The Brief

L.A. city officials say they’ve been complying with a federal court requirement to create 6,000 new beds for unhoused Angelenos.

But there’s a problem.

Court-appointed auditors were not able to verify that the city was actually following through on that commitment.

Officials at the L.A. Homeless Services Authority — who Mayor Karen Bass oversees — failed to provide records to the auditors for any spending on more than 1,400 rental subsidies the city was taking credit for in compliance reports submitted to the court.

“Very concerning” was how the court’s special master, Michele Martinez, put it at the most recent court hearing on March 27.

She was seated next to U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter on the bench, with Bass in the jury box.

“I want you all to keep that in mind if we are not able to verify, you're not going to be able to count those,” Martinez said. If the unverified subsidies are excluded, that would appear to mean the city was falling short of its court-enforced obligations under the agreement.

LAist asked for the spending data the day after that hearing. It took more than a dozen requests over the last month-and-a-half before LAHSA eventually provided LAist on Tuesday with the fuller spending records they had withheld from the court’s auditors.

The records, covering the fiscal year ending in June 2024, show no city role in paying for more than 1,400 of the rental subsidies the city was taking credit for to show compliance. The largest share of rental subsidies the city has been taking credit for were funded not by the city — as required under its court obligations — but by dollars L.A. County directly gave LAHSA, according to the newly-disclosed data.

LAHSA’s data indicates that the city was involved in paying for just 673 to 853 out of the 2,000-plus “scattered site” beds it has been counting toward compliance with the court agreement.

LAist has asked repeatedly for an explanation from city and LAHSA officials for why the city was counting more than 1,400 beds toward its obligations that LAHSA’s accounting shows no city role in funding. None has been provided.

A LAHSA spokesperson previously told LAist that “LAHSA stretches the City’s investment by braiding its money with other funding.”

LAHSA officials also have not answered why the full spending data was withheld from the court’s auditors.

LAHSA spokesperson Paul Rubenstein disputed that anything was withheld, pointing to a partial dataset that LAHSA provided to LAist in mid-April and that court-auditors had flagged as incomplete. He has not responded to repeated questions about why the full accounting was withheld for months from the court-overseen reviewers, and from LAist, until this week.

(Click here to read LAist’s full email exchange with officials since late March seeking the records.)

Bass didn’t respond to requests for comment. LAist had asked whether she has any concerns about the financial data being withheld, and whether the city has been taking credit for subsidies it's not actually funding.

City spending is also overseen by the City Council. During the weeks-long email exchange with LAHSA, LAist copied the spokesperson for Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the council’s housing and homelessness committee. Raman was not immediately available to comment, according to the spokesperson.

And the city lawyer who submitted the compliance reports in question — Deputy City Attorney Arlene N. Hoang — did not respond to requests for comment.

Judge Carter is now demanding answers.

He scheduled a hearing for May 27 to hear evidence on whether the city breached its agreements to create more shelter.

Carter scheduled the hearing response to a filing by the plaintiffs — the downtown business group L.A. Alliance for Human Rights — requesting the judge find the city in violation. They want the court to seize control of city homelessness spending and hand it to a court-appointed receiver to oversee.

“Knowingly or unknowingly, the City was falsely reporting that it paid for and provided all 2,293 beds when it unequivocally did not,” L.A. Alliance attorney Elizabeth Mitchell wrote in a court filing last week requesting the receivership.

Shayla Myers, the lead attorney for unhoused people in the lawsuit, said she’s been raising concerns about the city’s claims about these beds for years.

“The city had an obligation to show they've actually been funding those beds," she said. "The fact that can’t show that calls into question their compliance with court orders."

“The fact that we are now years into the Roadmap agreement and there is still no substantiation of [the city funding] these beds — it undermines the court’s authority,” Myers added.

Who paid for the beds

The court-overseen deal at issue is known as the Roadmap agreement. Signed in the fall of 2020 as part of the L.A. Alliance lawsuit, the agreement requires the city to expand the number of shelter beds for unhoused people in the city of L.A. by adding 6,000 new beds — and paying for them.

The city “is responsible for all costs” for the beds, aside from the annual county payments to the city, according to the agreement.

Every three months, the city has been submitting required reports showing how it claims to be meeting its obligations under the Roadmap agreement.

On the city’s compliance reports, its largest line items are for over 2,000 beds at so-called “scattered sites” under the “Time Limited Subsidies” model or “TLS,” which pays for renting individual units on the private market.

But for the last several months, LAHSA did not provide the court’s auditors with any evidence of spending for most of the TLS beds the city reported for its compliance.

