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the property management company hired by [Adams] sent out 3-day eviction notices to hundreds of tenants which were then rescinded but which should never have been sent.”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.

Just over a year ago, the U.S. Department of Education abandoned key oversight of the companies that run the federal student loan program, according to a new report from the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

GAO investigators found that, in February 2025, the Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) stopped reviewing the accuracy of loan servicers' records. FSA also stopped reviewing recordings of calls with borrowers to make sure they're being given accurate information.

Without this oversight, the report warns, borrowers could feel the consequences.

"If servicers' records are inaccurate, borrowers could, for instance, be placed in the wrong loan repayment status, billed for incorrect amounts, or not have a refund processed in time," the report says. "Similarly, FSA has not monitored calls since February 2025, so there is a risk that borrowers have received or will receive incorrect information and poor customer service."

The investigation was requested by the ranking members of the House and Senate education committees, Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

"Instead of providing relief to 43 million Americans who are drowning in student debt," Sanders said in a statement to NPR, "the Trump administration has made it harder for them to understand how much they owe and how long it will take to pay back."

What the administration has to say about GAO's findings

The Office of Federal Student Aid is supposed to conduct quarterly reviews, according to its contracts with loan servicers.

These reviews include comparing loan servicers' borrower records with FSA's own records, to screen for gaps or discrepancies, as well as "targeted reviews" of borrowers in specific situations, including those who request temporary relief from their payments.

The assessments that were stopped are more labor-intensive than other types of oversight that have been automated, GAO says. According to the report, agency officials told the government watchdog they stopped these reviews in early 2025 "due to lack of FSA staff capacity." That's around the same time the Trump administration began dramatically reducing staffing levels at the Education Department.

According to the report, FSA began 2025 with 1,433 staffers; by December, it had 777 — a 46% reduction.

In a written response accompanying the report, Richard Lucas, FSA's acting chief operating officer, disagreed with GAO's recommendation that FSA resume the reviews. While he confirmed that FSA had, indeed, stopped the oversight in question, Lucas wrote, "FSA determined that a better approach is to provide substantial oversight through additional activities that measure the accuracy of servicer data and the quality of their performance." Those activities include regular reviews of borrower satisfaction surveys.

Melissa Emrey-Arras, who led the GAO study, says FSA's "better approach" isn't better.

"While reviewing those satisfaction surveys may be helpful, they don't directly assess the quality of the information given to borrowers. A borrower may indicate they were satisfied with a call, not realizing they were given completely wrong information by their servicer," she says.

The last FSA review found problems with loan servicer accuracy

Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance, which represents the servicers working on the federal student loan program, says servicers also police themselves.

"[Servicers] internally are monitoring far more than any of our regulators ever could or would. Because it is in our best interest to make sure those errors are fixed. And because we have contracts, and if we have major issues that have become clearly apparent, then people will say, 'We'll find someone else to do it.'"

At the end of 2024, before the Trump administration cut oversight, GAO's review of servicer recordkeeping found that "four of the five servicers did not meet the accuracy performance standard and faced associated financial penalties."

In fact, recordkeeping at two servicers was troubled enough to merit the maximum financial penalty allowed.

And GAO notes that the Education Department's independent financial auditor reported as recently as January 2026 that the department "continued to have a material weakness related to the reliability of its student loan data."

What's more, Emrey-Arras says, scaling back oversight at FSA has also meant scaling back efforts to hold servicers financially accountable for their performance. This accountability, she says, "is critical. Without it, the government risks overpaying for poor performance."

For borrowers, servicer mistakes can lead to very real problems, said Rep. Scott in a statement to NPR. "Borrowers can either overpay or be placed in the wrong student loan repayment program. [The Education Department's] refusal to conduct oversight of student loan servicers is a dereliction of duty."

Scaled-back oversight of big student loan changes

These cutbacks in staff and oversight come as millions of federal student loan borrowers will need help transitioning into new repayment plans. The Biden-era SAVE plan is in turmoil, with borrowers now being charged interest and the plan due to be closed by 2028 at the latest. Another 12 million borrowers are either in default on their loans or on their way there.

What's more, in July, a raft of new, potentially challenging changes to the student loan program will begin — courtesy of Republicans' One Big Beautiful Bill Act — including the introduction of two brand-new repayment plans and the phasing out of others.

GAO warns that these changes will affect millions of borrowers who "will need accurate and complete information when they call for help," yet, for the time being, the Education Department can't be certain that's what borrowers are actually getting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

An insurance crisis continues to rattle California’s foster care system, threatening to displace thousands of vulnerable children.

