The Brief

This story was produced by the nonprofit journalism publication Capital & Main in partnership with ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network.  It is co-published with permission. Read part one and part two of the investigation into L.A.’s residential hotels.

As part of Mayor Karen Bass’ signature homelessness initiative called Inside Safe, the city of Los Angeles awarded Las Palmas Hotel a contract potentially worth about $2 million to temporarily shelter people living on the streets.

But the 62-unit hotel in Hollywood was already supposed to be providing housing for people who couldn’t afford to live anywhere else under a 2008 city law meant to ease a “housing emergency” that has grown more severe in the past 15 years.

Inside Safe participants now fill most of Las Palmas’ rooms at nightly rates of up to $140, according to the hotel’s contract with the city — more than double the amount Las Palmas would likely earn if long-term residents rented the rooms as that law requires.

Las Palmas is one of eight residential hotels that have received contracts over the past year to house homeless people through the new Inside Safe program, a Capital & Main and ProPublica investigation found. Of those, five hotels including Las Palmas have collected city funding despite seemingly violating the housing ordinance by offering rooms to tourists.

L.A.’s struggle to preserve low-income housing while simultaneously trying to shelter the growing number of people living on the streets represents an increasingly common national problem as city leaders wrestle with the competing needs of different populations amid a limited housing supply.

Residential hotels, which offer basic single rooms sometimes with shared bathrooms, have long been a kind of last-resort housing for low-income, older and disabled people. The 2008 law bars landlords from turning their buildings into condos or tourist hotels unless they build new units or pay an equivalent fee to the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

Altogether, at least 18 residential hotels have turned into interim shelters through various homeless services programs since 2016, according to a review of the Los Angeles Housing Department’s residential hotel list, Inside Safe contracts, state awards for housing construction and a Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority database of interim housing sites.

Now, that number is set to grow as dozens more residential hotels could become temporary shelters. On Nov. 1, citing a “desperate need for interim housing,” Bass issued an executive order that allows Inside Safe or similar programs to use the city’s 16,000 residential hotel rooms in 300 buildings during the city’s declared homelessness emergency as long as the rooms are unoccupied.

Turning such permanent housing into temporary shelters only makes the city’s housing problems worse, said Barbara Schultz, director of housing justice at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.

“It is inconceivable to me that the city would reduce the number of permanent units affordable to low-income people when we are in the middle of this ginormous housing crisis,” Schultz said.

Bass’ press secretary Clara Karger said in an email that the mayor’s office decided that temporary housing is a better use of the rooms given LA’s housing crisis.

“It is troubling that residential hotels were being misused for daily rates and short-term vacation rentals,” she wrote. “Now, many of those rooms are being used to urgently bring people inside and save lives, and the mayor has directed the Housing Department to address enforcement and to conduct a comprehensive review of all residential hotels.”

This summer, Capital & Main and ProPublica reported that the Housing Department had done little to enforce the residential hotel law as 21 properties openly offered rooms to tourists on travel websites. Following a request by the mayor’s office, Housing Department managers investigated and issued citations to the owners of 17 hotels, including Las Palmas.

Pankaj Naik, CEO of Shivay Hospitality, which operates the hotel, declined to comment or answer questions. Las Palmas has appealed its citation and joined other hotels in a federal lawsuit against the city, alleging that residential hotel enforcement violates their constitutional protection against unreasonable searches. The owners also argue the city has given them tacit approval for short-term rentals by accepting nightly hotel tax payments. The lawsuit is ongoing.

The Housing Department told the mayor that with additional resources, the agency could “stop rogue property owners from violating the Residential Hotel Ordinance and undermining the availability of affordable housing stock.”

But now Bass’ office has removed hundreds of those same residential hotel rooms from the permanent housing market. And the Housing Department’s enforcement hasn’t stopped the city from giving the hotels hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money. Las Palmas’ Inside Safe contract expires in mid-November, but it provides for a six-month extension.

Patricia Harrold, an 80-year-old pianist at Miceli’s, a landmark Hollywood restaurant, has lived at Las Palmas for 29 years.