On March 28, LAist requested a breakdown of money spent on 2,293 “scattered site” homes the city claimed to be providing in a compliance report to the court last summer.

Nearly a week went by with no answers. So LAist asked again — seven more times over a two week period, copying Bass and some of her top staff.

LAHSA then provided a spreadsheet — but it didn’t include any of the spending information LAist requested. In fact, it didn’t show any spending information at all.

So LAist asked again.

LAHSA sent a second spreadsheet. But that too failed to show any spending for about 70% of those claimed beds. It showed funding for just 673 of the roughly 2,300 beds.

So LAist asked yet again, noting plans to publish an article on the issue.

On May 12 — a month-and-a-half after LAist started asking — LAHSA officials ultimately provided LAist with the accounting they had not provided the court’s auditors for months.

The records show city involvement in funding 853 of the beds. The rest were paid for by the county through Measure H funds and state grants to LAHSA meant for countywide services.

Measure H is a dedicated county funding stream that predated the court case, and had to be spent on homeless shelter and services regardless of the Roadmap agreement. There is no indication that the city had any role in arranging for this portion of the spending, despite taking credit for it in compliance reports submitted to the court.

A $1.7 million discrepancy

There’s also a $1.7 million discrepancy in the data LAHSA provided LAist — translating to 180 housing units claimed to be funded by the city.

The data LAHSA provided on April 15 showed $14.3 million in city spending on the scattered sites last fiscal year — all from state grants to the city.

But follow-up data LAHSA provided three weeks later showed the city spent $16 million on the same program across the same timeframe.

LAHSA officials, under CEO Va Lecia Adams Kellum, did not acknowledge the retroactive change when they sent the second dataset.

The retroactive funding jump also means an increase in the number of housing units LAHSA claimed the city was funding last fiscal year under the Roadmap agreement — from 673 scattered sites to 853.

In response to questions from LAist, Rubenstein, a LAHSA spokesperson, said the April 15 spreadsheet did not include two projects totaling $1.7 million the city was paying for using grant money from the state.

Judge plans to hold hearing on whether agreement was breached

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit noticed the discrepancies in the city’s spending claims and are asking the court to intervene.

“The real-world equivalent would be if two people decided to pay for 10 pizzas for a total of $100. Person A paid $30 and Person B paid $70; combined they achieved a total purchase of 10 pizzas. But under no interpretation of the event could Person A claim to have purchased and provided all 10 pizzas," Mitchell, the L.A. Alliance attorney, wrote in a court filing submitted last week.

It was “even more shocking” that LAHSA continued to fail to show any expenditures for about 1,600 of those beds, Mitchell wrote.

While the court-overseen audit only looked at the 2024 fiscal year, she added, “these scattered sites have been reported back to at least to July 2021 and continue to today.

“It is reasonable to assume that this same financial mismanagement and mis-accounting has occurred since the inception of the Roadmap Agreement and funding of the Scattered Site beds.”

The city responded in a written court filing to say it’s improper for the Alliance to seek an evidence-gathering hearing about whether the city violated the Roadmap agreement because the Alliance isn’t a party to the agreement.

Carter scheduled the May 27 hearing to discuss whether the city broke its promise to pay for the new beds. In the meantime, Carter has a separate hearing scheduled for Thursday to discuss what the auditors found.

He issued two orders requesting attendance at Thursday’s hearing from Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom, as well as other elected officials.

Hoang, the attorney for the city, informed Carter this week that Bass will not attend. Hoang wrote that it’s procedurally improper because lower-level officials can testify.

The wood crates are lined up on folding tables in a church parking lot in San Fernando. Each crate is filled with russet potatoes, knobby purple and orange carrots, plump garlic, red apples and more. It's produce from the Santa Ynes Valley in Santa Barbara County that could easily be found in farmers' markets in upscale neighborhoods.

But here, it’s free.

“ I wanted to find a way to distribute food to people that was done with dignity,” said Lindsay Chambers, president of non-profit Together We Thrive

The crates, the quality of the produce, much of it organic, and other details intentionally blur the line between farmers' market and food bank. Before starting these, Chambers volunteered at eight food banks across the nation to a get a sense of how they work. When she saw how much people love farmers’ markets, she decided she'd make her new food bank look like one.

Together We Thrive buys produce to give away from small farms in Southern California.

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“Instead of just receiving a free handout, they're coming in person and they get to select. It looks like a regular farmers' market,” Chambers said.

She opened her first Together We Thrive food bank in Canoga Park in January 2025. The L.A. fires led her to start another in Pasadena. Then this one in San Fernando.

