The Brief

There’s a parking lot in the city of Los Angeles lined with plywood platforms where unhoused people can set up tents and access meals, bathrooms and other services — all at taxpayers’ expense.

The Lincoln Safe Sleep Village in South L.A. opened in 2022 and is one of only a handful of similar encampments around the state. Public records show it was contracted to provide space for up to 88 residents last fiscal year.

But two observers who made separate visits to the location during that time — one of them a commissioner with the governing body that oversees the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, the other a “special master” appointed by a federal judge — found the site was operating at half capacity.

Still, LAHSA paid a nonprofit organization $2.3 million to operate the site — with 88 spots.

A federal judge this week described the situation as “obvious fraud.”

The nonprofit that runs the site, San Francisco-based Urban Alchemy, told LAist it reduced the site’s capacity by half in April 2024 at the request of L.A. city officials and LAHSA.

The homeless services agency did not update its funding formula for the site until more than a year later.

LAHSA records show Urban Alchemy was paid in full. Because of the reduced capacity at the site, the cost per person served there was about $63,900 for the year — or more than $5,300 each month, according to LAist’s review of records.

The nonprofit said it’s been operating and staffing the Safe Sleep campground according to the terms of its contract with LAHSA.

“We want to make abundantly clear that we have never misreported any data or invoices for reimbursement for the services provided at this site,” said Jess Montejano, a spokesperson for Urban Alchemy. “These issues are more a reflection of LAHSA’s disorganization and management.”

The situation has emerged at a time when LAHSA is under intense scrutiny for failing to properly manage hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts with service providers, and the city of L.A. remains under a court order to provide more shelter for the city’s unhoused residents.

Federal court scrutiny

During a sometimes tense federal court hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter described the situation at the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village as "obvious fraud."

The hearing was the latest in a series of court appearances stemming from a settlement between the city of L.A. and a group of downtown business and property owners known as the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights.

The judge has been overseeing the settlement, specifically the city’s progress in meeting obligations to provide housing and shelter for unhoused people. The agreement requires the city to open nearly 13,000 new shelter beds by next year.

In April, when the city of L.A. submitted its quarterly bed report to Carter, it described the South L.A. campground program as having 88 beds.

But approximately half of those beds had been unavailable for about a year, according to Urban Alchemy.

According to testimony on Wednesday, Michele Martinez — the special master Carter appointed to help enforce the terms of the settlement — visited the Safe Sleep Village on June 9. She tried to verify the number of beds available at the site with city officials, but did not get an answer, Carter said.

Three weeks later, the city responded by questioning whether Martinez’s inquiry was proper.

In a June 30 email, L.A. Deputy City Attorney Jessica Mariani argued that Martinez had “no authority or basis to review or provide any assessments.” However, Mariani added, the city was still looking into Martinez’ questions about the safe sleep site.

The city later adjusted the count to 46 spots in its July 2025 update to the court.

Carter questioned Mariani during Wednesday's hearing, noting that the city (through LAHSA) continued to pay full amounts for more than 80 spots at the site and tell the court those spots existed, even though at least half appeared to not be available at the time.

"Is the City's position when the Special Master notes obvious fraud and that the documents don't match, that you are bringing forth to this Court that Ms. Martinez should disregard that and not report this to the Court when you try to curtail her monitoring activities?” the judge said, according to a transcript of the proceedings.

Carter described the city’s actions as potentially “contemptuous.”

LAist reached out to Mariani and the City Attorney’s Office, but has not yet received a response.

Weeks before the special master’s visit to the site, LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa stopped by the South L.A. campground. The 10-member LAHSA Commission makes policy and funding decisions for the regional homelessness agency.

Szlasa said later that he noticed during his visit that half of the campground was closed down. He said budget documents sent to him for approval described the site as a “low-cost, high-impact” program serving 88 people.

“We at LAHSA must ensure that we receive what we are contracting for,” Szlasa wrote in a social media post describing his findings.

He filed a public records request with LAHSA to obtain the contracts and payment details for the Urban Alchemy site in South L.A.

“I want to understand, first and foremost, why this was misrepresented to the Commission,” Szlasa said. “Then I want to understand if Urban Alchemy was actually in compliance with the contracts.”

He continued: “I am concerned this Safe Sleep program — which I happened to arbitrarily spot-check — is not an outlier.”

A drone's view of the South LA site prior to one section closing down in 2024.

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LAHSA and Urban Alchemy responses

LAist reached out to LAHSA for more information about its contract with Urban Alchemy and about the number of people who lived at the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village during the last fiscal year.

LAHSA authorities said the site had a 41% average “utilization rate” during the budget year that ended in June. They said that's based on capacity and occupancy information Urban Alchemy provided in a database called the Homeless Management Information System.

