The Brief

Nearly 300 apartments built for unhoused people are sitting empty in the city of Los Angeles more than two months after being declared ready for move in, largely due to longstanding bureaucratic rules.

City data reviewed by LAist shows 274 newly constructed apartments — each funded largely by a $1.2 billion voter-approved bond measure called Proposition HHH — had yet to have a resident as of Aug. 1, despite being declared “ready to occupy” by city officials more than 60 days prior.

That number is down from 444 empty units in May and 354 in June. And it’s expected to further improve in the coming weeks and months due to waivers L.A. Mayor Karen Bass requested and recently received from federal officials to speed up the process of housing people.

About 60 of the vacant units are in Skid Row Housing Trust buildings opened years ago, in 2020 and 2021. The nonprofit trust financially imploded earlier this year — and was taken over by a court-appointed receiver – though its most serious problems centered on its century-old buildings, not the newer ones where dozens of units remain vacant.

What’s causing the problems

In interviews, local officials and service providers said the overall vacancy issues with HHH housing are fueled by federal paperwork rules, and layers of eligibility restrictions regarding who can live in particular units.

Officials say many of the vacant units have people matched to them, who are still going through the process of getting their paperwork together. In some cases, people have been living outdoors for months as their assigned apartment sits empty.

Bass calls the vacant units one of her biggest frustrations as she tries to address homelessness. Her main homelessness program, Inside Safe, has sheltered more than 1,400 people in motel rooms but has only been able to move 8% of people into long-term housing. The program is estimated to have cost $32 million through the end of June, mainly on motel rooms and service providers.

“You better believe it's frustrating to me, because I don't want people to languish in motels,” Bass told LAist in an interview about the vacant units.

“I want people to be able to be mainstreamed back into the housing market. I want them to be a part of the workforce. I want them to be city employees, since we have so many vacancies. I don't want them living a life in a motel room. And then, yes, [the motels are] expensive,” she added.

“It is untenable to have [motels] become the city's system of interim housing,” Bass said. “This has to be a temporary system. And the only way to make it temporary is to move people…out of these motels.”

The apartments sit empty as L.A.’s latest homeless count, conducted in January, shows nearly 33,000 people are living outdoors without shelter.

Since taking office as mayor in December, Bass has taken on homelessness as her top issue, but is grappling with longstanding shortages of housing and case management staff. And many homeless programs in L.A. are provided by the federal and county governments. The 274 vacant units are overseen by the city.

Progress expected to speed up

In recent days and weeks, federal officials at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) have granted a series of waivers — after repeated requests by Bass — that are expected to speed up the process of filling up the units.

One of those waivers, which LAist was the first to report Monday, will allow people to move into housing first and gather their income documentation like bank statements and tax forms later — eliminating a key barrier that’s kept units vacant.

HUD approved another set of waivers in mid July that lift social security numbers and proof of disability as requirements before moving in.

After HUD previously rejected the waivers earlier this year, Bass requested them again and appealed directly to HUD’s top official, Secretary Marcia Fudge.

Va Lecia Adams Kellum, who leads the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), called HUD’s decision this week “a game changer.” LAHSA oversees the nonprofit service providers that help people qualify for housing.

“People experiencing homelessness will be able to move into housing faster and vacant units will be filled more quickly,” she said.

The waivers to let people move in and then sort out paperwork are collectively known as “presumptive eligibility” — meaning people self-certify they are eligible without needing to prove it before being allowed access to housing. Adams Kellum previously told LAist they would be the single most helpful policy change to get unhoused Angelenos housed.

“This is a waiver that, in the past, hasn't typically been granted,” said Richard Monocchio, a high-ranking HUD executive who oversees all housing subsidies in the country, in an LAist interview this week where he announced he was approving the income proof waiver.

“But the way I looked at it was, in light of the seriousness of the issue — and the city and the housing authorities requested to please take another look at that particular waiver request — I decided it was in the best interest of the city of L.A., and within federal purview.”

Complicated rules and paperwork

Officials also told LAist one of the challenges with the HHH units was the various layers of eligibility rules and extra applications people have to submit because the buildings were built with multiple funding streams — like federal and state dollars, in addition to the city money.

