The Brief

Last year, the virtual book club at the Huntington Beach Public Library voted to read and discuss the humorous novel The Guncle during its May 2025 meeting. The book, published in 2021, is about a gay former sit-com star who suddenly finds himself the primary caretaker of his niece and nephew.

Then, just a month before the book club meeting, library staff were told to remove the book from the club’s discussion calendar, according to several sources. An LAist review of the book club’s calendar and library newsletters confirm the switch.

Some library supporters suspect the book was removed because it has a gay protagonist. It’s one of several indications, they say, of what’s sometimes called “soft” or “quiet” censorship.

“Any time that you restrict access or create an impediment to access, it's a form of soft censorship,” said Sam Helmick, president of the American Library Association.

The Guncle incident is also an indication that the book battles that have divided this historically conservative beach town are far from over — despite a special election last month in which voters rebuked the City Council’s conservative agenda for the public library system. The continued controversies over Huntington Beach’s libraries has put the city at the forefront of the so-called culture war battles taking place across the country.

“In reality, there's a lot of things going on still, even since the election, that we're concerned about,” said Carol Daus, a volunteer and former board member of the group Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library, “certain areas that, again, could be involving book censorship.” These include:

• Conservative activists filing formal requests for library book reviews, effectively taking books off the shelf, potentially for months.
• The continued exile — to an isolated shelf in the city’s main library — of some books about puberty and sexuality that used to be available in the children’s section.
• The city’s still-existing resolution that restricts minors’ access to books deemed to have “sexual content,” a term that is debated.

Daus told LAist she asked a city official with library oversight about the removal of The Guncle from the virtual book club list earlier this year and was told it was necessary “to lower the temperature” ahead of the special election. One of two measures on the ballot asked voters if they wanted to repeal a board of residents with the power to decide which children’s books are appropriate for the library.

Corbin Carson, a city spokesperson, said staffers could not comment on the decision to remove the novel from the club’s reading list or otherwise comment for this story because of a pending lawsuit from several Huntington Beach residents and civil rights organizations, including the ACLU. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Aug. 22.

What happened after the special election?

In the June special election, a solid majority of Huntington Beach voters rejected the city’s efforts to exert greater control over the content and management of the libraries. Just over 58% voted to repeal the library review board. And an even greater margin, nearly 61%, voted to restrict the city’s ability to privatize the libraries.

The proudly all-MAGA City Council quietly accepted the results of the election at its meeting earlier this month. “The people have spoken,” Councilman Chad Williams, who campaigned against the ballot measures, said in a phone interview. He said the point of the book review committee was to give the community more say over which books are selected for the library.

But as of Friday morning, more than a month after the election, the city’s website had yet to be updated to fully reflect the election results. The review board is still listed on the city’s website as one of the official advisory bodies, and it has yet to be removed from the city’s municipal code, as called for in the ballot measure.

Plus, the library’s website still links to a collection development policy — guidelines to help librarians select and maintain library materials — that cites the powers of the repealed “Community Parent/Guardian Review Board” and contradicts the new selection policy adopted by voters in the special election. Although, as of last week, the website now notes that pursuant to the results of the election, the city is “reviewing the Collection Development Policy.”

“ I think it's just a matter of time,” Williams said. “It's all going to be codified.”

Librarians at the Huntington Beach Central Library review books in the children's section on Feb. 7, 2024.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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What's in the restricted books section?

The City Council’s establishment of the book review committee, by way of a resolution passed in 2023, was just one part of its efforts to restrict access for minors to certain library materials. The resolution also states: “No city library or other city facility shall allow children ready access to books and other materials that contain any content of a sexual nature.” The question of what that means is very much alive.

The issue will be discussed when Judge Lindsey Martinez hears oral arguments in the lawsuit that seeks to overturn the sexual content resolution. The plaintiffs argue the resolution violates California’s Freedom to Read Act. The law, which went into effect in January, was squarely aimed at Huntington Beach. The city argues that it’s not subject to the law because it’s a charter city, which gives it more independence from the state.

