The Brief

As COVID-19 tore through California, Jennifer Hark Dietz had a decision to make. The state was making perhaps its biggest push ever to get people off the street, offering up billions of dollars for cities and organizations like hers to turn old motels into new homes.

It was risky. The Homekey program came with up-front cash and a promise to move fast and cut red tape. But it also meant taking on old buildings with little vetting, which had the potential to put a developer in a deep financial hole.

At first the gamble paid off. In just a few months, Hark Dietz’s nonprofit, People Assisting The Homeless, was housing people in the old 40-room Hollywood Orchid Suites in Los Angeles. She called it a “shining light” for what seemed possible with the radical new program.

But then came a pale pink Travelodge in the suburb of Gardena. The city of LA had already bought the motel for $9 million, and Hark Dietz said her team didn’t have a chance to vet or tour the site. They’d only seen online photos and basic inspection reports before they took it over in December 2020. A city consultant estimated that it would take about $50,000 to start moving people into the roadside motel.

“Of course,” she said, “we know now that’s not the case.”

More than five years and nearly $3 million later, the motel — which turned out to need all new windows, plumbing and electrical, among other issues — was still vacant earlier this year. There was plywood over some of the windows, and someone graffitied a ghost on one side.

The boom-or-bust results in Los Angeles underscore how little is known publicly about a generational project with a high price tag and even higher stakes. Some projects were huge successes. Others were total failures. Dozens remain stuck in limbo. CalMatters found there’s been little public accountability for any of it.

Launched by Gov. Gavin Newsom in the summer of 2020, Homekey awarded more than $3.8 billion to local governments to convert motels and other buildings into homeless housing, thrusting many local governments into a new role running multimillion-dollar real estate projects. Cities and counties could hire outside contractors to help or do the work themselves, skipping some of the usual building process for the sake of speed.

It was unlike anything the state had ever done, largely because it sprang from desperation. Homekey launched during peak COVID, five months before vaccines were available, and after cities had already moved thousands of unhoused people into motels through Project Roomkey, another Newsom program. But those rooms were temporary, and officials were scrambling to prevent a mass exodus back to the streets.

With Homekey, local officials across the state bought and gutted Motel 6s, Best Westerns and roadside inns. They got more creative as the program evolved: Tiny homes sprouted in Silicon Valley, and Santa Cruz retrofitted an old dentist’s office. In Southern California, housing took shape in a former Tri-Delt sorority house, an earthquake-stricken church and a hostel that once served as a refuge for Japanese Americans returning from World War II internment.

Live Oak Apartments in Ukiah on Feb. 26. Live Oak offers its residents access to common spaces, such as a community garden and meeting rooms for visitors.

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Manuel Orbegozo

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CalMatters

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“What we’re doing here today is multiples of what any state in American history has committed to address this crisis of homelessness,” Newsom said at a 2021 press conference announcing a major Homekey expansion.

The program came with little built-in oversight. Earlier this year, state lawmakers killed a bill to audit Homekey. No state agency has publicly analyzed the program in detail to find out what’s working and what’s not.

The challenge now: A new and more complex phase is already underway with up to $2 billion from the voter-approved Prop. 1 mental health bond. But no one has publicly accounted for how many of the program’s original projects stalled out and how many succeeded.

To find out what happened, CalMatters filed more than 100 public records requests with cities and counties that were awarded Homekey funds. We asked for key details on 250 projects announced through the end of 2024, covering all but a handful of projects for which less public data was available. Those state and local records — along with dozens of visits to Homekey sites, plus interviews with people who built and lived in them — create a first-of-its-kind window into how it all played out.

Among our findings:

• Homekey made producing housing simpler. But it came at a cost. Homekey provided billions of dollars in housing funding up front, allowing some developers to sidestep the usual webs of investors and lenders and finish much faster than normal. But fewer funders also means less oversight. With rushed vetting, some projects got bogged down in delays, blown budgets or worse. At least one Homekey developer was forced out of business by an unwieldy project. Another is facing fraud charges.

• When Homekey worked, those involved stress that it really worked. Nearly 13,500 people now live at Homekey sites, according to the state Housing Department. For small and rural communities, such as Glenn County, the program provided crucial cash for their first-ever homeless housing. Officials from Mendocino County to Ventura say they were able to stabilize people longer term by adding stronger ties to public services and extra investment in resources such as counseling.

• Those successes magnify the opportunities squandered. Projects involving about 3,000 homes — roughly 1 in 5 promised by the program — weren’t finished as of the end of last year. Another 2,000 units have people living in them on a temporary basis but haven’t been converted into permanent housing, the program’s main goal. In 10 instances involving 500 more units, the state publicized grants that later were canceled or that never materialized because local officials or developers backed out.

• A lack of transparency raises familiar questions about the program’s future. State officials stress that they have extended deadlines and improved vetting for the program’s latest bond-funded iteration, Homekey+. But they refused to publicly provide details about that vetting process. And as homeless services providers have long warned, there remains no guaranteed state funding to keep existing or planned Homekey projects going. 

Yes, many Homekey projects opened late or over budget. But, officials emphasize, they still opened.

Newsom said he considers the program a “phenomenal success.”

“We’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of projects all across the state of California that they’re trying to manage and organize and operate,” he said when CalMatters asked about it at a recent press conference. “And I imagine each one of them brings its own opportunities and own challenges as we move forward and implement at a scale we’ve never implemented in the state’s history.”

Taryn Sandulyak knows that better than most. The Bay Area developer thought Homekey might be her big break, but it ultimately put her out of business. She sees a fundamental mismatch at the heart of the program. It wanted high quality, high speed and low budgets.

“You can only have two of those,” Sandulyak said. “You really can’t ever have three. That’s the issue with Homekey, is they give you not quite enough money to do it, and they want you to do it really, really fast and really, really well.”

