The Brief

Tenants in the city of Los Angeles could soon face eviction over unpaid rent from early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

So far, the city of L.A.’s COVID-19 regulations have given renters protections from eviction over pandemic debts. But rent was never canceled — only delayed. And landlords have long complained about financial hardships stemming from unpaid rent.

Now, tenants have until Tuesday, Aug. 1 to pay landlords all of the rent they missed between March 1, 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021. If they don’t pay those debts in full, they could face eviction.

“I am very worried about the deadline,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass told LAist. “I'm concerned that we're going to have another spike in homelessness.”

In the interview with LAist, Bass deferred questions on actions the city will take to help renters before the deadline to the head of the city council’s housing committee, and the CEO of the Mayor’s Fund, a nonprofit aligned with the Bass administration’s housing goals.

The city has put funding toward programs that provide legal aid and limited rental assistance for tenants facing eviction. And the Mayor’s Fund is pledging to step up ongoing homelessness prevention efforts. But other funding through the city’s new “mansion tax” will not be available to tenants by the Tuesday deadline.

Eviction filings have already been rising across L.A. County for many months. And landlord advocates say more are coming after the pandemic rent debt protections go away.

“We're doing tons [of eviction cases] now, but there will be many new evictions that we have in the pipe to start on Aug. 2,” said prominent L.A.-area eviction attorney Dennis Block.

Block said the city’s COVID-19 restrictions have unfairly prevented many of his clients from taking action over debts that in many cases stretch back more than three years.

“When does it stop?” Block said. “And why is it the landlord's responsibility to be financially responsible for someone else's debt?”

Tenant advocates worry thousands of L.A. households — including those who applied to the state’s COVID-19 rent relief program but got caught in bureaucratic limbo and have yet to receive aid — could soon end up struggling to defend themselves in eviction court.

“There are still a lot of people, especially in the L.A. area, who are waiting on the government relief to pay off the debt to their landlords,” said Legal Aid Foundation of L.A. staff attorney Jonathan Jager. “They're not going to get the check before next week.”

For many renters, 'trying to rebuild is not easy'

Many tenants who struggled to pay rent in earlier phases of the pandemic are in the clear, because they applied for and received rent relief funding from the state. California’s $5.2 billion program to cover pandemic rent debts up to April 2022 delivered almost $1.4 billion to tenants just within the city of L.A.

But other L.A. renters are still shouldering debts that in some cases run into the tens of thousands of dollars. According to recent U.S. Census Bureau survey data, about 339,000 households in the L.A. metro area have rent debt totaling close to $1.3 billion.

“The economic impacts definitely aren't over,” said Cesar Alvarez, a camera operator for documentary film and TV projects who has about $18,000 due on Tuesday. “We're still crawling out of holes. Trying to rebuild is not easy.”

Alvarez remembers the day in March 2020 when all his work suddenly disappeared.

“Everything dried up, all within less than 24 hours,” he said. “My phone wouldn't stop ringing. Emails were coming and talking about all projects being canceled until further notice.”

Cesar Alvarez stands outside his Highland Park bungalow. If he’s evicted over COVID-19 rent debt, he said, “There's no way I could afford Highland Park again.”

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After his income vanished, Alvarez informed the landlord of the Highland Park bungalow — where he has lived for the past seven years — that he would need to use the city’s protections allowing tenants to defer rent because of pandemic hardship.

He went to apply for rent relief, but by then work was picking up again, and he said the state’s website suggested he wasn’t eligible for assistance under the program’s income limits.

Alvarez is now back to regular work and paying his full rent. He adds a couple hundred extra dollars each month to chip away at his debt. But he said for tenants in his situation, repaying all of their past-due rent in one lump sum is impossible. He worries about what comes next.

“It's going to lead to a wave of massive evictions,” Alvarez predicted. “It's going to lead to a wave of massive homelessness. If you think it's bad now just give it three more months.”

Second repayment deadline is coming next year

The city’s rules give tenants with more recent pandemic rent debt additional time to pay back their landlords. Unpaid rents from Oct. 1, 2021 through Jan. 31, 2023 must be paid by Feb. 1, 2024. Other parts of L.A. County have different COVID-19 repayment rules.

For tenants still struggling to pay off rental debt, limited rental assistance is available to some living in the city through the city-funded StayHousedLA.org program.

In addition, the nonprofit Mayor’s Fund For Los Angeles recently launched a $6.5 million homelessness prevention effort called “We Are L.A.” that aims to give thousands of vulnerable tenants legal assistance and get them signed up for health care, food and other public aid programs.

Mayors Fund leaders said the program does not directly pay down COVID-19 rent debt, but it has already connected more than 10,000 tenants with caseworkers who know how to buy renters more time in legal proceedings to find solutions.

