The Brief

In the city of Los Angeles, some 650,000 apartments are subject to local rent control. How much rents can go up each year has been the subject of ongoing controversy between tenants and landlords, who often disagree about what’s fair amid a regional crisis in affordable housing.

The L.A. City Council, which sets policy, has been at the center of that tension. Last October, Councilmembers Bob Blumenfield and Hugo Soto-Martinez put forward a motion calling for a fresh look at the city’s decades-old formula for setting annual limits on rent hikes. The council approved that motion and called for a study to “conclude within 3 months.”

This May, the Economic Roundtable, the nonprofit research organization the city commissioned to carry out the study, submitted its report to the L.A. Housing Department. Four months later, the city still has not released it publicly. LAist obtained the report through a public records request.

The independent analysis found some of the city’s rules governing rent increases have favored landlords over tenants. The report recommends changes that could lower the rent hikes tenants face each year, setting up what is sure to be a fierce debate at city hall.

LAist has published the full report here (and you can also read it below).

What’s in the report? 

Over the course of 193 pages, the report offers an extensive analysis of the L.A. rental housing market, challenges facing both tenants and landlords, and the impact of the city’s Rent Stabilization Ordinance. Among the findings:

• About 35% of the rent L.A. tenants pay goes to operating expenses for apartment buildings, on average. This includes maintenance, utilities, insurance, payroll and other routine costs. Landlords can use the remainder to cover mortgages and turn a profit.
• From January 2020 through January 2023, 4 in 10 rent-controlled L.A. apartments became vacant. When a tenant leaves a rent-controlled unit, the city’s rules allow landlords to raise rents to market rates. These higher rents helped landlords absorb the impact of a nearly four-year freeze on rent hikes.
• Many expenses have risen sharply for landlords in recent years, outpacing inflation. Property insurance costs have roughly doubled since 2020. However, the report notes these expenses make up a relatively small portion of overall costs.
• About one-fifth of L.A. renters are living below the federal poverty line. According to U.S. Census data, just over half of those renters spend 90% of their income or more on rent. Rent increases can leave these low-income renters vulnerable to displacement and homelessness.
• The city’s current range of allowable annual rent increases — anywhere from 3% to 8% depending on inflation — is higher than the increases permitted in most other California cities with rent control.

The report makes some recommendations on how the city could change its formula for determining annual rent increase limits:

• Either eliminate a provision allowing landlords to raise rents an extra 1% per year if they pay for a tenant’s gas, plus another 1% if they pay for electricity — or replace it. The report estimates each 1% increase could raise rents an additional $150 to $240 per month after 10 years, more than the actual cost of providing those utilities. One option, the report says, would be to instead use a surcharge that better captures the increased costs of providing those utilities.

The report recommends considering changing which version of the consumer price index is used to calculate allowable increased to one that excludes housing costs, shown as "Less Shelter" in the chart above.

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Courtesy Equitable Rent report

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• Change how annual rent increases are calculated. Instead of using a version of the consumer price index driven to a large degree by housing cost inflation, the report recommends a different index that excludes housing costs. The report argues this would stop the feedback loop of allowing high housing inflation to create further housing inflation.

What do landlord advocates say?

LAist shared the report with advocates for landlords and tenants.

Landlord advocates strongly disputed the report’s conclusions. Daniel Yukelson with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles pointed to recent data from the National Apartment Association, a trade group for property owners, concluding that California landlords earn 7 cents of profit on average for every dollar of rent.

“What [the report] is trying to do is make a PR effort to lay the groundwork to chip away at what little ability landlords have in L.A. to be able to raise rents and be able to keep up with their costs,” Yukelson said.

He said the report takes a macroeconomic view of the city’s rental market, but fails to capture the unique struggles facing many small landlords.

“There are plenty of owners out there who have had their renters in place for many years,” Yukelson said. “They're way below market. And they're having trouble today keeping up with the growing costs of insurance, maintenance and supplies.”

What do tenant advocates say?

Tenant advocates took a very different view of the report. They said it correctly identifies problems with L.A. rent control and validates their demands for stronger limits.

