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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Jay L. Clendenin

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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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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Jay L. Clendenin

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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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.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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J.W. Hendricks

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The LA Local

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.