The Brief

Opponents of a top private school’s plans to transform a Studio City golf course into a student athletics complex say despite a Los Angeles city council vote this week to support the project, their fight isn’t over.

Tuesday’s unanimous council vote gives the council’s blessing to Harvard-Westlake, which purchased the Weddington Golf and Tennis property in 2017 for $42 million as part of its plans to build sports fields, a running track, a gym, a swimming pool and tennis courts.

The seventh through 12th grade college preparatory school’s 17-acre River Park project has faced opposition from nearby residents concerned about traffic, noise and loss of open space accessible to the public (a nine-hole game of golf at Weddington currently costs $12 on weekdays and $15 on weekends).

So far, opponents have filed an ethics complaint against two of the nine members on the city’s planning commission. Caroline Choe and Samantha Millman both disclosed ahead of the vote that they were Harvard-Westlake alumni and said they consulted with the city attorney’s office. They have said their votes in support of the project were not compromised by their relationship with the school.

The ethics complaint alleges the two commissioners have each donated substantial sums of money to Harvard-Westlake over many years. Both were appointed to the planning commission by former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, himself a Harvard-Westlake alumnus. Opponents of the project believe Choe and Millman should have recused themselves from the vote.

Studio City resident Teri Austin with the group Save Weddington said opponents are planning to sue the city over what she sees as a flawed environmental review process. She believes the city’s process has favored Harvard-Westlake from the start.

“[Harvard-Westlake] are doing this because of the uber-competition between expensive schools to get students,” Austin said. “They want the biggest, the best, most expensive. That's what this is about.”

During Tuesday’s council meeting, councilmember Nithya Raman — whose district includes the project site — described the process of getting to the vote as “long, fraught and frustrating.” Weddington’s previous owners said the property was no longer financially viable as a golf course, and the city failed to acquire it.

“I deeply empathize with people in the neighborhood who feel a palpable emotional connection to the golf and tennis facilities,” Raman said. “My team and I have done our best to honor that connection, to push the project in a direction that serves both the community and the school.”

Response from Harvard-Westlake

Harvard-Westlake has said it plans to preserve parts of the property adjacent to the L.A. River as publicly accessible open space. The school says it will also give outside clubs and teams access to the new sports facilities when they’re not in use by students.

In a statement following the vote, Harvard-Westlake president Rick Commons said, “We thank all of our supporters who took the time to speak in support of our plans to transform the Weddington property into an athletic facility and sustainable open space that will serve our students and the Studio City neighborhood.”

Harvard-Westlake was ranked the nation’s second best private high school in a 2023 post by school review website Niche. It charges $46,900 per year in tuition. The school has existing sports facilities including a gym, track and an Olympic-sized swimming pool, but the athletic director has said more facilities are needed to cater to all the students wanting to play sports.

Details from Tuesday’s meeting

Councilmember Paul Krekorian, whose former district boundaries included the site, said during Tuesday’s meeting that Harvard-Westlake has presented the best plan for the property moving forward.

“One speculative absentee developer after another wanted to come in and acquire this property and build high-density housing … which the neighborhood adamantly was opposed to,” Krekorian said. “We were successful in stopping one project after the other.”

During the meeting, a number of speakers expressed support for the school’s project during public comment. Some disclosed their relationship with Harvard-Westlake.

“[The River Park project] will be available to so many more people — children, teens, senior citizens and those with disabilities,” said Susan Welsh, the mother of two Harvard-Westlake students. “Neighbors who live in nearby apartments who don’t have backyards will have a place to play. River Park will be safe. Harvard-Westlake will provide security and maintenance and pay for all of it.”

But Austin said if the project moves forward, Studio City residents will lose treasured open space. In order to use facilities such as the gym and pool, according to the school’s description of the project, neighbors will have to be part of a pre-approved organization and reserve the spaces ahead of time.

“It's not public access,” Austin said of Harvard-Westlake’s plan. “This should have never gone through the way it has.”

Nithya Raman turned the tide in the L.A. mayoral race by winning over large swathes of the city that voted for Karen Bass in 2022, according to an LAist analysis of election data.

Bass was a favorite in many areas that voted for Rick Caruso when she faced him in 2022. She held onto a majority of voters across South L.A., but lost much of her previous support.

