The Brief

One of L.A.’s biggest homeless service providers has been awarded over $100 million in taxpayer funds while failing to comply with federal audit mandates, according to an LAist review of federal government records.

The downtown L.A.-based nonprofit Weingart Center is at the heart of a controversial property purchase under federal investigation and discussed in a recent criminal indictment of the developer who sold the property.

LAist found Weingart Center also has been continuously out of compliance with federal deadlines to turn in audits — known as “single audits” — since early 2022, based on a review of records in the federal database where they have to be uploaded.

The audits for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 were each finished a year and a half after the federal deadlines, according to the dates on those reviews. The audits show multiple failures by Weingart Center to properly account for taxpayer money that were not remedied from one year to the next.

The group still has not filed an audit that was due nine months ago for its fiscal year ending in April 2024, according to the federal database and L.A.’s regional homeless services agency.

Consequences for failing to turn in a single audit by the deadline can be significant. Federal agencies can cut off any further funds to groups that are overdue, and L.A.’s homeless services agency can do the same, according to a contract with Weingart Center.

Weingart Center has received over $100 million in taxpayer funds while it’s been out of compliance with turning in the audits, according to its latest public tax filing and an LAist review of the audits.

Among the funds the group received while out of compliance is a $9 million no-bid contract L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’ office directed officials to award Weingart Center in 2023 to run the largest shelter site in her signature homelessness program.

A Weingart Center audit also was overdue when the mayor and state officials greenlit the group’s taxpayer-funded purchase of a senior living facility in Cheviot Hills. Federal prosecutors earlier this month announced charges against the man who sold the property to Weingart Center.

Former state Sen. Kevin Murray, who has been Weingart Center’s president and CEO since 2011, has not returned LAist’s messages seeking comment.

Murray and Weingart Center’s chief of real estate development, Ben Rosen, have been placed on leave, according to the L.A. Times. Rosen also has not responded to LAist’s request for comment.

The nonprofit’s board has commissioned an outside investigation into the valuation of housing projects, Weingart Center spokesperson Stefan Friedman told LAist. He did not respond to questions about the audit failures.

Murray previously served in the state Legislature with Bass, who has not responded to a request for comment for this story.

Murray is an attorney and a licensed real estate broker. In addition to leading Weingart Center, he also has a local government role overseeing homelessness spending in the region.

Bass appointed him to the board that oversees hundreds of millions a year in government spending on housing and other programs from the Measure A tax approved by L.A. County voters last year.

The spending panel — known as LACAHSA — oversees just over a third of the roughly $1 billion expected to be generated each year from Measure A. Its job is to create new affordable homes, preserve existing lower-rent housing and prevent people from losing the housing they already have.

This September, Bass also nominated Rosen — the Weignart Center real estate chief — to the spending board as an alternative city appointee to step in when Murray can’t attend. She withdrew that nomination a few days after federal authorities announced their investigation into the property flip.

‘Disappointed’ it wasn’t caught sooner

A large share of the federal money Weingart Center received was distributed by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, a joint city-county agency known as LAHSA.

LAHSA’s contract requirements say its vendors, like Weingart Center, have to comply with the single audit requirements in federal law. Those requirements say organizations that receive a certain amount of federal money — such as Weingart Center — have to submit the audits within nine months after their fiscal year ends.

Single audits are “the single most important way” to assess an organization’s ability to manage federal dollars, federal officials say.

Among other things, they check whether a group has an accounting system to accurately document the spending.

Weingart Center was long overdue turning in two annual audits for 2023 and 2024 to LAHSA when LAist contacted LAHSA on Oct. 23.

Weingart Center has since submitted its 2023 audit to LAHSA, but the 2024 audit remains overdue.

“We are currently evaluating options regarding next steps,” LAHSA spokesperson Ahmad Chapman told LAist on Nov. 20.

LAHSA’s new interim CEO, Gita O’Neill, told LAist she’s “disappointed” the homeless services authority didn’t catch Weingart Center’s late audits earlier and that she’s been working to beef up oversight of contractors.