The concept is straightforward: the organization buys fruits and vegetables from California small farms. They bring them by electric trucks to the weekly giveaways staffed by paid staff and volunteers.

Lindsay Chambers, right, founded Together We Thrive to provide free produce at L.A. area food banks.

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Chambers said they serve about 300 people weekly at this San Fernando location, more in Pasadena. As the cost of living has squeezed many people, hundreds of food banks have sprouted across Southern California. This one has built a loyal following in part through their approach.

Very helpful

The San Fernando food bank sets up at Latin American Church of the Nazarene. People bring their own reusable bags or get a paper bag. The free food is welcomed by many.

“I have a 94 year-old father, and with finances the way they are, this is very, very helpful. Then I come for my other coworker for her elderly parents as well,” said Katherine Balarezo, a high school special education assistant who lives in nearby North Hollywood.

Katherine Balazero has visited the Together We Thrive food bank about 15 times.

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While other food banks offer pre-selected boxes or bags filled with dry food, or may require registration of some kind, that's not what happens here. People can just walk up and choose their own produce.

 ”It's not canned stuff. This is fresh vegetables so you can do a lot and the shelf life is longer,” Balarezo saying it's good for people like her who like to cook their own, healthy meals.

Patrons of various ages and backgrounds

On this day, at this location, people who came represented various races, ethnicities, and ages. Some said their pocketbooks are tight, others said they were doing OK.

“I'm currently a college student, so I'm trying to save as much cash as I can so I can pay for my books and my tuition every semester,” said Allam Reyes, who lives about five minutes away.

He’s going to juice the carrots and may cook the potatoes in the air fryer. He said this bag of produce would cost him about $20-$25 at the supermarket. His roommates may like what he makes.

“If I can share it, then I'll share it, but if not, I'm going to make it for myself,” Reyes said.

Allam Reyes visits the Together We Thrive food bank in San Fernando.

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Chambers, the founder of this food bank says this multiplying effect, that the food given away here to one person goes on to serve more, is one of the things that drives the organization to keep on giving. Together We Thrive plans to open a similar food bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.

A self-proclaimed pet psychic is in L.A. for a national tour of pop-up readings, with a few sold-out days of connecting with pets in Pasadena and Highland Park this week.

Tucked away at the back of Doggee Club pet shop on Raymond Avenue, pet psychic Cynthia Okimoto was posted up at a table. There was no crystal ball, just a small sign that read: "Pet Psychic Readings: $35."

Dogs, cats... and snakes too 

Jason Mendieta and Cristina Becerra sat for a reading with their small poodle, Bishon.

“He says he’s a social guy, he’s popular and he’s hoping to have more followers on Instagram. Does he have an Instagram account?” Okimoto said in a very matter-of-fact way.

“He doesn’t. He has almost no social media presence,” Becerra replied.

“Well that’s gotta change soon,” Okimoto said.

It was on a spiritual retreat in Siberia where Okimoto said she was told by some high priestesses that she had the gift of animal communication.

Flash forward years later and she’s traveled across the United States and even to Japan and Korea to help people connect with their pets. After Los Angeles, her tour includes stops in Vegas and Houston, before wrapping back to Orange County and San Diego.

Brenda Teng, owner of the Doggee Club, said she took her time to get to know Okimoto before inviting her for this psychic pop-up. She even did a reading with her own dog.

“She’s so amazing and the things that she can be so specific about your dog is spot on,” Teng said. “Then I was like, no brainer, let’s bring you in, it would be such a gift for our community.”

Okimoto said she’s not here to convince anyone or sell products. Some of her own friends don’t believe in what she's doing and she said that’s OK with her.

And to people who say this is just snake oil: she reads reptiles too.

“I did connect with a snake that had run away,” Okimoto recalled. “And I knew that it was in the person’s home hiding under the mattress, because I could see that there was a rip in the mattress lining and I could see what the roommate’s bedroom looked like. And I’m like, ‘I know he’s in there. I just don’t know how to get him to come out...' I don’t talk to too many snakes. So that was surprising."

Levity aside, Becerra and Mendieta seemed genuinely pleased with Bishon the poodle’s reading. They had suspected he always wanted to be a show dog. With Okimoto’s help, now they feel like they know for sure.

“It’s always nice to hear that I’ve shed some light on a pet’s health and happiness,” Okimoto said.

It was the end of an era for a sign of the times.

On a rainy March day in 1999, a 70-foot billboard perched at the doorstep of the Sunset Strip was taken down and trucked away. That spot on Sunset Boulevard and Marmont Lane had long been the home of the rough-hewn, lasso-toting Marlboro Man — so much a fixture it became part of the glitz and glam of L.A.