The chasm between Homekey successes and failures isn’t a simple, one-size-fits-all story. But it does provide an outline of what it will take to make good on California’s big effort to finally make a dent in its homelessness crisis.

‘Failing was not an option’

On the west side of Ventura, just as the surf town creeps up into the hills toward Ojai, sits what used to be one of the city’s worst nuisance properties: a nearly 100-year-old apartment building once known, in a nod to local drug slang, as the “Booyah Mansion.”

The city’s housing authority, Ventura Housing, cobbled together enough money in 2019 to buy the building. But it didn’t have enough cash to fix all 300-something code violations at the crime-ridden property — until Homekey came along.

“We had some scary stuff go on here,” said Karen Flock, Ventura Housing’s real estate development director. “This property failing was not an option.”

Now known as El Portal, the 29-unit apartment complex today serves as a lifeline for a mother with 9-year-old-twins, one severely autistic. It’s a refuge for a woman who lived for six years in a city-funded Tuff Shed. Another neighbor still keeps his shopping cart from the street in his apartment as a reminder of what he’s been through, and why he can never go back.

Cynthia Gomez, 60, at her home in El Portal apartments in Ventura on Feb. 26. Gomez, who was formerly homeless, now lives in a studio apartment.

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Julie Leopo-Bermudez

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for CalMatters

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Ventura and other cities and counties that were able to pull off Homekey projects relatively on time and on budget credit a variety of factors for their success. Some grantees provided services themselves rather than contracting them out, better integrating public resources. Others raised extra money for on-site social services or worked closely with first responders to head off concerns about crime and stabilize residents.

Jeffrey Lambert, CEO of Ventura Housing, said the crucial thing was realizing early that Homekey money alone isn’t nearly enough. Instead, the city combined it with other public and private funding, staffing and resources. Projects that failed or got stuck in limbo often fell apart after they ran out of money.

“Homekey works,” Lambert said, “because of all the stuff added on top of it.”

For housing researchers such as Ryan Finnigan, deputy director of research at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, the real strength of Homekey was not the building minutiae. It was the attempt to challenge the state’s status quo of painstakingly slow housing development while people keep pouring onto the streets.

“If we’re not willing to try a new approach,” he said, “then we’re not going to learn as much about how we can be more creative, how we can work with more urgency than the current systems.”

As fraught and full of delays as the construction process can be, getting a project completed is often just the first hurdle for Homekey. Once a project opens its doors, it typically needs significant resources in addition to the state funding. Mendocino County credits much of its project’s success to extra services for residents, which aren’t paid for by the state grant, said Megan Van Sant, a senior program manager for the county who oversees the Homekey site.

At the former Best Western hotel now known as Live Oak Apartments, there’s a therapist on retainer for tenants, plus a dog trainer paid to work with problem pets. Both try to help residents resolve any issues that come up before they escalate into grounds for an eviction.

To provide those extras, the county runs the project itself, rather than contracting with an outside service provider as many Homekey projects do. Two county staffers work full-time inside the building, using their connections to do everything from enrolling residents in Medi-Cal to pairing them with mental health services.

All that is expensive.

“I think the state should continue to support these projects,” Van Sant said. “The state asked communities to do these projects, and they cost more to do well than what you can earn in rent.”

Resident Sherry Collins inside her room at Live Oak Apartments in Ukiah on Feb. 26. Photo by Manuel Orbegozo for CalMatters

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Manuel Orbegozo

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for CalMatters

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Sherry Collins, 66, moved into the project three years ago, at a time when she was terrified of what would come next. Her husband had died, her health was failing, she couldn’t work, and she couldn’t afford to keep living in her cabin in the tiny coastal city of Fort Bragg.

Now she feels like she’s home. Collins decorated the window of her room with little red and pink hearts and adopted a kitten with extra toes, whom she named Mr. Handsome. She continues to deal with health challenges after losing a leg to diabetes about a year ago. The building has only four units accessible for people with disabilities, making it a challenge to accommodate everyone, but one recently opened up for Collins, where she can more comfortably shower.

“They have been awesome to me,” Collins said. “They’re more like family.”

Never-ending projects

For Sandulyak, Homekey was too good to refuse.

Five years earlier she had co-founded Firm Foundation Community Housing, which helped Bay Area churches turn their parking lots and backyards into tiny homes for homeless residents.

Homekey was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to dramatically scale up that vision by using millions in state funds to house dozens of people in Vallejo. It would be the small nonprofit’s most ambitious project by far.

Sandulyak never suspected that by applying for Homekey, she had doomed her organization.

Firm Foundation was awarded $12 million in 2022 to build a 47-unit modular apartment building called the Broadway Project. Over the next four years, nearly everything that could go wrong did.

Some problems had nothing to do with Homekey. The general contractor went bankrupt, and the nonprofit tapped to operate the facility squabbled with the city, leaving the project in limbo for a year. The state wouldn’t let Firm Foundation pick a new partner to run the housing, which Sandulyak says further delayed the opening.

Other problems were directly related to Homekey. By design, the program forced cities to take a much more hands-on role with housing development than they were used to. Vallejo wasn’t prepared for that responsibility. It fumbled its attempt to get a key federal grant and failed to set up important safeguards that protect affordable housing projects from financial risks.

Soon, Sandulyak had $2 million in bills and no way to pay them. With construction three-quarters done, the project ran out of money. Firm Foundation was forced to stop work.

It became such a nightmare that the Vallejo City Council asked for an independent audit to find out what went wrong and why. The audit blamed both the city and Firm Foundation for allowing the project to run out of money before it was finished. Firm Foundation vastly underestimated the project’s cost, and the city bungled efforts to secure additional funds.

In some ways, the audit found, the very nature of Homekey helped set the project up for failure.

