The Brief

Jaime Colindres’ third-floor room at the American Hotel in Los Angeles was tiny, but in it he painted expansive scenes of the American West on salvaged pieces of wood. Guitar sounds filled the halls, and neighbors kept their doors open. Some residents landed there when the city’s ruthless rental market slammed its doors on them, but they quickly soaked up the creative soul that creaked and hummed, rattled and swelled through the battered hotel.

That was 10 years ago.

The American is now a boutique tourist hotel in LA’s downtown Arts District. Nearly all of its longtime residents have been replaced. But the culprit is not gentrification. It’s the city’s failure to enforce its own laws to preserve affordable housing.

A 2008 city ordinance sought to protect residential hotels like the American. Residential hotels often offer single-room dwellings and are sometimes the only housing that elderly, disabled and low-income people can afford. But Capital & Main and ProPublica found 21 such buildings, including the American, offering rooms to travelers.

Under the ordinance, owners who convert or demolish residential hotel rooms must either build new units or pay into a city housing fund. None of the 21 have received clearances from the city showing that they’ve done either, according to Housing Department records. But the agency has cited only four of the hotels for residential hotel violations, even as some buildings went through obvious transformations and publicly advertise rooms on travel websites, the news organizations found. The American wasn’t one of the hotels cited.

This week, the city announced it would investigate all 21 hotels for violations of the law and review the resources needed to improve enforcement. “We are asking for a report on how this happened and recommendations for ensuring this does not happen again,” said Zach Seidl, a spokesperson for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.

But the city’s action comes too late for some. The American’s unhindered conversion into guest rooms and suites upended the lives of many tenants who called it home. Their stories illustrate the impact that L.A.’s failure to preserve affordable housing has had on the city’s low-income residents.

If the Housing Department’s planned investigation reveals violations of the residential hotel law, the American’s owner Mark Verge said, “We’ll work it out.” Verge previously said he was unaware of the residential hotel law. In an interview, he denied that the conversion left his former tenants in difficult situations, noting that he allowed tenants who wished to stay during the remodel to do so. “That hotel was falling apart,” Verge said. “I literally made them the greatest hotel ever and the greatest place to live.”

The 118-year-old hotel was a hotbed of creativity in part because its low rents gave artists the freedom to focus on their craft. For about $500 a month, most tenants got rooms that were barely big enough to fit their beds, with bathrooms at the end of the hall. The hotel was a place where people turned when they had nowhere to go. Once there, however, they joined a community that many embraced.

“It was just a flophouse for all us artists and musicians,” said Christiaan Pasquale, a singer and guitarist who lived at the hotel in the 1990s and again in the 2010s. “You almost get trapped at the American because it was so fun and so cheap.”

The American was unique because of the community its residents built and because it stood as a cultural hub in the Arts District. Al’s Bar, a graffiti-splattered dive on the hotel’s ground floor, was iconic in the L.A. music scene. For many residents, the club, which closed in 2001, was a hangout where they unwound at the end of the day. The bar oozed punk rock attitude. It hosted “No Talent” nights, displayed work by major L.A. artists and staged live theater events as well as hosting big-name acts like Beck, Ry Cooder and Hüsker Dü.

The American was a housing safety net for Colindres, who had lived at the hotel in the 1990s and again for about five years in the early 2010s. And it was too for Arturo Núñez, a truck driver who had been at the American for about six years until, he said, he was driven away by a bedbug infestation in 2013 before Verge began the hotel’s transformation. Núñez would duck out of gatherings with his Teamster co-workers at Denny’s and rush home to be with his neighbors at the American.

“We talked the same language: music, poetry, painting,” he said.

When Arturo Núñez lived at the American, he said, he would duck out of gatherings with his fellow truckers and rush home to be with his neighbors. 

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Barbara Davidson

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special to ProPublica

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New to the city, Jomar Giner, a 20-something transplant from Utah, ended up at the American in 2013 because it was her only housing option, she said. A would-be landlady had refused to rent to her because at the time Giner relied on disability payments. She was thrilled to learn that the punk bands she’d listened to as a teenager had played just a few floors below her room.

More important, at the American, no one cared about her source of income, she said. She got a job as a barista at the coffee shop across the street from the hotel and quickly settled in.

