The Brief

A homeless services provider for Los Angeles’ Inside Safe motel shelter program is under investigation on fraud allegations, after officials determined that it failed to provide nutritious meals to residents despite being paid a $110 per person daily fee to provide those and other services.

While some service providers say they offer freshly prepared sandwiches, soups and roasted vegetables, the City Controller’s Office said in a July 26 news release that the unnamed provider’s on-site “food inventory consisted almost entirely of instant ramen noodles.”

“The small remaining portion of other food inventory consisted only of instant oatmeal, canned soup, canned corn, and canned refried beans. The food selection appeared to fall short of fulfilling daily nutritional requirements,” said the release from the office of City Controller Kenneth Mejia.

“There was no fresh food provided by the contractor for the residents," the statement continued. "Fresh food was available in the common area, but it had been donated to the facility by others.”

An investigation by the controller’s office into whether the contractor engaged in fraud is ongoing.

“Taxpayer money goes heavily into homeless services in our city,” Mejia said in the release, citing a current homelessness budget of nearly $1 billion.

“Angelenos should be able to reasonably expect their investment to return decent meals for our unhoused neighbors — not instant ramen for almost every meal.”

What service providers are paid to do

Service providers receive $110 per day in city funds for each person they care for at Inside Safe motels, under Mayor Karen Bass’ signature homelessness initiative. In turn, providers are required to offer an array of services, including three meals per day.

Those meals are required to meet Food and Drug Administration nutrition standards, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), which manages the contracts on the city’s behalf.

But LAHSA officials say the provider under the controller’s scrutiny did not follow those requirements, in violation of the contract.

“Inadequate shelter and services discourages unhoused people from accepting or remaining in shelter. LA cannot meaningfully lower our unhoused population unless the City provides adequate housing and services,” Mejia said in his news release.

Who is the provider?

Mejia’s office would not name the service provider, citing the ongoing investigation. LAHSA officials also did not answer multiple requests for the provider’s name.

All of the service providers for Inside Safe told LAist it wasn’t them.

LAist contacted all nine of the lead Inside Safe service providers listed in a recent report to the City Council last week. LAist asked LAHSA officials for the program’s full list of service providers last Monday and continued to ask repeatedly in the days that followed.

The list wasn’t provided until Wednesday. It included one provider that wasn’t on the list provided to the council.

The chief executive of that tenth provider told LAist it was not the one targeted by the investigation.

The follow-up

After verifying the tip, Mejia’s office flagged the issue to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the joint city-county agency that pays Inside Safe service providers from city taxpayer money, according to both agencies.

LAHSA now requires the service provider serve three nutritious meals per day, according to the controller’s announcement.

“We are encouraged that LAHSA took quick action to correct the immediate situation,” Mejia said in the news release. “We will continue our investigation into the allegation of contractor fraud, including determining their contractual obligations and how they used taxpayer dollars.”

In a statement, LAHSA officials said the provider was serving “unacceptable meals” in violation of the contract.

“As the Controller noted, LAHSA quickly took corrective action to ensure the people at this site received the required three nutritious meals every day,” LAHSA officials wrote. They said the agency will be visiting the motel frequently to “provide additional support, training, and monitoring to ensure contract compliance.”

LAHSA’s statement added that the agency has long had “inadequate” systems for overseeing contractors’ performance, which officials say they are overhauling. The agency also is working on sending out surveys to program participants to allow them to anonymously report issues at their interim housing, including Inside Safe.

Mayor’s office: ‘This should never happen’

A spokesperson for Bass, who created and oversees Inside Safe, said in a statement that the meal issue was unacceptable.

"This should never happen,” said Zach Seidl, the mayor’s lead spokesperson, in a statement.

“We must ensure service providers are provided the support and resources needed to provide 3 meals per day as well as health and other supports necessary to enable unhoused Angelenos to stay inside. The Mayor has long said that these standards are vital,” he added.

The mayor’s office has made it a top priority to improve the quality of services at Inside Safe, Seidl wrote.

LAHSA’s chief executive, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, did not respond to requests made through a spokesperson for an interview.

Tensions over the controller’s auditing powers

The City Controller’s office has wanted to audit the Inside Safe program since the program’s early weeks a year and a half ago, according to court testimony by Mejia.

At a June hearing before federal Judge David O. Carter, Mejia testified that he was blocked by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office from reviewing the contractors’ performance under the program.

Deputy City Attorney Jessica Mariani testified that the controller does not have authority under the city charter to review the performance of programs under other elected officials, such as Inside Safe.

Carter said that made him concerned.

“I'm worried that the City, either intentionally or unintentionally, is able to put a program under the umbrella of an elected official, the Mayor or whomever, and not have accountability in terms of somebody watching and verifying,” he said at the hearing.