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Under Inside Safe, which Bass launched shortly after taking office in December, city staffers target tent cities under bridges or on sidewalks. Outreach workers offer motel rooms while buses stand by to ferry those who accept the offers to their temporary dwellings. Once the encampment residents are gone, sanitation workers break up the camps, toss trash and hose down sidewalks.

The pressure on city leaders to bring people inside from street encampments is “immense,” said Gregg Colburn, a University of Washington real estate professor who studies homelessness. Currently, 46,000 Angelenos live in cars, tents and makeshift shelters, and Bass promised to find housing for 17,000 of them in her first year.

“The problem with that strategy,” Colburn said, “is it doesn’t end homelessness. It recharacterizes it from unsheltered into sheltered, which is why I and many others argue we need a lot more permanent housing.”

Housing enforcement, then lucrative contracts

The Housing Department is supposed to approve any conversion of residential hotel buildings from permanent housing, but department records for 10 of the hotels obtained by Capital & Main and ProPublica didn’t show that permission was obtained to turn the hotels into temporary shelters.

The Housing Department did not provide all the hotel files that the newsrooms requested. It also didn’t respond to an interview request or answer emailed questions about whether it had cleared the hotels and what procedures they have for Inside Safe. Instead, the agency said it would handle the queries as a public records request.

Housing Department records revealed that inspectors had cited two of the Inside Safe properties for residential hotel violations in recent years. Hotel booking websites showed three others were openly renting rooms to tourists against Housing Department rules shortly before signing contracts with the city.

Las Palmas is a prime example. The hotel for years advertised its central location for travelers visiting Hollywood, capitalizing on its fame as the site of the final scene in the movie Pretty Woman.

The final scene in the movie “Pretty Woman” was filmed on Las Palmas’ fire escape.

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The Housing Department had designated Las Palmas as a residential hotel in 2011. It based its decision, in the Las Palmas case and others, on the state’s legal definition of a residential hotel: a building of six or more units that are the primary residences of their guests. During the period analyzed in 2005, hotel tax records showed that 93% of its occupants were permanent residents.

But as tenants moved away or died, the struggling actors, writers and celebrity impersonators who called Las Palmas home watched as their landlord turned more and more of the units into tourist rooms. The hotel’s website features a photo of the lobby with a mural of “Pretty Woman” stars Richard Gere and Julia Roberts reuniting on the building’s fire escape. The website promises visitors a “wonderful holiday” and a “blissful stay.”

Today, only about a dozen permanent residents remain, according to residents and the latest rent registry filed with the Housing Department.

As rents have soared, Las Palmas is the only housing most can afford, said writer John Bucher, 72. He got his third-floor room at the hotel 12 years ago “when there was still a payphone in the lobby.” Bucher has driven for Uber and DoorDash to supplement his income and can count on his adult kids to help him in an emergency. But for his neighbors, the hotel “is their safety net,” he said. “They’ll die here.”

John Bucher, a 72-year-old writer, has lived at Las Palmas for 12 years. Over time, more and more rooms have been rented to tourists as residents have moved away or died.

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As Las Palmas turned into a tourist hotel, it did little to hide its marketing efforts. Outside was a large sign offering “DAILY” and “WEEKLY” rentals. A housing inspector even snapped a photo of it in 2019, potential evidence that the hotel was violating the residential hotel law. But there’s no indication the inspector asked about the sign or followed up to ensure the hotel wasn’t being rented to tourists. And Las Palmas wasn’t cited under the ordinance until this summer, a few months after receiving the Inside Safe contract.

That wasn’t the case for two other hotels that similarly landed Inside Safe agreements: the Top Hat Motel and the Central Inn in South Los Angeles. The Housing Department cited both hotels in recent years for advertising to tourists in violation of the residential hotel law.

But in both cases, the hotels’ attorney wouldn’t allow inspectors to reenter without administrative warrants. Housing Department enforcement records show no evidence that inspectors obtained warrants, and no further enforcement action was taken.

Yet even that knowledge of violations didn’t prevent the city from awarding them Inside Safe contracts.