“I became good friends with a lot of people,” she said. “They were really proud of the place.”

But as the neighborhood gentrified, Verge, an L.A. entrepreneur, bought the hotel and planned to renovate it. He told residents that those who could endure the dust, noise and intrusions of a remodel could stay. Some did. But he also provided an incentive for tenants to move, offering them between $2,000 and $19,000, depending on how long they’d lived there, their age and how long they held out, according to interviews with eight current and former residents. Many of the American’s residents accepted Verge’s offers, they said.

“We were all just desperate at the time,” and the money sounded good, Pasquale said. “We all worked hard at our crafts — I was in a band and touring. Any money like that was a big chunk of change.”

As the American’s tenants moved out, several said, they struggled to find stable housing for as little as they had paid at the hotel.

Giner received a $3,000 payment and, with the help of her then-boyfriend’s parents, scraped together enough cash for the couple to move into a Koreatown apartment. Colindres, the painter, said he negotiated a buyout of $19,000 but struggled to find housing because of a two-decade-old eviction. Instead, he joined an exodus of artists to the desert near Joshua Tree National Park, about 140 miles east of Los Angeles, where a friend had offered him a place to stay.

But after a few years, Colindres grew tired of his hot, lonely surroundings. He said he returned to L.A. and slept in his car.

By then, the hotel was being advertised to nightly guests. Tourists had begun reviewing the American on Yelp in 2016, with one writing, “All in all, a decent stay for very little coin.”

Only a handful of long-term residents still live at the American today.

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Barbara Davidson

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special to ProPublica

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In the years since the hotel’s conversion, it’s arguably become even harder for the former residents to find a replacement for the housing they had at the American. Several former residents left the state to be closer to family or to find more affordable housing.

Today, Colindres shares a studio apartment with a friend, piecing together a living by painting signs for businesses, faux finishes for decorators and, sometimes, movie sets for independent films. Occasionally he sells one of his paintings.

Colindres shows off his paintings at the friend’s apartment where he lives.

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Robin Urevich

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Capital & Main

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Colindres said he doesn’t know how long he can stay in his place, and in L.A., he said, “I have no place to go.”

Núñez, the truck driver, lives in his 1991 maroon Ford van with two cats, T.K. (for tiny kitty) and Orangey. He cooks on a propane stove — red chile with pork is his specialty, he said. The van is immobile, and he pays $100 per month from his Social Security check for a parking spot marked off with orange cones in a lot just a few blocks from the American.

Núñez lives in his van. He pays $100 a month to park in downtown LA, near the American.

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Barbara Davidson

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special to ProPublica

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On a blustery March afternoon, Núñez spotted Colindres across the parking lot and greeted him with elaborate tai chi-like gestures — a nod to Colindres’ longtime practice of the ancient Chinese art.

Núñez retrieved battered chairs from his van as the two sat and reminisced about the ups and downs of their days at the American.

“This is my neighborhood,” Núñez said, gesturing toward the hotel. “I’d move in now.”

But moving in isn’t an option. The American’s online hotel policies say guests can’t stay longer than 21 days.

A view of nightlife in the Arts District in downtown L.A., home of the American

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Barbara Davidson

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special to ProPublica

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President Donald Trump is canceling nearly $1 billion in spending approved by Congress, the White House announced on Friday, using a rare and contested power to axe funding for immigrant services and diversity-focused initiatives.

Trump’s Office of Management and Budget described the funding cut as focused on “the most harmful government spending.”

Most of the cuts are focused on services for immigrants, including nonprofits that serve refugees and unaccompanied minors accused of being in the country illegally. The administration says the funds are no longer necessary because illegal border crossings have diminished considerably.

A White House press release announcing the funding rescissions notes that some of the organizations are led by people who worked in the administration of Democratic President Barack Obama.

Trump’s move was condemned by Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican in a tough re-election campaign and chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Collins said in a statement that the action came without warning or consultation. She also said she would work to address with colleagues “these illegal actions.”

“Not only is the delay itself an impoundment that was not reported to Congress, but also it is a usurpation of Congress’s appropriations powers,” Collins said. “OMB is an agency of the executive branch. It does not get to decide which programs are worth funding.”