Currently, the central library maintains a shelf labeled “Youth Restricted Books Section” for books that librarians have moved out of the children’s section under an evolving set of criteria intended to comply with the sexual content restrictions. The mostly empty shelf sits between an art gallery and a study area. Minors are not allowed to check out the books without a parent’s consent.

The library posted its most recent list of books restricted to that shelf in December 2024. The list has seven titles, including It’s So Amazing! A Book about Eggs, Sperm, Birth, Babies, and Families, first published in 1999, and It's Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health, first published in 1994.

A recent visit by LAist found just two books on the restricted shelf, It’s Perfectly Normal and The Care and Keeping of You, a book published by the American Girl doll company. The latter is not on the library’s list of books with restricted access under the youth sexual content resolution, raising questions as to how and why it was on the restricted shelf.

Why challenged books are unavailable books

Other books considered inappropriate by some City Council members and conservative activists have been completely removed from shelves while librarians review them. The review policy, which has existed for years, allows library patrons to lodge complaints about books and ask that they be recatalogued or removed altogether.

Until recently, librarians had only received official complaints about a handful of books. But in recent years, dozens of complaints have been lodged, including from City Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland, president of the group Huntington Beach Republican Women and the wife of Tony Strickland, a state senator and former mayor. Van Der Mark and Carla Strickland did not respond to repeated requests from LAist for interviews for this story.

In a social media post following the special election, the Huntington Beach Republican Women vowed to “never give up this fight to keep our children safe from sexualized content, both in our HB libraries and schools.” The group wrote that its members had challenged more than 40 books that “have no business being in our taxpayer funded libraries.”

The challenges alarmed library advocates, who filed a public records request for related documents, which they shared with LAist. Some of the challenged books are frequent targets by conservative activists across the country, including the young adult books This One Summer and Flamer, both coming-of-age books with LGBTQ protagonists.

Other challenges to books catalogued as children’s books included:

• Making a Baby, billed as answering the classic question “Where did I come from?” 
• Pride Puppy! an ABC book in which a family’s dog gets lost at a Pride parade.
• The Big Bath House, a picture book about Japanese bath house culture.
• The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, written by Lil Miss Hot Mess, the founder of Drag Queen Story Hour. 

On the library complaint form about The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish, the complainant, whose name was redacted, wrote that the book's “content is gender confusing.” The complainant also wrote that the book had “sexually explicit” content. LAist reviewed the children’s picture book and found no sex, kissing or nudity.

The person who filed a complaint about The Big Bath House wrote that the content included “sexual and obscene themes.” The complaint included drawings from the book depicting naked women at a communal bath with penciled pubic hair and sketched outlines of breasts.

Another of the complaints was about an adult book, Call Me By Your Name, about a love affair between two men. Adult books catalogued as such are not subject to the city’s sexual content restrictions for minors.

At least one copy of each challenged book, including Call Me by Your Name, is currently unavailable for check out at the central library while the books undergo evaluation. Those evaluations could take up to a year, according to the library’s collection development policy.

“ We see that as making books inaccessible to readers who want to read them,” said Daus, from Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library.

Khloe Rios-Wyatt, chief executive of the group Alianza Translatinx, one of the groups suing the city over the sexual content restrictions, told LAist the actions of city leaders and their allies are “a direct attack on LGBTQ people's ability to access library resources that are self-affirming.”

The unexpected reach of censorship

Proponents of Huntington Beach’s book restriction efforts have said their goal is to protect children from age-inappropriate sexual content. When asked whether those efforts constitute censorship, Williams, a City Council member, said, “ I think that we all believe in censorship to some degree. And I guess the question is, where's that threshold?”

Williams cited the book Let’s Talk About It: The Teen's Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human as one of the books he thinks should not be available to minors without parental permission. The book, which the library catalogues as young adult nonfiction, contains a discussion about pornography and advice on how to explore it ethically, including that you should pay for it.

“ I think that [voters] weren't aware that that's one of the things that they were voting on,” Williams said. He said if his critics feel like restricting access to a book “that instructs its readers, minors, to go and watch porn and pay for porn, if they think that that's censorship … I guess that's on them. I guess that's on each individual community member.”

