The Brief

The L.A. region’s lead homelessness agency is moving to take the Trump administration to court over a recent suspension that has potentially frozen up to $150 million in federal homelessness funds and complicated how millions more will flow to Los Angeles County.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency from federal grant activity in a June 11 letter pending an investigation into alleged mismanagement at the agency.

On Monday, LAHSA's governing body, the LAHSA Commission, voted unanimously to authorize legal action challenging that suspension. The agency has not said what a lawsuit would specifically target or when it might be filed.

LAHSA officials were initially unclear which funds the suspension reached — money already under contract with HUD, federal grants awarded but not yet signed, or the coming year's application for regional homelessness grants.

“ The wording in this initial letter was quite vague and left a lot of uncertainty about which funds would be impacted by suspension,” Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim CEO, said at Monday’s commission meeting.

LAHSA officials estimated about $115 million in grants awarded for fiscal year 2025 are awaiting HUD's final signature and in limbo.

O'Neill put the agency's broader exposure higher, warning of “$150 million in award funding at risk if HUD chooses to restrict LAHSA from distributing current funds from grants that have been awarded but not yet executed.”

The larger figure includes executed and unexecuted contracts spanning fiscal years 2022 through 2025, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer said.

HUD looks to bypass LAHSA

Following LAHSA’s request for clarity, according O’Neill, HUD sent another letter on June 18 explaining that as a result of the suspension, LAHSA would be barred from performing one of its key functions: applying to HUD on behalf of the entire region in the federal housing agency’s main homelessness grant competition.

The biggest pot of federal homelessness dollars flow to regions like Los Angeles through HUD’s Continuum of Care grant program.

In 2024, HUD awarded more than $220 million to the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, including more than $77 million to LAHSA directly. HUD has awarded $944 million to the L.A. Continuum of Care since 2021, according to the federal agency.

In each region, a lead agency applies for those funds as what HUD calls a “collaborative applicant” and passes them along to local providers. In Los Angeles, that agency is LAHSA.

In HUD’s June 18 letter, Ronald Kurtz, assistant secretary for community planning and development, wrote that LAHSA is “no longer eligible” to fulfill that role.

HUD may “designate another body as a collaborative applicant or permit eligible entities to apply directly for grants,” Kurtz wrote.

Absent a different decision based on LAHSA's response, the letter said HUD has determined “it would be in the public interest to allow eligible entities to submit their grant requests directly to HUD.”

Allowing individual shelter and housing operators to seek federal money on their own rather than through LAHSA would be a major structural change.

HUD did not respond to repeated inquiries about the June 18 letter.

The application for the next round of Continuum of Care funding, covering fiscal year 2026, is due Aug. 26. LAHSA officials estimate about $241 million is at stake for the L.A. region in that funding cycle.

President Donald Trump greets Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner during the congressional picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on May 19 in Washington, D.C.

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Heather Diehl

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Getty Images

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LAHSA's problems

LAHSA is a joint-powers authority created by the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County, which elected leaders appointed to coordinate the region's response to homelessness.

It administers a mix of federal, state and local money — applying for the funds and passing them to the nonprofit and government agencies that run shelters and housing programs.

LAHSA's city, county and state funding — which makes up the majority of the agency's budget — is not affected by the federal suspension.

The June 18 letter gives LAHSA and the Continuum of Care 30 days to respond to its findings. HUD said that action is separate from the June 11 suspension, which carries its own 30-day window to contest.

LAHSA declined to comment on a potential lawsuit Thursday.

HUD’s suspension comes as LAHSA is under increased local scrutiny.

An L.A. County auditor-controller report in November 2024 found LAHSA paid contractors late and failed to secure repayment agreements for some. A March 2025 court-ordered review found Los Angeles failed to properly track billions in homelessness spending, largely because of dysfunction at LAHSA.

Last year, L.A. County officials voted to pull more than $300 million a year from LAHSA and manage its own homelessness dollars through a new homelessness department at the county.

HUD has cast its actions as overdue accountability.