The complex funding structures used to construct the buildings allowed more units to be built, but also created a maze of extra restrictions, rules and paperwork requirements for people to move in.

As eligibility requirements stack, it becomes a challenge to find people who match the prerequisites.

“A lot of this is just the nature of working within a system that involves so many different partners – each having their own documentation, their own processes, their own qualifying conditions to use their money,” said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of L.A. Family Housing, one of the biggest homeless service providers in L.A.

“There's just so many different qualifying conditions,” she said.

One example she cited is a HHH-funded apartment complex for young adults who recently aged out of the foster care system, where the funding requires 10% of the units be for people with certain disabilities that are more common for older people.

“It was very hard to lease up that building,” she said.

“So, it seems like a silly detail, but you add up all of those details, and it starts having an impact.”

LAHSA has also been changing its practices to speed up the process — like matching multiple people to a unit.

“The mayor has taught us all, don't be afraid to call out what's not working or any bottleneck and own that so we can fix it,” Adams Kellum told LAist in an interview.

“We have identified the bottlenecks. We're owning whatever part of that is us” and working to fix them quickly, said Adams Kellum, who started at LAHSA in April.

The results of Prop. HHH so far

While there are hundreds of vacancies, city data show 2,868 other units funded by HHH were occupied as of Aug. 1.

Another 3,500 units are listed as under construction and 2,200 in the design phase, for a total of around 8,600 apartments finished or planned under HHH. That’s 1,400 short of the 10,000 units the ballot measure promised within ten years when it went before voters back in 2016.

Mayor says transparency problems remain

Among the units that have been filled, the mayor says she’s running into transparency problems with knowing who gets to move in to the new housing, how those decisions are getting made – and even who is making the decisions.

“Who are they? And where did they come from? Were any of them from Inside Safe? Were any of them from a tiny home, bridge home?” Bass told LAist, saying she wants reforms for more transparency.

“That's not in the data that they've given me. It's just numbers…by building. But I want to know who they are,” she said. “It's very hard to determine who's going where, who's making the decision.”

Councilmember Nithya Raman told LAist it’s important that the city to use the resources it has — including the HHH units — in order to strengthen its ask for more federal housing dollars.

“We need more [housing vouchers]. But in order to really make the case for it, we have to ensure we’re fully utilizing what we have,” said Raman, who chairs the city council’s housing and homelessness committee.

Clearing hurdles

Sarah Dusseault, who co-chaired L.A. County’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Homelessness, said it’s essential to keep clearing through bureaucratic hurdles.

“It’s critical for us to be thinking, how can we make it easy….and that’s what Mayor Bass has been lifting up and pushing on,” she said.

“We’ve got to inject hope back into the system, by getting rid of red tape.”

While filling the vacancies is important, much more housing capacity is needed to solve homelessness, noted Klasky-Gamer, the L.A. Family Housing leader.

“Until we really do that – produce [housing] at the scale that the crisis demands – filling up all the vacancies is not going to end homelessness,” she said.

“That's the key part of this equation to end homelessness in people's lives.”

California voters will advance two candidates for governor to the November election in the most unsettled gubernatorial race in recent memory, concluding a long and winding primary campaign in which Democrats struggled to pick a new leader for the nation’s most populous blue state.

The decision comes at a particularly consequential time for California. Residents face a crushing cost of living, nation-topping gas prices made worse by the war in Iran, wildfire risks that have driven insurance companies out of state, an unstable state budget, impending federal cuts to the state’s expansive health system and an economy dampened by immigration enforcement.

Democratic former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who has promised to fight Trump and freeze insurance and utility rates, is the leading Democrat in opinion polls and is favored by much of the state’s Democratic establishment. He appeared in contention to secure one of the top two spots for November heading into Election Day.

Republican Steve Hilton, a Donald Trump-endorsed former Fox News host who has vowed to cut income taxes and slash environmental regulations, was polling in second place ahead of Election Day, having consolidated support from many of the state’s conservatives.