Ada Palmer, a University of Chicago professor who studies the history of censorship, said the goals and effects of censorship go well beyond the obvious target. “What they're going for is the chilling effect, side effect of censorship,” she said.

For example, “if you have a big, scary, public ceremonial book burning of Harry Potter books … a nearby school librarian will be more conservative with what she orders for the school library. A young writer will be more conservative with what she puts in her book if she wants to get published, right? It makes other people self-censor,” Palmer said.

Another potential effect in Huntington Beach: Nearly a dozen librarians and other library staff members have left their jobs since the book controversies started. One librarian was let go days after the June special election, despite being promoted in January.

“Everybody who I know who left, left because of the City Council and the resolution,” said Melissa Ronning, the former principal librarian and one of the first to announce her resignation. (She did so at the public podium during a contentious City Council meeting about the library.)

A local lawsuit, a national debate

Versions of Huntington Beach’s book battles are taking place across the country. Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of Maryland parents who sought to excuse their children from class during discussions of books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters, citing religious beliefs. One of the much-discussed books throughout the case was Pride Puppy!

There’s evidence that conservative national leaders want to elevate Huntington Beach’s library debate to a bigger platform. Last week, a nonprofit law firm co-founded by Stephen Miller, a top White House aide to President Donald Trump, signed on to defend Huntington Beach against the lawsuit that seeks to block the city’s library book restrictions. It’s a high-profile ally for a city that has emerged as a conservative darling in the so-called culture wars.

Helmick, from the American Library Association, said librarians have a duty to provide a wide variety of material for all sectors of the population. “It is the responsibility of credentialed library staff to offer a wide and robust collection of information for the community to pursue,” Helmick said, and to let people “make their own determinations” about what books to read or not read.

Otherwise, Helmick said, “I am afraid we will have a generation that is afraid to think and afraid to reason on their own.”

This spring marks the end of an era for the Community Solidarity Project, a mutual aid nonprofit with a longstanding footprint in Mid-Wilshire. It will no longer run Bernie’s Coffee Shop, a community space located in the historic landmark Johnie’s Coffee Shop, famous for appearing in The Big Lebowski and Miracle Mile.

This year, the organization also stopped running a free supply center called the “Really Really Free 99 Store.” The Community Solidarity Project has provided mutual aid to Angelenos for years and started the distribution center last year to help those affected by the L.A. fires and immigration raids.

Co-founder Michelle Manos is the first to admit she had no idea any of her organization’s projects would last as long as they did.

“If you would've told me in 2016 that we would have a 10-year run here, I might have looked at you like you're crazy or I might have died of shock right there on the spot,” Manos said.

The use of Bernie's Coffee Shop as a community space traces back to the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign.

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Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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Manos has been a steward of Johnie’s Coffee Shop ever since she helped throw a one-night takeover during Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign (that’s how it got the name Bernie’s Coffee Shop). From then, she started a partnership with the Gold family to continue to use the space — first as a campaign center, then as a hub for organizers’ meetings, mutual aid distribution, art events and even on-location shoots with student filmmakers.

Manos said she is “ extraordinarily grateful” for their time in the space, as the Community Solidarity Project looks to extend its work running a free, volunteer-run, large-scale mutual aid distribution site. In order to do so, it is raising the funds to be able to continue operating in a new space.

Getting the project off the ground

The “Really Really Free 99” project started at the beginning of last year, as Los Angeles was reeling from the impact of the L.A. fires. The team at the Community Solidarity Project immediately pivoted to providing mutual aid for fire victims, since it had built up the experience during events like the COVID-19 pandemic.

Following those distribution drives, the Community Solidarity Project connected with a multinational mutual aid organization that had an extra tractor trailer’s worth of resources to donate.

At that moment, with the then-vacant location of the 99 Cents Only store right next door, Manos realized there was an opportunity. The coffee shop and the adjacent store are owned by the family of Dave Gold, the founder of the 99 Cents Only chain.