Typically, Congress can review the president’s proposed spending cuts before they take effect. But Trump made that all but impossible by announcing them with just five days left in the federal fiscal year. The Government Accountability Office says the maneuver, known as a “pocket rescission,” is illegal.

Collins called it the latest attempt by OMB to “undermine Congress’s Constitutional power of the purse.”

A hedge fund manager who wants more bike lanes and a construction workers' union are the biggest donors in L.A. city elections over the past two months.

They put a total of $7 million behind City Councilmember Nithya Raman’s run for mayor, according to the latest campaign filings submitted by Thursday to meet a state deadline.

Aaron Sosnick, a hedge fund founder, and the construction workers union — the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters — each gave $3 million to the same committee backing Raman, city filings show. Sosnick gave another $1 million to the pro–Raman political committee of the street-safety group Streets for All.

Airbnb has pumped in more than $4 million into backing Mayor Karen Bass and three other city candidates. The filings also show the LAPD officers' union has spent nearly $3 million, money that went to oppose Raman, city attorney candidate Marissa Roy and city council candidate Estuardo Mazariegos, and to support council candidate Tim Gaspar. Most of that Airbnb and police union spending was before the June primary election, though police union spending against Raman has picked up recently.

Overall, the filings show Raman’s significant earlier disadvantage in outside dollars has narrowed significantly in recent weeks. So far, the amount of ad spending by outside groups for the general election is similar between the two candidates, with a total of $1.57 million supporting Bass and against Raman, versus $1.53 million supporting Raman and against Bass. Those groups still have millions of donor dollars on hand for future ads.

Ballots are set to start hitting voters’ mailboxes by the week of Oct. 5.

What to know about the mayor’s race

Sosnick runs the New York-based hedge fund A.R.T. Advisors, which uses computer programs to quickly buy and sell stock, to make money from short-term price changes. He is based in Reno, according to campaign filings, and splits his time between New York and L.A.’s Los Feliz neighborhood, according to Michael Schneider, Streets for All’s founder.

Sosnick has been a major donor to prior streets-focused campaigns in L.A., including 2024’s Measure HLA. That voter-approved initiative requires the city to add planned bike lanes, bus lanes and pedestrian upgrades when it repaves major streets.

Two years after voters approved it, the city had completed only about 300 feet of HLA improvements as of March, Streetsblog L.A. reported at the time. The city paused some repaving and shifted to smaller repairs that stay under the measure's trigger, Streetsblog reported.

The construction workers union — which has said most of its nearly 100,000 members are in Southern California — endorsed Bass in 2022, before switching to Raman in August. The union broke with Bass over her affordable-housing directive, ED1, which doesn't require union wages.

The LAPD officers' union has put more than $2 million into groups opposing Raman. A recent ad funded by the union highlights Raman’s remarks about opposing a city ban on homeless encampments near schools. In the ad, Raman is shown saying she doesn’t "think a kid’s gonna be safer because a tent is 500 feet away from a school."

The police union committee also received $525,000 from Douglas Emmett Inc., the landlord behind the largest attempted eviction from rent-controlled housing in the city in decades. The city declined to legally intervene on behalf of the renters, who ended up suing and winning a 2024 court ruling that found the evictions were illegal.

Airbnb has given more than $4 million to groups backing Bass, city attorney candidate John McKinney and City Council candidates Jose Ugarte and Gaspar. The city attorney's office has a current lawsuit against Airbnb over alleged price gouging after the January 2025 fires. Whoever wins in November will inherit the case. This year, Bass advanced a proposal backed by Airbnb to relax city regulations by letting Airbnb hosts rent out second homes and investment properties through 2028.

Dodger Stadium parking-lot co-owner Frank McCourt's real estate firm also gave $25,000 to a group backing Bass. McCourt needs approvals from the Metro board, which Bass chairs, for a proposed gondola project.

Much of Bass' other outside support comes from unions, including the SEIU union that represents most city government staff, whose pay is negotiated by the mayor and approved by the city council.

City attorney

Beyond $2 million from an Airbnb-backed committee supporting McKinney, the police union’s committee has spent $357,000 against city attorney candidate Roy.