One big problem was the timeline. Homekey required projects to finish construction within one year of their award, and to move people in 90 days after that. To meet those deadlines, Firm Foundation created budgets before the architectural drawings were even done, contributing to serious cost underestimates, the audit found.

The audit also found a lack of oversight at the Broadway Project, which it said is typical of Homekey projects. Normally, a single affordable housing project uses funding from multiple sources, including the city, the county, the state, federal funds, tax credits, private banks and more. The more funders and investors, the more eyes watching and holding the developer accountable. With Homekey, the city applying for the grant typically takes on all those risks by itself, the audit found.

The official ribbon cutting at the grand opening of Broadway Village in Vallejo on March 5.

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Nathan Weyland

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On a recent Thursday morning, Sandulyak gathered with city officials and her construction partners in front of a crowd to celebrate what they, at times, had thought would be impossible: the Broadway Project was finally open. Behind them rose the terracotta-colored wall of the sleek, new, modular apartment building. A red ribbon waited in front of them.

On the count of three, Sandulyak helped Vallejo’s assistant city manager snip the ribbon. The crowd cheered.

The project ended up coming in two and a half years late and 70% over budget. Despite those setbacks, the audit found it still cost less per unit and was built more quickly than the region’s average affordable housing project.

At right, Firm Foundation Community Housing Executive Director Taryn Sandulyak at the grand opening of Broadway Village in Vallejo on March 5. Photo by Nathan Weyland for CalMatters But it cost Sandulyak everything. She laid off three of her four employees, and she plans to lay off the last one and dissolve her organization. The nonprofit is still on the hook for more than $1 million in unpaid bills related to the project.

Despite her pride in the finished building, Sandulyak wonders how much more housing her nonprofit could have built — if only she’d never applied for Homekey.

Still, 52 people now have somewhere to call home.

“I’m unshaken in my belief that that is worth it,” Sandulyak said.

One of those people is 62-year-old Terrence White, a former refinery worker who was forced into early retirement by an injury and can’t afford market-rate rent. Now, he pays $294 a month and finally has his own place.

“It feels wonderful,” he said.

The Homekey gold rush

During the frantic first two years of Homekey, when many experienced affordable housing developers were sitting out the untested new program, an LA company called Shangri-La Industries stepped in to help fill the void. It scored nearly $115 million in contracts to build 500 homes for homeless Californians in cities from Salinas to San Bernardino.

But a federal indictment and a separate civil lawsuit allege that millions in state funds instead went to fund a lavish lifestyle for the company’s chief financial officer.

Among the charges attributed in court records to Shangri-La’s former CFO, Cody Holmes: $46,000 in monthly rent for a Beverly Hills house with a pool. Designer gifts for a girlfriend, including a $127,000 diamond necklace and a $111,000 crocodile Birkin bag. A $5,000-a-month lease on a Ferrari Portofino. Another $53,000 for Coachella passes, and $44,000 for flights on private jets.

All this while many of the desperately needed motel rooms sat empty.

Homekey set a low bar for contractors to qualify: They had to have worked on at least two affordable housing projects that included at least one homeless tenant.

Shangri-La easily cleared that hurdle. But had any state or local officials done more digging, they might have seen warning signs.

Shangri-La’s construction business was sued twice for breach of contract in 2018 and 2019, court records show, after two firms alleged that it failed to pay them. The company was also a contractor on a troubled LA veteran housing project, where records first reported by KCRW show Shangri-La partners sold the property to themselves, increasing the project’s budget by $8 million.

With Homekey, federal prosecutors allege that Holmes “knowingly submitted fake bank records” to the state Housing Department to boost Shangri-La’s credentials — financial claims that state officials apparently failed to verify with the banks. Holmes has pleaded not guilty, and an attorney representing him declined to comment.

As the company took on the Homekey projects, property records show that entities connected to Shangri-La or its partners paid around $13 million for actress Milla Jovovich’s Beverly Hills mansion, adding to a portfolio that included a $7 million oceanfront home in Long Beach purchased two years earlier.

In a separate civil fraud case, state prosecutors allege in court records that Shangri-La went behind the state’s back and took out undisclosed loans on the Homekey buildings, giving up control of the sites and violating their contract with the state. That became a major problem when the company defaulted on the loans.

For several of the properties, no one had filed crucial paperwork to ensure that they remained affordable housing. After the buildings ended up in foreclosure, some were scooped up by companies with no commitment to homeless housing.

Homekey contracts tasked local officials with vetting projects and reviewing contractors’ organizational documents, budgets and other key details. But records show state officials also reviewed Shangri-La’s financials, and once they paid out the Homekey money, they failed to verify that paperwork was completed to restrict the buildings to affordable housing.

The state Housing Department and several local governments that hired Shangri-La for Homekey projects declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation.

Andy Meyers, the former CEO of Shangri-La, acknowledged in an interview that he had “a lack of control” over his company. He has sued Holmes for fraud. He also blamed the local and state officials.

“My CFO had a lot of wrongdoing,” he said. “But it was a confluence of events that caused each project to go bad.”

Meyers said officials’ failure to file the proper affordable housing restrictions, which were also required by his lender, triggered a financial disaster that led his company to default on some of the properties. On two projects that Shangri-La did open in San Bernardino and Salinas, he estimated that the company incurred around $11 million in unexpected costs.

“We have spent so much money following their guidelines and following their timetables,” he said, “and they never followed their guidelines or timetables.”

Monterey County Supervisor Chris Lopez rallied support for a Homekey project in his hometown of King City. He thought Shangri-La made sense for four projects in the county, since it had already opened one Homekey site in Salinas.

But it didn’t take long for constituents to start asking why rooms were sitting empty behind chain-link fences.

“The longer it went on without seeing any movement, the flag started to get raised,” Lopez said. “I was starting to hear less and less communication and more sort of finger pointing.”