“I reached out to our partners in the Gold family, and I asked for and received permission to be able to start storing those items inside the 99 next door, which is the original 99 Cents store here at Wilshire and Fairfax,” she said.

From there, the organization started to focus on giving out these supplies and finding more about what residents needed. The Community Solidarity Project’s Ralph Green maintains many of the organization’s relationships with suppliers, including building partnerships with brands and big stores that might otherwise throw out materials.

“They know it's going right back out to the community,” Green said.

The Free 99 distribution center offered all kinds of goods, including hats and apparel.

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Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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Green said the Community Solidarity Project also partners with mutual organizations across Southern California in order to share and trade the resources they’ve been given.

“My personal philosophy as an organizer has always been to say yes to resources and opportunities and then figure it out,” Manos said.

That often means the organization’s members and volunteers end up dedicating large amounts of time to ensuring resources get shared — like one day when Rosalind Jones traversed L.A. County for 14 hours to distribute about 10 pallets’ worth of plant-based ice cream.

“When I tell people our core team is like six or seven people, they're like, ‘That sounds impossible. How did you do that?’” said Jones, who ran the Free 99 distribution center. “I don't know. It just happened. We just started moving things and doing stuff, and then it all came together.”

Some displays at the distribution center, like this one, even resembled a free version of the 99 Cents Only store.

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Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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About the Free 99

As more and more donations came into the Free 99, it distributed food, hygiene products and other necessities, plus other goods like family-planning supplies and hot meals when available. Eventually, it was able to accept donations of beds, desks and bookcases so people displaced by the Eaton Fire could refurnish their apartments for free with quality furniture.

Members of the Community Solidarity Project unloading furniture.

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Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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Karla Estrada, who ran the organization’s furniture distribution program, said they were able to give out more than 150 pieces of furniture to 70 families. She said one woman who came in for furniture even showed her pictures of a new apartment, excited to show off where everything would be going. Estrada said when the woman was saying goodbye, she said, “Thank you for saving the world.”

“That is why we do the things that we do,” Estrada said. “It's because we love our communities. That itself is the gift for me, and I'm very proud of that work.”

Rosalind Jones said many people who came into the distribution center couldn’t believe they weren’t being charged. Some even came up to the checkout counter with bills in hand, ready to pay.

She says she personally assisted people who came in, including an unhoused trans woman who distributed supplies to others in her encampment and a mother whose husband was detained by immigration agents and needed help taking care of her two children.

The end of an era

As of last month, the “Really Really Free 99” project has ended after the landlord began taking on paid leases, starting with a 99 Cents Only-themed art show. The Community Solidarity Project’s leadership was aware of the possibility and had been bracing no longer to have access to the space.

Still, the Free 99 store being asked to leave turned into a flashpoint on social media, as commenters panned the art show for seemingly pushing out the mutual aid group, a situation Manos called “unfortunate.”

 ”We never had any issue with the gallery itself or the artists themselves, especially the local, smaller artists who had the opportunity to work with some of the larger artists that were participating in organizing that gallery,” Manos said. “We're well aware that when a local artist sells a piece of art, they use it to feed their family, they use it to make a repair on their car.”

Manos said she also saw value in how the pop-up gallery provided a third space for people to gather, which is also part of the Community Solidarity Project’s mission with spaces like Bernie’s Coffee Shop.

The Community Solidarity Project's Michelle Manos (left) and Rosalind Jones.

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Kevin Tidmarsh

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LAist

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“If we can find more ways to use spaces that are empty around our city to build community, to build the arts, those things are important,” Manos said.

Manos said vacating the space was difficult, especially since community members — many of whom they didn’t have contact information for due to privacy concerns — needed to be notified, and the store’s stock needed to be moved out quickly.

The Community Solidarity Project now is being asked to leave that space as Metro prepares to open a nearby D-Line stop — no word yet on what it’ll be replaced by — but its members are optimistic they can build on that work as a proof of concept wherever they land next.

“Part of the fantastical part to me is that we're a group of poor people that has found a way to be extraordinarily generous, and it's not something that we could have done alone,” Manos said.

