Topline:
The L.A. City Council has approved another $10 million loan to fix apartments run by the troubled Skid Row Housing Trust — a nonprofit that is the largest provider of subsidized housing in Skid Row.
What’s the money for? The bigger budget is needed to pay for higher costs for security, insurance, utilities and janitors, according to a court filing by Kevin Singer, who is in charge of overseeing the trust.
What happens next? City officials say the new money approved by the city council will last until December. The building’s owners will have to pay it back once the apartments leave the receivership.
Go deeper: LAist previously reported on problems with the Skid Row Housing Trust and uncovered unpaid tax debt and other issues. You can read that reporting here.
The L.A. City Council has approved another $10 million loan to fix apartments operated by the troubled Skid Row Housing Trust — a nonprofit that is the largest provider of subsidized housing in Skid Row.
That funding comes on top of a previous $10 million the council approved in June and another $2 million earlier this month. It would go to the work of Kevin Singer, the person the city requested a judge put in charge of the trust’s buildings in June as a court-appointed receiver.
The bigger budget is needed to pay for higher costs for security, insurance, utilities and janitors, according to a court filing by Singer.
In a report to a judge and city officials, Singer noted his original security budget through September was $1.9 million, but ended up being $3.8 million. He also said there were higher costs tied to the previous receiver, Mark Adams, who was briefly in charge of the trust starting in April before city officials forced him to resign in late June.
“I don't see how we cannot do this. We don't have a lot of options,” Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky said about the first $10 million loan when it came up for a committee vote in June. The idea was to incentivize the court to oust Adams and bring in Singer as receiver.
The backstory
Singer was appointed by an L.A. Superior Court judge to try and right-size the housing trust’s problems back in June.
Just a few months earlier, in April, Adams was appointed by the court to manage the properties at the request of L.A. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto, who praised him at the time as the most experienced person for the job.
But that support for Adams deteriorated, after Feldstein Soto said Adams made a series of “unforced errors.”
The worst one, the city attorney has said, was in early June when a company Adams hired wrongfully told 451 tenants they’d be evicted.
Adams called those notices “a flub up” in an interview with LAist. But the city attorney said they were unacceptable — and illegal. The notices were rescinded.
WHAT IS A RECEIVER?
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A receiver is someone appointed by a court to take control of a property and fix problems. They essentially become the landlord, with oversight by a judge and the city. The Skid Row Housing Trust case is by far the city’s largest court-appointed receivership in the history of L.A., according to the city attorney.
“That kind of error visited upon people who are incredibly vulnerable — who have no place to turn, and who show up at their door and are faced with a three-day notice to quit or pay rent — is completely unacceptable,” Feldstein Soto told city councilmembers at the time.
In moving to oust Adams, the city attorney also cited him not providing the city with financial transparency reports that were required, and being far behind in fixing fire safety issues in the buildings.
Feldstein Soto has acknowledged not fully vetting Adams’ background, which the L.A. Times and LAist have reported includes multiple judges finding problems with his past receiverships — including major overbilling for his company’s services.
About the Skid Row Housing Trust
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The Skid Row Housing Trust is a nonprofit formed in the late 1980s. It's the largest provider of subsidized housing in Skid Row, L.A.’s main neighborhood of unhoused people.
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The organization develops, manages and operates 29 buildings in Downtown L.A. that house people who formerly experienced homelessness. In recent years, the nonprofit completed construction on about 250 units with Measure HHH funding, the $1.2 billion housing bond voters approved in 2016.
What happens next
City officials say the new money approved by the city council will last until December. The building’s owners will have to pay it back once the apartments leave the receivership. In a recent report to the council, L.A. Housing Department chief Ann Sewill wrote that Singer has made a lot of progress since he took over from Adams.