O’Neill said LAHSA sent a notice of non-compliance to Weingart Center about the overdue audit and is reviewing the late-submitted audits to see “if additional action is needed.”

At the October meeting of LAHSA’s governing commission, O’Neill shared a plan to improve the agency’s oversight of contracts, which she told LAist will strengthen oversight over issues like single audits. O’Neill, who started at LAHSA in late August, said the reorganization plan would roll out publicly in a few weeks later.

“Every member of this reorganized team will receive training for their new role so we can more effectively hold our [service] providers to the standards we set for them,” O’Neill said. “This is an important step toward holding ourselves and our providers more accountable.”

What state officials say

Aside from LAHSA, the other major agency awarding federal dollars to Weingart Center is the state’s Department of Housing & Community Development, or HCD.

Records show HCD awarded tens of millions of dollars in federally funded grants to Weingart Center under the state’s Homekey program while the group has been out of compliance with turning in the audits.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for HCD said Weingart Center was not out of compliance with its award-granting process, which the agency called “very thorough.”

HCD’s agreement with Weingart Center for a 2024 grant says the nonprofit is responsible for complying with the single audit requirements.

The HCD spokesperson said the state housing agency is not responsible for reviewing the federal audits. Instead, the spokesperson said the audits are received and reviewed by the state controller’s office, which then identifies issues and discusses them with HCD.

The controller’s office told LAist it did not receive single audits from Weingart Center or any other nonprofit.

Problems found in latest available audit

The most recent available single audit of Weingart Center, covering fiscal year 2023, was not completed until July 2025, a year and a half after it was due.

That audit report, which LAist obtained from LAHSA, said Weingart Center followed the most important requirements for nonprofits receiving federal funds but also found a range of accounting failures.

The problems identified by auditors included:

• Weingart Center did not include over $50 million in federally funded grants, via HCD’s Homekey program, on the list of federal dollars it handled. The review also found Weingart Center failed to have its financial records checked for accuracy by someone who didn’t prepare them, auditors wrote. 
• Weingart Center did not have an accounting team with enough experience or size to handle housing developments, the review found — despite the problem being flagged in the prior year’s audit. This was one of six problems identified in the previous year's audit that the 2023 audit showed as ongoing.
• Other repeat issues flagged by the audit include Weingart Center failing to properly document money coming into the organization, management failing to catch errors in how it was accounting for money and failing to document how it picked vendors — including the general contractor for a Homekey housing project.

The Weingart Shelby purchase

Weingart Center has been the focus of recent controversy over its use of $27 million in taxpayer funds to buy a senior housing complex from an investor who had just purchased it for less than half that price.

As Weingart Center’s leader, Murray signed key documents in the purchase of the property on Shelby Drive in Cheviot Hills, according to contract records produced by the city in response to LAist public records requests. The documents he signed include a purchase agreement in which he agreed to have Weingart Center keep the seller’s name confidential forever from the news media and general public, with narrow exceptions.

That purchase now is the focus of a federal investigation and was referenced in an October indictment of the man who sold the property to Weingart Center. It was funded by the state’s Homekey program and the city of L.A.

Murray previously told the L.A. Times he had “no prior relationship with the seller and no continuing relationship” and that taxpayers paid fair market price. He has not returned LAist’s messages seeking comment on the property deal.

LAist also has been investigating the sale of the Shelby property and found numerous discrepancies. They include an appraisal report Murray commissioned and submitted for taxpayer funding that showed false information about the purchase deal and the property’s ownership.

[Click here to read LAist’s article exploring the property flip, published today.]

Price concerns about another Murray-led project under same state grant program

The Shelby purchase is not the only Weingart Center property deal that has faced scrutiny.

This summer, city leaders in Torrance publicly alleged the group may have been massively overpaying for a hotel property under a new round of taxpayer-funded Homekey grants. For that site, Weingart Center had teamed up with L.A. County to apply for the grant.

It was one of several criticisms Torrance officials cited in urging the county not to proceed. Ultimately, the project was canceled.

Records show Murray had signed a purchase agreement for Weingart Center to buy the Torrance hotel for $30 million in taxpayer funds. An appraisal he later commissioned found its fair market value was close to the amount he agreed to.