“It's another way that, at very low cost and very efficiently, the whole outreach and case management process can help avoid evictions,” said Conway Collis, chief executive officer of the Mayor’s Fund.

But other funding that could be used to clear tenants’ remaining COVID-19 debts won’t be available by the Tuesday deadline.

The city’s housing department expects to help about 3,000 households with about $20 million in emergency rental assistance during the first year of funding from Measure ULA, the voter-approved tax on property sales valued at $5 million or more. That funding could cover up to six months of back rent for eligible tenants. But the portal to apply for that funding will not be online before Tuesday’s repayment deadline.

Existing ULA tax revenue has been lower than expected. Supporters of the ballot initiative originally projected it would raise up to $1.1 billion per year. But wealthy homeowners scrambled to sell their properties before the tax took effect on April 1, and only about $38 million in revenue has been raised so far. The measure also faces legal challenges that could put funding in jeopardy.

City lawmakers are restricted under state law from pushing back the Tuesday repayment deadline. But tenant advocates say city leaders could have done more to deliver rent relief ahead of time in order to stop evictions over pandemic debt.

“They had years of time to do something like set up a local rental assistance program to help tenants pay off these debts that were not covered by the state rental assistance program, or to look at other potential ways of mitigating the harm of having all of this due on the same day,” said Jager with the Legal Aid Foundation.

Tenants rally to call for relief

Tenants like Julia Orozco fear they could soon slip into homelessness. As a street vendor, Orozco saw her income evaporate during the pandemic. She isn’t earning enough to cover the approximately $5,000 in debt coming due on Tuesday.

Orozco attended a rally this week outside the Stanley Mosk Courthouse in downtown L.A. She and other tenants called on L.A. leaders to stop the rising number of eviction filings across the city.

Speaking in Spanish, Orozco said, “It affects me a lot because my daughter asks me every day if we are going to sleep at home or if we are going to sleep on the street.”

Julia Orozco brought her daughter to a rally where tenants called on city leaders to address evictions over COVID-19 rent debt.

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Councilmember Nithya Raman, chair of the L.A. city council’s housing committee, said she has been working with the mayor’s office and the city’s housing department to coordinate efforts around the looming deadline. She said new renter protections passed by the council earlier this year, as well as the city’s existing Eviction Defense Program, could help many tenants.

"My hope is that the impending Aug. 1 rent debt repayment deadline actually pushes us to reshape and transform our current system into one that proactively supports vulnerable tenants to stay housed, not just at this moment but over the long term,” Raman said in a written statement.

But local landlords say their patience is wearing thin.

“Renters should have known this day was coming,” said Daniel Yukelson, executive director of The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles. “If a renter has not made at least some attempts to pay down some of this rental debt these past three years, there’s a strong likelihood that they're not going to be able to make a lump sum payment when the due date comes.”

Yukelson said most landlords in the city are not hopeful about recovering unpaid debts. As for eviction, he said going to court for many landlords is a last resort. He said in some cases, tenants who followed all of the city’s requirements for notifying landlords about COVID-19 hardships each month may not be subject to eviction, only debt collection.

What to do if you're at risk of eviction

The mayor’s office, in conjunction with Raman’s office, released a list of resources available to tenants on Thursday. They recommended tenants at risk of eviction reach out to the city’s housing department through appointment-only public counters or by calling 866-557-7368. They also encouraged tenants to contact their local councilmembers and sign up for tenant rights workshops put on by StayHousedLA.org.

The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.

The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.

Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.

The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.

Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.

Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.

More on solitary confinement  

According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:

• “Serious mental or medical illness.”
• Conducting a hunger strike.
• Suicide watch.

The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”

Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.

The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.

How isolation can affect immigrant detainees  

UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.

The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”

In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.

People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — not to serve criminal sentences.

According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.

Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.

For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.

In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”

Huerta called that “laughable.”

“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”

Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.

She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.

It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.

"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."

As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68

The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.

One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.

Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.

LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.

Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.

"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."

For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.

Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.

"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."

This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.

Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.

In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.

The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.

The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.

Epstein died in prison about a month after a 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was convicted on sex-trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans.

The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."

In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.

In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."

On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.

NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.

Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"

Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.

"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."

Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.

The U.K. cases are focused on corruption 

In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.

After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.

Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.

Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases

Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.

McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.

Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.

Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.

Other potential charges are also a difficult path

Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."

But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."

"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."

But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.

Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.

The current evidence lacks context

Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.

Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.

One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.

Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.

"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools published two reports on Wednesday on the state of student homelessness in the county: “Rising Numbers, Fading Resources: Students Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County” and “Hidden in Plain Sight: Fear, Underidentification, and Funding Gaps for Housing-Insecure Students in Los Angeles County.”

Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.

The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.

Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.

As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.

There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:

• Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
• A third of homeless students were in high school
• Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates

While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.

The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.

“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.

School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.

That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.