The Brief

Pointing to a series of problems and a breakdown in trust, L.A.’s city attorney is now recommending yanking control of the troubled Skid Row Housing Trust from the person she had a judge put in charge just a few months ago.

In a memo dated Friday, City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto and the city’s housing director outlined their support for asking the judge to replace Mark Adams as the properties’ receiver — and have the city lend up to $10 million toward fixing problems with the apartments.

To incentivize the judge to replace him, the city would be offering the low interest loan on the condition that Adams is replaced. City councilmembers are expected to take up the recommendation at a budget committee meeting Monday. The committee's chair, Bob Blumenfield, told LAist Friday afternoon that he supports the move to replace Adams.

“All of these red flags move from being red flags to being flashing red lights that say, 'watch out'," Blumenfield said.

"We really need to do everything we can to prevent a human tragedy from getting worse, and to look after the public dollar as well. Because that is very much at stake," he added.

Back in late March, Feldstein Soto had asked a court to put Adams in control of the trust’s 29 properties, which are home to about 1,500 formerly unhoused people — after the nonprofit Housing Trust fell apart financially and many of its apartments were deemed health and safety risks.

But in a reversal of confidence, Feldstein Soto joined with L.A. Housing Department chief Ann Sewill to recommend Adams be replaced by Kevin Singer of Receivership Specialists, for “some or all” of the properties.

'Disappointing' progress

“[Adams’] progress toward resolving serious code enforcement violations such as repairing the fire/life safety systems, fixing plumbing problems in common area restrooms and restoring units that have been cited for abatement by HACLA for minor code violations has been disappointing,” states the memo to the city council.

“In addition, just a couple of weeks ago, the property management company hired by [Adams] sent out 3-day eviction notices to hundreds of tenants which were then rescinded but which should never have been sent.”

Feldstein Soto previously told the Los Angeles Times the 451 eviction notices were illegal under the city’s tenant protection law and violated his promise to not evict anyone solely for being behind on rent.

The memo also says Adams hasn’t hired enough staff to repair and secure the properties and says he hasn’t provided the court-ordered reporting and accounting that the city and other agencies require.

“It became apparent that the receivership would be better served with a different receiver,” it states.

Adams didn’t respond to LAist’s requests for comment Friday morning, and a spokesperson for the city attorney said they had no comment.

In recommending Singer to replace Adams, officials wrote that Singer has handled nearly 500 receiverships statewide — more than Adams’ roughly 300 — and that San Francisco officials spoke highly of his work in the city, which included “a very challenging receivership” in the Tenderloin District.

Asked if Singer received more vetting by the city attorney than Adams did, Blumenfield said he and others have asked and "we have been assured there’s been considerably more vetting."

What happens next

The request to extend city loans up to $10 million — as long as the court replaces Adams — now heads to the city council’s budget committee for a decision. That meeting is set for Monday at 2 p.m.

“One way or the other, the public ends up on the hook for this," Blumenfield told LAist, saying that he believes if the Housing Trust implodes, many of the residents will end up back on the streets with no other options.

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We need to be smart about this and engage as early as we can to prevent a bigger catastrophe that will also end up costing us a tremendous amount of money – which is why we're even entertaining the idea of engaging with our own tax dollars in this process.”

As part of the loan, Blumenfield said, the city would put in place more stringent requirements for the new receiver to update the city – and consequences if that doesn't happen.

Blumenfield said that's something the city can't currently require, because the receivership is a court-controlled process and the city isn't a lender.

It will ultimately be up to L.A. Superior Court Judge Mitchell Beckloff whether to replace Adams. His support of Adams could be waning — last week, during a tense court hearing in downtown L.A., Beckloff removed seven properties from the receivership and questioned Adams’ efforts to improve the properties. Still, the judge expressed support for Adams, saying he thought he was the right person for the job.

It’s unclear what the status is of the city attorney’s investigation of Adams’ performance, which she revealed last week. Her spokesperson declined to comment about it Friday.

The key going forward, Blumenfield said, is for the housing units to be fixed up quickly so they can become financially stable. Currently, hundreds of the units are ineligible for federal housing voucher dollars because the city has declared they violate livability standards, including for issues like fire safety.

Past issues

The move comes after the improper eviction notices, and reports by the L.A. Times and LAist about multiple judges finding problems with his past receiverships, including major overbilling for his company’s services.

LAist also reported earlier this month that a company Adams created for his receivership work has been banned by the state from doing business since 2015 over unpaid taxes. Adams told us he’d look into it and said his current company is in good standing.