Local officials like Lopez had to start from scratch, raising millions more dollars to revive the projects as encampments swelled. It took 10 different deals totaling $16 million to open the King City project in March, three years behind schedule.

The full trail of Shangri-La’s deceit stretches from the state’s agricultural heartland to the edge of the Southern California desert. A $27 million Thousand Oaks hotel project sits abandoned today, robbing a region of 77 homes while it had a decade-long housing waitlist. Another $16 million project scrapped in Salinas would have provided 58 homes. Officials still plan to salvage 200 homes in other parts of Monterey County. The only two Shangri-La projects that stayed open during the legal battle, two motels in Southern California, were full of people who were plunged into messy foreclosure disputes.

The Quality Inn & Suites building, a former Shangri-La project, stands vacant in Thousand Oaks on Feb. 26.

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Julie Leopo-Bermudez

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for CalMatters

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Carrie Harmon, San Bernardino County’s director of community development and housing, said in an email that “the county entered into this effort in good faith, relying on representations that later proved to be inaccurate.”

Even some of those whose Homekey projects went well say they’re not surprised that things went sideways. In Mendocino County, Van Sant said the state’s oversight was limited to quarterly progress reports. Once the money was spent, the state stopped asking for any information at all.

“They gave us a bunch of money, made us do some paperwork, and then they’re out of here,” Van Sant said.

For Colleen Robinson, public officials’ failure to see the red flags with Shangri-La was life-changing.

Robinson, now 62, survived years on the street after losing her job and fleeing a bad relationship. The All Star Lodge in downtown San Bernardino was her chance to start over. Shangri-La did manage to renovate and open that project in late 2022.

Two years later, the bank foreclosed. Because no one had put the affordable housing restriction on the property, the new owner told Robinson and other tenants that it was going to quadruple the rent. She said the new owner neglected the building; weeds and stray cats reclaimed the parking lot, police sirens blared, and neighbors died with little explanation.

“This would give hell a run for its money,” Robinson said.

Harmon said the county was still trying to buy the building and figure something out, but Robinson didn’t wait around to see how the saga ended. On a Thursday in February, she packed up and boarded a Greyhound bus for Iowa, where one of her children lives.

Homeless veterans still waiting

An unfinished motel conversion in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 27. The project is expected to finish more than a year after the original deadline, city records show.

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Lauren Hepler

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Some Homekey projects still haven’t opened.

Santa Cruz County has three badly delayed Homekey projects, one of which will be more than four years late when it is slated to finally be finished at the end of next year. For that project, the county obtained more than $6 million to convert rustic vacation cabins under a grove of redwood trees into housing for homeless veterans. The state initially set a completion deadline of 2023, but the project ran out of money before it crossed the finish line, forcing construction to stop.

There were many reasons why, but one stands out: underestimating the cost, said Robert Ratner, director of Santa Cruz County’s Housing for Health division.

The developers had never undertaken a project this large, and that inexperience contributed to the budgeting error, Ratner said. But so did the design of Homekey, which capped what the state was willing to pay per unit at about half what it takes to build affordable housing in some parts of California.

The idea was that projects would be cheaper because they were converting existing buildings, while also cutting out extra layers of bureaucracy that add time and expense. That led developers to low-ball budgets, which came back to bite them when the savings weren’t as great as anticipated, Ratner said.

Once the budgeting error was made, neither the state nor the county caught it, Ratner said. The county assumed that the state would scrutinize all Homekey applications and throw out any that didn’t seem viable, Ratner said. But it appears that in reality, the state was relying on the counties to do that vetting.

Santa Cruz County had little experience analyzing whether a construction project was adequately budgeted. Typically, the county relies on other funders, such as construction lenders and tax credit investors, to do that job. But those investors weren’t present here.

When asked whether he and his colleagues had done their due diligence to make sure the projects were realistic, Ratner was straightforward.

“I would say no,” Ratner said. “I can’t say yes with a straight face at this juncture.”

Other projects just never happened.

A $14 million Homekey award was supposed to help breathe new life into the Hotel Travelers, a rundown, century-old building in Oakland’s Chinatown, as housing for people returning from incarceration. But once the developer got a look at the building, that plan fell apart. An inspection revealed such severe issues with the building’s construction that the developer determined it would be “morally untenable” to proceed. Oakland returned the grant.

In total, CalMatters found at least 10 cases where a Homekey award was announced, only for the grantee to later withdraw their application, return or redirect the money, or have the state claw it back. Some instances had more public explanation than others.

City officials in Fresno voted down their own project. Long Beach was unable to come up with a suitable location for $2 million worth of brand-new tiny homes left sitting in storage. Projects in Marin and Mariposa counties evaporated when real estate deals fell through, and the state rescinded its grant for a project in Salinas after a nonprofit partner pulled out.

Newsom's legacy and a financial cliff

Despite the vastly different outcomes at Homekey projects around the state, there’s no plan for a comprehensive audit to see what worked and what didn’t — a decision that raises the question of whether the state has done enough to grapple with Homekey as it forges ahead with the new version of the program, Homekey+.

Earlier this year, lawmakers nixed a public accounting proposed by Assemblymember Leticia Castillo, a Republican from Corona.

“While the program has expanded housing options, critical questions remain about its long-term impact and cost-effectiveness,” a summary of Assembly Bill 505 said. “It is unclear how many Homekey-funded units remain occupied after one year, how many individuals successfully transition to stable, long-term housing, and whether Homekey’s cost per unit is competitive.”

The bill was never publicly debated. It died in January.

The state did do one audit of multiple homeless services programs in 2024. It didn’t get into Homekey delays or what actually happened to people living in the buildings, but it analyzed the costs of eight projects. Based on that small sample, the auditor concluded that Homekey was “likely” cost-effective, with an average cost of $144,000 per unit, compared to the hundreds of thousands of dollars more it can cost for new construction in California.