Since 2024, more than two dozen nonprofits that recruit, train and support foster parents have shuttered across 13 counties, according to the California Department of Social Services.

Counties have historically relied on the licensed nonprofits, known as foster family agencies, to place children — especially those in need of intensive support — in certified homes until they are adopted or reunified with their birth families.

Their closures come two years after a key insurance carrier backed out of covering foster family agencies, citing rising legal costs. The company, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California, covered approximately 90% of the more than 200 foster family agencies operating throughout the state, leaving them scrambling to find a replacement.

No other California insurers have stepped in since then, forcing foster family agencies to secure coverage from companies outside the state — and sometimes, outside the country. In an unregulated market, that’s meant that agencies have seen increases of 200 to 400% in their liability coverage. Many are reporting cost hikes of more than $350,000 in annual premiums.

The Legislature last year approved a one-time $31.5 million allocation to buoy the agencies as they face unsustainable premiums, but the money has run out. Assemblymember James Ramos, a Democrat from San Bernardino, and Sen. María Elena Durazo, a Democrat from Los Angeles, recently requested another $30 million in relief funding.

Tony Iagmin holds a three-month-old baby at his home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026. Tony and Sara Iagmin are fostering the baby.

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But without any long-term policy solutions, advocates warn that the whole system is at risk of collapsing. It would start with some or all of the remaining foster family agencies closing. Foster parents, lacking the support that’s needed to sustain them, could then exit the child welfare system altogether and kids would face even more instability, the advocates say. And medically fragile children — including kids with feeding tubes, developmental disabilities or drug dependencies from their mothers — are especially at risk because counties don’t typically have sufficient resources to provide that level of care.

“It would be an absolute crisis if the foster family agencies closed,” said Diana Boyer, managing director of research and policy at the County Welfare Directors Association of California. “Foster children are the state’s children. We all collectively need to be doing more to support them and ensure that they have homes and families to go to.”

The crisis is tied to California’s attempts to provide redress to survivors of sexual abuse. Legislation passed in 2019 lifted the statute of limitations, allowing survivors to sue government agencies. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed since then, and hefty payouts have driven up insurance costs for public agencies across the board. Schools were among the first to feel the pinch from rising costs for insurance to cover liability from the suits.

The Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California stopped renewing insurance policies following a $25 million payout to three children after a jury found that a foster family agency in Santa Rosa failed to protect them from sexual abuse. The group had also made a mostly failed effort to reform aspects of California law related to insurance and liability.

'Our collective responsibility'

Roughly 300 foster family agencies operate throughout California, providing critical services to approximately 6,500 of the state’s 45,000 foster children.

Counties run many of their child welfare placements through the community-based nonprofits because of their quality of care — especially for kids with the highest needs.

If a child is removed from their home in the middle of the night due to abuse or neglect, foster family agencies quickly step in with supportive homes that are “at the ready,” said Pete Weldy, chief executive officer at the California Alliance of Child & Family Services, which represents roughly 200 foster family agencies around the state.

After initial placement, the agencies continue to work with foster families and kids to provide sustained support, including around-the-clock care, crisis assistance, and consistent case management.

When an agency shutters, the child’s placement could be disrupted.

“That’s one of the untold stories of this whole crisis,” Weldy said. “It could mean that the youth has to move to a different county, to a different foster family. They could be uprooted from their family. They might have to change schools, maybe move communities, lose their friends.” The disruption, he added, can often exacerbate behavioral health needs. “Eventually, it could lead to the worst outcome, which is that the child ends up unhoused,” he added.

If counties are unable to find a placement, Weldy said the child may end up in a hotel, hospital, or conference room.

“This is the state’s responsibility and really, therefore, all of our collective responsibility to make sure these really vulnerable kids and youth have what they need to thrive,” he said. “And that’s where foster family agencies do such an incredible job.”

Foster families 'knew who to turn to'

Tony and Sara Iagmin play with the baby they are fostering at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026.

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Sara and Tony Iagmin have fostered 45 children since 2013, when they started working with Angels, a San Diego-based foster family agency that recently closed due to the insurance crisis. Over that period of time, they worked with three case managers from the agency that would make weekly visits to the child or children they were currently fostering. That consistency served them and their foster children well, they said.

“We knew who to turn to and how to get support for everything that came up,” Sara Iagmin said.