Neither of the owners of the Top Hat or the Central Inn returned phone calls seeking comment, and the Top Hat’s owners didn’t respond to an email. One of the Top Hat’s owners, Dipakkumar Patel, said at an appeal hearing that he would lose “everything” if he were unable to continue short-term rentals at the hotel. The hotel also joined the civil rights lawsuit against the city.

The Top Hat brought in nearly a half million dollars between late March and the beginning of October through Inside Safe, while the Central Inn earned more than $200,000 from May to September, according to invoices the motels submitted to the city’s administrative officer.

Stealing permanent housing

By turning residential hotels into temporary shelters, Bass may be working against her ultimate goal of transitioning people to permanent homes, housing experts said.

While Bass reported in September that about 17,000 people had moved to motels, traditional shelters or tiny home villages since she took office, only 2,235 had found permanent homes. For Inside Safe, just 190 of the nearly 1,700 participants had landed a permanent place to live as of mid-October. The city’s administrative officer, Matt Szabo, has told the City Council that there is not enough staff to help people find housing and also a shortage of affordable housing.

Inside Safe isn’t the first time the city has allowed residential hotels to be turned into temporary shelters. It’s unclear whether prioritizing getting people off the streets over preserving permanent housing was a deliberate policy choice or simple bureaucratic oversight: the result of well-intentioned housing policies from different eras colliding.

Eight other residential buildings have been pressed into service as temporary housing since 2016 through Los Angeles County or U.S. Veterans Affairs programs for emergency shelter or mental health and drug and alcohol treatment, or as part of the COVID-19 public health response.

Additionally, the state Housing and Community Development agency granted Los Angeles County and two nonprofit groups $19.3 million in Project Homekey funds to acquire and remodel two other residential hotel buildings to use as interim housing.

Schultz, the legal aid attorney, said it is a “mind-bogglingly terrible strategy” to use residential hotels as temporary housing because the ordinance provides such strong legal protection for their preservation — at least on paper. Residential hotels are the city’s only housing that can’t legally be demolished or converted to another use unless the housing is replaced, Schultz said.

The 72-room Highland Gardens, a midcentury modern hotel in Hollywood, highlights the tension between the city’s need for temporary shelter and its equally pressing need for permanent housing. Formerly known as the Landmark Motor Hotel, it is best known as the place where singer Janis Joplin died of a heroin overdose more than 50 years ago.

Highland Gardens had been designated as a residential hotel in 2009 but for years had also advertised its rooms to tourists. Then when local officials needed temporary housing to stop the spread of COVID-19 in homeless shelters, the hotel received a contract under Project Roomkey, paid for with federal pandemic relief funds.

Highland Gardens’ owner didn’t return phone messages left at the hotel.

By the time the program ended in December 2022, few participants had found permanent homes, and City Councilmember Nithya Raman pushed to keep Highland Gardens open as an interim housing site. She said she didn’t know it was a residential hotel.

“That’s part of the problem with the city is that we have such an ad hoc process for finding interim housing,” Raman said. Before Bass took office, Raman said, council offices took the lead in finding sites. “I personally would speak to the owner of this facility to tell them about the program and convince them that there would be benefits for them,” she said.

Raman’s colleagues backed her request, and now a $6 million contract, in effect until mid-2025, includes nearly $4 million to rent the hotel’s rooms and about $2 million for social services for people who had been living on the street. At just $50 per room per night, it’s a more favorable deal for the city than the Inside Safe hotels have negotiated.

Raman said she doesn’t think using the Highland Gardens for temporary housing is a mistake, given the urgent need for shelter. “It has saved lives,” she said.

Tommy Lachenmyer, 36, who moved into Las Palmas through Inside Safe after a fire ripped through a Hollywood encampment near where he slept this year, said the temporary housing has been “a blessing.” But while he’s found a job at Pizza Hut and is studying at a local film school for a career in music production, his quest for stable housing may be harder.

Lachenmyer revisits the location where he once lived in a tent on Vista Del Mar Avenue in Los Angeles.

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Lachenmyer said he filled out an application for permanent housing when he moved in about six months ago. He’s still waiting for approval before he can begin his housing search and said he holds out hope that his stay at the hotel will lead to permanent housing. As for the long wait, Lachenmyer said, “I’m OK with it. People have waited for years.”

