The Brief

For years, Bob Hughes had been eyeing a corner lot just down the street from his San José office, where he runs a building firm.

The single-family property at Lantz and Foxworthy avenues — shrouded by trees and sitting on just under 12,000 square feet in a quiet residential neighborhood near Cambrian Park — seemed ripe for development. So when he got the opportunity to purchase it, Hughes immediately began thinking about how to split the lot.

“The original house here was just covered with foliage all across the front — large trees and plants,” he said. “You couldn’t even see the house.”

Now, nearly three years later, Hughes is a few weeks away from becoming the second developer in the state to successfully take advantage of a new law that allows homeowners to sell ADUs as condos.

The first, on Josefa Street near San José’s downtown by developer AlphaX RE Capital, got its official certification from the city in a public ceremony on Thursday. Standing in front of a white backyard cottage with a sloping roof, Mayor Matt Mahan said the home represented “history in the making.”

“ADUs are affordable by design and growing in popularity across the state. And now, they can offer the most accessible form of homeownership, as well,” he said. “We are offering a proof of concept for California and hope that other cities follow San José’s lead.”

The law, AB 1033 by former San Francisco Assemblymember Phil Ting, went into effect in 2024 and allows cities to opt into the new rules. San José became the first city last year to adopt them. Since then, at least a handful of other cities have followed, including Santa Monica, Santa Cruz, San Francisco and San Diego. Berkeley planning officials expect to put forward an ordinance in September to allow condo sales.

Robert Hughes, a long-time developer from the South Bay, stands outside of a condominium for sale in San José on Aug. 13, 2025.

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The goal, supporters say, is to encourage more affordable ownership opportunities in a state where just 15% of households could reasonably afford to purchase the median-priced single-family home, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Rafael Perez, board chair of the Casita Coalition, which championed the law, lauded California for making significant strides in permitting new ADUs — with over 30,000 permitted last year, representing a quarter of California’s projected housing stock.

But early iterations of the law had prohibited selling them as condos, with some exceptions. Two surveys, from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation and the South Bay Cities Council of Government, found that about 65% of ADUs are offered as long-term rentals, either on the private market or to family and friends for free.

“ADUs weren’t moving the needle on homeownership as much as we would like,” Perez said. “ADU condos open up that door of possibility.”

But so far, city officials in Santa Monica and Santa Cruz, which adopted their versions of the law in October and January, respectively, said they had not yet received any applications. In San José, just two developers have filed applications to convert ADUs to condos — though, on Thursday, AlphaX committed to completing dozens more.

The paucity of enthusiasm — either from other cities looking to implement it or other property owners hoping to take advantage of it — isn’t entirely surprising, several observers said.

For owners with mortgages, the conversion not only requires securing lenders’ approval but also potentially devaluing the existing home, since condos are typically valued less, said Martina Davis, a planning division manager for the city of San José.

“If you have a big mortgage, your bank might not be OK with that,” Davis said. “Or you may look at it and say, ‘Wait, hold on, I need to retain the full value of the house.’”

Anecdotally, Davis said most of the interest in converting ADUs to condos in San José has come from developers for whom those obstacles may not apply. Though Hughes said the newness of the law, along with some of its provisions, has presented its own challenges.

The kitchen at 2985 Lantz Ave. in San José on Aug. 13, 2025.

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Unlike traditional condos, the law requires the ADU to receive a certificate of occupancy before undergoing condominium mapping — a process that’s taken Hughes about six months of precious time sitting on two vacant homes. And after San José officials certify the units as condos, they’ll need approval from the county, as well.

“I’ve got a lot of money tied up here,” he said. “I want to hurry this along.”

For AlphaX, the decision to use the law was more of an experiment to test whether it could work. The company had already purchased the lot and had renters living in both the main home and ADU.

“We are not afraid to be the pioneer,” said Jia Li, the company’s chief asset manager. “If you solve this problem, or we explore the options, then there’s all these other opportunities that could come.”

But Jane Lin, chief investment officer for AlphaX, said it’s a model they think has promise. “At the end of the day, it’s just providing more housing. It’s one possible solution to help create more housing.”