The challenge is that when Homekey plans fell short of ambitions at job sites around the state, the consequences were often murky. In extreme cases, where cities acknowledged that projects failed to materialize, the state has clawed back grants. But usually, the main penalty for blown deadlines or other missteps is that the state may hold it against a local government or developer the next time it applies for funding — a dynamic that provides no public transparency.

Gary Wish stands outside El Portal apartments in Ventura on Feb. 26, 2026. Photo by Julie Leopo-Bermudez for CalMatters What happens next will be left up to a new state housing agency set to be launched this summer, the California Housing and Homelessness Agency. That effort is expected to include a new development committee to “provide centralized, coordinated guidance to state housing policy and funding decisions.”

For now, the state’s Housing Department maintains that it “monitors each project closely” if issues arise or deadline extensions are granted. Even with widespread delays, the agency maintains that “Homekey has helped build more and faster.”

The state said it is learning as it gives out the new Homekey+ funding. After seeing so many projects miss the one-year deadline, the state doubled the timeline for new construction to two years. Homekey+ projects that serve veterans now can propose bigger budgets for new builds, potentially addressing the issue of under-budgeted projects running out of money.

Officials also said they’re scrutinizing applications more closely now, including looking carefully at whether applicants are budgeting enough funds for their proposed projects, said California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Johnson.

“We are improving our own vetting process, if you will,” she said during a recent news conference, “to ensure these projects are successful in delivering.”

The state’s housing department maintains that Homekey accomplished a major feat: building thousands of units despite a global pandemic, labor shortages, supply chain issues and other challenges.

“It is tremendously rewarding to see so many vulnerable Californians housed so quickly, and to have voters expand the successful Homekey model to house and support veterans and others facing behavioral health challenges,” Assistant Deputy Director Cari Scott said in a statement.

As the state’s housing policies shift, there’s one big question left for people like Van Sant in Mendocino: Will there be enough money to keep Homekey projects running?

Most of the projects have a pay-as-you-go model, versus standard 10- or 15-year affordable housing financing — a calculation that leaves a financial cliff looming for thousands of Homekey homes.

“If [Homekey] is going to be a long-term, permanent, successful program,” Van Sant said, “I think the state’s going to have to find a way to find some ongoing funding for it.”

Data reporters Erica Yee and Kate Li contributed to this story.

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

President Donald Trump has called for a temporary waiver of the federal gas tax, which costs drivers 18.4 cents per gallon.

It's one of several attempts to relieve pain at the pump as voters grow increasingly frustrated with gasoline prices, which have hit four-year highs thanks to the oil trade disruption triggered by the war with Iran.

A national gas tax holiday would require an act of Congress. Lawmakers have floated the idea, with several bills introduced before Trump called for a temporary pause on the tax.

But even with the president's backing, it's not clear whether his proposal will make it to the floor for a vote. Gas tax holidays are controversial, with advocates arguing they provide quick relief and with critics denouncing them as costly and even counterproductive.

Here's what you need to know.

How much would a federal gas tax holiday save? 

At most, waiving the tax would save drivers 18.4 cents per gallon, or $2.76 on a 15-gallon fill-up. The national average price for a gallon of gasoline is now $4.46, up from around $3 prewar, so the relief would make up for only a fraction of that price spike.

But there are two reasons that drivers might save even less. First, some of the tax savings might instead go toward refineries and gas stations. That's especially true for a shorter holiday, says Kent Smetters, the faculty director at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, which researches the cost of public policies.

"What we generally think is that over long periods of time, most of the tax cut would go to consumers," he says. "But over shorter periods of time, suppliers — even though it's fairly competitive to sell gas — they still have some market power." And that market power means they could hike their prices a little bit, eating into those tax savings and keeping some of the benefit for themselves.

Penn Wharton estimates that about 13.2 cents a gallon in savings would actually reach consumers; Adam Hoffer, the director of excise tax policy at the Tax Foundation think tank, estimates it's about 16 cents.

And second, waiving the gas tax can increase demand for gasoline; that's the natural result of lower prices. That could worsen the supply-demand imbalance that's driving prices up.

A pause on the federal gas tax alone probably isn't large enough to send demand soaring. But Patrick De Haan, an analyst with the app GasBuddy, told NPR this spring that if states widely suspend their own gas taxes, that could push demand — and prices — back up.

That's because state taxes are usually much higher than the federal tax. The amount varies by state — from 9 cents a gallon in Alaska to 70.9 cents in California. On average, states tack on an extra 33.3 cents per gallon.

A handful of states have already cut or paused their gas taxes. Kentucky lopped 10 cents off in May. Georgia completely froze its gas tax in March for two months and has extended its freeze as the conflict with Iran continues.

The price of a gas tax pause

While waiving gas taxes may save drivers a bit at the pump, it means less money for keeping roads safe.

Revenue from the federal gas tax goes into the Highway Trust Fund, which is used to pay for interstate construction and repair, as well as to invest in mass transit. Revenue from state gas taxes is often used for local road repairs.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model estimated that when Georgia paused its tax for two months, this cost the state about $361 million.

"Now we're talking real money," Smetters said.

That's less funding available to the state for repairs. "Anytime you take away a source of funding for highway construction and maintenance, then you're running the risk of the roads getting worse and not better," said Rob Bhatt, an insurance analyst at LendingTree, which recently issued a report about the condition of U.S. roads.

Drivers feel the pain of poorly maintained roads in very familiar ways: in potholes and dips. Patrick Marshall, a music teacher in New Orleans, wasn't watching close enough one morning and hit a dip that nearly broke a wheel off his 1989 GMC Sierra. The incident cost Marshall $2,500 and resulted in a 10-block walk to work.