"It was such an iconic ad — such a tall billboard with this very handsome image up there," said John Heilman, current and then-mayor of West Hollywood. "Right there by the Chateau Marmont and near a lot of music venues that we have up on Sunset."

Billboards along the Sunset Strip, including one for Marlboro, in December 1985.

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That's how I came to know about these larger-than-life Marlboro billboards, going to the Roxy and the Whiskey to see shows, and to the Sunset Tower Records for music in the 1990s. I didn't know it at the time, the image apparently changed every couple of years, but the vibe was so consistent it felt like one, long seamless spell.

 "When you came in on Sunset, that is what you saw," said Neil Ford, head of sales for central U.S. and the West Coast at Big Happy, a digital and mobile ad agency based in Chicago. "It really captured what out-of-home [advertisement] was at that moment, what it meant."

The Marlboro billboard on Sunset Boulevard.

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Ford said the campaign was groundbreaking — advertising at its most effective.

"You think about that image of the Marlboro Man. It was a different size, it had presence and it captured your attention," Ford said.

It was a gamechanger for Philip Morris. Sales for Marlboro hit $5 million in 1955, a more than 3,000%  increase a year after its debut.

In other words, it attracted more smokers.

 "It was obvious that the image of the rugged Marlboro Man encouraged generations of men to smoke," said Paul Koretz, a former West Hollywood council member who was at the sign on that March day to celebrate its fall.

The total pivot

Hypermasculinity aside, Marlboro was originally marketed to women as a luxury brand peddling a mild flavor when it was introduced in the 1920s.

The pivot came three decades later, when the company was looking for a way to sell men on filtered cigarettes, long considered effeminate and less flavorful.

Enter Chicago ad man Leo Burnett, who engineered what many consider one of the greatest brand reinventions of all time by creating a new series of mascots — not just butch cowboys, but tough-as-nail sailors, hunters, businessmen, sportsmen, writers.

At the end, the cowboy won out, becoming the brand's reigning Marlboro Man.

" They brought this masculine symbol — image, visual — and really re-created what Marlboro as a brand meant," Ford said. "And it just was one image, there was very little copy. It had the logo on it. It was its own creation at the time."

The campaign propelled Marlboro to the top of the domestic industry by the 1970s, even as the toll on public health from the use of tobacco products racked up.

The Centers for Disease Control estimates that some 480,000 people in the U.S. die every year from cigarette smoking, including exposure to second-hand smoke. At least four actors who portrayed Marlboro Man died from smoking-related diseases.

In 1971, the U.S. banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. Brands then shifted to other mediums, in particular billboards.

The Sunset Strip

A street view looking west from the northern side of Sunset Boulevard near Chateau Marmont at night. In the background is the billboard for Marlboro.

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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The 1.7-mile stretch of Sunset Strip in West Hollywood has never been a stranger to grabby billboards. In fact, it was where the medium became art.

"It's always been known for very creative advertising," Heilman, West Hollywood’s mayor, said.

Its golden era was arguably the 1970s, when giant, hand-painted rock ‘n’ roll signs lined the Strip, a veritable checklist of who’s who in the music world.

Various billboards on the Sunset Strip and Horn Avenue during a full moon in June 1980.

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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The phenomenon started in 1967, with Elektra Records taking out a billboard to promote the debut album of a little-known local band called The Doors.

Two years later, The Beatles’ "Abbey Road" appeared, followed by Led Zeppelin, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen.

The era came to a close in the 1980s with the advent of MTV, which changed the playbook of music marketing, says photographer Robert Landau in his book, Rock 'n' Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip.

"Other types of billboards focusing on the entertainment industry were very popular," Heilman said. "A lot of the new movie releases, new album releases, new product releases."

And the Marlboro Man stood amid this hit parade in one of the most commanding spots on The Strip since at least the late 1970s.

"As I recall, at one point they actually had steam coming out of it to simulate smoke," said Heilman, who has lived in West Hollywood for more than four decades.

Night view of large billboards along Sunset Strip circa 1980.

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Roy Hankey

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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Billboard ads along Sunset Strip in November 1985.

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Paul Chinn

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Los Angeles Herald Examiner Photo Collection / LAPL

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The billboard predates the incorporation of West Hollywood as a city in 1984. Helping to lead the cityhood efforts was Koretz, who went on to become a City Council member for West Hollywood before serving on the state Assembly and the Los Angeles City Council.

