The Brief

With evictions rising as the city of Los Angeles peels away pandemic-era tenant protections, more tenants are going to court without an attorney. To try to meet demand, new efforts are underway to get lawyers from some of the city’s top law firms to help out.

The Mayor’s Fund for Los Angeles, a nonprofit that supports homelessness prevention priorities outlined by L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, has so far recruited about 200 lawyers through an initiative launched in October to increase pro bono eviction defense aid across the city.

Mayor’s Fund CEO Conway Collis said solving the city’s homelessness crisis isn’t just about moving unhoused people indoors — it’s about preventing people from losing their housing in the first place.

“We need to prevent the human tragedy of people becoming homeless and being evicted if the ongoing effort to move people off the streets and end homelessness is going to be successful,” Collis said.

Thousands housed, thousands more facing eviction

Unlike in criminal court, where the accused are given public defenders if they can’t afford to pay for an attorney, tenants at risk of losing their housing in eviction court have no right to free legal representation. As a result, most tenants have to fight evictions on their own, facing landlords who have attorneys 95% of the time, according to UCLA researchers.

The outcomes in eviction court can be devastating for low-income tenants with nowhere else to go. Housing researchers often call eviction court the frontlines of homelessness, and city leaders are starting to focus on this area of law as key to grappling with the region’s ever-increasing unhoused population.

Bass promised to house 17,000 people during her first year in office, which concludes next month. Her administration has said that close to 19,000 have entered interim housing so far. But at the same time, more than 66,000 eviction notices have gone out to L.A. tenants, according to data collected from landlords by the city’s housing department.

In late October, Bass called on lawyers throughout the city to help confront this crisis by volunteering for pro bono eviction defense work.

“Everyone has to have skin in the game as we work towards solutions that prevent Angelenos from falling into homelessness in the first place,” she said in a press release.

What’s happened so far 

The mayor’s office has met with some of the city’s top law firms to spur interest in pro bono eviction work. David Lash, the managing counsel for pro bono and public interest services at O'Melveny & Myers, has been heeding the mayor’s call to get more attorneys in the pipeline.

“Eviction cases proceed very rapidly,” Lash said, and it’s crucial that lawyers are trained on how best to assist tenants within that short window of time. “It is a very specialized, nuanced area of the law. It's not something that you can just waltz into, and be prepared to go to trial.”

Lash said he saw firsthand how much difference a lawyer can make in eviction court when he participated in a UCLA Law School study a few years ago.

“We tracked 150 cases in the downtown L.A. Superior Court housing court where the tenant was unrepresented and the landlord did have counsel,” Lash said. “The tenant lost 150 times. At the same time, legal aid organizations were getting favorable results in 90% of the cases where they were representing tenants.”

Collis said the Mayor’s Fund has put $1.1 million per year, for the next four years, toward hiring staff at L.A.’s top legal aid law firms, who will coordinate the efforts of attorneys who’ve volunteered to work pro bono.

So far the initiative has reached about two-thirds of its goal of getting 300 attorneys to volunteer. Most of them have begun receiving training from local legal aid organizations. After those trainings, they can help run clinics where they give tenants advice on how to handle their own cases.

Fewer attorneys are ready to take on full cases and represent tenants in court. Collis hopes that with more training, many will have that capacity soon. The L.A. city council proposed a “right to counsel” policy back in February that would provide tenants in eviction court with free attorneys.

“It's not clear we're going to have that in the foreseeable future,” Collis said. “In the meantime, the gap needs to be filled by pro bono attorneys.”

Eviction law is very different from their day job 

One of the attorneys who has volunteered in recent weeks is Evan Jackson. As an associate attorney at O'Melveny & Myers, he typically handles a wide range of civil litigation — employment law, real estate and trademark issues to name a few. But housing is new for him.

“As an L.A. native, when I was kind of looking for [pro bono] options, this one just stood out,” Jackson said. “You don't need to be an L.A. native to know that homelessness is arguably the biggest problem the city has.”