"It's a tough hit to take when it's an unexpected expense," Marshall said.

(Well, not that unexpected — at least not in a city infamous for rough roads. When Marshall leads his students on brass and drum lines through New Orleans' streets, they know to shout warnings of "Pothole!" loud enough to eclipse the trumpets and French horns.)

All those pothole-related damages add up: AAA estimated that damage from potholes cost drivers some $26.5 billion in repairs in 2021.

Overall, this month's LendingTree report, which was based on federal data from 2024, found that 8.9% of the nation's road miles are in poor condition. Rhode Island scored the worst, with 31.5% of road miles rated as poor, with California and Massachusetts coming in second and third at 27.0% and 24.5%, respectively.

Minnesota stood out as the most improved between 2019 and 2024 — the state reduced the share of road miles rated as poor by more than 60%. But nationally, the report didn't find much improvement at all over that five-year span.

And even drivers in Rhode Island, the report's lowest-rated state, say potholes are bad everywhere. "I hit a pothole in New York City about a month ago, though that literally took life out of me," said Rhode Island resident Carleen Quattrucci.

The bigger problem: The gas tax is broken 

Here's even more bad news: The federal gas tax hasn't collected enough money to fully fund highway construction and repairs for years. And that fundamental problem is only getting worse.

It wasn't always like this. The gas tax was based on the premise that the people who use highways the most should pay the most for their upkeep. And the more miles a driver puts on their car, the more gasoline or diesel they purchase, so the more tax they pay — no toll booth required.

From the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s, that worked well, says the Tax Foundation's Hoffer.

"The revenue from gas tax collections was sufficient to cover all federal highway road construction and maintenance expenses," he says. "So the drivers were paying for the roads to be maintained and more roads to be built, when they drove on the roads. It was a terrific system."

But the last time the gas tax was raised was in 1993. It was 18.4 cents a gallon then; it's 18.4 cents a gallon now.

Yet since 1993, the cost of road repairs and construction has risen — and the price of gasoline has tripled.

"It's a weird tax," says Smetters, because it's not pegged to the price of gasoline, so it doesn't rise with inflation.

Meanwhile, new vehicles have gotten more fuel efficient, and per capita miles driven per year peaked 20 years ago. That means the government collects less and less with the gas tax.

Now, the tax falls short of the highway fund's needs every year. For 2026, the shortfall is estimated to be $17 billion. Congress has to keep making up the gap with general taxpayer funds.

Raising the federal tax wouldn't fix the problem for long 

Hypothetically, the national tax could be increased. After all, many states' gas taxes are set to raise automatically.

One problem: "Nobody likes gas taxes. Politicians don't like them. Drivers don't like them. Voters don't like them," Hoffer says. "So increasing these taxes is a real political challenge." That's even though higher gas taxes do have benefits. For example, by discouraging driving, they cut down on carbon emissions, which improves air quality and human health. And a well-designed gas tax is a fairer way of paying for highways than drawing from the general tax pool, Hoffer says.

But there's another problem: Gas taxes make less sense as more drivers choose electric vehicles. EVs use roads and highways, so they add to the wear and tear on infrastructure. But they don't burn gasoline. So as EVs make up a growing share of vehicles, even a significantly higher gas tax would be doomed. It would bring in less money over time, because fewer drivers would pay it.

Many states have imposed EV registration fees to address this problem; the federal government is also considering adding one. However, because EVs still make up a very small share of vehicles, this doesn't come close to addressing the gas tax shortfall. Also, in many cases the fee for EVs is — or would be — much higher than the typical driver pays in gas taxes, creating an unfair system. Other potential solutions are being debated too. A lobbying group representing major automakers is pushing for a fee that all car owners would pay based on vehicle weight, so trucks would pay more than sedans. Heavier vehicles are harder on roads.

Some states are experimenting with road-user fees, which drivers pay based on how many miles they drive. In some cases, the programs use odometer readings; in others, they rely on devices or phone apps to measure miles driven. While economists say they're a fairer way to collect revenue — because, like with a gas tax traditionally, the people who use roads the most contribute the most toward their upkeep — those plans can raise privacy concerns, depending on the technology used to track miles driven.

Smetters, of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, also points to congestion fees and toll lanes as alternative funding mechanisms.

None of these ideas has yet caught on as a replacement for the federal fuel tax. But one thing is clear: At some point down the road, this tax is going to run out of gas.
Copyright 2026 NPR

In Los Angeles, you don’t need to go to a big venue to catch live music. Like art, music is everywhere throughout the region, so there’s something for everyone. Here’s a list to get you started.

Baked Potato is a cozy jazz club that hosts different artists on any given night.

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Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Los Angeles Times

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Baked Potato

The Baked Potato is an iconic spot where you can catch live jazz performances in a very intimate setting with drinks, and yes, a baked potato. What makes this place even more special is that phones are not allowed, meaning everyone is living in the moment and enjoying the music.

Where to go: 3787 Cahuenga Blvd., Studio City
Check out the shows here.

Kamasi Washington performs with special guest Ami Taf Ra in concert at Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City.

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Udo Salters Photography

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Getty Images

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Blue Note

The Blue Note brings New York’s iconic jazz scene to Hollywood with a bar and menu to match the vibes. It’s open seating, meaning you get a show and get to mingle with other jazz music lovers.

Where to find: 6372 Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles
Check out the shows here.

The Troubadour as its marquee asked for pandemic era help.

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Courtesy Jason Horton

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The Troubadour

For more of an indie-rock feel, head to The Troubadour in West Hollywood. It’s a local classic that’s hosted some of music’s legends like Joni Mitchell, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel, and many, many more. It’s standing-room only, with limited seating upstairs that is first-come, first-served.

Where to find:  9081 Santa Monica Blvd., West Hollywood
Check out the shows here.