But an appraisal commissioned by Torrance estimated it was worth just $10 million — a third of what Weingart had agreed to pay with taxpayer dollars.

Property valuations are being reviewed by the outside law firm hired by Weingart Center’s board, according to the nonprofit’s spokesperson.

Officials at the county government’s housing agency, known as LACDA, say the appraisal Weingart Center submitted for the Torrance purchase “was conducted by a reputable appraisal company and did not raise concerns.”

Torrance officials, meanwhile, said they had “serious concerns” about how much taxpayers would be paying.

City leaders sent a letter urging the state to reject the grant application.

“This purchase price appears significantly inflated and represents a potential misuse of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said he was blindsided by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposal Thursday to curtail the superintendent’s duties and he disagrees with it, although it’s unclear what he can do to stop it.

“Tony Thurmond is proud and grateful to work with Gov. Newsom. They’re both champions of public education,” said Elizabeth Sanders, spokeswoman for the California Department of Education, which Thurmond heads. Sanders was speaking on behalf of the superintendent.

“Unfortunately, on this particular issue they are not aligned.”

In his State of the State address on Thursday, Newsom proposed shifting oversight of the Department of Education, a 2,000-employee state agency, from the superintendent to the State Board of Education. The move would concentrate more power over K-12 schools with the governor, who appoints the school board.

The superintendent would remain an elected position, but with diminished and less defined duties.

Referencing a December report from Policy Analysis for California Education, Newsom’s aim is to simplify California’s convoluted system of K-12 school governance. Currently, education leadership comes from the governor, the Legislature, the State Board of Education, the superintendent and the Department of Education — who may or may not have the same vision for how to best run schools and teach children. At the local level, school boards and county offices of education also have a good deal of power over budgets and day-to-day school operations.

The result of the many-headed leadership structure is that schools often don’t know which policies to follow, according to the PACE report. Guidelines can be contradictory, redundant or just plain incoherent, researchers found.

A slew of education advocacy groups have supported Newsom’s proposal, saying it will clarify a system that’s been confusing and inefficient for a century. California is one of only a handful of states with such an education governance model.

‘Unnecessary disruption’

Thurmond’s staff had a few hints that an announcement might be forthcoming, but otherwise was caught off guard by Newsom’s proposal, Sanders said. They also hadn’t talked to PACE researchers about their report, although PACE staff said they reached out to the department prior to the report's publication.

Thurmond questions the point of the change, Sanders said.

“It’s unclear how this would benefit students and families,” Sanders said. “It’s an unnecessary disruption. … We should be staying focused on creating results for students.”

If the governor really wanted to help schools, he should pour more money into K-12 education. The Department of Education has been underfunded for years, she noted, and schools could use more funds for initiatives like tutoring and mandatory kindergarten.

John Affeldt, managing attorney at Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm focused on education, also questioned the value of Newsom’s proposal. It would take power away from the voters and give it to the governor, which might be great if the governor supports public education but may backfire if a governor doesn’t, he said.

“It might improve the governance structure a bit, but I’m not sure it’s worth the tradeoff,” Affeldt said. “It might be a lot of political theater for not much real change.”

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

Gov. Gavin Newsom painted a rosy picture of California’s fiscal future during his State of the State address Thursday. Flashing top-line numbers, the Democratic governor touted billions of dollars more in revenue, proposed new investments in education and pledged more toward the state’s reserves and pension debt.

But that was a one-sided story.

It’s not clear whether Newsom will forecast a budget deficit for the 2026-27 fiscal year, how big it will be and whether closing the gap would require painful spending cuts to core services like child care, food assistance and Medi-Cal, the state’s health care coverage for low-income residents, especially as federal funding diminishes.

Yet Newsom will be absent from his last annual budget proposal presentation Friday, when details of his spending plan will be unveiled, leaving his Department of Finance Director Joe Stephenshaw and Chief Deputy Director of Budgets Erika Li to field those questions.

Newsom’s forecast will likely be far sunnier than the grim outlook by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office, which in November projected an $18 billion deficit despite higher-than-expected tax revenue thanks to a booming AI industry. A shortfall of that size would require long-term fixes, although state leaders had relied on Band-Aids such as accounting maneuvers, internal borrowing and withdrawals from the state’s reserves to balance the books in past years.