Smart Justice California, a criminal-justice-reform advocacy group that wants to reduce incarceration, and a group of trial lawyers are major backers of a committee supporting Roy. The city attorney oversees the city’s misdemeanor prosecutions and defends the city against lawsuits, including those brought by plaintiffs' firms.

City Council: Gaspar and Ugarte far ahead in outside money

In Council District 3, Gaspar’s biggest outside supporters include about $550,000 from an Airbnb-backed group, around $230,000 from a major association for apartment landlords and $136,000 from the police union. His opponent, Barri Worth Girvan, has received a much smaller amount of outside backing, largely from unions, including one that represents construction workers.

In Council District 9, outside spending for Ugarte includes about $300,000 by Airbnb and about $230,000 by the landlords association. Among their many responsibilities, the city council votes on rent rules.

Ugarte’s opponent, Estuardo Mazariegos, has received much less outside support, largely from the main union for L.A. Unified School District teachers and a tenant organizing group known as ACCE.

How the biggest donations flow

Direct giving to the candidates’ campaigns is legally restricted to $1,800 per donor each election cycle for L.A. mayor and city attorney, and $1,000 for city council. So the biggest donors instead spend through “independent expenditure” committees, or “IEs.” Donors can give unlimited amounts to these committees, as long as the spending isn't coordinated with the candidates' campaigns.

That IE money often flows through multiple committees — many of which combine money meant for candidates in multiple races — on its way to election ads, which can make the money hard for the public to easily track.

The general election will take place Nov. 3.

The City of Long Beach is pushing back against requests to release information about a sustained misconduct finding from the personnel file of one of its former officers — even as more details come out about past incidents.

Defense attorney Scott Sanders has requested material in the personnel files of former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez after he learned Suarez was convicted on aggravated battery charges stemming from a 2019 beating in Cobb County, Georgia.

In court filings, Sanders has argued that information should have been disclosed to his client, Lonnie Jacobs, from the outset of the case. Jacobs is facing up to four years in prison on a charge that he brought a controlled substance into a jail. Sanders has argued the case should be dismissed because he alleges the initial arrest was based on Suarez misrepresenting facts and omitting evidence.

Now the defense has requested information from Suarez’s personnel file about both the Georgia conviction and an allegation that Suarez assaulted a man on the job in 2023. Sanders argues that information in the personnel file could show a pattern of misconduct by Suarez. In court filings, he also claims it could reveal a practice within the Long Beach Police Department to conceal incriminating information about its officers in protected personnel files.

“The reasonable conclusion is that the non-disclosure of Officer Suarez’s conduct and conviction is illustrative of an intentionally flawed process designed to conceal evidence that is favorable to defendants and harmful to LBPD officers,” Sanders wrote in a declaration submitted to the court on Sept. 23.

“With what we've learned so far, every defendant charged in a Long Beach case must presume that evidence is being concealed in their case,” Sanders told LAist. “Just look at the lengths the department went to in order to protect Officer Suarez's misconduct. He was arrested after violently causing serious injuries to the victim. Then just three months after being convicted in that case, he used force while on duty that the department found impermissible. Long Beach PD's response? Send him back to the streets and block defendants from finding out the truth.”

Erik Suarez from a photo in a Long Beach police file documenting his use of force during an arrest in 2023.

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LBPD

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Suarez left the Long Beach Police Department in June and is now with the Burbank Police Department, according to records from the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.

The Burbank Police Department confirmed that Suarez was employed there and assigned to the field operations division. The department said it could not comment on “confidential personnel records or specific aspects of an individual’s background investigation, employment history, disciplinary history, or other personnel matters” and declined to make him available for an interview.

LAist tried to reach Suarez by calling a phone number linked to him in public records. Each time, a man answered and said he was not Suarez, but that he was in contact with Suarez. This week, that man said he had no interest in passing along the reporter's contact information.

Todd Vigus, an attorney for the Long Beach Police Department, argued in a Sept. 22 response to Sanders’ motion that the allegations surrounding Jacobs’ arrest “do not establish good cause to search the officers' personnel files for every conceivable form of misconduct, moral turpitude, discipline, performance deficiency, racial bias, or unrelated wrongdoing.”

A spokesperson for the Long Beach Police Department said in an email dated Sept. 11 that they are prohibited from discussing personnel matters and internal investigations, but did confirm that the department was aware of Suarez’s arrest in Georgia.