“Small landlords are able to maintain their profits and draw income above their expenses — they haven't been overly burdened by rent stabilization,” said Christina Boyar, a legal fellow with Public Counsel and a member of the Keep L.A. Housed coalition.

Tenant advocates have called for a 3% ceiling on annual rent hikes and elimination of the 2% surcharge for landlords who provide gas and electricity. They point to other L.A.-area cities that currently limit rent increases to less than 3% with no add-ons for utilities.

“The report shows that rent costs exceeding what tenants can pay is a primary cause of homelessness,” Boyar said. “We are obviously in a homelessness crisis in L.A., and if this formula isn't updated soon, more folks will just fall into homelessness.”

How LAist obtained the report

The city’s housing officials have been in possession of the Economic Roundtable report since May.

When LAist first requested the report, officials told a reporter the study was not subject to disclosure under the California Public Records Act, saying there was an exemption for “deliberative process.”

They provided the report shortly after LAist’s public records lawyer intervened.

Why had the city not released the report? 

Daniel Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable and a co-author of the report, said he didn’t have a good answer for why the report was kept under wraps.

“I think when it's a politically contentious issue, there are attempts to manage the conversation,” Flaming said. “The substance of the report is final. It was submitted as a final report and accepted by the city as a final work product.”

Sharon Sandow, a spokesperson for the L.A. Housing Department, told LAist last week the document was still a “draft report,” and they didn't have a specific date lined up for its release.

“There are several rounds of revisions left to go before this report is considered final,” Sandow said in an email. “Economic Roundtable is under contract to complete this report through January 2025 — though clearly we hope to have it finalized before then.”

By the end of last week, Sandow sent LAist a version of the report she described as "final."

Under state public records law, preliminary drafts must be released if they are retained in the ordinary course of business, as this one has been. LAist noted in its correspondence with housing department officials that the report was not a draft but was a finished product submitted by the contractor.

Why it matters

The city’s rent increase limits apply to a huge number of L.A. residents. Almost two-thirds of L.A. households rent their homes. Local rent control rules cover about 650,000 apartments — 44% of the city’s entire housing stock. Apartments in L.A. are generally covered by local rent control if they were built before Oct. 1, 1978.

Housing costs are a major burden for many L.A. households. About 59% of the city’s renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent, a level considered unaffordable by federal government standards.

The report notes that because L.A. has a 3% floor on annual increases — even in years when the consumer price index is lower — landlords have often been allowed to raise rents above inflation. Between 2010 and 2020, the consumer price index in L.A. rose 21%. During the same period, rents in rent-controlled L.A. apartments were allowed to rise 36%.

The issues facing landlords

On the other hand, the report finds that landlords have faced unique challenges — particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

State and local regulations allowed tenants who lost income during the pandemic to delay rent payments. Annual increases in rent-controlled housing were banned. And landlords were restricted from evicting tenants who fell behind on rent. That all played out during a time when the cost of maintenance, utilities and insurance was rising faster than inflation.

L.A. kept COVID-19 protections in place far longer than many other jurisdictions. The city faced strong criticism from landlords who argued too little was being done to help property owners.

Some of these hardships were addressed by government rent relief programs, which provided funds to landlords with tenants behind on rent. The report also notes that high turnover helped landlords raise rents to market rates and keep rental income nearly at pace with inflation.

But landlord advocates say some property owners have yet to fully recover from the pandemic. They now worry about the potential cost of proposals to remove gas stoves and install air conditioners.

“The cost of electricity is just going to continue going up,” Yukelson with the Apartment Association said. If the city stops landlords who provide electricity from raising rents an additional 1% per year, he said, “The next tenant is going to have to pay that burden, because the rents are going to have to go up.”

How L.A. stacks up to other cities

On balance, Flaming said the report shows that L.A.’s policies diverge significantly from how other California cities handle rent control. He said the utility surcharge in particular seems “arbitrary.”

“The Los Angeles ceiling and floor are atypically high for rent-controlled cities,” he said. “Among cities that have elected to control rents — and not all cities have — Los Angeles appears to be tilted toward landlords.”