Their hopes for the future

Manos said now that the organization is starting a new chapter, it is hoping to raise funds — at least $30,000 — to secure a new, more permanent location.

Long before running the Free 99 store, the Community Solidarity Project organized other kinds of mutual aid, like mask giveaways.

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Courtesy Courtesy Community Solidarity Project

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“We would hope to be able to continue a version of the free store, as well as a version of the community gathering space,” Manos said. “That has been the magical part, when the community is here and when we're able to pay it forward.”

In addition to monetary donations, the organization also is looking for volunteers to help coordinate mutual aid and staff events, including its annual Queer Fair.

“We're not exceptional in that we thought of something that's never been done before,” Jones said. “We just did something that seemed like it was really hard and seemed like it might even be impossible with the resources and the amount of people we had. But we did it.”

A forensic audit released by Orange County on Monday found ex-Supervisor Andrew Do and his top aide had a longstanding pattern of misspending public money far beyond the scandal that led to federal corruption charges and landed Do in prison.

The report released Monday was the first phase of a forensic audit the OC Board of Supervisors commissioned last fall into county contracts in the wake of LAist’s investigation of the Do meal money scheme and his corruption conviction. The audit is being conducted by the firm Weaver.

The report details how Do and his chief of staff, Chris Wangsaporn, undermined procedures meant to prevent abuse of county money, while using their influence to steer taxpayer money to friends, family and businesses that quickly donated to his election campaigns — often with little information about the services being provided.

“The pattern of contracts being awarded to vendors that contributed to former Supervisor Do’s political campaigns raises questions and concerns about potential ‘pay-to-play’ schemes,” the report states.

Supervisor Janet Nguyen, who was elected to replace Do in 2024, said in a statement that “Do’s federal bribery conviction was the tip of the iceberg” and called on law enforcement to investigate.

“For years, I have known that Andrew Do was a criminal, acting as the Godfather of Little Saigon — strongarming political opponents and pressuring his minions to do more,” Nguyen said. “Now the county has evidence of all of it, and I’m hoping the federal DOJ, FBI, state attorney general, the district attorney and the [California Fair Political Practices Commission] investigate.”

[Click here to read the forensic audit report.]

Do’s attorney, Paul Meyer, declined to comment on the audit findings, saying that would be “inappropriate.”

Wangsaporn declined to speak with the auditors, according to the audit report. He has not returned LAist’s multiple requests for comment over the past year and a half, including Monday.

The forensic auditors plan to present their findings at the Board of Supervisors’ public meeting March 24.

More payments to Peter Pham

Among its many findings, the report found Do routed more money than previously reported to companies affiliated with Peter Pham, a central figure in the meal fraud scandal that sent Do to federal prison.

The report notes Do routed money for county events in his district to businesses linked to Pham. One was Aloha Financial Investment — the same company that received most of the diverted meal money in the corruption scheme and paid the down payment on a house for Do’s daughter. The other was Pham’s construction company, Hua Development, which also did business as HD Construction and HD Entertainment.

The findings echo an LAist review of county contract records, which found over $500,000 in county funds were directed to Hua Development and Aloha Financial Investment — largely for events in Do’s district dating back to 2016 and for public service announcements during COVID.

Pham’s construction company, auditors noted, also “appeared to have performed a kitchen remodel of former Supervisor Do’s personal residence in March 2021.” LAist discovered the renovation work in permit records and reported on it last year.

At the time, Do was routing millions of county meal dollars to Pham’s nonprofit, Viet America Society, in the bribery scheme that later led to Do’s criminal conviction. Do admitted in his plea deal that nearly $8 million in meal funds to the nonprofit were diverted, including $385,000 to purchase the home for Do’s daughter.

The new report notes the forensic audit is limited because auditors were not able to make non-county officials and organizations provide documents or answer questions.

More payments to 360 Clinic

Additionally, the auditors found Do authorized an $814,650 county payment to 360 Clinic — the county’s main provider of COVID-19 tests — despite concerns from county staff that the company was double billing. The findings largely echo LAist’s previous reporting on the issue. In all, auditors wrote, the county paid 360 Clinic $3.4 million for uncollectable claims, despite the fact that state and federal law required private insurance or the federal government to fully pay for all coronavirus testing claims at the time.