“Taxpayers will no longer bankroll an organization that puts its own self-interests ahead of the Americans it was created to serve,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said when announcing LAHSA’s suspension this month.

HUD has accused LAHSA of repeatedly certifying financial controls and conflict-of-interest safeguards it did not have.

The agency said it has hired accounting firm KPMG to overhaul its finances, with recommendations to be presented publicly in July, according to O’Neill.

Local leaders, including L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, have called HUD’s suspension counterproductive.

Beyond the Rose Bowl and historic bungalows, Pasadena has stranger tales to tell. David Kalbeitzer has been seeking out those stories where rocket science meets the occult and ghosts haunt the city’s grandest buildings.

For Kalbeitzer, a Disney executive who investigates the paranormal in his free time, his fascination with the city’s mysterious side started when he bought a Victorian north of Old Town.

He sensed a spirit at the open house a dozen years ago and took it as a reason to move his family to Pasadena. Then he started learning the city’s history.

David Kalbeitzer, a paranormal investigator from Pasadena, is giving a talk about the city's strange history Saturday night in Old Town.

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Courtesy of David Kalbeitzer

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“I realized, ‘Oh, this place called us just as much as we were looking for it,’” he said.

On Saturday night, he’s sharing the lore he’s collected at Mesmer Mesmer an Old Town shop and event space. While the event is full, there’s a waitlist, and more talks featuring Kalbeitzer are in the works.

A city of ghost stories 

Ask Kalbeitzer about haunted Pasadena, and the list stretches from alleyways to the Colorado Street Bridge to Castle Green, the turreted former hotel overlooking Central Park.

“The Pasadena Playhouse theater is, you know, very haunted,” he added.

He says theatergoers have reported hearing disembodied voices.

Theatergoers over the years have described hearing voices and seeing apparitions at the Pasadena Playhouse.

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Jeff Lorch

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Courtesy of Pasadena Playhouse

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“And you look, and there’s no one there, or apparitions that have been seen sort of standing in the corner, and then you walk up, and they kind of disappear like shadowy figures,” he said.

As for the spirit that helped draw him to his current Pasadena home?

Kalbeitzer says she’s still around — and his psychic friend Michael Kouri shared her name: Dolores.

“It’s actually haunted by a very kind ghost that looks out for the house, protects my family and has been able to activate our alarm,” he said.

Having a Dolores in the house might send some people running, but Kalbeitzer said he grew up in a haunted house in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

And when his family moved to Charleston, South Carolina, a teenage Kalbeitzer started seeking out places known for paranormal activity.

Rocket science, ritual magic and mind-reading

Having lived in different neighborhoods in L.A., Kalbeitzer says there’s something uniquely otherworldly about Pasadena — and it goes beyond ghost stories.

He said the city has an energy that draws people exploring the unknown, perhaps most famously Jack Parsons.

The rocket pioneer who helped launch the Jet Propulsion Laboratory also practiced ritual magic at his Pasadena home with the likes of L. Ron Hubbard before he founded Scientology.

“Many people call it the occult," Kalbeitzer said. "I don’t know that I fully subscribe to that, but there is spiritualism and occult mixed in there."

Then there was Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of The Jungle, whose interests while living in Pasadena extended to telepathy and séances.

Upton Sinclair, pictured with his wife Mary Craig Sinclair in 1935, several years after he published a book examining her reported telepathy.

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Los Angeles Times via Wikimedia Commons

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In 1930, Sinclair published Mental Radio, a book about experiments in mind-reading. Albert Einstein provided a preface. Yes, that Einstein, who would spend the following winter at Caltech expanding on the theories of relativity and cosmology.

“It’s the craziest mixture of things that were happening at that time and all of it at the same time,” Kalbeitzer said.

A presence in the shop 

The event couldn’t have found a more appropriate venue.

Since opening five months ago in Old Town, Mesmer Mesmer has embraced the dark and mysterious, offering tarot and crystal readings and hosting events on subjects such as hip-hop’s relationship with ghosts.

Tyke O'Brien opened her shop Mesmer Mesmer earlier this year to create a third space and offer books and esoterica alongside clothing.