Some L.A. city council members have floated the idea of establishing different rent control rules for “mom and pop” landlords and larger, corporate landlords. The report recommends the city instead target aid to small landlords, rather than allowing additional rent increases on tenants.

What happens now? 

The clock is ticking for the city to develop a new rent-control formula in time for Jan. 1, 2025. That’s when landlords will be required to give tenants notice of any rent increases starting in February. Many tenants in rent-controlled housing received a 4 to 6% annual rent increase on Feb. 1, 2024 due to the lapse of the L.A.’s COVID-19 rent freeze.

Soto-Martinez, one of the council members who requested the report be commissioned — has already called for capping increases at 3%.

In an email reacting to the Economic Roundtable report, Soto-Martínez told LAist, “As we await the finalized version of this report, it’s heartening to see so much data supporting the policy changes that renters have been demanding — especially when it comes to preventing excessive rent increases that can devastate working families.”

The city’s rent control debate is playing out against the larger backdrop of an election season where rent control — and many other housing-related measures — are up for a state-wide vote.

Read the full report

Link: Equitable Rent Rent Stabilization Standards in the City of Los Angeles

Note: The initial report released to LAist early last week was dated May 2024. Late last week, L.A. housing officials resent the report, now dated September 2024.

It won't be as hot as last week, but we're in for another warm week here in SoCal where temperatures are going to be more than 10 degrees above normal.

Low clouds and even patchy fog are in store this morning for the coasts, downtown L.A. into the San Gabriel Valley. Otherwise, expect a mostly sunny afternoon.

High temperatures along the beaches will be in the mid to upper 70s. For the valleys, we're looking at highs between 83 to 91, and up to 93 degrees in the Inland Empire.

Meanwhile, in Coachella Valley temperatures there will be hotter with highs from 93 to 98 degrees.

On a recent morning, traffic sped by the Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica where San Vicente and Ocean boulevards meet. A few hundred yards away, the waves crashed on the shore.

But 100 years ago, when Hollywood starlet Marion Davies lived in this once-rural spot of coast, standing this close to the house would put you knee deep in water at high tide.

“That low white concrete wall was the sea wall to protect the pool, to protect the backyard of that home,” said Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation, gesturing toward the house.

A century ago this wide flat beach was far narrower. Many beaches in the Santa Monica Bay were artificially widened from the 1930s through the 1960s.

The sand came from an ancient system of coastal dunes that extended from LAX all the way to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The endangered El Segundo blue butterfly is found only in the dunes’ restored, fragmented remains.

Expanding dune restoration

Now, change is coming again to this iconic stretch of beach. For a decade, The Bay Foundation has been figuring out how to bring back pieces of those ancient dunes. So far, the nonprofit has restored small patches of dunes on beaches from Point Dume to Manhattan Beach.

Their latest, and largest dune restoration effort so far, will extend about 30 acres south of Santa Monica pier to the border with Venice. Announced last month, it’s possible thanks to a partnership with the city and a $2 million state grant.

The nonprofit first installed dunes in Santa Monica in 2016 — “installed” meaning they put in a simple rope and little wood fence around about 3 acres, then scattered a bunch of native dune plant seeds. Nature did the rest.

The historic extent of sand dunes in the southern Santa Monica Bay.

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Courtesy Kyle Emery

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UC Santa Barbara

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Now across about 8 acres of this beach, dunes up to 5 feet tall are crowned with low-lying plants: blossoming yellow beach evening primrose flowers, light green beach bur, saltbush — a foundational plant for growing dunes, Ford said.

“These are super tough characters. They can handle the salt water, they can handle the salt air," Ford said. “Their big roots are extending down into the beach.”

The native dune plants will provide more habitat to shorebirds, including snowy plovers, a threatened species.

Snowy plovers are a threatened species.

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Photo by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service/Southeast

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Licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Ropes and signs surround the dunes to discourage people from trampling them.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Within a few months of the dunes installation in 2016, a snowy plover nest appeared on Santa Monica Beach for the first time in some 70 years. Now, they can be spotted scurrying about the driftwood and dune plants.