But billionaire climate activist Tom Steyer, a progressive Democrat who has self-funded his campaign to the tune of $213 million, was still fighting for one of the top spots. A series of polls released in the final days of the race showed Becerra in the lead with roughly a quarter of likely voters’ support, and Steyer and Hilton locked in a tight battle for second.

Votes could take days or weeks to tally. Pollsters and strategists noted that lingering Democratic uncertainty led some voters to wait so they could back whoever appears to be ahead.

“Those polls could become self-fulfilling,” said Paul Mitchell, a Democratic strategist whose company tracks ballot return data.

The race to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will leave office at the end of the year due to term limits, is the marquee contest on the ballot Tuesday. The seat is considered a shoo-in in November for Democrats, who have nearly twice as many registered voters as Republicans, and holds national importance for the Democratic Party’s pushback to the Trump administration.

It’s also been one of the most unusually open races in recent state history.

No Democratic stars in the race

In contrast to decades of California politics dominated by movie stars, family dynasties and larger-than-life personalities, none of the most recognizable Democratic names jumped into the race.

That led to a crowded field on the left, briefly causing liberals to panic that Hilton and a fellow Republican, the bombastic Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco, could each garner more votes than any Democrat, locking the party out of the general election. The state Democratic Party began a public pressure campaign asking lower-polling candidates to drop out. Nearly all stayed in the race.

But when Democratic then-Rep. Eric Swalwell dropped out over multiple sexual assault allegations, Becerra was the clear beneficiary, raking in many of Swalwell’s donors and supporters. He’s been surging ever since, successfully dodging criticism of his record. Steyer, who spent $200 million boosting his name recognition through campaign ads, consolidated much of the party’s left flank. Former Rep. Katie Porter, a progressive dogged by allegations about her temperament, fell behind. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, a moderate backed by Silicon Valley billionaires, rose from single digits in the polls, but not enough.

Trump’s endorsement of Hilton quickly helped him pull away from Bianco, making it unlikely both Republicans would come in first and second. If Hilton advances to the November election, he faces long odds of being elected against a Democrat.

Both he and Steyer have spent the final weeks of the campaign portraying Becerra as a symbol of the status quo and themselves as agents of systemic change amid multiple state crises, with affordability dominating the race.

For Hilton, that would mean ending 16 years of “one-party rule” under Democrats, slashing spending and reversing many liberal policies such as greenhouse gas reduction mandates, the progressive tax system and parts of the social safety net.

“After 16 years of everything being in one direction, that’s left a lot of people dissatisfied,” he said last week. “Anybody who wants change or balance in our politics, the only choice is for me.”

His name recognition as a former Fox host helped him start the race with a fan base. Nancy LeVesque, a retired salesperson from Roseville, already admired him and said he was an easy choice as she dropped off her ballot at a Placer County vote center on Monday. She liked that he would bring an outsider’s perspective to the governor’s office and a change for those leaving California because of its liberal politics.

“We have lost so many good people,” to other states, she said.

Steyer styled himself as a populist “class traitor” who would force lower costs for Californians by taking on monied special interests like investor-owned utilities, the real estate industry and health insurance corporations. He made a litany of progressive promises on climate change, single-payer health care and raising taxes on the wealthy.

Undecided voter Tina Varnado attended a rally last week for Steyer hosted by her union, which represents home health aides. The South Sacramento resident is a full-time caretaker for her elderly mother and her adult daughter who had open-heart surgery. Between her mother’s social security checks and her pay as her daughter’s health aide, “we do have to spend everything we have every single month” to stay afloat, she said.

“Everything he touched on really touched home for me,” she said after hearing Steyer speak. “If we can lower prices, maybe we can start putting money down on a home for my future.”

Becerra has emphasized his long experience in government, including his lawsuits against the first Trump administration and his time as U.S. Health and Human Services secretary during the pandemic.

That appealed to Evan Cragin, of the California Young Democrats, which endorsed Becerra weeks before his sudden surge. Cragin said he wants the next governor to have government experience to push back on federal “abuses” from the Trump administration.

“Secretary Becerra has done that before,” Cragin said.

Surrounded by supporters at the offices of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California on Monday, Becerra dismissed his opponents’ promises, pointing to past accomplishments including passing the Affordable Care Act and defending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration program.