Her company on Thursday said it hoped to complete another 85 ADU condos over the next year, which could be built for existing homeowners on lots they already own, or on lots the company purchases. Once it secures the land, Lin said, “ADUs go up fast.”

In Seattle, about 60% of all ADUs were sold as condos in 2024, according to a city dashboard. Nick Welch, a senior planner at Seattle’s Office of Planning and Community Development, said those figures may be even higher this year because the share of ADU condos has been rising, indicating strong demand for more affordable homeownership options.

According to a city report analyzing data from 2023, the median ADU sold at about 60% of the price of the associated main home and about half as much as a new, detached home.

“Plenty of people want to buy homes and are priced out of the market,” Welch said. “ADUs — just by virtue of being smaller and having a smaller lot area — are obviously sold for less than a new 4,000 square-foot single-family home. And so there’s plenty of demand for that type of ownership housing.”

However, Perez sees scenarios where existing homeowners could also benefit from converting their home and backyard cottage into condominiums. The law makes it possible to access their home’s equity, without taking on additional debt, he said. “They can sell off the ADU and with the proceeds, pay off what was left of that mortgage and be mortgage-free, right?”

The main home property associated with the condominium for sale at 2985 Lantz Ave., in San José, on Aug. 13, 2025.

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Or, they can sell to a family member. “For families that are seeing displacement, the ability to create an entry point in the backyard that’s more affordable than the homes they can’t afford is also a way that people are able to stay in the state.”

Hughes said he already has a buyer for the ADU he built in San José. The three-bedroom, two-bath, nearly 1,200 square-foot home will go for just under $1.6 million, as soon as the condominium map is approved.

The primary home, with five bedrooms, three bathrooms and nearly 2,900 square feet, is listed for more than $3 million.

While certainly not cheap, Hughes said, “No place in San José is, though. I mean, realistically, they are not.”

Hughes had the advantage of starting with a relatively big lot, which allowed him to build two units with separate entrances and utilities, making them more akin to single-family homes than condos.

“It’s unique because it’s on the corner, and the lot was big enough that I could build a 1,200 square-foot ADU,” Hughes said, noting that most lots will be smaller and have shared utilities. “It’s going to be down in a lower price range just by the size. So, therefore, it is creating that affordable home for somebody to go in there.”

More typical is the lot on Josefa Street, where AlphaX is recording the city’s first ADU-condominium-conversion map. The main home takes over most of the lot, with the ADU at the rear of the property. The two homes share a long driveway.

Lin said she wasn’t sure whether the company would ultimately sell the units as condos or continue to rent them out.

“It’s just the beginning,” she said. “So that’s why we’re all very happy and very excited to try.”

Al Pacino has been named the next recipient of the SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award.

The 86-year-old star of “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Scent of a Woman” and a trilogy of “Godfather” films is the 62nd actor to receive the highest honor handed out by the Screen Actors Guild -American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

“I wondered and wandered most of my life but have always felt at home with a script and my fellow actors. It’s the work and the actors along the way that have been among the greatest joys of my life,” Pacino said in a statement Thursday. “It’s an honor to be recognized by SAG-AFTRA in celebrating the journey.”

He’ll pick up the prize on Feb. 28 at the 33rd annual Actor Awards at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The show will stream live on Netflix.

The award also honors humanitarian work, and the guild cited Pacino’s charitable efforts for disaster relief, fighting hunger and poverty and his support for local theater companies, including the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles.

The native New Yorker was a young actor best known for his stage work when director Francis Ford Coppola tapped him to play Michael Corleone in 1972’s “The Godfather” against the wishes of a studio that wanted an established star in the coveted part.

He would be nominated for an Oscar for the role and become regarded as one of the finest actors of his generation. He got annual Academy Award nominations for the next three years, for “Serpico,” “The Godfather Part II” and “Dog Day Afternoon.” He would not win until he took best actor for “Scent of a Woman” in 1993, a year when he was also nominated for supporting actor for “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He’s been nominated nine times overall, most recently in 2020 for “The Irishman.”

Pacino has also won two competitive Actor Awards from SAG-AFTRA, two Emmys, four Golden Globes and the Globes’ lifetime achievement honor, the Cecil B. DeMille Award.