But longtime resident Bucher said he is not as optimistic that his new Inside Safe neighbors will find permanent housing.

“All they’re doing is warehousing people,” he said. “Nobody thinks about anything but getting them off the streets.”

As summer marches on, expect the heat to stick around.

With these high temps, many of us are searching for a sweet frozen treat to cool off and maybe indulge a little.

I recently sat in for an AirTalk segment with fill-in host Josie Huang, where we both shared some of our local favorites to get ice cream and other frozen treats and heard from listeners who shared theirs.

Take a look and see if your go-to places are here.

Pasadena

A scoop from Kinrose Creamery, dusted with spice and topped with a dried flower.

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Robert Haleblian

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Courtesy Kinrose Creamery

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Kinrose Creamery is one of my personal picks. Owners Maria Oveysi and Moe Kamal make Persian and Egyptian ice cream. Signature flavors include saffron pistachio rose, kanafeh, walnut baklava topped with pashmak (Iranian cotton candy) and sour cherry.

Locations:

• 140 Mills Pl., Pasadena (Old Town Pasadena)
• 16915 Ventura Blvd., Encino

Downtown L.A.

Sad Girl Creamery's Strawberry Animal Cookie Sundae layers strawberry tres leches ice cream with strawberry jam, rainbow sprinkles, frosted animal cookies and housemade vanilla bean whipped cream.

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Courtesy Sad Girl Creamery

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Sad Girl Creamery is another one of my picks. Run by SueEllen Mancini, the pop-up ice cream stand is at Smorgasburg every Sunday, hawking Mancini’s nostalgic Latino ice cream novelties. Flavors include her riff on the iconic Choco Taco, along with a Gansito Sundae made with Mexican vanilla ice cream, strawberry-raspberry-hibiscus jam and yellow cake. Mancini always has something worth stopping by for.

Location: ROW DTLA, 777 S. Alameda St., Los Angeles

Leimert Park

Listener Camille emailed to recommend All Chill, a shop specializing in small-batch and artisanal ice cream, with a built-in hip-hop museum (yup!). The shop ties the flavors to the neighborhood's cultural identity. Fan favorites include bean pie and, as a non-dairy option, cognac and currant.

Location: 3415 W. 43rd Place, Los Angeles

Arcadia

626 Ice Cream is another of my picks. Founded in 2020 by Amber Tan and Waldo Yan after both lost hospitality jobs in the pandemic, the duo took over the longtime Ace Frozen Yogurt space. With a completely reimagined space and menu, flavors include black sesame, roasted green tea, Yakult, lychee strawberry, mango calamansi, and malted chocolate.

Location: 160 E. Duarte Rd., Ste. E, Arcadia

Atwater Village

Wanderlust's Tokyo Rainbow Sherbet blends ramune soda, tart yuzu and creamy strawberry Calpis, inspired by Tokyo summers and childhood conbini treats.

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Courtesy Wanderlust Creamery

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Listener Ann-Marie from Whittier emailed to say Wanderlust Creamery is like a “travelogue featuring flavors from all over the world, and the quality is top-notch. When you walk outside and eat a cone, it doesn't instantly start melting like so many other places' ice cream." Signature flavors include sticky rice mango, Japanese Neapolitan, and Vietnamese Rocky Road.

Locations: Atwater Village, Costa Mesa, Venice, Irvine, Sawtelle, Pasadena, Tarzana, Topanga Social

Altadena

Camille's email also flagged Bulgarini. Owner Leo Bulgarini, a Rome native and trained sommelier, places sourcing as his gelato shop’s reigning ethos — think Bronte pistachios from Sicily, Vestri chocolate from Florence, and Hawaiian macadamia for his various creations. And if you're interested in making a whole meal around your visit, the shop also serves a small pasta menu and tasting dinners a few nights a week.

Location: 749 E. Altadena Drive, Altadena

Highland Park

Owner Tai Kim may have quietly started the artisanal ice cream revolution when he opened the first Scoops over 20 years ago. The original has since closed, but two more locations have opened since — one in Highland Park, where Kim still makes the ice cream for all Scoops locations, and one in Chinatown. As listener Marty from Mt. Washington put it in an email, Scoops "make[s] different flavors all the time, very unusual flavors, and they make non-dairy options too" — case in point, the shop's signature Grape-Nuts–infused brown bread (my personal favorite) and its basil coconut.

