is estimated to raise up to $100 billion and would be used to offset deep federal healthcare cuts imposed last year by Congress.

According to the poll released late Tuesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, 52% of likely voters said they would vote yes on the tax, while 46% said they would vote no.

“Supporters of Proposition 40, the so-called billionaires tax initiative, have a lot of work to do,” said Mark Baldassare, the institute’s statewide survey director, noting the challenge of keeping support above 50% with what is only a “slim” lead.

A T-shirt with a campaign message is seen before the start of a rally led by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, an Independent from Vermont, during the campaign kickoff for the California Billionaire Tax Act at The Wiltern in Los Angeles on Feb. 18, 2026.

(

Patrick T. Fallon

/

AFP via Getty Images

)

But opponents of the tax, led by several billionaires, are also asking voters to weigh in on Propositions 41 and 42, which have provisions that could nullify the billionaire tax if they pass with more votes.

Proposition 41, which would make any new taxes subject to the state’s existing spending limit, is leading in the Public Policy Institute of California poll 51% to 44%.

Proposition 42 would prohibit taxes on financial assets such as stocks and other personal property other than real estate. It’s leading in the poll 54% to 43%.

If all three pass, but Proposition 41 or 42 gets more votes than Proposition 40 gets, the state will be prohibited from enforcing the billionaire tax.

“So the supporters [of Proposition 40] have the work to do of both keeping their support, which is now just above 50%, in the majority range, and also raising questions about Propositions 41 and 42 that may reduce support below what Proposition 40 is getting,” Baldassare said.

That task will likely be made even harder by the large amount of money being spent by billionaires against the proposed wealth tax: Opponents of the billionaire tax have already raised nearly $120 million to fight Proposition 40 and support Propositions 41 and 42.

The poll from the Public Policy Institute surveyed 1,103 likely voters from Sept. 4–10 and found an electorate that is pessimistic about the trajectory of both the state and the nation. Majorities of adults and likely voters told pollsters that price increases have caused financial hardship for their households, and just 27% of likely voters approve of President Donald Trump’s job performance.

The survey also found Democrat Xavier Becerra leading Republican Steve Hilton 60%-38% in the race for California governor.

“Affordability continues to be top of mind for Californians,” Baldassare said, “when considering their choice for governor: 65% of likely voters say that a candidate’s plans to address cost-of-living issues are very important to their vote.”

The poll also asked voters about the other 11 ballot measures on the November ballot.

It found strong support for Proposition 3, which would make existing higher tax rates permanent for individuals earning more than $371,000 a year, and for Proposition 37, which would create a new loan program for middle-income home buyers in the state.

Proposition 45, which is aimed at speeding up construction by expediting some environmental reviews, is narrowly leading 48% to 46%.

Likely voters are also backing Proposition 1, which would authorize $11 billion in state bonds for affordable housing, and Proposition 2, which would increase the state’s rainy-day fund.

But a voter ID measure, authored by Republicans in the state Legislature, is trailing in the poll, with 43% of likely voters backing Proposition 39 and 55% opposed.

A voter is given a sticker after dropping his ballot at City Hall in San Francisco on Oct. 30, 2025, ahead of the statewide special election.

(

Beth LaBerge

/

KQED

)

The survey also shows several other measures trailing among likely voters, including Proposition 4, which would repeal a prohibition against public funding of candidate campaigns; Proposition 5, which would change the process for replacing a state elected official who is recalled by voters; and Proposition 43, which would make it harder for voters to approve local tax increases.

In all, California voters will weigh in on 14 ballot measures this fall, and the Public Policy Institute found voters “exhausted” by the responsibility: Nearly 80% of respondents said they are frustrated with the size of the ballot.

Baldassare said it’s the rare question that unites Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

“Every time we’ve asked this question of Californians, they tell us that, you know, there’s too many ballot measures that they have to deal with,” he said. “This is something that everybody agrees on.”