Birds migrating thousands of miles along the Pacific Flyway will be able to rest and forage here too.

Not only that, the dunes can lessen the amount of sand that blows onto the bike path, parking lots and roads, a regular nuisance for city maintenance crews.

Dunes and sea level rise

Long term, the dunes can help combat rising sea levels.

“Between the sea level rising and getting taller, more frequent, more violent storms hitting our coastline, we're likely to lose the beach,” Ford said.

Scientists estimate that our warming planet is likely to raise ocean levels at least 3 feet. At that level, as many as 75% of California's beaches could be gone by 2100 without intervention.

But dunes “start to build a beach that grows in height, and that helps us keep up with sea level rise,” Ford said.

Tom Ford, CEO of the Santa Monica Bay Foundation.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Ford picks up trash next to a plant blossoming on a dune.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Sand dunes can withstand only so much water, but the Santa Monica dunes have been shown to reduce erosion and flooding.

Native dune plants hold onto sand, while allowing the dunes to remain dynamic, reducing erosion. That’s opposed to introduced species like iceplant, which have squeezed out many native dune plants and are akin to concrete to wildlife.

When not carpeted by iceplant, the dunes themselves can absorb waves’ energy, displacing less sand and redistributing it in a way that allows the beach to recover. In contrast, sea walls trigger a scouring effect when the waves reverberate off of them, said UC Santa Barbara coastal ecologist Kyle Emery, who is part of a team that has surveyed more than 120 dune restoration sites across the state, including the Santa Monica dunes.

His research found that those dunes also reduced flooding on the beach during significant storms in the winter of 2023.

“That restored dune site was able to prevent about 14 meters or 50 feet of water runup on the beach,” Emery said.

A batch of younger dunes forming on Santa Monica beach.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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There are only so many ways to adapt to rising sea levels. We may have to abandon some areas. Nourishing beaches with sand is one expensive tool.There’s hard infrastructure like sea walls, but that’s costly and worsens erosion. You can build sand berms like the ones that go up in the winter in Orange County — those can protect infrastructure, but don’t have much benefit for wildlife (or ocean views).

As for dunes?

“We've demonstrated that this nature-based solution can protect against sea level rise and storm-driven wave erosion,” Emery said.

Still, Emery emphasized, dunes are no silver bullet. Dunes won’t work everywhere, and some places are likely to simply be too inundated with water. More long-term research is needed, Emery said, but so far the research on dunes shows promise.
A 2023 state law requires all coastal areas to plan for sea level rise — dunes are mentioned as a nature-based strategy. And Proposition 4, passed by voters in 2024, provides dedicated funding for such coastal resilience efforts.

The wide, flat, groomed beach we're all used to in Santa Monica.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Restored dunes stretch along the shore in the other direction.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Bolsa Chica State Beach, for example, is likely to seek such funding for its own burgeoning dune restoration effort (mostly to help with sand that piles up in parking lots and on Pacific Coast Highway), as are parts of south Orange County, where beach erosion has been a major problem for infrastructure, such as the Pacific Surfliner tracks, said Riley Pratt, a senior environmental scientist for State Parks Orange Coast District.

“ I think the writing is on the wall, and we're now looking at it differently, that we really need to get ahead of this,” Pratt said.

In Santa Monica, the dunes are something of a test. We’ve become used to volleyball and sunbathing on wide, groomed stretches of sand, but maybe it’s time to make room for dunes, too. They may be cluttered with some trash, but there’s also a patchwork of plants and small birds foraging. There’s also driftwood and kelp — once the foundations of developing dunes before we came accustomed to scraping the beach clean.

It’s a more complicated version of beach, but likely a more sustainable one.

Beach evening primrose is a native dune plant that helps stabilize sandy soils and provides habitat for coastal wildlife.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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The Trump administration's unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum, as the administration moves to scale up its detention footprint to fuel its campaign to arrest, detain and deport the largest number of immigrants in modern U.S. history.