Locations:

• 5105 York Blvd., Los Angeles (Highland Park) 
• 727 N. Broadway, Ste. 125, Los Angeles (Chinatown)

Melrose

AWAN is another of my picks. 100% vegan, gluten-free, Indonesian-inspired. Started as a West Hollywood walk-up window; now has brick-and-mortars in Larchmont and Venice. Signature flavors include Balinese vanilla, chocolate Oreo, soursop mango ripple, and blue yuzu.

Locations:

• 5630 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles (Melrose)
• 866 Huntley Dr., West Hollywood
• 540 Rose Ave, Venice
  

Alhambra

"Definitely Fosselman's in Alhambra. Chocolate-covered strawberry is the best," listener Vicki from San Gabriel emailed to say. Josie backed her up, noting the shop still has that 1950s fountain-soda-shop vibe.

Location: 1824 W. Main St., Alhambra

Koreatown / Mid-City / Culver City / West L.A.

"Mateo's Ice Cream and Paletas," listener Loretta emailed. Founded in 2000, Mateo's specializes in Latin American-style ice cream and paletas — think mango chile, black sapote, and horchata, alongside more classic flavors.

Locations: 

• 1250 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles (Koreatown) 
• 4234 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles (Mid-City) 
• 4929 Sepulveda Blvd., Culver City 
• 11551 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles (West L.A.)

Tarzana

"I just had the roasted strawberry and also pistachio baklava. Delicious," listener Caroline from Woodland Hills emailed about Magpies Softserve. Founded by chefs Warren and Rose Schwartz, Magpies also has locations in Silver Lake and Highland Park.

Locations:

• 2660 Griffith Park Blvd., Los Angeles (Silver Lake) 
• 5049 York Blvd., Los Angeles (Highland Park) 
• 18971 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana

Culver City / West 3rd Street

"Lately I've fallen in love with Ginger's Divine Ice Cream," listener Jerome from Laurel Canyon emailed. The shop started in Culver City before adding a Mid-City/West 3rd Street location near the Beverly Center.

Locations:

• 12550 Washington Blvd., Culver City
• 8430 W. 3rd St., Los Angeles

Anaheim

Tocumbo didn't come up on air, but it's worth including. The shop takes its name from the small municipality in Michoacán that's considered the epicenter of Mexican ice cream and paletas — there's even a giant popsicle monument there. Siblings Jennifer Clausen-Quiroz and Ricky Quiroz started Tocumbo to continue that tradition, using recipes sourced directly from Michoacán. Standouts include ice cream sundaes made with Gansitos (chocolate-dipped snack cakes filled with cream and jam) and a wide selection of paletas, including chamoy, and a chocolate ice cream made with chocolate imported from Zacatecas.

Location: 956 S. Euclid St., Anaheim

Laguna Beach

"Gelato Paradiso in Laguna Beach is the cutest little shop right on the PCH and the flavors are always rotating. My favorite lately has been their take on the Biscoff – Biscotti-flavored ice cream. It is divine," said Fahim Khan, an LAist producer.

Location: 448 S. Coast Hwy, Ste. A, Laguna Beach

Multiple locations

• Handel's is Josie’s  family standby — a homemade ice-cream chain that's been scooping since 1945, with dozens of locations across SoCal. Her family always gets the four-mini-scoop sampler (mint chocolate chip, cookies and cream, rocky road, and mango) when they can't agree on just one flavor. 

• "I'm a Salt & Straw diehard. The quality is unmatched," said Lindsay Wright, LAist senior producer, citing the Portland-born chain's rotating, offbeat flavors as the draw.

Betye Saar’s long art career was the subject of media profiles and art shows in the years and months leading up to a milestone birthday this week. She died Sunday, July 26, four days before she would have turned 100.

Betye Saar in her studio in Los Angeles on January 22, 2026.