“I have spent my life in awe and appreciation of the force of nature that is Al Pacino,” SAG-AFTRA President Sean Astin said in a statement. “When you watch him perform, you are witnessing a student and a master. Al Pacino is an artist of extraordinary courage, intensity and heart whose work has always set an exceptional standard of skill and talent. All of that and he’s just plain fun to watch.”

The SAG-AFTRA Life Achievement Award dates to 1962. Previous winners include Barbara Stanwyck, James Stewart, Pearl Bailey, Frank Sinatra, James Cagney, Katharine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Paul Newman, James Earl Jones, Jane Fonda and Harrison Ford.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

An affordable housing charity that controls hundreds of apartments in Long Beach is facing a torrent of accusations that it cheated the government out of tens of millions of dollars, defrauded homeless assistance programs and swindled low-income tenants out of money.

The nonprofit Helpful Housing and its for-profit subsidiary Ocean Structure are run by Rodney Rosenstein, who is in federal custody after being indicted in connection with a series of alleged fraud schemes in Arizona. 

In Long Beach, a flood of similar accusations at 15 residential complexes has gone virtually unnoticed until now. They are spread across dozens of lawsuits reviewed by the Long Beach Post, as well as through obtained property records, financial documents, a whistleblower account from a former employee and interviews with tenants. Separately, they are little more than small-time court cases, rental disputes and loan defaults. Taken together, they allege Rosenstein is at the center of a cascading scam that took advantage of multimillion-dollar homeless services programs and federal affordable housing incentives with little oversight.

One attorney in particular managed to build the most comprehensive view of the alleged scheme while she pursued a maintenance worker’s wage-theft case. Kimberly Lind says Rosenstein’s organization falsified paperwork under the city’s nose for years, all to hide a system of overcharging agencies that placed formerly unhoused people in the apartments.

The full extent of the potential fraud in Long Beach — which also included low-income tenants alleging they were charged exorbitant fees without cause — remains unknown. 

Lawyers for Rosenstein declined to comment or did not respond to detailed questions from the Post. The city of Long Beach has said the Arizona indictment “raises new concerns” about its dealings with Rosenstein’s organizations, and it’s already suing him over missing payments on federal loans that it administers.

Still, Helpful Housing is continuing to serve as a landlord and collect money meant to help people avoid homelessness: The Long Beach Housing Authority alone is using federal housing vouchers to pay rent for 14 tenants at Helpful Housing and Ocean Structure properties, amounting to $157,811 so far this year.

Since 2010, Helpful Housing says it’s housed 10,000 people in “beautifully designed” Long Beach apartments. Its website touts its housing-first approach, its experience developing and remodeling apartments and its goals of expanding across L.A. County. 

Rosenstein’s business boomed in Long Beach after he received $6.5 million in zero-interest federal loans via the city between 2010 and 2016 to renovate apartment buildings. The loans came with the condition that he rent to low-income tenants at discounted rates and prove it every year with pay stubs and other documents showing their incomes fell below federal limits. 

As renovations were completed, revenue started rolling in. Records obtained by Lind and the Post show much of it was paid by government programs and homeless services agencies, which placed people in the apartments and paid millions in rent, repairs and security deposits. 

Before the loans, the nonprofit was reporting around $129,000 in revenue a year. By their 2024 filing, the nonprofit and business raked in more than $5 million in annual revenue and had accrued more than $51 million in total assets. 

It was around this time that Lind began looking into Helpful Housing. 

According to the attorney, the case brought to her in late 2023 by former maintenance worker Javier Zaldivar seemed at first a straightforward wage-theft suit against the nonprofit: Zaldivar claimed he worked at least 64 hours a week without rest breaks or sick pay for $15 an hour until he was fired in May 2023. He said he was owed $288,491 in back pay and civil penalties.

“And then as I got deeper and deeper into the case, I realized what they were doing,” Lind said. 

Proceeding to court in March 2024, Lind dug heavily into Rosenstein’s nonprofit and businesses, interviewed whistleblowers, and obtained a combination of emails, pay stubs and loan agreements. She even deposed Rosenstein himself before the lawsuit settled under undisclosed terms. Rosenstein continued to deny wrongdoing, and Lind alleges the full depth of the fraud has yet to come to light.