City officials have said the stakes are high with the housing trust. For decades, it’s been one of L.A.’s largest providers of affordable housing to unhoused people. But its buildings have fallen into disrepair in recent years as its nonprofit owner descended into disfunction and financial ruin, according to the memo and reporting by the Times.

On April 5, just before Adams was put in charge, three people were found dead in a Skid Row Housing Trust building due to suspected overdoses.

When Feldstein Soto announced in late March she would be seeking the receivership that put Adams in control of the properties, she said the 1,500 people living in its buildings are extremely at-risk.

“[These] are among our most marginalized and vulnerable populations,” Feldstein Soto told reporters. “If they lose their housing, there is very little question that they will spill out onto our streets.”

LAist reporter David Wagner contributed to this story.

In his final year in office, Gov. Gavin Newsom plans to go after large investors buying and owning California housing — in the same week that President Donald Trump also took rhetorical aim at Big Landlord.

It’s an unlikely meeting of the minds of two political foes who, in a race to head off the electorate's concerns about affordability, have landed upon the same populist message: Blame Wall Street.

Newsom plans to say during his State of the State address to lawmakers on Thursday that he wants to work with them to regulate the practice of investors buying up large stocks of housing to rent out, forcing California residents to compete with them to afford buying a home, according to the governor’s office.

Proposals could include “enhanced state oversight and enforcement and potential changes to the state tax code,” according to the governor’s office.

“When housing is treated primarily as a corporate investment strategy, Californians feel the impact,” a source in the office said. “Prices go up, rents rise, and fewer people have a chance to buy a home.”

That sounds similar to a proposal Trump made on his social media platform Truth Social on Wednesday. The two previously closely aligned on policy related to clearing of homeless encampments.

“I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes,” the president wrote, sending stock prices of major publicly traded residential investment firms plummeting. He urged Congress to put the proposal into law and promised to unveil additional housing policy proposals at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland later this month.

Newsom is stopping short of calling for an outright ban on institutional investors’ ownership, though the source said he will seek to “curb” it with the goal of making home ownership more affordable for California residents.

He hasn’t yet proposed anything concrete. Whatever Newsom seeks to do, he’ll need the approval of the state Legislature.

Trump, for his part, did not offer any details about his proposal, such as how institutional investors would be defined under the proposed law or why he targeted single-family homes in particular. The White House’s press office did not respond to an email with those questions.

The twin announcements come after years of long-shot efforts by California progressives to address a surge in companies buying up single-family housing stock in the wake of the Great Recession. The issue has been the subject of renewed anxiety in post-fire Los Angeles, where a recent report by RedFin showed investors (loosely defined as any buyer with a name that includes “LLC,” “Inc” or “Corp”) have purchased 27 of 61 burned vacant lots that sold in Altadena — more than 40%.

Asked about that report in an interview on MS Now this week, Newsom said he had signed an executive order last year seeking to protect homeowners who find it too expensive to rebuild from falling for “predatory” lowball offers for their properties. But he acknowledged “the broader market conditions are challenging.”

The proposals mark new territory for Newsom’s housing affordability platform. The governor, now in his final year in office, has spent most of the past seven years focused on boosting construction. It’s a pivot toward populism for the governor, who is widely expected to run for president in 2028.

Blaming deep-pocketed investors for the nation’s housing woes has become an increasingly ideological-spanning exercise in recent years, with politicians as diverse as New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vice President J.D. Vance championing the cause.

Shortly after Trump’s post, Republican Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio, an enthusiastic supporter of the president, promised to introduce legislation in his own post on X.

Is this actually a problem in California?

Many housing industry professionals, economists and policy researchers are skeptical.

“It’s really hard to buy a house right now so people are looking for someone to blame for that, but I think (institutional investors) are more of a symptom of the affordability crisis than they are a perpetuator of it,” said Caitlin Gorback, a University of Texas at Austin economist who has studied investors’ effect on local real estate markets.

Research on the topic is mixed, though most analyses have found that by taking owner-occupied homes and converting them into rentals, these companies tend to increase the supply of rentals. That puts downward pressure on rents, while taking away purchasable homes, leading to higher prices.

Fewer than 3% of all single-family homes in the state are owned by companies that own at least 10 properties.That also takes away opportunities for would-be homeowners to buy a coveted single-family home. But even that comes with an under-appreciated upside, said Gorback: They provide more priced-out renters the opportunity to live in single-family homes — typically in wealthier, whiter and higher-resourced neighborhoods — something historically reserved for those who can afford to buy.