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David Sprague

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Courtesy Roberts Projects

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Saar had deep roots in Southern California. She was born, raised and educated in the Los Angeles area. She was firmly rooted in the region and in various Black communities, but her art was not provincial.

Saar took on the global, national and regional issues that affected Black Americans in her drawings, paintings and assemblages. She redefined, broke apart and juxtaposed issues related to stereotypes and racism, as well as mysticism and spirituality.

She exhibited widely in the U.S., and her pieces are in the permanent collections of many museums including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The piece I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break on view at LACMA.

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The next few weeks provide a unique opportunity for people who live in or are visiting L.A. to see a wide spectrum of Saar’s work — from the fashion, jewelry and costume designs she created early in her art career to the final commissioned piece she made a few years before her death.

It’s a work that takes on the concepts of memory and transition.

A piece in the museum Betye Saar grew up going to

Saar grew up in Pasadena, and when she was young, she frequented The Huntington in nearby San Marino. In 2023 the museum unveiled one of Saar's pieces, titled "Drifting Toward Twilight," on display through Nov. 30, 2027.

To create the work, Saar used found objects, metal cages and animal horns, and placed them inside a wooden canoe. The vessel rests on a bed of branches and twigs she collected from the grounds of The Huntington. The piece is displayed in a room where the walls have been painted in three shades of blue and where the lights subtly change, illuminating seven shapes representing the stages of the moon.

The piece Drifting Toward Twilight was Betye Saar's last commissioned piece before she died. It's on display at the Huntington until the fall of 2027.

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“She's basically drawing up a scene for us in our minds, so that as we engage with the installation," said Lauren Cross, the Huntington’s associate curator of American decorative arts. "We are in the canoe on a journey with her, traveling along, and experiencing the work with her.”

Cross said Saar was working with the idea of transitions, including spiritual transition related to death.

A 16-minute video created for this exhibit, based on Betye Saar’s life as an artist, plays in a room next to the gallery.

A mother and an artist

The exhibit that’s likely to give the deepest view of Saar’s art is on view for a few more weeks.

A piece made in 1969 by Betye Saar on view at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.

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Robert Wedemeyer

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Courtesy of the artist andRoberts Projects, LosAngeles

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"Let's Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar" is at Roberts Projects until Aug. 22. It features more than 200 objects, including costume designs, photographs, drawings, garments, jewelry, artworks and historic materials from the 1950s to the 1970s as Saar was becoming a nationally recognized artist.

The show demonstrates how deeply Saar created for stage productions in L.A. such as for the Inner City Cultural Center, a multicultural performing arts group started after the 1965 Watts Rebellion.

The decorative art she created would have defined a remarkable career, but then around the late 1960s she moved on to assemblages, works made with found objects. These works took on lifelong areas of interests such as spirituality and racism.

The piece Souvenir of Friendship (1977) by Betye Saar is on view at Hauser & Wirth in downtown L.A. until August 16.

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Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles

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One of the most poignant pieces, titled "I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break," from 1998, is on display at LACMA’s new David Geffen Galleries. Saar uses a vintage ironing board, wood clothespins, a flat iron and a white bedsheet to comment on women’s work, slavery’s dehumanization and the enduring racism that seems to infuse much of U.S. society.

Detail from the piece I’ll Bend But I Will Not Break on view at LACMA.

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“Betye is very much alive in her work,"said Carol S. Eliel,  senior curator emerita of modern art at LACMA. "There's so much of her personality, her fierceness … she had an iron spine. She was a very gentle, lovely, beautiful person, but you could not steamroll her and I think the work reflects that.

Betye Saar in North African dress in 1968 in a photo that's on display at Roberts Projects.

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Carol A. Beers

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Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.

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“It makes me happy that someone who had such a long and rich and productive career will live on through these amazing works,” she said.

The LACMA piece is part of the museum's permanent collection. Much of the other work by Saar in L.A. will come down in the next month and a half.

Here’s a guide to help you plan a Betye Saar L.A. art tour.

Duplex projects will be allowed to move forward once again in two Southern California cities affected by last year’s fires. The change of course is the result of a court showdown between advocates for denser housing and local elected officials who wanted to ban more units from cropping up in burn zones.