Working with the Legal Aid Foundation of L.A., Jackson has joined tenants over Zoom to provide legal advice about how they can best defend themselves from eviction. He hopes to receive more training and be able to fully represent clients in court soon.

Unlike Jackson’s usual work — involving clients that can afford to pay attorneys to argue cases that can go on for years — eviction cases move fast, often leaving unrepresented tenants feeling confused and powerless.

“The speed was a bit surprising,” Jackson said, noting that tenants only have five business days to file an answer to an eviction in court. “Expecting a layperson or someone with not as much legal experience to be able to file an answer in five days — that sounded daunting to me.”

When representing tenants facing eviction, the goal is to keep tenants housed. Sometimes that means arguing against a wrongful eviction in court. In other cases, tenants will have to vacate. But attorneys say they can still help renters leave on favorable terms and reach settlements that keep an eviction off their record, making it easier to find new housing.

Recruitment efforts are ongoing, said Collis with the Mayor’s Fund. But he admits that this initiative’s success won’t result in every L.A. tenant getting an attorney.

Even if the program reaches its goal, about 80% of Angelenos facing eviction will still be without an attorney.

“There’s a great deal of more work to be done,” Collis said.

News that Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale has Hollywood buzzing. The legendary film studio, which has grown to include streaming services and cable channels, is currently accepting non-binding bids until Thursday. According to company spokesperson Robert Gibbs, they expect to have a decision about the sale by Christmas.

It's become something of a Hollywood parlor game to guess who will ultimately take over the business, which was founded in 1923 by four brothers: Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner. They owned a movie theater in Pennsylvania before coming to Hollywood to make movies.

Warner Brothers Pictures found one of its first silent picture stars in a German shepherd named Rin Tin Tin. By 1927, the studio made history with its feature-length "talkie" picture: The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.

Over the years, Warner Brothers has made or distributed countless iconic films including: Casablanca, The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon in the 1940's. The list goes on, with titles like A Clockwork Orange, Goodfellas, Barbie, as well as Bugs Bunny and all the Looney Tunes cartoons.

Warners Brothers has had multiple owners over the decades. Three years ago, Warner Media, as it was called, merged with Discovery. And in June, the company announced it would split in two, with film, TV and streaming studios in one camp, and in the other, mostly legacy cable channels, including CNN.

The planned split has not yet happened, and a new buyer might get the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery and its film and TV libraries.

As the film industry continues to consolidate, there's speculation that Warner Brothers' old rival Paramount could take over. Having just merged as Paramount Skydance, CEO David Ellison has already made several overtures.

The idea of streaming giant Netflix buying the company has raised antitrust concerns on Capitol Hill. In an earnings call last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos told investors, "We've been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks. There is no change there."

Industry watchers suggest other suitors could be Comcast, Amazon, or an investor who's not already in the entertainment business.

Regardless of whoever does end up buying the company, theater owners say they hope making movies for cinemas will be a priority.

"As long as we have more movies," says Daniel Loria, senior vice president at The Boxoffice Company, which analyzes data from studios and theaters. "That doesn't mean the same amount, doesn't mean less, but more movies. I think you're going to find folks in the movie theater industry support any business decision that gets us there."

Loria recalls that after Disney purchased Fox and Fox Searchlight, their combined studios significantly reduced the number of films they released in the theaters. Crunching the numbers, Loria says in 2016, a year before the merger announcement, Disney and Fox released a total of 38 theatrical films. This year, the consolidated studios released 18.

That's a problem for theater owners who've been struggling to bring audiences back to cinemas after the COVID-19 pandemic shut them down; they're competing with movie-watching on TVs, computers and phones.

Some theater owners and cinephiles also fear studio conglomerates will only greenlight a few big-budget blockbusters, leaving the lower budget indies behind.

"The concern is you're going to see less of that risk taking, less of that experimentation and less of that embracing new directors, new filmmakers in the future," says Max Friend, the CEO of Filmbot, the ticketing platform for independent cinemas in the U.S. "It's really important that there are studios that are funding and supporting, cultivating that kind of work."