While apartment buildings are commonly owned and managed by large financial companies, single-family rentals weren’t seen as Wall Street-worthy money-making opportunities until the aftermath of the Great Recession. Since then, companies like Invitation Homes, Blackstone, Progress Residential and AMH Homes have typically focused on markets with relatively low prices and rapidly growing populations.

That doesn’t describe California. As a result, larger investors — however defined — make up a relatively small share of single-family landlords in the state. Fewer than 3% of all single-family homes in the state are owned by companies that own at least 10 properties, according to an analysis by the California Research Bureau, which conducts research for state lawmakers. A mere 20,066 are owned by firms with portfolios of 1,000 units or more. The largest of those owners is Invitation Homes, which owns over 11,000 homes in the state and reached a settlement with Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office last year over allegations it price-gouged tenants and illegally raised rents on more than 1,900 properties.

There are more than 16 million rental units across the state, according to Census data.

Though attacking big monied investors for the high cost of housing is a “huge distraction,” it has obvious political appeal, said Stan Oklobdzija, a UC Riverside public policy professor. “Attacking institutional investors is the latest iteration of appearing to do something without actually doing anything. …It's just kind of archetypical cheap talk.”

For nearly a decade, Democrats in the state Legislature have proposed bills to track or ban the practice. Former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill to create a registry of institutional investors that own 100 or more single-family homes, noting that “collecting the data would not stop the purchase of these homes by private investors.”

In 2024, lawmakers proposed banning investors that own at least 1,000 single-family homes from buying more houses and renting them out, prohibiting institutional investors from buying single-family homes for any reason and banning developers from selling entire new single-family subdivisions to investors to rent. All three bills died in committees.

Assemblymember Alex Lee, author of the first proposal, revived the bill last year. It passed the Assembly and awaits a hearing in a Senate committee.

Lee, a Democratic Socialist who has long critiqued the role of big money in the state's real estate market, said he was "flabbergasted" to find himself on the same page with Trump, whom he described as a "far-right fascist." Though he expressed doubts that the Trump administration would follow through with the promises the president made in his social media post, he said that "Democrats need to wake up to this populist, but righteous, position."

"We can’t let the far-right capture the housing positions that the people care about," Lee said.

Newsom evidently agrees.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

Once upon a time, we lived in a world where the “cool” kids were the ones up drinking until 5 a.m., weekend warriors who relished the pursuit of pleasure no matter the unsavory cost.

In today’s post-COVID world, however, things have gotten a little topsy-turvy. Nowadays, the cool kids are in bed by 9 p.m. so they can be up at 5 a.m., in time to slam down a shot of matcha and head to a day rave where all the attendees are — believe it or not — shockingly, sober.

The thing is, to the undiscerning eye, the crowd at a Daybreaker rave looks exactly the same as its typically drug-fueled nighttime counterpart: buoyant, animated and so very alive with its sea of thrashing bodies, quivering booties and smiling faces.

It’s a testament to a new paradigm shift, one in which adults are increasingly turning away from the hard stuff in favor of celebrating without alcohol. Nurtured by the desire for vitality, the small flame of “Dry January” has taken shape into something much greater — a whole new world of non-alcoholic gatherings.

From coffee raves to tea speakeasies and beyond, the world of adult beverages as we know it is rapidly changing. Whether you’re a social butterfly looking for a new scene or a homebody hoping to finally venture off the couch, we’ve featured three of our favorite non-alcoholic gatherings in L.A. Check ‘em out below in all their glory.

Bar Nuda (pop up locations)

Founded by Morris Ellis, a creative director and branding expert, and Pablo Murillo, a storyteller and entrepreneur, Bar Nuda is a pop up “bar” experience designed for those in mind who want to indulge in the social aspects of the barfly life without any of the lingering regrets the next morning.

“We've been on a mission to redefine a night out,” says Murillo, smiling as he places a drink in front of me. “Our slogan is ‘Drinks to Remember’, because we want you to go out and celebrate life.”

Bar Nuda helps you indulge in the social aspects of the barfly life without any of the lingering regrets

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Janelle Lassalle

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LAist

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It’s a mission that’s more personal than professional — Murillo’s experience of losing his father to alcohol-related illness inspired him to redefine the narrative of what a night out could look like. His goal was a surprisingly simple concept: to create a warm, welcoming community where people could mingle without the standard social lubricant of booze.

“We wanted to really hold space for people like myself, you know?” Murillo continues. “When we started Bar Nuda, I was not sober, but I am now. Bar Nuda got me sober. We wanted to change the narrative for my family, but also be there for others to do the same and to say, hey, look, you can go out and have a really good time without drinking booze.”