But the agency’s calculations appear to have been based on outdated capacity data, not on how many spaces were actually available for use.

LAHSA said it was Urban Alchemy’s responsibility to update the information in the database.

"All providers are required to record their data in [the database]; if the data is inaccurate, it would be based on that data entry,” a LAHSA spokesperson said.

Urban Alchemy said LAHSA is to blame.

“We will not be a patsy or let our integrity be attacked because of the decisions made by and directed to us by LAHSA,” Montejano told LAist Thursday. “We are also extremely frustrated with the lack of communication, transparency, and bureaucracy here.”

The nonprofit told LAist it has operated under the terms of its contract, and that it followed direction from the city to close down part of the site, reducing its capacity.

LAHSA instructed Urban Alchemy to stop accepting any new clients to set up camp in the east half of the campground — one of two parking lots — in March 2024, according to emails reviewed by LAist. In one email, LAHSA staff told a senior leader at the nonprofit that the push to close down a portion of the site came from the L.A. city administrative officer.

LAist has reached out to LAHSA and the city administrative officer with questions about those instructions, but has not received responses.

An agency spokesperson said LAHSA has been “engaged with” Urban Alchemy about the site since April 2024, and that the program has been “under review.”

Property records show a South L.A. nonprofit called the Coalition for Responsible Community Development purchased the property where the tent camp operates in 2020. It has plans to convert the larger property into a 60-unit affordable housing complex.

Until that project is ready to start construction, the site is expected to keep operating as a safe sleeping location, according to the office of L.A. City Councilmember Curren Price, who represents the area.

“When the site first opened, beds were consistently full,” Angelina Valencia-Dumarot, Price’s communications director, told LAist Thursday. “That’s why the current occupancy rate is especially concerning.”

She said council offices are too often left out of updates by LAHSA.

“We can’t address problems quickly if we’re finding out only after numbers fall or from the press,” Valencia-Dumarot said.

A sign at the South LA campground

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LAHSA manages more than $742 million in contracts with 121 service providers.

Over the past year, audits and reports found the agency had mismanaged hundreds of millions in contracts for homeless services, including a failure to collect accurate data on nonprofit vendors or properly track how they spent taxpayer dollars.

The South L.A. campground is the only “safe sleep” site of its kind currently in LAHSA’s portfolio, the agency told LAist. LAHSA also administers funding for about a dozen “safe parking” sites, where unhoused people can legally park and live out of vehicles they own.

LAHSA has paid Urban Alchemy more than $12 million to operate the Lincoln Safe Sleep Village since 2021, according to the agency’s records.

What should this cost? 

At full capacity, the monthly operating cost for the South L.A. campground would have been about $2,180 per participant each month — instead of $5,300.

Shayla Myers, a senior attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said these campground sites are expensive to operate.

“They are the kinds of programs that shock the conscience of taxpayers,” Myers said, adding that they cost much more than paying rent, while keeping people unsheltered.

LAHSA staff say per-person costs for homeless programs differ based on location, hours and staffing needs.

Examples include:

• The region’s safe parking sites, which receive about $1,200 per participant per month to provide a set of similar resources to vehicle dwellers, according to LAHSA contract documents. 

• LAHSA programs that provide temporary rental assistance to families and cost about $2,000 per household per month, officials said. 

• The city of L.A.’s Inside Safe program, which moves people from encampments to hotel rooms. It costs about $6,900 per person served each month, according to a recent report by the city’s chief administrative officer.

Urban Alchemy has operated temporary campgrounds for unhoused people in the city and county of L.A. since 2021, including one in Virgil Village that has since closed and another in Culver City that is still operating.

In 2021, L.A.’s city administrative officer reported the Virgil Village campground cost more than $2,600 per participant per month.

Culver City opened its campground in 2023, so that the city could legally enforce a ban on camping in public approved that February. The city spent nearly $4.6 million on the campground in 2025, according to budget documents.

The Culver City site has space for 40 people, and the city says the occupancy rate is around 85% this year. That’s a cost of more than $11,000 per person served each month.

Myers said interventions like this will always cost more than moving people into homes.

“It doesn’t matter whether you're paying for a hotel room, a shelter, or in this case, lines drawn on a parking lot,” said Myers. “Continuing to provide shelter to folks who are unhoused — rather than providing permanent housing — is always going to be exponentially more expensive.”

After the city finalized its budget in June, LAHSA allocated $1.2 million — instead of $2.3 million — to Urban Alchemy for the South L.A. campground for the current budget year.

LAHSA now lists the site’s capacity as 46 tent spaces, authorities said. The agency said the site now has a “utilization” rate of 70%, compared to 41% the previous fiscal year.

That’s at a cost of about $3,100 per participant per month.

LAist's Nick Gerda and Makenna Sievertson contributed to this story.