He points out that this year, Warner Brothers made a string of critical hits, including Ryan Coogler's Sinners, the horror film Weapons and Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another.

Friend wonders if the next owner will take similar risks with future original, creative films.

Warner Bros. Discovery is a financial supporter of NPR.

Copyright 2025 NPR

A downtown hearing kicked off Wednesday, during which a federal judge will consider holding the city of Los Angeles in contempt of court. The hearing is the latest step in a long-running legal saga regarding the city's response to the region’s homelessness crisis.

The hearing was ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, who has been overseeing a settlement in a lawsuit brought against the city by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group of downtown business and property owners. L.A. Alliance sued the city, and county, in 2020 for failing to adequately address homelessness.

Several witnesses are expected to testify during the contempt-of-court hearing, including Gita O’Neill, the new head of the region’s top homeless services agency, and Matt Szabo, the L.A. city administrative officer.

L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger watched at least part of Wednesday’s hearing in the courtroom.

Why now?

Carter said in court documents that he’s concerned “the city has demonstrated a continuous pattern of delay” in meeting its obligations under court orders. During a hearing last week, the judge pointed to several delays, including recently reported issues related to data and interviewing city employees.

The judge noted that similar concerns have come up at previous hearings. Carter told attorneys for the city in March 2024 that he “indicated to the mayor that I’ve already reached the decision that the plaintiffs were misled” and “this is bad faith,” according to court transcripts.

The judge said in a Nov. 14 order that he’s concerned the “delay continues to this day.”

The contempt hearing is expected to cover whether the city has complied with court orders and provided regular updates to the court under the settlement agreement.

Reducing delays

Attorneys for the city have pushed back against the hearing, filing objections with the judge and making an unsuccessful emergency request with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to block it from happening.

City authorities also asked the appeals court to press pause on the judge’s order to appoint a monitor in the case to make sure the city stays on track with the settlement. The city argued that Carter handed the monitor “a blank check to interfere with the democratic process,” according to court documents.

The appeals court partly denied the city’s request. It allowed Wednesday’s hearing to move forward, but it agreed to pause the appointment of Daniel Garrie as monitor.

In light of that response, attorneys for the city have argued that looking at the city’s cooperation with Garrie “would be inappropriate” during the hearing and that L.A. “cannot be held in contempt for either the substance or the manner of its compliance with the order,” according to court documents.

Previous hearings related to the settlement have elicited tense questioning of witnesses and harsh words from the judge, who has been vocal about reducing delays and moving the case forward.

In an opening statement Wednesday, Theane Evangelis — one of the attorneys representing the city — urged the judge to “turn down the heat” on the closely watched case. Evangelis said the “city is constantly under fire” in court while L.A. has made “enormous strides” in getting people off the streets.

Elizabeth Mitchell, lead attorney for L.A. Alliance, said the city treats transparency as a burden.

She said Wednesday that the “city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness” and that the court should address L.A. 's “consistent” delays throughout the case.

What’s next?

The hearing will resume Dec. 2, when more witnesses can appear in person.

City authorities told the court they believed a one-day hearing wouldn't be enough time to go over all the evidence.

If the judge does find the city of L.A. in contempt of court and that it "isn't doing what it promised to do," the consequences could range from nothing all the way up to serious sanctions, according to Matthew Umhofer, an attorney for L.A. Alliance.

Umhofer told LAist after the hearing that sanctions could include the court ordering more intensive monitoring of the city’s performance, imposing new requirements on the city, monetary penalties or possibly a receivership.

Carter previously stopped short of seizing control of the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in homelessness spending and handing it to a court-appointed receiver, deciding against that option in a June ruling.

L.A. Alliance is considering asking for an extension to the settlement agreement, Umhofer said.

“The city has gotten away with not complying for a very long time,” he said. “So extending the agreement can be among the things that we might ask for ... given the pattern of delay and obstruction."

Evangelis and Bradley Hamburger, another attorney representing the city, declined LAist’s request for comment after the hearing.