Bar Nuda's slogan is “Drinks to Remember"

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Janelle Lassalle

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LAist

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Bar Nuda partners up with local bars, neighborhood coffee shops and other venues around Los Angeles to create unique non-alcoholic based events for patrons; check out their Instagram for the details. Trivia Night, for instance, is a regular staple in their event roster, with most events starting at 7 or 8 p.m. Other events include benefit concerts (to raise money for CHIRLA, The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights), Alcohol Free Game Night and even courses dedicated to making your own non-alcoholic based drinks.

“We do a ton of work with hospitality groups, venues and music festivals who are looking to build out their non-alcoholic programs,” says Brianda Gonzalez, founder of the non-alcoholic shop The New Bar, who partners with Bar Nuda. “Consumers are increasingly looking for other options when they go out and don't want to drink quite as much.”

Ellis and Murillo are certainly doing something right: to walk into one of their events is to feel like you’re, well, inside of a bar, filled with the sounds of warm laughter, buzzing conversations and the inevitable chaotic din of the trivia crowd. Drinks are prepared with a level of craftsmanship that might have you second guessing as to whether or not you’re drinking alcohol. The menu rotates seasonally, with many of the drink ingredients sourced directly from Mexico. The house favorite is the “Rosa Nuda”, made with tantalizingly tangy, fresh bougainvillea sourced by Bar Nuda’s Beverage Director Bryant J. Orozco.

As the guests at the bar form a small crowd, giggling about events to come, I take a sip of the Rosa Nuda before a huge smile spreads across my face.

The bartender laughs at me, pleased.

“Not bad, eh?”

Grab tickets here.

Daybreaker (rotating locations)

A recent Daybreaker event in Venice giving good vibes

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Courtesy Daybreaker

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The first time I attended a Daybreaker event was in Portland several years ago. I attended because friends of mine had told me there was a new, sober day rave spreading across town, and I simply didn’t believe them.

How very wrong I was. It may have been 9 a.m., but this crowd seemed just as rowdy, if not rowdier, than its nighttime counterpart. The only difference between the two was this crowd seemed decked out in yoga pants rather than rave gear.

Bubbling with energy at Daybreaker Venice

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Bailey Templeton

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Courtesy Daybreaker

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“I wanted to have fun while still being able to function,” said Nemo, a DJ I met there. “At some point my body was not able to handle the disrupted sleep cycles and booze anymore, but I still wanted to be able to go to events and enjoy myself.”

To my great surprise, I discovered raving sober had its own unique appeal. The lack of alcohol kept me light and energetic rather than clouded in a drunken haze. I was able to dance for much longer than usual, and felt a familiar euphoric high similar to a runner’s high the longer I danced.

Daybreaker throws day raves in a number of different cities: Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, New York. The next event in L.A. is Saturday Jan. 24 from 9 a.m. - 12 noon, to be held in a secret venue. Given it’s described as “dry January, wet with endorphins”, there’s a good chance it’s in a sauna, where Daybreaker is known to throw dance parties.

Celebrating life at 9am in Venice

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Bailey Templeton

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Courtesy Daybreaker

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“We’re living in a cultural moment where people are craving clarity, connection, and control over their wellbeing — and ultimately belonging,” says Daybreaker founder Radha Agrawal.

“Post-pandemic, there’s been a mass re-evaluation of what we put into our bodies and how we spend our time. Gen Z in particular is leading the charge — they’re drinking nearly 30% less than millennials did at their age — and they’re looking for ways to connect without sacrificing health or mental clarity," he says.

"People want to wake up feeling good, not hungover, and they’re realizing that social connection can actually feel better without alcohol.”

Snag tickets here.

Bu Tea Den (DTLA)

In true speakeasy style, I reached Bu Tea Den through an inconspicuous metal door in a back alley downtown. Once inside, however, the vibe quickly shifted. A curious video was projected onto a wall by the entrance, lit up by colorful, digital Paisley shapes swimming about. Each Paisley had a customer’s name plastered above it, giving the surreal sensation that I was watching some sort of digital city like a god from up above on high. ‘PAISLEY ID’ read across the top of the screen.

Nearby, what I initially thought was an ATM was actually marked "AFTM: automated fortune telling machine". Patrons can take a quiz and receive a spiritual fortune of sorts, printed out neatly onto a slip of paper like an ATM receipt, along with a corresponding Paisley.

(According to the machine, my life path number is seven, my soul age is baby, and my chakral focus is sacral. "Trust what steadies you, even if it changes tomorrow.")

Writer Janelle Lassalle experiencing Bu Tu Den's AFTM — an automated fortune telling machine

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Janelle Lassalle

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Inspired by time spent in the Burning Man community, co-founders Severin Sauliere and Natalie Tran created the art installation to help inspire a sense of community at Bu Tea Den.