An internal county report obtained by LAist last year found that 360 Clinic had double- and triple-billed for some testing services. In the report released Monday, auditors found the company submitted more than 4,000 potential duplicate COVID-19 testing claims, with the same patient name and same date of service.

The auditors wrote that they examined documents indicating insurance providers had already paid for some of the claims submitted to the county for repayment. Other claims were for services that weren’t eligible for reimbursement, the auditors wrote.

“While additional review on a claim-by-claim basis would be required to quantify the extent of such denied claims, it is questionable at best as to whether these denied claims should have been invoiced to the county,” they wrote.

‘Not to be questioned’

The audit found Do and Wangsaporn had a pattern of steering contracts and grants to businesses that either employed an immediate family member of Do, contributed to his political campaigns shortly after being awarded a contract, provided a media platform for Do or were involved in the annual Tet and Moon festivals in Do’s district.

Do and Wangsaporn “were very involved in procurement decisions and established a culture where decisions related to District 1 contracts were not to be questioned,” the report states. County procurement staff, it adds, were “concerned that they would receive a phone call” from Do or Wangsaporn “if their requests were not approved.”

Among the decisions Do and his chief of staff impacted were “lump sum advanced payments” to vendors, “directives to pay vendors and contractors for invoices with open issues under review and the selection of vendors and grant recipients.”

Board’s approach obscured money flows

The county’s spending during the COVID-19 pandemic was obscured by the process the Board of Supervisors set up, auditors found.

Contracts were approved without competitive bidding or public approval by the board, which “limited visibility of purchase amounts and vendors selected,” the report states.

During the pandemic, Do and the other county supervisors set up a process where millions in taxpayer spending was directed without the usual public transparency on meeting agendas to show where money was going.

Do used the board-approved closed-door process to quietly direct millions of dollars to the nonprofit at the center of the meal scheme.

The audit also found that the county lacked policies requiring invoices detail what taxpayers were paying for. Do’s office had a common pattern of issuing contracts where payments were made on invoices that had few details about the services provided or itemizations of costs, the report states.

Supervisor cites reforms in the scandal’s wake

“As expected, the most recent audit again exposes criminal Andrew Do for habitually using his position of power to financially reward family, friends and donors through crony capitalist contracts at the expense of Orange County taxpayers,” Supervisor Katrina Foley said in a statement.

Foley said she and other supervisors have implemented reforms to contract policies, “aimed at increasing competitive bidding and [reducing] opportunities for corruption.”

She called on the county to put in place additional safeguards recommended by the auditors to "further protect taxpayers and prevent this type of misconduct from happening again.”

Supervisor Don Wagner said the audit findings show “former Supervisor Do’s corruption goes beyond that for which he is now serving federal prison time,” adding that he’s “deeply disturbed.”

Wagner defended Do at a January 2024 supervisors’ meeting after reports that Do had awarded millions to Viet America Society without disclosing its close ties to his daughter.

“There are no, nor should there be, questions or challenges as to that particular grant of money because there's nothing illegal about what was done,” Wagner said at the time, while blocking a reform proposal to require supervisors to disclose close family connections to groups they award money to.

Do ultimately pleaded guilty to bribery and is serving a five-year prison sentence.

LAist reporter Jill Replogle contributed reporting to this story.

The legal aid organization that was denied a tenant aid contract last year by the Los Angeles city attorney now appears set to receive the contract after all.

On Tuesday, the L.A. City Council voted 12–1 to approve a nearly $107 million eviction defense contract with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, or LAFLA, which oversees the Stay Housed L.A. program.

The vote had been previously scheduled but delayed twice. Last week, council members said they wanted to put off the vote because of a last-minute confidential memorandum sent to council offices by the L.A. City Attorney’s Office.