Flush with new cash — $85 billion in new funding, with around $45 billion specifically to expand immigration detention over four years — Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving fast to lease and acquire warehouses and buildings across the United States with the aim of retrofitting them into detention spaces. ICE is also expanding contracts with local jails and private prison facilities as it builds out its sprawling detention footprint. ICE is now the highest-funded law enforcement agency in the nation.

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement worker stands outside a warehouse in Williamsport, Md., that's being converted into an immigration detention center with plans to hold 1,500 people, on March 9.

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for NPR

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Wesley Lapointe for NPR

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ICE detainees have been held at more than 220 detention sites around the country, according to government data provided by ICE in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by NPR. These sites range from dedicated ICE facilities and private prisons to county jails, military bases and newly converted warehouses. Detainees are also being held temporarily in staging areas, hospitals and holding sites. The number of sites continues to grow.

ICE's biggest detention operations are largely clustered in the southern United States. Just five states — Texas, Florida, Louisiana, Arizona and Georgia — account for just over 60% of the nation's more than 750,000 ICE detention book-ins. (In the Deportation Data Project's dataset, these book-ins are referred to as "stints." Most individuals have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple detention centers.) Texas had more than 200,000 book-ins across 115 facilities between President Trump taking office in January 2025 and mid-October 2025, the most book-ins of any state in the country.

A year ago, around 37,000 people were being held in immigration detention across the nation, according to ICE data. That number had jumped to more than 72,000 by the end of January 2026. The administration's goal is to keep expanding detention space to keep up with arrests. Ultimately, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aims to build bed space for 100,000 immigrants alleged to be in the country illegally. On average, detention facilities daily now hold nearly 70,000 immigrants, a scale of mass detention not seen since the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and nationals during World War II.

And most detained noncitizens are clustered at a handful of centers. Of the more than 60,000 book-ins across Arizona, nearly half were at the Florence Staging Facility. Forty-five percent of the 93,105 book-ins across Louisiana were at the Alexandria Staging Facility.

DHS documents reveal ambitious growth plans scaled up around a "Hub and Spoke Model" in which eight large detention centers holding between 7,500 and 10,000 people each are fed by 16 smaller regional processing centers holding 500 to 1,500 immigrants each. The proposed facility in Social Circle, Ga., for example, is one of the eight proposed "mega centers" positioned strategically across the nation. The new center would effectively double the town's population of roughly 5,000.

Growing frustration, local backlash

But there's growing grassroots opposition — across political and geographic lines — to ICE's detention expansion. And communities are winning. From Georgia to Texas to Arizona and in scores of towns across the U.S., residents are pushing back, citing costs and infrastructure worries, as well as zoning, political and even moral concerns.

"They're getting the wrong people," says Donnie Dagenhart, who lives not far from a proposed ICE detention center near Williamsport, Md. Dagenhart, who owns a local construction company, says he supported Trump for years but has now soured on the president largely over how immigration is being enforced. "Let's get the bad ones out. That's what we should be doing, but we're not. I just think we're living in a police state and it's getting worse," he says. "Did you see the building?" he asks of the new detention site. "It's huge."

Motorcyclists ride through Williamsport, Md., on March 9.

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Wesley Lapointe for NPR

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Polling shows that the public has largely turned against Trump's aggressive mass deportation agenda. Sixty-five percent of Americans said ICE has "gone too far" in enforcing immigration laws, according to the latest NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. That's an 11-point increase since last summer.

In New Hampshire, a "purple"' swing state that holds the nation's first presidential primary, community uproar recently forced the halt of a planned ICE detention facility in the town of Merrimack.

New Hampshire state Rep. Bill Boyd, a Republican from Merrimack who had previously reached out to DHS voicing his opposition to the facility, called it a big win.

"This community has fought giants and has come out victorious," he told NPR member station NHPR. "And it's just a testament to my neighbors and local leadership and the state leaders for taking a stand.

Backlash erupted, too, in Oklahoma City in deep-red Oklahoma when local residents learned of plans to convert a vacant warehouse into a facility to process and temporarily house immigrants. Faced with strong opposition, DHS and ICE backed away from that proposed detention site too.