But according to Newsom, California will have a $248.3 billion general fund next year — $13 billion higher than his office predicted in June.

Newsom also touted Thursday that the state would have $42.3 billion more in revenue than forecast last year. But that figure is for a three-year span, state Department of Finance spokesperson H.D. Palmer told CalMatters.

The omission of the cumulative nature of the $42 billion makes Newsom’s speech “troubling,” said Sen. Roger Niello, a Roseville Republican and vice chair of the Senate Budget Committee.

“That would be an intentional misrepresentation of the fact,” he said.

Nonetheless, Newsom teased multiple new proposals with unknown price tags or timelines, such as fully funding the state’s universal transitional kindergarten program and providing universal before and after-school programs at elementary schools. He also proposed spending $1 billion to add high-need community schools and redirecting $1 billion in Proposition 1 mental health funds annually for housing and homelessness.

The governor briefly nodded to “long-term structural challenges,” proposing a $7.3 billion deposit to the reserve fund, roughly the amount the state withdrew last year, whichwould bring the rainy day fund balance to roughly $21 billion. He also proposed to spend $11.8 billion over the next few years to pay down the state’s pension debt, including $3 billion in next year’s budget.

Some Democratic lawmakers struck a cautious tone while largely blaming President Donald Trump for withholding funds from Californians in need.

“California will not be able to fill the holes that have been left by the federal government,” said newly elected Senate President Pro Tem Monique Limón, a Santa Barbara Democrat. “We have to go back and look (at) what is feasible.”

Sen. John Laird, a Santa Cruz Democrat and the new chair of the Senate Budget Committee, warned that the high revenue projection indicates a bubble. Laird, who was elected to the state Assembly in 2002 after the 2000 dot-com bubble burst, said he’s concerned the AI-driven boom may not last.

“I think everybody agrees that this level of revenue can’t be maintained, but how big is the bubble? That’s probably the question,” he told CalMatters.

The Legislature must start chipping away at the long-term structural deficit this year instead of punting the problem, he said.

“We’re gonna have to do a piece of it,” he said. “We can’t go into next year with a $30 or $37 billion shortfall, because the reserves amount doesn’t get anywhere near that.”

Continued fight over homelessness funding

Newsom has tussled with counties over homelessness funding for years as political pressure to resolve the state’s homeless crisis continues to mount. Newsom has blamed counties for failing to deliver results despite his $24 billion investment over the years. Only a portion of the funding goes to county agencies and there is no dedicated annual funding to fight homelessness.

On Thursday, Newsom again bashed counties for the problem while attributing a drop in unsheltered homeless people last year to his statewide programs. In the same breath, he also proposed to redirect “$1 billion in annual mental health funding to housing and treatment for people living on the streets” under Proposition 1, a voter-approved bond primarily for mental health beds and supportive housing.

“No more excuses — it’s time to bring people off the streets, out of encampments, into housing, into treatment. Counties need to do their job!” Newsom said, drawing applause from legislators.

It wasn’t immediately clear how he plans to allocate those dollars. He did not mention any funding for the Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention program, the state’s main homelessness funding source.

The California State Association of Counties, which represents all 58 counties and has lobbied for an annual allocation of $1 billion in HHAP funding, was displeased.

“Playing a shell game with existing funds is no substitute for the most successful program addressing homelessness at the local level,” said association CEO Graham Knaus. “Why on Earth would the state abdicate its responsibility and allow homelessness to soar again?”

Newsom’s plan also startled county behavioral health service providers, who rely on Prop. 1 dollars for services.

“While these one-time bricks and mortar investments are promising, the $1 billion in funding for ongoing housing subsidies under Proposition 1 comes at the expense of redirected mental health treatment and prevention programs,” said Michelle Doty Cabrera, executive director of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association.

No mention of Medi-Cal

Newsom also gave next to no detail on the outlook for Medi-Cal — the state’s most expensive program with a $200 billion budget and therefore an attractive target for potential cuts. He didn’t even name the program in his speech.