After an earlier hearing on the issue before Carter, Mejia announced in March that he was launching an audit of Inside Safe.

Feldstein Soto’s spokesperson, Ivor Pine, did not respond to messages in recent days asking if the city attorney continues to believe the controller lacks authority to conduct the audit. It’s separate from a more sweeping audit that Carter is overseeing into city homeless services.

The recently-announced meals investigation, however, was launched after a tip to the controller’s fraud, waste and abuse hotline, according to the controller’s office. That’s a separate process from their ongoing audit of Inside Safe.

What do other service providers serve?

Many service providers told LAist they provide freshly prepared hot meals to residents daily.

Rowan Vansleve, president of Hope the Mission, said about 75% of the meals served to its Inside Safe participants are freshly prepared with whole foods and whole proteins. They include a fried chicken sandwich with potatoes and salad, which Vansleve described as the most popular meal the group has ever served.

“Their bodies have experienced some incredible trauma. Living on the streets just breaks you down,” he told LAist in an interview.

“Providing whole foods, nutritious foods, a variety of different foods, is vital to the healing process. We’ve gone at great lengths to [provide] that,” Vansleve said, adding that a private donor helped Hope the Mission build a kitchen where the meals are prepared.

He said meals they provide include:

• Stews and soups with oven-roasted vegetables
• Sliced chicken or turkey meat with carrots and potatoes
• Freshly baked granola
• Chicken or fish po’ boy sandwiches
• Chicken salad wraps
• Breakfast sandwiches with frittata egg, veggies, bacon, on English muffins baked in-house 
• Sliced fruits

Rev. Richard Reed, who leads the nonprofit provider First to Serve, said the menu for its Inside Safe participants on a recent day included:

• Pancakes, hash browns, turkey sausage and orange juice or coffee for breakfast
• Korean beef bulgogi, white rice and green beans for lunch
• Black pepper chicken, garlic potatoes, roasted broccoli and dessert for dinner

The menu changes weekly, he said.

Cleanup is just beginning for a contaminated industrial site in South Gate, according to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials who are leading the effort.

The small southeast L.A. city was built on industry — in the early 20th century it boomed with auto, chemical and other manufacturers.

That legacy also left it with three Superfund sites, areas designated by the federal government as highly contaminated with hazardous waste.

The three sites are all clustered on a large lot framed by Southern and Rayo avenues. A residential neighborhood is nearby.

“This site is less than 50 yards away from a home, so we want to make sure that we clean it to a point where we can feel confident,” said South Gate Mayor Joshua Barron.

South Gate is home to about 90,000 people, the majority of whom are Latino. The median household income is about $74,500 and the state has identified the city and surrounding communities to be disproportionately burdened by pollution and its health effects.

This site, dubbed the Southern Avenue Industrial Area, housed a screw manufacturing business for 30 years, then a carpet adhesive plant. Both businesses are now defunct and the site was designated by the federal government as a Superfund site in 2012.

The pollution at this property was compounded by pollution from companies next door.

One of the two adjacent Superfund sites was used by Cooper Drum Co., a steel drum recycling plant. A group of Cooper Drum’s former customers, including chemical manufacturers and oil companies, are paying for part of that cleanup. The other site, previously operated by an aircraft rivet and conveyor belt manufacturer, is still in the analysis and planning stages.

At the Southern Avenue site where the EPA broke ground Tuesday, analyses commissioned by the agency found widespread lead and other toxic contamination in the soil, as well as a plume of trichloroethylene, a carcinogen, in the groundwater.

Officials say the plume has not affected the deeper aquifer South Gate and other southeast L.A. cities rely on for drinking water.

In 1986, the city closed water wells contaminated by the neighboring Cooper Drum site.

EPA project manager Kelia Liang explains the cleanup effort in South Gate on Tuesday.

(

Erin Stone

/

LAist

)

“ The water is safe to drink,” said Mike Montgomery, superfund director for the EPA. “What we're trying to do is prevent it from becoming impacted.”

EPA officials estimate soil cleanup will take about two months. Groundwater cleanup planning will start in 2027 and could take a year or more. The whole effort is estimated to cost between $45 million and $60 million, primarily through federal dollars.

The summer heat may be sweltering at the moment in Southern California, but predictions about this winter’s El Niño show it could be the strongest on record.

So the LAist newsroom wants to know: What questions do you have? (You can submit below.)

We can tell you now that El Niño is a climate pattern that happens roughly every two to seven years, and is one of the most powerful drivers of the Earth’s weather.

During an El Niño event, the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean off the coast of South America warms to above normal temperatures. The warm ocean adds moisture and heat to the atmosphere, influencing atmospheric circulation, temperatures and precipitation on a massive scale.