Mississippi's senior U.S. senator, Roger Wicker, a Republican, has strongly opposed a proposed immigration detention center near Byhalia, Miss. "I am all for immigration enforcement, but this site was meant for economic development and job creation. We cannot suddenly flood Byhalia with an influx of up to 10,000 detainees," Wicker wrote on X last month.

Public outcry also stopped a planned detention facility in conservative Texas. The federal government planned to buy a 1 million-square-foot warehouse from Majestic Realty in Hutchins, Texas, and turn it into a holding center. But following weeks of pushback from community members and city leaders, the company decided not to sell or lease the facility to DHS.

"We're grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the City of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth," a Majestic Realty spokesperson told Texas Public Radio in a statement.

The largest detention facilities in the country are run by two for-profit, private companies, Geo Group and CoreCivic. Both companies reported more than $2 billion in revenue in 2025, an 8% and 18% increase, respectively, in growth year over year. A handful of other companies also have big DHS and ICE contracts to help guard, run and support ICE detention operations, including Akima Global Services and its sister company Akima Infrastructure Protection. The Project on Government Oversight reports that CoreCivic's ICE awards have increased 45% since Trump took office for his second term.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue"

In Surprise, Ariz., where DHS recently purchased a 400,000-square-foot warehouse for $70 million, NPR member station KJZZ reported that the move sparked frequent protests and community pushback. Hundreds of people swarmed Surprise's City Council meetings demanding that the city pass a resolution to make DHS and ICE publicly disclose operational plans.

These concerns are heightened as reports of overcrowding and lack of food in detention centers across the nation have proliferated. ICE is investigating numerous detainee deaths. Since October, 26 people have died in ICE custody, putting immigration detention on track for its deadliest fiscal year since the agency was founded.

Protesters gather with signs condemning Immigration and Customs Enforcement's purchase of a warehouse in Roxbury, N.J., for use as an immigrant processing facility, on March 10.

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José A. Alvarado Jr. for NPR

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Advocates say reduced oversight and record numbers of detainees are a recipe for more sickness and death in custody. "The abhorrent and worsening conditions in detention centers, gross negligence and a complete lack of oversight have contributed to yet another grim record for deaths in ICE custody," said Jennifer Ibañez Whitlock, senior policy counsel at the National Immigration Law Center, an immigrant rights defense organization.

While there have been few to no oversight moves on the federal level, local leaders are taking action. The U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 mayors of cities with populations over 30,000, recently passed two emergency resolutions calling for the administration to rein in ICE tactics, expand transparency and put guardrails on detention expansion.

"A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter," the Republican mayor of Columbia, S.C., Daniel Rickenmann, told NPR. The conference called for federal immigration agencies to "assure all those detained have access to legal assistance required by law; require all buildings where people are detained to meet local health and safety standards; [and] obtain appropriate local zoning and building permit approvals to convert warehouses and other buildings to detention or deportation facilities."

Rickenmann says he and fellow mayors have grave concerns about the rapidly expanding ICE detention system: "Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?"

In a statement to NPR, ICE said new facilities would bring jobs, additional tax revenue and security to communities. On recently purchased warehouses in Roxbury, N.J., and Hagerstown, Md., the agency wrote: "These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards. These sites have undergone community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase."

Local officials NPR spoke with dispute the existence of any rigorous community impact studies for new ICE facilities.

An industrial warehouse recently purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for use as a detention center is seen on February 10, 2026 in Social Circle, Georgia. Local officials have expressed frustration over the planned ICE detention facility.

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Elijah Nouvelage

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Getty Images

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DHS secrecy leaves local officials in the dark

A through-line complaint across communities is lack of transparency. Representatives at all levels of government, from city councils to the U.S. Congress, complain they have been largely kept in the dark about DHS' plans. Local representatives in Oakwood, Ga., Baytown, Texas, and Highland Park, Mich., told NPR that they received no response from DHS when they inquired about facilities slated to be built in their communities.

In Social Circle, Ga., local frustrations rose so high that city leaders barred water use by ICE's planned facility until the agency provides more clarity on its plans.