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Tyke O'Brien

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At that event, a medium told owner Tyke O’Brien she could sense a presence in the shop, which formerly housed a bridal store.

“She goes, ‘Do you ever feel it?’ And I’m like, ‘I am such a bummer,” O’Brien recounted. “I wish I could say yes."

The same can be said for this writer who’s lived and worked in and around Pasadena for years without so much as a brush with the otherworldly.

Kalbeitzer, on the other hand, reports supernatural encounters all around town.

“Everyone has the ability to have those experiences," he said. "But I do think how you see yourself in the world has a lot more to do with it, and whether you want to have those experiences."

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027. 

At a community meeting Thursday night at MacArthur Park Elementary School, officials said fence installation is now expected to continue through fall 2027, overshooting the previously announced spring 2027 completion date.

Thursday’s meeting highlighted the divide over the city’s plan to fence off MacArthur Park, with tensions rising during public comment. The Los Angeles Police Department says the fence will make drug enforcement easier, while some in the community who volunteer around the park questioned whether it will improve safety enough to justify the cost.

The city has allocated $2.3 million for the project, but officials have not said whether that will cover the full cost.

Installation of the green metal fence around the park’s perimeter is expected to begin in November and take about a year. A second phase, adding decorative elements to the fence, is planned for fall and winter 2027. Officials said the schedule could change because of weather or other unforeseen circumstances.

The park is expected to remain open during construction.

Capt. Ben Fernandes with the LAPD’s Rampart Division said the fence would create a barrier along Alvarado Street and other areas where officers have seen people using narcotics. That would allow police to focus more of their enforcement efforts inside the park, he said.

“So if people are going deeper into the park to use, that’ll make it easier for us to go in and do enforcement on them and arrest them for that use,” Fernandes said. 

MacArthur Park will close every night once an 8-foot-tall fence goes up around the green space, with Los Angeles police officers sweeping the park for encampments and people sleeping there before the gates shut. The Board of Recreation and Park Commissioners approved the plan Thursday.

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LA Recreation and Parks

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“I’ve been an officer for 29 years, and I’ve always known I can go buy drugs there, and I did as a narcotics officer. So what I’m saying is, we are trying to make it not convenient,” he added. 

Fernandes also said the city plans to enhance the park’s existing camera network. LAPD officers and Los Angeles Park Rangers will be able to monitor the cameras from their respective stations, he said. City officials are still evaluating whether additional cameras will be needed to address blind spots in the park after construction is complete.

Ariana Walker, who visits MacArthur Park every Saturday with a group of friends who pool their own resources to distribute food and hygiene kits, questioned whether the city had shown that the fence would improve safety and how much it would cost to maintain.

“The fence is a $2.3 million fence at the base level,” she said. “And they haven’t given us any indication of how much more it’s going to cost for upkeep, to keep anybody safe. There’s no conclusive evidence that a fence is going to stop crime the way that they’re suggesting.”

The meeting grew tense when John Alle, a local property owner whose family owns the building that houses Langer’s Delicatessen across the street from the park, objected to having his comments read from a written comment card rather than speaking directly to officials. Alle has been a vocal critic of the city’s response to drug activity and public safety concerns around MacArthur Park.

He was allowed to comment during the meeting and said the city needs to take a tougher approach to drug use and sales around the park. 

“We see knife attacks at all hours of the day. It’s out of control. And it’s not gotten any better,” he said. “We want to bring it back to where it was 15 or 20 years ago.”

Los Angeles officials expect construction of a fence around MacArthur Park will start in November and continue through fall 2027.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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Alle pointed to public events at the park, including an upcoming Día de los Muertos celebration and a Labor Day weekend picnic hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman as positive developments for the space. But he added those events do not reflect conditions throughout the park.

Officials also outlined other planned improvements, including restoring access through the tunnels connecting the park’s north and south sides, making accessibility upgrades and providing free Wi-Fi for parkgoers. 

Residents who want to provide input on the fence’s decorative elements can email admin@themorcosgroup.com or call (310) 479-4727 for more information.

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