In response to a records request from LAist, department officials on Thursday released records from a 2023 use of force investigation that determined Suarez used "unnecessary or unreasonable force" while arresting someone.

That same year, the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office investigated an allegation that Suarez committed “assault under the color of authority” but declined to press charges.

“The decision to decline prosecution in the 2023 matter was based on the evidence available at the time,” said Greg Risling, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office. “Although we did not know of the allegation from Georgia, the facts of that case would not have been a deciding factor in that charging decision.”

How Suarez's record came to light

When Suarez left the LBPD in June, Sanders was attempting to subpoena him for questioning about why he arrested Jacobs, who is bald, when his body-worn camera footage showed a witness describing the person who threatened him with a gun as having dreadlocks or braids.

Sanders attempted to subpoena Suarez twice through the Long Beach Police Department. In response to the first subpoena, in April 2026, the department said Suarez was out of the country. After the second subpoena filed June 22, the department informed Sanders that Suarez had resigned.

According to state records, Burbank hired Suarez two weeks later, on July 6. He’d worked for the Long Beach Police Department from November 2017 until June 19, 2026 — three days before Sanders made a second subpoena attempt.

Still attempting to subpoena Suarez, now at his home, an investigator working for the defense of Lonnie Jacobs — the man Sanders represents in the drug case — found Suarez had been convicted of misdemeanor aggravated battery in 2022 in Cobb County, Georgia.

According to court records LAist obtained from Georgia, the incident took place in a Waffle House in 2019.

The victim told the Long Beach Press-Telegram that Suarez threatened to kill him while beating him on the ground. The victim said he has vertigo and problems with his vision from the beating, according to the newspaper.

The Cobb County District Attorney’s office charged Suarez with two felony counts of aggravated battery. In 2022, Suarez pleaded guilty to misdemeanor aggravated battery. He served a year on probation and was ordered to take an anger management class.

According to the article, the victim said he was told by Georgia prosecutors that Long Beach police officials had been informed of the charges, and was surprised to see that Suarez was still working for the police department years later.

Records released by the Long Beach Police Department show Suarez received a two-day suspension for bringing discredit to the department by leaving the scene of the assault without reporting it.

Former Long Beach Police Officer Erik Suarez received a two-day suspension after the 2019 arrest in Cobb County, Georgia.

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Long Beach Police Department

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Sanders argues in his filing that these details support the motion to open up Suarez’s police records. In California, police personnel files are mostly shielded from public disclosure, except under certain circumstances, including findings of unnecessary use of force and misconduct while on the job.

Defendants who believe those personnel files may include information relevant to their case can file what’s called a Pitchess motion in court. If a judge agrees with the motion, the court will have an opportunity to review personnel files and pull out information deemed relevant to the case at hand.

Sanders filed an initial Pitchess motion before a preliminary hearing, but the court denied his request. He filed another motion to disclose Suarez’s personnel files once the defense learned about the Georgia conviction. Long Beach filed in opposition to that motion, arguing information in Suarez’s personnel file is not relevant to the Jacobs’ case. It is that motion that a judge is considering now.

Why this case could have broader implications

Sanders argues the Georgia conviction should have been disclosed not through a Pitchess motion, but proactively under Brady v. Maryland, a 1963 Supreme Court case that established prosecutors’ obligation to disclose information that could help defendants win their case. In his motions, Sanders is asking not only for information about Suarez’s conviction and potential misconduct, but for evidence that the Long Beach Police Department employs a similar tactic to hide information about other officers in their personnel files.

“Quite clearly, there can be no safe haven within a police department that is created to facilitate the concealment of improper acts by its officers or to hide the department’s efforts to protect officers from receiving deserved consequences,” Sanders wrote in a Sept. 23 supplement to the second Pitchess motion. “It is a near-certainty that the department is engaging in a pervasive practice of non-disclosure.”

On Thursday, a judge in Long Beach granted a continuance in the case against Jacobs, rescheduling the hearing for the second Pitchess motion for Nov. 12.

What the DA knew — and didn’t know

Shortly after Sanders began defending Jacobs, a deputy district attorney on the case notified the defense that the DA’s office investigated Suarez in 2023 for “assault under the color of authority,” but did not file charges.