"There is a lock on the meter," Eric Taylor, the city manager for Social Circle, said in a statement to NPR member station Georgia Public Broadcasting. "The lock is there until ICE indicates how water and sewer will be served without exceeding our limited infrastructure capacity."

In Merrillville, Ind., reports that ICE intended to convert a vacant 275,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention facility caught local officials completely off guard. The town quickly passed a forceful resolution opposing the conversion and publicly criticized ICE for failing to inform local officials of the move.

"We want to be clear that we've received no communication from any federal agency regarding the use of this property as a processing or detention facility, and the town has not approved or authorized any such use," Merrillville Town Council President Rick Bella said in an emailed statement to NPR.

San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said that the lack of communication from ICE, as well as from the private-sector companies, is especially concerning when coupled with reports of mistreatment and abuse.

"Here in San Diego, our members of Congress are not permitted to access these facilities," Gloria said. "Our local public health officials have also been turned away. And so when you look at what's happening in public with these detention efforts, they often become extremely chaotic. It makes you wonder what's happening behind closed doors and without, you know, transparency and accountability."

In Oakwood, Ga., the mayor and City Council posted that while they support ICE's mission, they were concerned that the local government was not involved in the process of green-lighting the detention center or selecting its location. The sale was recently finalized, and Georgia Public Broadcasting reported that ICE paid $68 million for the space, which had an assessed value of around $7.2 million.

Oakwood City Manager B.R. White strongly criticized the detention center's placement next to two residential areas, an established subdivision and a building under construction, and warned that taxpayers would likely have to foot the bill, including an estimated $2.6 million in added sewer expenses alone.

"I would have liked to see [ICE representatives] come in, sit down, tell us what their plans are and discuss with us how to resolve the issues and the tax losses to the community," White told NPR.

He says the city has not received any communication from the federal government, so the city is left to deal with these issues on their own. "It was an egregious overstep by the federal government," White said. "'Get the ox and the cart out of the ditch service' is what we're having to do right now."

Some places that aren't slated to have a facility have preemptively taken action. After reports that DHS was scoping out locations for new facilities in Missouri, the Jackson County Legislature approved a plan to ban immigration detention facilities. Legislator Manny Abarca told NPR member station KCUR that it puts the county on the record as being against "the caging of people" even if the county doesn't legally have the authority to stop DHS.

A handful of communities have embraced new facilities, however warily, with an eye on the economic boost and local jobs that these detention centers bring.

In Georgia, Charlton County Administrator Glenn Hull says the county will make about $230,000 this year from the detention center contract between GEO Group and the federal government — enough to pay the salaries of 20% of the county's employees.

Hull says GEO Group has been a "great partner," providing about a dozen college scholarships and funding for holiday festivals and events, even as he acknowledges the ethical and moral costs of profiting from people being forcefully separated from their loved ones, locked away and deported.

"I hate to say it, but if not here, then somewhere else," Hull admits. "So you take advantage of what you have on your table. I hate to simplify it like that 'cause these are lives and families, but that's the reality of it."

To determine where people detained by ICE were held, NPR analyzed data provided by ICE in response to a FOIA request by the Deportation Data Project. In the Deportation Data Project's original dataset, a book-in is referred to as a "stint." Most noncitizens have only one book-in per stay in detention, but some are transferred between multiple facilities. Each transfer to a new facility counts as a separate book-in, as does a return to a facility where the person had previously been booked. Facilities range from dedicated ICE centers to local jails and hospitals.

Sergio Martinez-Beltran, Jasmine Garsd, Ximena Bustillo, Alyson Hurt, and Preeti Aroon contributed to this story.
Copyright 2026 NPR

L.A.’s main homeless services agency is at risk of blowing a federal deadline to turn in a required audit of its financial records after executives were far behind schedule in providing necessary documents, according to the lead outside auditor.

The federally-required review — known as a single audit — is one of the most important oversight checks of the L.A. Homeless Services Authority. Every year, LAHSA must hire an outside firm to determine whether the agency is accurately tracking and reporting what happens with taxpayer funds it manages. Turning it in late, or having significant negative findings, can jeopardize an organization’s federal funding.