The governor slammed Trump for passing a federal budget that could kick 1.8 million Californians off their insurance and raise the premiums for another 2 million. The state would have to spend at least $1.3 billion more than previously expected next year just to implement the federal law, the LAO previously estimated.

Assemblymember Mia Bonta, an Oakland Democrat who chairs the Assembly Health Committee, said the state must “use the bully pulpit” to fight the federal government, find ways to lower costs or even revive indigent care, a form of last-resort care that has largely become obsolete due to Medi-Cal.

“Because the alternative is, people are going to be dying on the streets,” Bonta said.

Bonta said the Legislature should explore new funding sources. Some advocates are already pushing for a pair of proposed wealth tax ballot measures to fund health care and education, which Newsom opposes.

“We need to think about ways that we can increase our revenue sources … (with) openness around looking at our tax structure,” Bonta said, adding that there are ways “to make sure that everybody’s carrying their fair share.”

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

A year out from the Palisades Fire of January 2025, life’s not fully back to normal — and especially not without some of our favorite restaurants.

But some are open, catering in a different form, or have reached some closure.

Here’s a list of affected restaurants that are open (and would love your support), those still rebuilding and some that remain closed.

Reopened

Gladstones 

Open, outdoor seating only

17300 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades

Gladstones is still serving its staple seafood — but only outside, under the stars and very warm heaters. The restaurant isn’t taking reservations now, so you can walk in anytime between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Gladstone’s is still renovating its insides from the damage from the fire and flooding that followed.

Rosenthal Wine and Bar Patio

A patio at Rosenthal Wine's new location.

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Courtesy of Rosenthal Wine

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Open in a new location, limited hours
Kanan Dume Road and W. Newton Canyon Road, Malibu, 90265

Rosenthal Wine Bar and Patio is open at a new location on Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. Open since mid-August, they’ve been putting on events, comedy shows and concerts. They are also open to groups and parties to rent out any day of the week, and Mark Applebaum, Rosenthal marketing director, hopes that they can return to seven days a week in the new year.

Tramonto 

Catering and delivery services

Tramonto has turned to catering and delivery services from a kitchen in Santa Monica. They had served Italian food in Malibu for 10 years.

“We love Malibu, and it’s not like being in Malibu,” said owner Wilfredo Posadas.

But now those in the Malibu community and beyond can try their pasta from the comfort of their own home or at a catering event.

Duke’s 

Duke's signature sculpture of Hawaiian surfer Duke Kahanamoku, covered in debris and mud.

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Jimmy Chavez

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Duke's Malibu

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Open for private events
Grand reopening expected in February
21150 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu

Duke’s hopes to have its grand reopening in February. A planned partial reopening was delayed because of construction.

“You open one can of worms, and there’s three cans underneath it,” said Jimmy Chavez, Duke’s general manager who has been handling the remediation process.

However, Duke’s has been open for private events in their Ocean Room, which has gotten the community together and supported many core staff members. Regulars can expect to see nearly a brand new restaurant after a year of construction, but hopefully, some familiar faces as well.

Palisades Garden Cafe

Open
15231 La Cruz Drive, Pacific Palisades

The Garden Cafe has been open since March. While it may no longer be the easy stop after tennis lessons, it still serves its breakfast all day and wagyu burgers.

Prima Cantina

Open 

15246 W. Sunset Blvd., Pacific Palisades

Prima Cantina has been open since July, available for sit-down eating as well. It’s one of three restaurants open in the area right now, alongside the Garden Cafe and Chipotle across the street.

Closed

Moonshadows

The site where Moonshadows was in Malibu, seen in January 2025.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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Permanently closed

Moonshadows closed after nearly 40 years of serving Malibu. However, you can still find traces of their fine dining at sister restaurants the Sunset and Ca Del Sole, which are owned by the same people. If you yearn for the pumpkin tortellini or the spicy ahi tuna tartare, the Sunset is able to satisfy that craving.

Reel Inn and Cholada Thai

Closed

Reel Inn and Cholada Thai remain closed. The two faced licensing issues from the state, which according to ABC news, sent them a letter earlier this year terminating their lease.