The cities of Malibu and Pasadena have agreed to settle with the plaintiffs who brought forward a lawsuit that challenges local jurisdictions’ suspension of Senate Bill 9 in high fire risk zones, according to documents obtained by LAist.

Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the result will help residents get more out of their properties.

“I want them to know that they can build,” Trauss said.

How we got here

SB 9 allows single-family homeowners across the state to build duplexes and split their lots. It became state law in 2021. SB 9 applicants can use the law to create up to four units where a single-family home once stood, in some cases. The law takes away the ability of local governments to block these projects.

However, after the 2025 fires, some homeowners affected by the fires erupted with anger over the prospect of their burned-down neighborhoods being rebuilt with denser housing. They argued more homes — and the additional residents that come with them — would clog evacuations and hurt neighborhood character.

In July 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order giving local leaders the power to block the law in very high fire hazard areas within the Palisades and Eaton fire burn zones.

Elected officials in L.A. city, the county of L.A., Pasadena and Malibu followed suit and adopted policies to stop processing SB 9 applications in those areas.

Advocates for increased housing development, including YIMBY Law, sued the governments, alleging they didn’t have the authority to suspend laws passed by the legislature.

Trauss told LAist housing advocates believe the order is being misused for political purposes.

“ It chips away at the policy,” she said. “Especially in the Palisades, everybody could watch the political back-and-forth that caused that to happen.”

The backlash on social media to SB 9 projects in the Palisades was led by former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the fire and later mounted an unsuccessful campaign for L.A. mayor.

What the settlement means

According to the settlement documents, Malibu and Pasadena have agreed to repeal the local ordinances that blocked SB 9 projects by the end of September. The settlements still require City Council action to undo those bans.

The cities are also supposed to process any pending SB 9 applications that were submitted, paused or rejected.

Another plaintiff in the lawsuit — Andrew Slocum, CEO of Green Development Company — said he thinks Newsom never should have signed the executive order in the first place.

Slocum said he hopes to see recovering homeowners have more options when rebuilding their properties. Last year, he told LAist he was working with homeowners on SB 9 projects.

The settlement “allows for the people to hopefully be able to come back and resubmit that application,” Slocum said, “because most people who are doing SB 9 are the homeowners themselves.”

The Pasadena City Council took the first step toward repeal on July 20, according to city spokesperson Lisa Derderian. She said they’ll start processing SB 9 applications once the vote is finalized.

“The City reached a conditional settlement with YIMBY in recognition of the uncertainty inherent in litigation and the significant passage of time since the Eaton Fire in January 2025,” she said in a statement.

LAist contacted officials in the city of Malibu for comment but has not heard back.

What’s next

The county and city of L.A. are still fighting the lawsuit. They control land use in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, home to the lion’s share of properties affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires.

State officials also continue to defend the restrictions. Newsom’s office stands behind the executive order and plans to defend it in court, according to a state official.

Trauss said the parties met for  a trial setting conference a few days ago.

“ I want the folks in the county and in the city of L.A. who could build … to have hope,” she said.

The lawsuit is playing out while state legislators are moving forward with a new bill, SB 1090, which would expand the ban on SB 9 to all of Altadena.

One Hollywood icon is prepping for a comeback. The Cinerama Dome – one of the most famous movie theaters in the world – has been closed since the COVID pandemic. But it's now got a new lease on life, thanks to SONY Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

The studio announced it will lease, restore and reopen the famous theater in 2028; Alamo Drafthouse plans to program and operate it and 14 other screens at the adjoining multiplex.

"Hot damn! We're bringing the Dome back, baby," SONY Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group CEO Tom Rothman said in a statement. "We believe in moviegoing down to our soul, and no venue on Earth stands more for that than the one-of-a-kind Dome."

"There's a lot of passion behind this theater," says Michael O'Leary, who heads Cinema United, the global association of movie theater owners. He says while the Cinerama Dome's closing was a symbol of the pandemic, its recovery is proof the pandemic is behind us and movie theater-going is back.

"It's really exciting," agrees Escott Norton, former executive director and current board member of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation. "There's been a lot of people waiting with baited breath to see when the dome is going to reopen. People think of this as the ultimate Hollywood experience."