Something unusual is happening with only a few days remaining before the U.S. men's national team opens its World Cup campaign against Paraguay: Tickets for the match are not sold out.

Although numbers fluctuate regularly, FIFA's ticketing website still shows 132 tickets left to sell for a game that's set to take place in Los Angeles on Friday. Meanwhile, resale platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek — and FIFA's own marketplace — also show thousands of tickets on sale.

The number is even higher for Canada's opening match against Bosnia Herzegovina in Toronto on the same day, with 226 tickets left in FIFA's website and a high number of tickets available in resale markets.

That's unusual for high-profile events such as the opening matches of the World Cup — traditionally among the hardest to get tickets in the tournament. This year will feature three hosts in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — but so far only Mexico's opening match against South Africa on Thursday looks to be virtually sold out.

Ticketing experts widely agree on the reason: the prices. FIFA dramatically jacked them up for the tournament — especially for high profile games. The most expensive regular seats for the U.S. opener against Paraguay are priced at $2,735 — more than the final cost for the 2022 World Cup final — while the cheapest are $1,120.

Even President Trump said he wouldn't pay those prices.

"I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told the New York Post in a recent interview.

The other two remaining games for the U.S. national have far fewer tickets available, given that prices are well below the ones for the opening match.

Prices have also fallen sharply

There are not only plenty of tickets left to sell — a number of them are also available below FIFA's face value. According to Ticketdata, which tracks prices across the resale platforms, the cheapest pair of tickets for the opening match for the U.S. and Canada was $951 as of Monday morning, while in FIFA's resale platform, tickets were available for as low as $690.

Other games across the 104-match tournament also still have many tickets left to sell — despite FIFA President Gianni Infantino's claim that every match is "already sold out." That's especially the case for lesser well known teams such as the Jordan against Algeria match, which still had hundreds of unsold seats in the FIFA's web site.

Demand for high-profile tickets such as Argentina and Portugal was far higher, however, with many of those games looking largely sold out.

Will the opening matches sell out?

Whether eventually the U.S. and Canada opening matches will sell out is hard to answer. Throughout the sales process, FIFA has closely guarded how many tickets it has actually sold and how many are left to sell, making it virtually impossible to gauge.

In addition, like other teams, FIFA could also sell tickets in other platforms including third-party ones such as SeatGeek, which can further obscure how many tickets are left to sell.

FIFA and organizers, however, are hoping for a surge in excitement that leads to a last-minute rush of sales for the opening matches as well as for those such as Jordan against Algeria that look far from being sold out.

Ben Shields, a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, says perceptions so far of the tournament have been shaped by how expensive tickets and travel has been for a tournament taking place across an entire continent.

That, he says, "does not seem to sit well with many."

But that could change.

"The hope or bet — for FIFA is that once the matches start — and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is," Shields says. "We shall see."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Orange County’s top elected leaders on Tuesday are set to discuss what to do with $3.7 million recovered from the Andrew Do corruption scheme.

Do is now serving a five-year sentence in federal prison after he admitted to accepting bribes in exchange for awarding millions in tax dollars meant to feed needy seniors and people with disabilities in his district.

As part of the plea deal, Do acknowledged taking more than $800,000 in bribes through his two daughters, including a down payment on the house his youngest daughter Rhiannon Do later forfeited to resolve the criminal case. The scheme was first uncovered by LAist.

Federal officials recovered money from seized bank accounts and two properties connected to Do’s scheme — including the Tustin house his daughter bought.

The county Board of Supervisors is expected to publicly discuss plans for the recovered funds as they make decisions on the overall county budget at their meeting Tuesday. Public comment will also be taken.

What to do with the money?

Ahead of Tuesday’s discussion, Do’s successor said the funds should support residents of his former district who were deprived by Do and his alleged co-conspirators.

“For the past five years, every other district in Orange County has benefitted from the same community funds to support their cities, nonprofits, civic projects which strengthens their communities,” Supervisor Janet Nguyen wrote in a mass email to constituents last week. “However, our district went without because Do stole what belonged to our residents.”

“This money was stolen from the First District, and it must come back to the First District,” Nguyen added.

Nguyen was Do’s mentor and former boss more than a decade ago, before the two had a bitter falling out by 2016.

She encouraged residents of her district to send letters to the board and to speak during public comments.

Several county supervisors told LAist they supported a similar approach, one in which the recovered money goes to support the original intended recipients: seniors and people with disabilities in Do’s former district. Some supervisors have since advocated a broader view of how they’d want to use the money, noting that it was meant to address disruptions caused by the pandemic. Now that years have passed since the initial COVID-19 outbreak and lockdowns, some supervisors argue community needs have changed.