Casa Nostra

Closed, may reopen 

Casa Nostra has not started rebuilding yet. They are a long way from a decision on that, said a manager at the Westlake location. They haven’t ruled it out, but for now, they are focusing on their Westlake location.

The destruction of last year’s January fires was devastating. Not just in how they leveled more than 16,000 structures and took at least 31 lives, but also how they stripped bare landscapes that many Southern Californians had become familiar with and had found solace visiting for decades. Hillsides that we’d long seen covered in dense green chaparral and coastal sage scrub were turned to ash, with the charred carcasses of native plants left behind.

However, nature moves fast, especially when there are large patches of open soil, sunlight and water to feed recovery. And recovery is what we're starting to see — both in good and bad ways.

“Recovery begins in the first growing season,” said Jon Keeley, research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

On recent trips to the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains, where the Palisades and Eaton fires burned a year ago, the signs are sprouting.

Manzanitas and oaks are regrowing from the bases of large plants that burned. Smaller, fast-growing showy pentstemon, hairy yerba santa and the pustule-causing poodle-dog bush are thriving now that competition has been removed.

But so are invasive plants like wild oats, bromes and mustard, which account for some of the green up.

What's growing?

A year after the fires, here are the plants you can see in the Eaton and Palisades burn scars.

Invasive Spanish brome growing in the Eaton Fire burn scar in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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A year after the Eaton Fire, new growth is sprouting from the base of badly burned plants.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Poodle-dog bush, often found on post-fire landscapes, grows in the San Gabriel Mountains in December. Don't touch!

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Pines scorched by the Eaton Fire near the Mount Wilson radio towers in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Oak resprouts from the base of a larger plant that burned in the Eaton Fire.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Penstemon growing in the Eaton Fire burn scar in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Dried out brome in the Eaton Fire burn scar in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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California sagebrush sprouts in the Palisades Fire burn scar in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Invasive plants are popping up in rocky, often disturbed areas along trails burned by the Palisades Fire.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Lupine seen growing in the Santa Monica Mountains in December.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Goldenbush pops up among filaree in the Santa Monica Mountains in December 2025.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Whether invasive species or natives take root long term depends on a variety of factors, including the age of the plants when they burned and how soon the area burns again, Keeley said.

Some of the Palisades Fire area hadn’t burned in about 60 years, according to state records, which may mean healthy native-plant recovery over the long term.

Walking the area recently, I saw native California sage brush, goldenbush and long leaf bush lupine, with some invasive grasses mixed in.

The Santa Monica Mountains, photographed from Mullholland Drive, on Jan. 21, 2025, just weeks after the Palisades Fire.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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In December 2025, the Santa Monica Mountains are green again, though non-native grasses fill quite a bit of the open space.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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Higher up in the San Gabriels, where the Eaton Fire burn scar has some overlap with the Bobcat (2020) and Station (2009) fires, native plants that have weathered repeated blazes may struggle to recover.

“If the fire occurs in areas that had burned within the last 15 to 25 years, then there's a good chance you're going to lose species," Keeley said. "And if you lose those species, they're replaced by non-native grasses.”

When fire occurs too frequently, native plant seedbanks can be destroyed, making recovery unlikely.

“ We've looked now at 65, 75, something like that, sites around the state over five years, and the pattern is pretty common,” Keeley said.

The nonnative grasses that replace native shrubs can often dry out and catch fire more easily than heartier natives. Shortening the interval between when wildfires can spread across a landscape, further challenging recovery. It’s a pattern that’s been documented across California — from the deserts to the mountains to the coastal hillsides.

Hope for native plants — and hard work

Even where invasive species have taken over, the hard work of conservation can help bring back natives. But fire is an ever-present threat, as Tree People learned.

For the past four years, the environmental conservation organization has been working to help reestablish native species near Castaic Lake. The work was arduous, with volunteers removing invasive plants across a 25-acre site and planting native oaks. And they were seeing good progress — until Jan. 22, 2025, when the Hughes Fire charred more than 10,000 acres, including their work area.