Café Tondo

At Café Tondo, a cafe-bar in Chinatown, you can catch bolero performances on Tuesday nights, different DJs every Saturday night and jazz on Sunday nights. You can find more info on Café Tondo’s Instagram.

Where to find: 1135 N. Alameda St., Los Angeles
Find more information here.

Eastside Luv Wine Bar in Boyle Heights plays different kinds of music on any given night, like mariachi, country and norteños.

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Lawrence K. Ho/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Los Angeles Times

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Eastside Luv

Eastside Luv is another must-see in the heart of Boyle Heights. It’s a cozy community spot where every night holds something different, from boleros and mariachi to norteños and country. The DJ at the 21+ bar also mixes songs throughout the night in both English and Spanish.

Where to Find: 1835 1st St., Los Angeles
Check out the shows here.

Two of the heaviest of heavy classical music hitters — cellist Yo Yo Ma and L.A. Phil conductor Gustavo Dudamel — take the stage at Disney Hall Thursday and Saturday for a world premiere performance, but even if you can’t score a coveted seat this week, let this serve as your reminder that your days left to see Dudamel as he prepares to depart for the New York Philharmonic are closing in swiftly. But have no fear, the Venezuelan maestro will be back for several performances a year, and the L.A. Phil just made the exciting announcement that conductor Daniel Harding will be taking over as music director for the 2027-2028 season (fun fact: he’s also an Air France pilot!). Plus, there are plenty of classical summer nights at the Hollywood Bowl on the horizon.

Licorice Pizza has your rock 'n' roll picks for the weekend. Friday, Ladytron is at the Novo; the Last Dinner Party plays the Orpheum; Violet Grohl (yes, daughter of Dave) is at the Moroccan Lounge, while Spike Hellis is at Que Sera; and the big Slide Away 2026 shoegaze festival, featuring Hum, Nothing, Chapterhouse and more, takes over the Palladium Friday and Saturday.

Other Saturday shows include Pitbull and Lil Jon getting low at the Hollywood Bowl; We Are Scientists performing their classic album With Love and Squalor in full at the Troubadour. Fat, Evil Children featuring Truman Sinclair is at the Roxy, and the all-star Jesse Colin Young Tribute concert “Get Together Now!” is at the Orpheum. Plus, Lords of Acid with Mz Neon and Princess Superstar are at the Echoplex. Sunday’s rock ‘n’ roll extravaganza at the Roxy features Licorice Pizza’s Kelsy Karter & The Heroines with Frankie and the Studs.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can avoid getting scammed on a World Cup ticket and make your plan to vote in next Tuesday’s primaries.

Events

L.A. County Fair + NEXTfest

Through Sunday, May 31, 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. 
1101 W. McKinley Ave., Pomona
COST: FROM $19.50; MORE INFO

The L.A. County Fair wraps up this weekend, as does its accompanying music fair, NEXTfest. Catch the last of the blue-ribbon-winning bakes and jams, carnival games, farm animal visiting and the new band showcase before they're gone. On Sunday, catch L.A.-based Latin pop duo MYRANDAS, KCRW DJ Raul Campos and many more.

Scuba Show

Saturday and Sunday, May 30 and 31
Long Beach Convention Center 
300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach 
COST: FROM $33; MORE INFO 

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Bobbi Wu

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Whether you’re like me (a warm-water, vacation-only scuba diver), a technical obsessive who heads to the Catalina kelp forests, or a brand-new beginner, the Scuba Show in Long Beach will get you ready for your next underwater adventure. The weekend-long convention has a discovery pool to try scuba, all the dive gear you could want to check out and a full schedule of talks from marine biologists, explorers, photographers and enthusiasts.

Tia Chucha’s Celebrating Words Art and Literacy Festival

Saturday, May 30, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. 
11200 Herrick Ave., Pacoima 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore

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Venture to Pacoima for this long-running art and literacy festival featuring fun workshops like cyanotyping (sun prints), tattoo-inspired button-making, mini-zine creation and more. Plus, you'll find local food options, book giveaways and vinyl tunes from DJ Linda Nuves.

Hell’s Kitchen 

Through Sunday, June 21
Pantages 
6233 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
COST: FROM $49; MORE INFO

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Marc J. Franklin

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Broadway in Hollywood

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The Alicia Keys songbook gets the stage treatment in this first tour of the popular Broadway show, with music and lyrics by Keys and directed by Tony winner Michael Greif (RENT). Opening Thursday at the Pantages, the show follows a teenager named Ali finding her voice in the big city. I hear she’s … on fire.

Lucha VaVoom de La Liz

Saturday, May 30, 8 p.m.  
Fox Theater
301 S. Garey Ave., Pomona 
COST: FROM $60.95; MORE INFO

Mexican wrestling-inspired variety extravaganza Lucha VaVoom de La Liz is back at the Fox Theater in Pomona (make a day of it after the fair!). Featuring world-class lucha libre-style wrestling, award-winning burlesque, death-defying aerialists, comedy legends, live music, classic lowriders, visual art and more, the show has a "Drinko de Mayo" theme this time around.

Migration Celebration

Saturday, May 30, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Ballona Discovery Park
13110 Bluff Creek Drive, Playa Vista
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Friends of Ballona Wetlands

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Take a freshwater marsh tour, enjoy a performance from the Bob Baker Marionettes and see a raptor presentation at the Friends of Ballona Wetlands Migration Celebration at Ballona Discovery Park in Playa Vista. Let your inner birdwatcher roam free (no Antarctic birdwatching cruise necessary!) and get to know the beauty of the birds right here at home in the Ballona Wetlands.