They fear that the increasing number of agency closures will result in more kids falling through the cracks and hurt foster parents, especially those who are new to the child welfare system and may need additional support.

“Foster family agencies are like AAA and the county is like the DMV,” Tony Iagmin said. “They have good workers, but it’s a lot of bureaucracy.”

Since Angels closed, the Iagmins started working directly with San Diego County. They said they feel well-equipped to handle the shift since they’ve been foster parents for so long, but will miss the community they found through Angels.

Tony and Sara Iagmin at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood.

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Photos of families Sara and Tony Iagmin have worked with over the years hang on a wall at their home in San Diego’s Lakeside neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2026.

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In Placer County, Sarah and Michael Prince have worked with the foster family agency Koinonia Family Services since 2016. After struggling with infertility for over a decade, the couple decided to attend the agency’s orientation.

“I came home buzzing,” said Sarah Prince. “My intuition said, ‘This is my home.’”

It took them two years to go through the agency’s certification process. Since then, the couple has taken in 13 foster children, four of whom they ended up adopting.

“I couldn’t have done it without a foster family agency,” said Sarah Prince. “It’s an extra layer of protection for you. They are your family. When the things fall, it’s the knowing that you have somebody to call. It’s consistency for these kids that haven’t had consistency because your foster family agency workers don’t change.”

Laura Richardson, a manager at Koinonia Family Services, said the statewide agency works with roughly 360 homes, 99 of which are not taking placements. On any given day, they serve around 200 youth in their foster family homes.

According to Richardson, the organization’s insurance increased by 242% — from $272,000 to $933,000 per year — since the Nonprofits Insurance Alliance of California stopped renewing their policy. It’s meant that they’ve had to rescind their licenses in three cities, transferring those families to other offices that are still operating.

Richardson said they’re trying to hold out for as long as they can for the state to come up with a solution. But as more and more agencies shutter, she worries that the homeless population will increase for youth.

“I worry about the safety net for these most vulnerable youth going away,” she said. “It’s going to stress other parts of the system. So the state is going to have to pay for it somewhere. My hope is that we can fix what’s good about what we already have before we lose it.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

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

Alberto Carvalho, the superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District, has asked to be restored to his position after being placed on paid administrative leave last month. The request was included in his first public statement since federal agents searched his home and office in late February.

“Mr. Carvalho respects the rule of law and the investigative process and has always acted in the best interests of students and within the bounds of the law,” read a statement provided by a spokesperson for Carvalho through the law firm Holland & Knight.

The statement said the government’s investigation is ongoing and no evidence presented by prosecutors supports allegations that Carvalho violated federal law.

The statement, first reported by the L.A. Times, was released nearly two weeks after federal agents searched Carvalho’s San Pedro home and district offices. The reason for the searches is unknown. A DOJ spokesperson said the agency has a court-authorized warrant but declined to provide additional details.

The L.A. searches are linked to a search of a South Florida home the same day. That property, first identified by local media outlets, belongs to a woman associated with the company LAUSD contracted with to create a short-lived AI tool. “Ed” was designed to be a "personal assistant" capable of nudging students who were falling behind and providing resources for learning.

Within three months of its March 2024 debut, the company behind Ed, AllHere, furloughed the bulk of its staff; its CEO was later charged with fraud.

How the district responded

Two days after the search, the LAUSD board voted unanimously to place Carvalho on paid administrative leave “pending investigation,” and appointed longtime administrator Andres Chait as acting superintendent.

The district has not responded to LAist’s questions about the reasoning for placing Carvalho on leave or whether the “investigation” referenced is federal or internal.

“Mr. Carvalho remains confident that the evidence will ultimately demonstrate that he acted appropriately and in the best interests of students,” read the statement. “We hope the school board reinstates him promptly to his position as superintendent.”

In response to LAist’s questions about Carvalho’s desire to be reinstated, an LAUSD spokesperson wrote, “the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education respects his right to defend himself.”

LAUSD Board President Scott Schmerelson did not respond to LAist’s request for an interview or comment about Carvalho’s statement.

Carvalho has been superintendent of LAUSD since 2022, and the board renewed his contract in 2025. His tenure at LAUSD has included a number of wins for the district, including gains in test scores, participation in AP classes and a decline in the rate of students chronically missing school.

“The achievements and success of the students, teachers, and staff of Los Angeles Unified remain his foremost focus,” the statement read. “Mr. Carvalho also expresses his sincere gratitude to all those who have extended their well wishes and prayers.”