Oak sprouts from the base of a slim trunk in March 2025.

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Alyssa Walker

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Tree People

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A young oak puts out new growth in September 2025.

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Alyssa Walker

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Tree People

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“We brought the team out, and everyone was just kind of speechless,” said Alyssa Walker, Tree People’s associate director of conservation.

The site where they’d planted thousands of trees and worked for years was devoid of green.

But they didn’t give up. They watered seedlings they thought had the best chance of survival.

It's working.

They’re seeing the best recovery in areas where they did the most invasive plant clearance, Walker said. The baby oaks have also done remarkably well, as fire-adapted oak trees often do. And sawtooth golden bush, sunflowers, yerba santa and sugarbush, among others, are all making a comeback.

In the areas that had a lower density of invasive prior to the fire, native chamise can be seen regrowing about a year after the Hughes Fire.

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Alyssa Walker

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Tree People

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In an area dominated by invasive annual plants, invasive plants have come back.

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Alyssa Walker

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Tree People

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“We've seen things grow back, if not to their existing size, like beyond,” Walker said.

Native plants in areas that had a higher density of invasive plants before the fire are growing slower because of all of the extra competition.

What about mountain lions?

This uncollared mountain lion's habitat appears to be east of the 405 Freeway. Video captured on the morning of Sept. 7, 2019, shows it chasing P-61 in the area east of the freeway.

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National Park Service

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Recent data gathered by the National Park Service in the Santa Monica Mountains area shows that since the Palisades Fire, at least one mountain lion, P-125, appears to be avoiding the burned area.

How other mountain lions are behaving is not yet clear, but the Woolsey Fire — which burned nearly 100,000 acres, including in the Santa Monica Mountains — offers insights into lion behavior after large fires.

After that 2018 fire, mountain lions favored areas that hadn’t burned and still had dense vegetative cover they could use to stay hidden and stalk deer, according to tracking data gathered by the Park Service over 15 months after the Woolsey Fire.

The fire squeezed the territorial cats into even smaller areas that are already fragmented by urban development.

“When you look at their post-fire behavior, because so much of the Santa Monicas were burned … they engaged in some riskier behaviors than they may have beforehand,” said Seth Riley, chief wildlife ecologist for the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.

That included crossing roads, one of the deadlier activities for mountain lions in Southern California. As was the case with P-61, who lived in the eastern Santa Monica Mountains.

P-61 crossed the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass, which is the first and only time that Riley and his colleagues had seen one of their collared lions cross that freeway. When the male lion reached Bel Air, he encountered another male lion, which chased him up a tree. Twenty minutes later, P-61 was killed by a car — crossing the 405 Freeway again.

Of the 11 lions that Riley and his colleagues were tracking around the Woolsey Fire, three died. P-61 was one.

P-74, they assume, got caught in the fire. Another, P-64, who lived in the Simi Hills and fled when the fire came through, was found dead two weeks later with badly burned paws. He chose to head back into the burned area instead of fleeing into neighborhoods full of people, Riley said.

When will normal return?

The Santa Monica Mountains, bisected by Mulholland Drive, about a year after the Palisades Fire. The area on the left was burned by the fire, while the area on the right, full of native vegetation, has not burned since 1944, according to Cal Fire records.

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Jacob Margolis

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LAist

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I met Lawrence Szabo from Venice on a trail in the Santa Monica Mountains in mid-December. He was looking out across a canyon that had started to green up after heavy rains. We were just down the way from an oak tree that serves as a landmark for hikers and cyclists.

“ I've always viewed that oak tree as kind of my chapel,” he said. “I think that's what was the heaviest part of the fires. Not knowing whether it was still there. And then, when I turned the corner the first time and I saw it there, it pulled a tear, and I felt like we could keep going.”

Southern California plant and animal life has long been adapted to fire. Though, in their recovery they face new challenges including climate change, repeated fires and the phenomenon of car exhaust unhelpfully fertilizing plants.

Over the next 10 years, assuming invasive plants don’t take over, native plants will repopulate and spread. And in several decades our hillsides could once again be filled with the dense and beautiful chaparral and coastal sage scrub many of us grew up with.