Sauliere and Tran are husband and wife: Sauliere is an artist/Creative Director, and Tran is Chief Steeping Officer in charge of tea operations. Their goal is to redefine happy hour by giving guests the opportunity to slow down and get social without the thundering din of techno music and flashy cocktails.

"It's not an upsell kind of thing," said Sauliere. "It's based on you chilling with your friends, having some tea together and talking. I'm not against alcohol, but it's everywhere. Having a space that doesn't have it challenges the dynamic a little bit."

Co-founder Natalie Tran, at Bu Tea Den “part tea lounge, part interactive art installation, and part intimate gathering space.”

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Janelle Lassalle

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LAist

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The space is cultivated in the style of a tea lounge, with a number of booths scattered about facing the Paisley display. Guests can enjoy a unique tea experience at the bar in which they’re served several rounds of tea blends, along with snacks like Ube popcorn, Fridays - Sundays 5 - 9 p.m.

Billed as “part tea lounge, part interactive art installation, and part intimate gathering space,” Bu Tea Den isn’t just a place where you can come to enjoy a strong cup of jasmine tea: it’s also gearing up to become a community-oriented event space. Guests can come by for regular events like Mahjong at the Den, a Hong Kong style version of the popular game, or an upcoming "Tea and Tease" burlesque and comedy night on Saturday Jan. 17.

Get in on the fun here.

Homeownership has become increasingly out of reach for many young families, especially in pricey California. On Wednesday, President Donald Trump said he plans to make housing affordable again by cutting deep-pocketed investors out of the single-family home market.

“I am immediately taking steps to ban large, institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it,” Trump said on the social media platform Truth Social. “People live in homes, not corporations.”

But in California, housing policy experts say Trump’s strategy might not move the needle on affordability much. That’s because institutional investors aren’t buying many single-family homes in the Golden State to begin with.

“It's kind of a red herring,” said Richard Green, director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. “Institutional ownership of single-family rentals is a very small share of all single-family rentals, let alone all of the housing stock in the United States.”

Less than 3% of CA homes 

Trump’s idea is not new. Democratic California lawmakers have also proposed limits on investor home-buying. To inform the legislative process, state researchers have looked into the question of how California homes are getting scooped up by institutional buyers.

The answer: Not many.

Statewide, 2.8% of single-family homes are owned by investors who own 10 properties or more. That’s according to the California Research Bureau, which produces nonpartisan policy research for the Governor’s Office and the state Legislature.

According to the Urban Institute, large investors own a much greater stock of single-family homes in cities including Jacksonville, Charlotte and Atlanta, where institutional investors own nearly 29% of single-family rentals.

Corporate ownership rates are much lower in California. In Los Angeles County, home to more than 10 million people, only about 72,474 homes are owned by large investors, according to the California Research Bureau. That number includes single-family homes as well as condos, townhomes and duplexes.

Would banning corporate owners reduce competition?

Invitation Homes is the largest owner of single-family homes in California, with more than 11,000 properties to its name statewide, including about 3,100 in Los Angeles County. Its business model involves buying single-family homes, updating them and then renting them out to tenants who may not otherwise be able to afford home-ownership.

LAist reached out to Invitation Homes for comment on Trump’s announcement. We were sent a statement from the National Rental Home Council.

“Housing affordability is a critical issue, and we appreciate the administration’s focus on ensuring Americans have access to a diverse mix of housing options,” the statement read.

The statement continued: “Professional single-family housing providers represent a small segment of the overall housing market, and the single-family rental industry remains focused on supporting renters while also supporting pathways to homeownership.”

David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation, said getting rid of institutional investors probably wouldn’t do much to bring down home prices for young Californians.

“The vast, vast majority of homes that are purchased are by people who are generally going to live in them,” Garcia said. “So you're not really reducing the main competition for home buyers, which is other home buyers.”

Lack of supply, lots of demand fuel CA’s high prices

Garcia and USC’s Green both said California’s home prices are high because of lack of supply. Steady demand for California homes coupled with low building rates since the Great Recession have produced a market where the wealthiest buyers out-bid everyone else for the few homes coming up for sale.

Trump’s proposal echoes similar policy explorations from the L.A. City Council, which voted in 2021 to consider banning companies like Zillow and Redfin from buying homes within the city.

Details were scant in Trump’s post, but he said more information about his plans would be forthcoming.

In his Truth Social post, he said: “I will discuss this topic, including further Housing and Affordability proposals, and more, at my speech in Davos in two weeks.”