Home is a Hotel screening in Costa Mesa and Burbank

Thursday, May 28, 6:30 p.m. (Costa Mesa);  Friday, May 29, 6:30 p.m. (Burbank)
PBS SoCal Studios 
3080 Bristol St., #100, Costa Mesa
2900 W. Alameda Ave., Suite 500, Burbank
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

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Courtesy PBS SoCal

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Join PBS SoCal for two free local screenings of the new documentary, Home Is a Hotel. The film takes viewers inside single room occupancy (SRO) housing “through intimate portraits of San Francisco residents, filmed over six years, in their search for a place to call home.” Check out the trailer here.

Walking Altadena 

Saturday, May 30, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. 
Bob Lucas Memorial Library 
2659 Lincoln Ave., Altadena 
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

Students from UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design will take visitors through a two-hour interactive exhibition, inviting public feedback on projects and proposals that imagine a rebuilt and reinvigorated post-fire Altadena.

Summer feels inextricably linked with the movies, with bigger budget movies in theaters — many of them aiming to reach “blockbuster” status — and likely some more trips to the cinema to beat the heat on hot days.

But how many of the movies coming out this summer were filmed in Los Angeles?

It’s a question we’re asking because the decline in local film and TV production is an ongoing issue that matters a lot — because of the impact on jobs, the broader economy, and the culture of the Los Angeles area — and there’s been some encouraging news of late.

The latest quarterly report from FilmLA, the official film office for the L.A. region, showed some signs that the expansion of California’s Film & TV Tax Credit Program last year may be beginning to have some positive effects, particularly for feature films, TV dramas and comedies.

There’s also a pilot program that the city of Los Angeles and FilmLA launched last month that reduces costs and streamlines the process for getting permits for productions that meet certain criteria to be considered “low impact.”

While the effects of that are still to be determined, if you want to support movies (and TV shows!) that have filmed locally in the meantime, we put together this non-exhaustive list of upcoming shows and movies:

Summer TV filmed in LA

Spider-Noir (May 27, MGM+ and Prime Video)

A live-action series based on the Marvel comic Spider-Man Noir, Spider-Noir is about a private investigator in 1930s New York City, played by Nicolas Cage, grappling with his superhero past.

While set in New York, the series was filmed in Los Angeles — in various locations downtown (including The Orpheum Theatre) and at several studio lots. In a recent interview, Cage’s co-star, Lamorne Morris, told LAist that  ”Downtown L.A. looks probably more like 1930s New York than New York does,” and also confirmed that one of the Spider-Noir filming locations — the bar called The Prince in Koreatown — is one that many may recognize from another series that Morris starred in, the L.A.-set show New Girl.

Sugar (June 19, Apple TV)

This neo-noir Apple TV series starring Colin Farrell is set in modern-day Los Angeles and filmed here too. Season two premieres on June 19.

Elle (July 1, Prime Video)

Elle, the prequel series about the Legally Blonde character Elle Woods’ early life filmed primarily in Vancouver, but we’ll give it a pass since it’s largely set in Seattle and because we know that the series did include at least some filming in the Los Angeles area (specifically on Rodeo Drive).

Lucky (July 15, Apple TV)

According to Deadline, this Apple TV limited series, starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Annette Benning and Timothy Olyphant was a recipient of a $10.682 million state tax credit and filmed mostly in the Los Angeles area, with some shooting in Las Vegas as well. The local filming locations also included some spots in downtown Long Beach. Taylor-Joy plays a con artist in the action/thriller.

The Hawk (July 16, Netflix)

This comedy series starring Will Ferrell as a golf legend named Lonnie “The Hawk” Hawkins who’s looking to make a comeback — alongside Molly Shannon, Fortune Feimster and Luke Wilson — was reportedly awarded a $17.2 million state tax credit. It filmed in Newport Beach and Los Angeles, in addition to some locations in Florida.

Lanterns (August 16, HBO Max)

The DC Studios series Lanterns — created by Damon Lindelof (Watchmen, Lost), Tom King (Supergirl) and Chris Mundy (Ozark, True Detective) — stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as “intergalactic cops” drawn into an “earth-based mystery.”

While it was initially set to film in Atlanta, DC Studios’ Peter Safran said tax credits made it possible to film in Los Angeles instead, largely on the Warner Brothers lot in Burbank.

Summer movies filmed in LA

The Mandalorian and Grogu (May 22)

The film’s director and co-writer Jon Favreau has said that The Mandalorian and Grogu is the first Star Wars movie to be shot entirely in Los Angeles. Ahead of the movie’s premiere at the TCL Chinese theater, he credited the California Film Commission for making that possible.

Maddie's Secret (June 19)

Filmed and set in Los Angeles, Maddie’s Secret, is the directorial debut of actor and comedian John Early. Early also stars in the film as Maddie, a food influencer with bulimia. Early described the film to The Los Angeles Times as a “very Echo Park, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock, Frogtown, Glassell Park, Highland Park, Los Feliz movie.” Filming locations included Early’s own L.A. home.

The Invite (June 26)

Set in San Francisco, and starring Olivia Wilde (who also directed the film), Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, The Invite actually filmed primarily on a Los Angeles soundstage, according to The San Francisco Examiner, with two days of on-location shooting in San Francisco.

Jackass: Best and Last (June 26)

The final installment in the Jackass movie franchise filmed in Los Angeles and Simi Valley. It’s helmed by Johnny Knoxville, who co-created and starred in every film and TV iteration of the series, which began as an MTV reality TV show in 2000.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass (July 10)

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass is set in Los Angeles and was filmed entirely on location here. The film is directed by David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer, Role Models), written by Wain and Ken Marino (Party Down, Wet Hot American Summer), and stars Zoey Deutch, Jon Hamm (playing himself), and John Slattery.

The Odyssey (July 17)

Director Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey filmed in Italy, Greece, Morocco, Scotland and Iceland — but some key scenes were also shot in Los Angeles.