The audit of LAHSA’s last fiscal year is due March 31, nine months after the fiscal year ended.

While government clients on that fiscal calendar would typically turn over their records to auditors by last December, LAHSA staff had failed to do so until March, lead auditor Justin Measley told LAHSA’s audit committee last Wednesday.

He said the timeline for reviewing the documents was now unusually compressed, and that the firm was doing everything it can to try to meet the deadline.

“It is possible that [LAHSA’s audit] will not meet the March 31st deadline,” Measley told the audit committee. “ It's been a few years of this sort of delay with LAHSA."

On Friday, however, LAHSA executives said the audit is on track to meet the March 31 deadline.

“We have submitted all required documentation” to the auditors and “the field work has been completed,” Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy CFO, told the commission’s finance committee. “At this time, we do not anticipate any issues with meeting that timeline or allowing sufficient time for review."

Lim has been stepping into her boss’ role as the top finance official for the last several weeks, while CFO Janine Trejo has been on an extended leave. The reasons for her leave have not been made public, nor has the timing of how long she’s been out.

Even after Lim’s presentation, LAHSA Commissioner Amy Perkins said she doubts the audit will be done by the deadline.

“Based on everything I know and have seen, this is very unlikely,” she said in a statement Friday.

In response to a request to LAHSA CEO Gita O’Neill for comment, LAHSA spokesperson provided a statement Thursday that the audit is “on track” to meet the deadline.

“LAHSA has provided financial and organizational documentation to our external auditors, despite a key mid-level leadership transition that required adjustments to the document-gathering timeline,” the statement provided by spokesperson Paul Rubenstein said. “As the audit nears completion, LAHSA remains committed to being a responsible steward of public funds, and we expect the audit to be completed on time.”

Auditor raised concerns in January, February and March

Measley, LAHSA’s lead contracted auditor, told the auditing committee on Wednesday that LAHSA executives had agreed in October to provide the documents by Jan. 15. LAHSA staff then confirmed multiple times in December and January that they were on track to do so, he said.

But LAHSA blew that deadline, Measley said, adding that auditors gave multiple extensions.

Measley said the records were still not provided as of March 3, even after he raised concerns about the timing with O’Neill and LAHSA’s governing commission chair, Amber Sheikh, during a meeting in early February.

On March 3, the audit firm contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents, Measley said.

“I felt like I exhausted my ability to work solely within management, and I needed to alert governance of the delays, which is when I sent the letter of the potential for LAHSA to not meet its regulatory deadline,” Measley told the audit committee.

In a statement, Sheikh said she met with the auditor in early February “as part of the standard annual single audit process.”

“They shared that some steps were slightly behind schedule, but they did not express concern about delivering the audit on time,” Sheikh said.

Juistin Szlasa, LAHSA’s audit committee chair, said he was not informed of any problems with the audit until March 3, despite them being flagged nearly a month earlier to O’Neill and Sheikh.

Szlasa expressed concern about the remaining timeline, saying the agency’s governing commission would still need time to review the draft audit once it’s ready and ask questions before it’s finalized. He said the draft audit should be circulated at least a week before it’s finalized.

“I don’t see how this is going to happen in a way that makes sense,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting. “I’m very disappointed,” Szlasa said. He did not fault the auditors, who he said were handling the review “with integrity and care.”

The mayor’s take

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is the only elected official on LAHSA’s governing commission, and was one of the three members of its audit committee from Aug. 22 until Jan. 23, which overlapped with the first few months of the audit. She did not attend any of the committee's four meetings during that time, according to official records.

Bass did not respond to an interview request through a spokesperson.

“Mayor Bass has been a champion for reforming L.A.’s broken homelessness system, and wants this audit done,” a statement provided by Ilana Morales, the mayor’s spokesperson, said. “She is tasking the City’s appointed LAHSA commissioners to work closely with the agency’s leadership to get this moving. After years of increases before she took office, Mayor Bass brought homelessness down, and she will not let bureaucratic failures stand in her way.”