The switchup came after Bass — a veteran in progressive politics — took a relatively-conservative approach on issues like policing and high-density housing developments compared to Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told its employees Friday to stop work, shut down their computers and stay off agency systems while it looked into “a potential security issue affecting our systems,” its chief executive confirmed to LAist.

That shutdown order was still in place Monday evening, according to a LAHSA official not authorized to speak on the record.

Gita O'Neill, the agency’s interim CEO, told LAist on Friday evening that the agency did not “yet have enough information to say definitively whether any sensitive or confidential personal information was accessed.”

She has not answered questions about whether or not services for unhoused people are disrupted.

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of LAHSA, speaks ahead of the annual homeless count on Jan. 20, 2026.

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Jordan Rynning

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LAist

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LAHSA holds highly sensitive information collected from people experiencing homelessness in the region. The agency oversees the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, which includes unhoused people’s names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and disabilities, as well as self-reported mental health and substance abuse history, income sources and domestic violence history.

In a statement Monday, LAHSA said it had taken its internal computer systems offline “as a precaution” and “engaged outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate the nature and scope of the incident.” The statement, sent on O'Neill's behalf by outside public relations strategist Trevor Daley, continued to call it “a potential cybersecurity incident.”

The agency is “taking steps to maintain essential operations,” the statement added, saying LAHSA “remains open” while the investigation continues. It said the agency is working with its technical and legal teams.

What staff were told

Friday’s email to "Team LAHSA" carried the subject line "URGENT: Log Off and Shut Down for the Week." LAist obtained a copy, and O'Neill confirmed by text message that she had sent it.

“As a precaution while we look into a potential security issue affecting our systems, we're asking all staff to stop work and take their machines offline for the remainder of today and through the weekend,” the email said.

It told employees to “Log off and shut down your LAHSA computer” and not to log back in or connect to LAHSA systems, including email, “until you receive an all-clear from us.”

The email also told staff to report anything “unusual” before shutting down, such as “files renaming on their own, unexpected pop-ups or messages.”

What LAHSA leadership has said

In a texted response to LAist on Friday evening, O'Neill said she asked staff to take their computers offline “out of an abundance of caution” while the agency’s IT team assessed the situation.

“Our IT team is actively reviewing the situation now and working to understand exactly what occurred and whether any information was affected,” she wrote. “Protecting people’s personal and confidential information is a top priority in that review.”

Leaders of three LAHSA-funded service providers told LAist on Monday afternoon that they had not received any communications from LAHSA about the potential cybersecurity issue. All three use the HMIS system that holds unhoused people’s personal details.

Previous attacks against another LA housing agency

Another L.A. housing agency was previously hit by cyberattacks. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles — a separate agency known as HACLA — has said hackers got inside its network in 2022 and may have accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, financial accounts numbers and medical information.

Two years later, HACLA was breached again, according to an official notice, with hackers potentially accessing names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and phone numbers.

LAist reporter Aaron Schrank contributed reporting to this story.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced Monday that she is running to be the county’s first elected chief executive. Horvath is the only candidate so far to enter the race, which is set for 2028.

The new executive post will take the place of the county’s appointed CEO and implement key priorities of the county Board of Supervisors. The executive will oversee the county budget, which is currently roughly $50 billion, and labor relations with more than 100,000 employees.

Horvath was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2022 and was re-elected in June to another four-year term. She represents the county’s 3rd District, which covers the San Fernando Valley and parts of the Westside and Central Los Angeles. She is a former mayor of West Hollywood.

The supervisor made her announcement Monday via social media and her campaign website. She called the race a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

The backstory

Voters created the position in 2024 when they approved Measure G, which was proposed by Supervisors Horvath and Janice Hahn.

Among other changes, the measure allowed the Board of Supervisors to expand from five to nine members by 2030 and established an independent Ethics Commission, which held its first meeting last month.

The pushback

On Monday, Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued a statement saying she believed it was “premature” to campaign for the new county executive position when it remained unclear whether “the office itself is constitutional.”

Barger pointed to questions raised by former federal judge Stephen Larson about whether California’s Constitution allows an elected county executive to veto board decisions, control county contracts and take on powers state law currently gives the Board of Supervisors.

“Moving forward with an office that would fundamentally change how Los Angeles County is governed, without first resolving these questions, is putting the cart before the horse,” Barger said in her statement. “We need clarity.”

The primary election is scheduled for March 7, 2028.