El Niño typically results in mild weather in the northern United States and wetter conditions in the southern part of the country.

In Southern California, we could start to see the effects of El Niño in the late fall or early winter. Generally, those effects include significant rain and high sea levels and the consequences that come with them, such as flooding, mudslides and coastal erosion.

Forecasters say there is a more than 90% chance of a powerful El Niño event this year, and a 70% chance that it’s record-setting.

That said, uncertainty remains around how exactly this winter’s El Niño will play out here.

So as you gear up for an El Niño winter, ask us your questions and we’ll do our best to get answers in the months ahead.

The company behind the Garden Grove hazardous waste scare earlier this year is planning to resume full operations in late September, subject to an independently monitored, court-approved safety plan.

GKN Aerospace employs 500 people at its Garden Grove facility.

What happened?

GKN Aerospace said in a news release that it had permanently decommissioned the tank that set off the hazmat scare in May and forced some 50,000 nearby residents to evacuate.

Removal of the tank is pending review and approval from state regulatory agencies, according to an emailed response from Salma Elshakre, a spokesperson for the Orange County Health Care Agency, which is overseeing the cleanup.

All of the toxic chemical, methyl methacrylate (also known as MMA), has been removed from nearby tanks as well, Elshakre said.

What about the compensation fund?

This week, the company also announced a forthcoming $100 million compensation fund for affected residents and businesses. GKN expects to release details on how to apply in the coming months.

What's next?

At least 39 lawsuits have been filed against the company in conjunction with the hazmat incident, according to a GKN webpage set up to track the fallout. The company pledged to explain the legal effect of participating in the compensation fund before it is launched.

What's the community reaction?

Garden Grove Mayor Stephanie Klopfenstein said in a statement that the city “welcome[s] this progress and will continue to expect GKN to address the broader effects on our community.”

A coalition of community groups called GKN Out of Garden Grove Coalition wants the city to shut down the GKN plant completely. The coalition plans to release a report documenting the company’s alleged history of hazardous waste failures at a news conference Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. at 11300 Stanford Ave. in Garden Grove.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is preparing to revoke the business and tourism visas of up to 200,000 foreigners who have applied for or are currently seeking asylum status in the United States. If it happens, the move would be the largest single mass revocation of visas in U.S. history and would likely face legal challenges.

Unless challenged or revised, the State Department is expected to announce in the coming weeks the revocation of so-called B1 and B2 visas issued between 2016 and 2026 whose holders have sought asylum or are now seeking asylum, according to State Department documents obtained by The Associated Press and two U.S. officials. The action will be taken in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security.

“We are coordinating with DHS to identify and revoke the nonimmigrant visas of foreigners who have come to the United States claiming to be short-term visitors, but then file for asylum to stay here permanently,” said State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott.

He declined to comment on the number of visas that might be revoked, saying “as the process will be ongoing, the number of revocations remains dynamic and will be done on a rolling basis.”

The revocations would not necessarily result in their immediate deportation, the officials said. Most of those with asylum cases currently pending would be recategorized but would lose their status as business or tourism travelers, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the revocations are not final yet.

Since President Donald Trump took office for his second term last year, his administration has steadily ramped up restrictions on visa applicants — demanding more information about their social media histories, requiring the posting of expensive bonds for the processing of visas, and outright banning the issuance of visas to citizens of certain countries.

In a social media post on Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau called out people who he said try to use tourist and business visas to get into the United States and then apply for asylum.

“People in the US and all over the world are fed up with bogus asylum claims,” Landau wrote on X. “Asylum isn’t supposed to be a loophole to circumvent immigration law.” Landau cited the case of a Colombian citizen who came to the U.S. in 2015 on a tourist visa and then applied for asylum.

B1 visas are generally issued for business trips and B2 visas are generally issued for tourism, family visits or medical care. It was not immediately clear from the documents or the officials how many of these visa holders are seeking or have sought asylum in the United States and would be affected by the revocations.

Current applicants for B1 and B2 visas are asked to affirm that they will not apply for asylum in the United States and prove that they intend to return to their home countries.

In the past 18 months, the State Department has revoked about 175,000 visas for people who have been convicted or accused of crimes ranging from drunken driving to rape and robbery, as well as for people who have spoken out publicly against U.S. policies, particularly in the Middle East.

The administration has also moved to crack down on so-called birth tourism, a practice the administration claims is used by foreign pregnant women to come to the United States to give birth so that their child will benefit from birthright citizenship. Trump has tried several times to end birthright citizenship, but those challenges have been rejected by courts, including the Supreme Court.

The State Department documents obtained by the AP suggest screening of current B1 and B2 visa holders began after the State Department received information about asylum requests from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.