“You can have all these great inflated promises,” he said. “Getting things done is not easy.”

Ryan Sabalow contributed reporting.

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

May gray has come and gone, and now it's time for June gloom.

Overcast skies will be present this morning, especially along the beaches and valleys closest to the coast. Otherwise, we're in for a partly cloudy afternoon.

Today's temperatures at L.A. County beaches will stay around 66 to 71 degrees, and reach 76 to 80 degrees for places more inland.

In Orange County, expect similar temperatures with highs from 67 to 74 degrees for Huntington Beach and surrounding areas. More inland areas like Anaheim and Garden Grove will see temperatures of up to 79 degrees.

Moving on to L.A. County valleys, expect high temperatures in the low to mid 80s.

In the Inland Empire, temperatures will range 80 to 89 degrees.

Election Day is here, but now comes the waiting.

Do you have something to watch on Netflix? Maybe you've been meaning to pick up a hobby — how about crochet? Whatever you do, take a deep breath and keep busy because it could be days (or weeks) before we get some California election results.

The state is often knocked by the rest of the country as being "slow" to count votes. But here's the deal: that's a feature, not a bug, of the election system.

The backstory

Things take a while here largely because California works so hard to expand the ways people can vote. For example:

• Californians in recent years overwhelmingly vote by mail — nearly 90% of votes cast in the 2024 presidential election were mail-in ballots. In that same year's primary the percentage was just as high. Those ballots can be postmarked up to and including Election Day. They're counted as long as the ballot arrives within seven days (for the June primary, that's June 9).
• California offers same-day voter registration at any voting center. These new voters must cast a provisional ballot, which is counted once election officials confirm their eligibility (they are overwhelmingly accepted — for example, Los Angeles County reports that historically between 85% to 90% have been counted.
• Voters also have the right to cast provisional ballots if there's any problem on election day — like if poll workers aren't able to void an outstanding mail-in ballot, or if there’s any issue calling up voter information from e-pollbooks. Again (see above), provisionals take longer to process because eligibility has to be confirmed.
• Vote-by-mail ballots require signature matching. When the one received doesn't match the one on file, county registrars must contact that voter to let them know — and give them the chance to correct it.
• And, with more than 23 million registered voters, we're really, really big. In the 2024 general election more than 16 million Californians voted (down from nearly 18 million in the 2020 presidential election). Either way, that’s more people than the total populations of all but three other states.

Why things have sped up, some

But things have sped up considerably in the 30 counties that have adopted a 2016 law called the Voter's Choice Act, including L.A., Orange and Riverside counties. In recent elections, the changes associated with that law — like voters not being locked into a designated polling location — drastically cut down the number of provisional ballots cast, which helped move things along faster than they had before.

A closer look at ballot counting times in California where an increasing number of vote-by-mail ballots has slowed ballot counts.

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Courtesy California Voter Foundation

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Still, accuracy and a commitment to "expanding the franchise" — translation: allowing more people to vote — means the process is not designed to produce instantaneous results.

Why you should take a deep breath Election Night

You'll have to get that endorphin hit elsewhere on June 2.

A few things to keep in mind: You may recall that during the 2024 primary, it took about a week to call the results for L.A. City Council races in District 4, where incumbent Nithya Raman was fighting to avoid a runoff election, and District 14, where challenger Ysabel Jurado wound up overtaking incumbent Kevin de León by just a few hundred votes.

It took an even longer 15 days to call the results of Prop. 1, during which opponents conceded, walked back that concession, and conceded again when the measure won by a razor-thin 0.4% margin. And it took 23 days to call the second-place winner for Orange County's 45th congressional district — it ultimately went to Democrat Derek Tran who went on to beat Republican Michelle Steel in the general election. Tran is now up for reelection and rematch with Steel is considered likely in November.

Depending on how close some of these races end up being, we may face similar waits this election cycle.

TL;DR: Officially, county and state election officials have until July 10 to certify election results — including a mandatory audit that requires hand-counting all of the ballots at 1% of precincts. Nevertheless, you're going to see a lot of national media headlines about California's relative "slowness." Brush it off. We have sunshine, beaches, and a highly enfranchised population.