"I actually lived near the Sunset Strip, so I thought about it every time I drove by," he said of the Marlboro Man ad. "It was one of the most effective symbols of tobacco marketing."

Both his parents, Koretz said, were heavy lifelong smokers who died from the addiction.  As a lawmaker, Koretz led a number of anti-smoking efforts, including a smoking ban in restaurants in West Hollywood — as well as a near total ban on tobacco advertising in the city.

Large billboard of the Marlboro Man, located on the Sunset Strip at Marmont Lane in West Hollywood, circa 1985.

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Carol Westwood

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Los Angeles Photographers Photo Collection / LAPL

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That ban was passed in the final months of 1998, just before a settlement agreement between the nation's biggest tobacco companies, including Philip Morris, and dozens of state attorneys general. The $206 billion deal settled lawsuits filed by the states to recoup health care costs for smoking-related illnesses. It also banned youth marketing, as well as outdoor advertising.

As a result, Los Angeles's most famous Marlboro Man stepped down on March 10, 1999 — about a month before the official removal deadline.

That day, Koretz held a news conference to send the sign off. He said not everyone was happy to see the landmark go. But the ban, among a slew of other anti-smoking policies, have made an impact.

Last year, the American Cancer Society reported cigarette smoking among U.S. adults dropped from  42% in 1965 to 11% in 2023.

" It was always controversial. There are always people that didn't like it," Koretz said of the billboard ban. "This is largely a success story."

Shortly after, a new billboard went up in the place of the Marlboro Man on Sunset.

It was still a cowboy, looking eerily similar to its fallen predecessor, but with a limp cigarette hanging from his mouth.

Instead of Marlboro, it read, "Impotent."

NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen were ensconced in the Orion space capsule when they dropped into the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego at 8:07 p.m. Friday. The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone to help recover the crew.

The USS John P. Murtha is stationed near the splashdown zone and will help recover the crew. A team will head out to the floating capsule and install an inflatable raft just below Orion's side hatch. The crew will be examined by a flight surgeon, then helped out of the capsule. From the transport ship, they will hitch a ride back to Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Risk of reentry

There's always risk when returning from space. Glover said that he has been thinking about this portion of the mission since he was selected for it back in 2023, and he's been looking forward to it ever since.

"We have to get back," he said from the Orion capsule Wednesday. "There's so much data that you've seen already, but all the good stuff is coming back with us. There's so many more pictures, so many more stories, and, gosh, I haven't even begun to process what we've been through."

To get back, the capsule must hit the atmosphere at a precise angle.

"Let's not beat around the bush," said Jeff Radigan, Artemis II's lead flight director. "We have to hit that angle correctly. Otherwise, we're not going to have a successful reentry."

All eyes will be on the heat shield — this is the piece of hardware beneath the capsule that protects the crew from the extreme temperatures during reentry. NASA tested it out on Artemis I, the previous, uncrewed mission, and found that the heat shield wasn't performing as designed.

NASA mission planners and the Artemis II team worked on a way to mitigate that risk. Instead of "skipping" through the atmosphere like Artemis I, this mission would hit the atmosphere steeper and faster, limiting the time the spacecraft spends in those fiery, energetic moments of reentry.

"It's 13 minutes of things that have to go right," said Radigan. "I have a whole checklist in my head that we're going through of all the things that have to happen."

Mission success

The Artemis II mission is a key flight test for Orion, and thus far, mission managers have been pleased with the results. The spacecraft has taken humans farther from Earth than they've ever been, breaking a record set by Apollo 13 astronauts in 1970.

The crew tested the manual control of the spacecraft, which will be needed for future missions that will dock with a lunar landing system. The mission tested the spacecraft's life support systems and ability to keep four astronauts comfortable within the confined space.

Artemis II returned humans to the moon for the first time since the Apollo program over 50 years ago. And while some astronauts back then did see the far side of the moon, the Artemis II crew was able to observe it from a vantage point never before seen by humans. Their images and geological notes will help better determine what the moon is made of and where it came from.

While some of the astronauts' observations may help scientists understand the distant past, others will help mission managers better plan for the future. Case in point: The crew tested out the very first toilet to go to the moon, and it quickly ran into issues during flight. Multiple times during the trip, the crew had to use manual urinals instead. The issue, NASA said, was not with the toilet itself, but the system that dumps the urine overboard when it gets full.

The Orion capsule will return to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after the mission, where engineers will examine the spacecraft after its flight, including a closer look at the spacecraft's plumbing. The team will be picking apart the spacecraft to see how it performed — and make any necessary changes ahead of the next mission, Artemis III, set to launch next year.