“It was just one thing after another,” Lind said. “It’s a rabbit hole that you go down, and I had to find out more.”

The front entrance to one of Rodney Rosenstein’s apartment buildings at 1133 Pine Ave. in Long Beach on Oct., 5, 2026.

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She said she found countless examples of forgeries, including W-2s, 1099s and pay stubs that were submitted to the city to prove they rented to low-income tenants, a requirement of the zero-interest loan agreement. Some people, she said, didn’t even exist. 

“They were pretty sloppy in some of them,” Lind said. “Some of it was kind of ridiculous. I look at pay stubs all the time. I know what’s supposed to be on them and what looks fishy.”

In the course of her investigation, Lind attempted to connect with a number of former employees. Many were afraid to come forward, she said, but eventually she met a former administrator who joined Helpful Housing in August 2022 and was tasked with balancing ledgers, handling evictions and reviewing vacancies.

In a sworn statement Lind shared with the Post, the worker — who asked to be identified publicly only as UMI for fear of retaliation — said they first noticed potentially fraudulent activity within the first four months on the job, watching co-workers routinely submit fabricated documents to the city.  

In some cases, the employee alleges, the organization maximized its profits by double-charging different agencies for the same tenant. In other cases, workers like Zaldivar were allegedly asked to build partitions in rooms to make space for multiple tenants: A building at 720 Chestnut Ave., for example, was permitted for 14 units but housed 18 by building partitions in some rooms “the size of a closet to maximize profits illegally,” UMI’s statement said.

After a number of confrontations with co-workers and Rosenstein, UMI quit, according to the sworn statement. 

“‘Everyday is a new element of chaos,’” they recalled telling Rosenstein. “‘You are all going to get caught committing fraud and the properties will end in receivership. You keep putting people in your buildings, and in the community — they are going to call their councilperson and it’s going to all blow up.’”

The practices alleged by UMI and Lind follow a strikingly similar pattern — relying on falsified tax and payroll records — to one federal prosecutors say Rosenstein allegedly orchestrated in Tucson, Ariz., also under his principal nonprofit, Helpful Housing. 

In an indictment filed in August, prosecutors say Rosenstein and Helpful Housing stole $2.9 million in COVID-relief money and $35 million in bank loans by lying about payroll expenses, creating W-2s for people who didn’t exist or never worked for him, and falsifying how full his Arizona buildings were, including one instance where his conspirators allegedly “staged” a condemned building to appear full of residents during various bank inspections.  He faces up to 30 years in prison on the charges and has pleaded not guilty.

When reached by phone, a federal prosecutor on the Arizona case declined to say whether they were looking into Rosenstein’s Long Beach business. 

An apartment building at 327 W. Pacific Coast Highway is one run by Rodney Rosenstein’s companies in Long Beach on Oct. 5, 2026.

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The indictment “raises new concerns” about Rosenstein’s dealings in Long Beach, said Deputy City Attorney Nick Masero. He said he could not comment on the accusations raised by Lind, “but in all such cases the city will accept available information, use the tools available to obtain additional information, coordinate with partner agencies that have different jurisdictions and take all appropriate actions to assert its rights and obtain just outcomes.”

Separately, the city has so far filed 15 lawsuits against Rosenstein for allegedly failing to make all the payments on the federally backed zero-interest loans he used to renovate his Long Beach properties. If they win, they plan to seize the 15 apartment buildings and auction them off, hoping to recoup a combined $9.6 million in principal and interest. 

As part of the loans, Rosenstein’s companies agreed to annual audits and inspections from the city. It’s unclear what they found or if they were completed. The city declined interview requests and refused to release audit and inspection documents while it’s in litigation with Helpful Housing.

In addition to the Long Beach Housing Authority, much of Rosenstein’s organization was fueled by money it took from Southern California anti-homelessness agencies — about 80%, according to UMI’s statement. During the course of her investigation, Lind obtained records showing millions in payments from nonprofit organizations like Mental Health America of Los Angeles (MHALA) and Interval House. 

MHALA, for example, paid Rosenstein’s entities a combined $3.1 million between 2014 and 2024 for rent, security deposits, repairs and “late housing support,” according to records Lind provided to the Post. (MHALA declined to comment.) Interval House confirmed the records were accurate and acknowledged they paid rent for some tenants through 2019 using government-funded programs like Long Beach Community Action Partnership Home Energy Assistance Program, and First 5, a state program targeting housing for homeless families. 