As an LA native and former film production designer, Norton has great memories of going to the Cinerama Dome. He says it was always an immersive experience to watch movies inside the geodesic-shaped auditorium designed to show wide screen movies.

"When I saw Close Encounters on this giant screen curved around me, it knocked my socks off," he says, adding he was also blown away watching Apocalypse Now at the Dome. "The movie opens up with this wide screen of just a quiet jungle, birds tweeting and then it explodes. Being surrounded by that on the curved screen, it still gives me tingles thinking about it."

The Cinerama Dome in October 2021.

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The Cinerama Dome was built in 1963 by William Forman – the founder of Pacific Theaters, who had popularized drive-in cinemas. Forman commissioned a French architect who had studied under R. Buckminster Fuller, a designer of other geodesic structures. The theater was originally made to showcase Cinerama, a format developed in the 1950s that was part of the widescreen craze designed to lure viewers away from television and back to cinemas.

Forman was able to get the theater constructed in 16 weeks … just in time for the world premiere of a madcap comedy called, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The movie ran four hours long, with an intermission. Filmmakers had originally planned to use the Cinerama format, but abandoned it, shooting in Ultra Panavision 70 millimeter instead.

Still, it featured a who's who of comedy at the time – including Sid Caesar, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, and Buddy Hackett. Buster Keaton even makes a ten second cameo. "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World played at the Cinerama Dome, the brand new theater, for two years without stopping," recalled Karen Sharpe, the widow of the movie's director, Stanley Kramer. The former TV actress and producer spoke at a rally to preserve the Cinerama Dome last year, and talked about the star-studded premiere.

"It was a real happening," she remembered. "Bobby Kennedy came, Adlai Stevenson came and President and Mrs. Kennedy accepted the invitation to attend the opening. A few days before, they called to say 'So sorry, we have to [decline] the invitation because President and Mrs. Kennedy have to go to Dallas.' And we know what happened in Dallas."

Over the decades, the theater became a mecca for cinephiles. The dome was sometimes costumed like the movies it screened. Once, a replica Godzilla appeared to burst through the egg-like roof. Another time it was painted green with ears to resemble Shrek's head. Figures depicting the Pink Panther, Spider Man and the Minions have perched or crawled atop the Dome.

And fans were treated to countless premieres and special events, like when filmmaker Quentin Tarantino personally welcomed audiences to his 2019 feature Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. For the film, he included exterior shots of the Dome.

Two years later, after the Cinerama Dome's operators went bankrupt during the pandemic, Tarantino talked about how it was one of his favorite LA landmarks.

"I don't know if I could 100% afford it, but I would love to own the Cinerama Dome," he said on The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM. "That would be fantastic."

Tarantino already owns two other historic LA cinemas. But other preservationists and activists have been working to revive the dormant theater. Many of them credit the efforts of Benjamin Steinberg, a 27-year-old filmmaker and actor who appeared on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

"The Cinerama Dome is the most famous movie theater in the world," Steinberg said, standing outside the boarded-up theater. "It seemed like it was going to be a demolition by neglect. So I was, like, something has to be done."

Steinberg created a campaign to save the Cinerama Dome. He organized a few street rallies, and wrote an online petition that amassed more than 30,000 signatures.

Ben Steinberg projected images onto the dome as part of a campaign to save the theater.

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Then in March, Steinberg went even further to get the attention of the Forman family, which still owns the property: he projected images of the owners' faces onto the outside of the Dome, asking them to reopen the theater.

"We actually projected it for two hours and then they called the police on us," Steinberg explains. "We didn't get arrested; The police just said that the ownership considered it an escalation and harassment. I never wanted to anger the owner, so we stopped immediately."

Steinberg's stunt created a lot of buzz, and may have moved the needle, says theater preservationist Norton. His group had been consulting with architects on restoration plans in hopes that someone would save the day.

"We were all working behind the scenes. But Ben Steinberg really got on board on social media to save the dome," says Norton. "I'm very happy he did. You know, you sort of have to rattle the chains sometimes."

Meanwhile, Sony has promised to preserve the Cinerama Dome's history while ensuring its future.
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