“We are so many years on, and the problems that money originally was to address (mostly Covid impacts) are now behind us, that I think we should have a discussion about how and where to spend it,” Supervisor Don Wagner told LAist via text message in March. “The budget is so tight and the needs so great across the county.”

Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento said he’d work toward a fair distribution of the funds to best serve residents, with a focus on current needs.

“We will definitely consider what areas of the County were harmed by Do’s scheme, but we must also remember that the funds were intended for relief efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic, a threat we are no longer facing,” he said in March. “We also need to consider addressing the current needs of residents with any dollars returned to the county.”

Millions more haven’t been recovered, at least yet

The amount of taxpayer money recovered so far is less than half of the $7.9 million Andrew Do admitted was diverted from specific meal contracts.

In a lawsuit seeking to recover funds, the county alleges the total amount lost in the scheme was even larger: $13.25 million. The county’s suit — scheduled for trial in November 2027 — covers all of the money Do gave to two nonprofits accused in the scheme, Viet America Society and Hand to Hand Relief Organization.

That leaves more than $4 million — and possibly much more — not yet recovered.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office noted they have an ongoing criminal case against Do’s alleged co-conspirator Peter Pham.

“Assuming we obtain a conviction in that matter, we would expect to seek restitution,” the spokesperson, Ciaran McEvoy, said.

Pham left the country on a flight to Taiwan in late 2024 and remains a fugitive, according to McEvoy. The case against him also includes charges against another alleged co-conspirator, Thanh Huong Nguyen, who led the Hand to Hand nonprofit.

Fans of the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team swelled the stadium at the Great Park in Irvine on Monday to watch players practice for the first time since arriving at the training facility they’ll call home for the first round of the 2026 World Cup.

“Seeing them play right now… it was really cool to see how they play and how they practice,” said Mila Ran, who came with her mother from nearby Mission Viejo.

“This whole time she’s saying, 'I want to go shoot, I want to go play,'” said Mila’s mother, Farah Ran.

They were among about 6,000 people who won free entry to the practice in a lottery that received more than 30,000 entries, according to Irvine officials.

Fans got to the venue early.

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The team’s biggest stars — Christian Pulisic, Antonee Robinson and others — showed off their ball handling skills, honed over years of play on U.S. youth fields and overseas in professional leagues. Fans yelled, waved U.S. flags, held up homemade signs, and did the wave several times.

The U.S. Men's National Team at their only open-to-the-public practice session in Irvine.

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LAist

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After the roughly 45-minute practice, some players walked to the sidelines to take selfies with fans and sign autographs.

The players know it’s going to take more than this, however, to live up to expectations during the World Cup.

US men's national team player Tim Ream signs an autograph for a fan.

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“To be in a position to train in front of these people today… is such a unique opportunity and one that none of us take for granted,” said backup goalie Matt Freese before the practice. “We’re working as hard as we can, as focused as we can to leave the next generation inspired."

The U.S. men’s team and their training staff will use the Great Park facility over the next several weeks as the team plays Paraguay on Friday, Australia on June 19, and Turkey on June 25 in group play at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Jury selection began Monday for the trial of the man accused of igniting a fire that led to the deadly and destructive Palisades Fire, which killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

Jonathan Rinderknecht is charged with one count of destruction of property by means of fire, one count of arson affecting property used in interstate commerce and one count of setting timber afire. He could face up to 45 years in federal prison.

How we got here

Prosecutors allege Rinderknecht set brush alight near a popular hiking trail in the Santa Monica Mountains on New Year’s Day, starting the Lachman Fire. Firefighters initially thought they put out the fire, but it remained smouldering underground for several days. High winds then brought the embers to the surface, sparking the Palisades Fire, which burned more than 23,000 acres.

What prosecutors say

In a court filing in April, prosecutors allege Rinderknecht displayed “extreme anger, indignation, and frustration” because he had to spend New Year's Eve alone. After driving around for Uber, Rinderknecht hiked up a popular trail and set chaparral alight in a clearing, according to prosecutors.

“He then started calling 911 multiple times, hiked down the hill, and fled the area in his car before firefighters arrived. Defendant returned to the area after he saw fire trucks arriving and then took videos of the firefighting efforts,” prosecutors wrote.

The filing also states that Rinderknecht threatened to burn down his sister’s home.

Prosecutors are expected to argue that Rinderknecht started the smaller blaze knowing it could turn into a bigger inferno.

U.S. District Court Judge Anne Hwang has previously expressed the government’s position could confuse jurors.

What the defense says

Defense attorney Steve Haney previously told reporters that prosecutors were trying to blame Rinderknecht for a fire that started days before the Palisades Fire.

"Well what about what happened between Jan. 1 and Jan. 7?" he asked. "Jonathan wasn't out there with a fire hose putting that fire out at the Lachman location, the Fire Department was. So why are they blaming him for whatever the Fire Department didn't do?"