People Assisting the Homeless (PATH) confirmed it also worked with Rosenstein’s companies for about five years but did not disclose how much it had paid them.

At least some of the money allegedly never went to services supporting low-income residents. 

When tenants moved out, UMI alleged, staff would send agencies bogus work orders for repairs they say were never completed. In one example from November 2021, UMI said, Favela’s Construction & Renovation charged $19,400 for alleged repairs.

Attorney Kimberly Lind and a former Helpful Housing employee alleged this invoice was fraudulent, corresponding to a business address that didn’t exist.

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When MHALA tried to deliver a check, an employee discovered the company’s listed address was actually a senior-living apartment building and confronted Helpful Housing, accusing them of fraud, UMI said.

The scheme also allegedly targeted the residents themselves. 

Julie Curren, who was placed at a Helpful Housing complex on 17th Street in October 2022, told the Post that PATH paid a $5,000 deposit meant for her to keep upon finishing their supportive housing program. “That deposit should have come back to me,” Curren said. 

But when she moved out in October 2024, she was charged $2,200 in damages. When she sued in small claims in December 2024, she said, attorney Bruce Gridley, representing Helpful Housing, first offered a $1,000 settlement. She refused. Then Gridley presented photographs of a messy apartment. 

“None of those pictures were mine,” she said. “The only thing that needed to be done was a quick paint job, and somebody told me somebody moved in like two days after I left, so you can’t tell me that apartment was in disarray.” 

A work order provided to Curren showed the contractor hired to take care of the repairs: Structural Integrity, a Chatsworth-based company owned by Rosenstein. (Gridley, who is also listed as a board member of Helpful Housing, declined to comment for this story.)

Curren said she spent months trying to recover her security deposit, money that she saw as a second chance at life. 

In emails she shared with the Post involving the city housing authority and Helpful Housing, the nonprofit claims it sent the money to the city, though officials claim they never received it. She says she’s weighing a civil suit. But she can’t afford a lawyer. 

“I think I’ve exhausted every effort,” Curren said. “I don’t know what to do.”

Long Beach Post reporter Jacob Sisneros contributed to this report.

Jackie, Big Bear’s late famous bald eagle, was suffering from several severe illnesses that ultimately led to her death in August, wildlife officials announced Wednesday evening.

Jackie had Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, otherwise known as HPAI, that caused a severe ulcer in her stomach, leading to internal bleeding, anemia and sepsis.

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance and the Ojai Raptor Center released the results of Jackies’s necropsy and additional testing. Veterinary pathologists with the wildlife alliance performed the necropsy, and the raptor center led Jackie’s intensive care for weeks.

“The necropsy results have helped connect many of the findings we were seeing throughout the eagle’s hospitalization,” Chris Eksteen, executive director of the Ojai Raptor Center, said in a statement. Eksteen added that caring for her was an “extraordinary privilege” for their entire team.

Friends of Big Bear Valley, the nonprofit behind the popular nest livestream overlooking Big Bear Lake, said on social media that they’re taking some time to process the news.

“Please take care and be kind,” the group told its roughly 1.3 million Facebook followers.

What do we know?

HPAI is an infectious disease that’s been circulating in wild bird populations throughout the country, according to wildlife officials. Jackie may have been exposed by coming into contact with affected birds, such as waterfowl, or by eating infected prey.

HPAI was the main cause of her decline, according to the necropsy details. She had signs of chronic disease in a part of her stomach commonly called the gizzard, which contributed to the severe anemia she was suffering from. She had a serious bacterial infection, as well as severe inflammation and blood clots in her heart and major blood vessels.

Toxicology screenings also showed rodenticide in her liver and “persistent environmental contaminants.” But the rodenticide — brodifacoum — was not named as the primary cause of her illness and death.

The multiple, severe and interconnected illnesses “had been developing over time,” wildlife officials said. The organizations said they have “no evidence that Shadow or the eaglets were sick.”

Jackie’s remains have since been cremated by the National Eagle Repository, which is run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.