In his latest filing, Sanders argues this disclosure suggests that the district attorney’s office was aware of its obligations to disclose evidence under Brady and would have disclosed the Georgia conviction if they knew about it.

The district attorney’s office handbook instructs prosecutors to turn over evidence that directly opposes guilt or could be used to impeach a witness, including felony convictions, misdemeanors or other conduct that “reflects on believability, misconduct involving moral turpitude.”

A charge evaluation worksheet submitted to the court provides some details about the 2023 incident but, according to Sanders, leaves other questions unanswered.

The worksheet says that Suarez was assisting other officers responding to a domestic violence call in 2023. The other officers had arrested and handcuffed a man who, according to the worksheet, was “forcefully resisting” arrest. The worksheet says the man bit Suarez. The account reports Suarez then punched the man in the face, and the man lost consciousness for about four minutes. That narrative is based on reports from body-worn camera footage, reports and interviews, the worksheet says.

The district attorney’s office decided not to press charges against Suarez, citing “insufficient evidence” showing Suarez used more force than necessary.

In the latest filing, Sanders raises several issues with the worksheet provided by the district attorney’s office and is seeking more information about what happened during the incident.

The worksheet says Long Beach “opened an investigation into the allegation that Suarez used excessive force” in March 2023, two months after the incident.

In response to a records request from LAist, the Long Beach Police Department said they had identified one investigation with a sustained finding of “unnecessary or unreasonable force” from 2023 in Suarez’s personnel file. Later that same day, the department released the investigatory files related to that incident.

The records show the internal affairs investigation was prompted by deputy chief Gerardo Prieto, who also requested a criminal investigation, and resulted in a three-day suspension for Suarez.

A summary of a meeting between Suarez and LBPD leadership states that Suarez and James Trott, an attorney with the Long Beach Police Officers Association, argued the use of force was reasonable. Trott said the incident “should and alone and not be associated with the prior out-of-state incident,” according to the summary.

The worksheet from the district attorney’s office does not reference any sustained findings by the Long Beach Police Department. It does not describe the allegation or explain where the allegation came from, a key omission, according to Sanders.

The report summarizes an interview with the man Suarez punched. It does not include any statements from that man and explicitly states they did not seek a compelled interview with Suarez.

Importantly, Sanders argues, the report makes no mention of the conviction against Suarez in Georgia that occurred just a few months earlier.

The man Suarez punched was convicted of resisting arrest during the incident. Sanders argues that he was entitled to know about Suarez’s conviction, and that the district attorney’s office should have known about the conviction while deciding whether or not to charge Suarez.

The district attorney’s office handbook states that when considering pressing charges on someone, prosecutors shall “review all available police reports and the accused’s background and prior record.”

“The fact that the accused’s alleged conduct is consistent or inconsistent with prior proven conduct may remove or create a reasonable doubt,” the handbook explains.

The district attorney’s office told LAist the office was not aware of the Georgia conviction at the time of their 2023 investigation.

What makes The Little Sugarplum special? Three sisters started the traveling pop-up bakery, each with a different role in running it. There’s the medical student-turned-baker, the hospitality worker-turned-marketer, and the blackjack dealer-turned-accountant.

What else? Their cinnamon rolls, which have become the main attraction, include a variety of rotating flavors like strawberry shortcake, matcha, coffee and ... mashed potatoes. Yeah, you read that right.

They recently shared their secrets with LAist host Austin Cross.

About the owners

Jenna Agpaoa grew up with her two sisters in Valley Center, a city in San Diego County, where their passion for baked goods began to take shape.

The Amish cinnamon roll

Soon after starting the bakery, their content went viral after sharing a recipe for a traditional Amish cinnamon roll, which notably uses mashed potatoes as an ingredient. They learned the recipe from an old neighbor growing up, who was Pennsylvania Dutch, a group descended from German-speaking immigrants from the 17th and 18th centuries.

Now you can find them vending all across Southern California, including at places like Ubefest and 626 Night Market.

Their fall flavor menu

They offer other baked goods in addition to cinnamon rolls, including cookies, brownies and bread.

The Little Sugarplum's fall menu.

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Courtesy The Little Sugarplum Bakery

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What should we try next?