LAist obtained screenshots of the memo, which show City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto warning the council against awarding the contract to the foundation. The memo argues the city should “reconsider the award of such a large contract to a frequent litigant against the city.”

Sources with knowledge of the contract dispute told LAist that Feldstein Soto opposes LAFLA’s selection in part because the legal aid nonprofit has joined lawsuits in which the city is a defendant. In one case, the city was accused of failing to adequately respond to its homelessness crisis. The city ended up agreeing to a settlement deal requiring nearly 13,000 new shelter and housing beds.

LAFLA leaders said lawsuits against the city are handled independently from the tenant defense work the city has contracted the organization to do.

“There is no conflict of interest here, because Stay Housed L.A. and any affirmative litigation LAFLA brings against the city are entirely separate,” said Barbara Schultz, LAFLA’s director of housing justice. “We do not use Stay Housed L.A. funds for anything except for Stay Housed L.A. services.”

The backstory 

With rents spiking faster than wages for many Angelenos, tenants can quickly find themselves on the brink of homelessness. The city’s elected leaders have tried to stop more renters from becoming unhoused by connecting them with rent relief and free legal defense against eviction.

LAFLA has headed the city-funded program Stay Housed L.A. since 2021. The program brings together legal aid providers to offer attorneys and legal advice to renters facing eviction.

Such legal representation is rare. One study found that 95% of landlords have an attorney in eviction court while the vast majority of tenants do not.

Last summer, the City Council and mayor approved a new five-year contract with LAFLA and its partners. But Feldstein Soto refused to sign it, arguing the contract should have gone through a competitive bidding process.

The city responded by putting out a request for proposals. After reviewing submissions, the city’s Housing Department recommended that eviction defense services continue to be overseen by LAFLA. The council approved that recommendation Tuesday after deliberating in closed session.

In addition to the $107 million award to LAFLA, the council voted in favor of giving $42 million to the Housing Rights Center for emergency rental assistance. The council approved nearly $22 million for the Liberty Hill Foundation to oversee tenant outreach and education.

Another tenant rights organization, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was approved to receive $6.6 million to strengthen awareness and enforcement of the city’s ordinance against tenant harassment.

Much of the funding comes from Measure ULA, the city’s so-called “mansion tax” on real estate selling for more than $5.3 million.

Calls for more transparency

In a statement emailed to LAist, City Attorney spokesperson Karen Richardson said the amount of funding being awarded exceeds the budget of some city departments.

“The eviction defense program is a City program and is in zero jeopardy,” Richardson said. “What is in question is a $177 million blank check to LAFLA and its partners without the reports and invoice review that is required by law.”

After rejecting the contract last year, the City Attorney’s Office launched an audit of LAFLA. LAist asked for details about the audit’s findings but did not receive a response.

In a statement after last week’s vote was delayed, Schultz said LAFLA has provided the city with ongoing reports about Stay Housed L.A. operations.

She said Stay Housed L.A. “has consistently provided anonymized detailed data on the individual case level to the city, without compromising client identities, along with detailed invoicing.” The program has “never refused to provide any data or invoicing information requested by the Los Angeles Housing Department,” she said.

Stay Housed L.A. leaders said the program currently retains about 160 tenants each month for legal representation and provides legal advice to another 575 tenants per month. They said about 55% of the tenants they’ve represented have remained in their homes and another 40% have settled cases on favorable terms.

During Tuesday’s meeting, some City Council members expressed frustration over how much information the program has reported on its outcomes.

“The transparency requirements in these contracts, when I look at them, does not meet the level of what we as a body should be requiring of organizations that we are giving money to,” said Councilmember John Lee, who cast the lone vote against awarding the contract.

Tuesday’s meeting included voting on a flurry of amendments. Among the amendments that passed, there were calls for new reporting requirements and annual funding renewals to be withheld pending performance reviews.

What it all means for renters

LAFLA is currently overseeing the Stay Housed L.A. program through a temporary contract extension set to expire March 31. If the council hadn’t approved the new contract this week, program leaders said they would have needed to quickly stop offering eviction defense services.

The program already has had to be judicious about taking on new clients, Stay Housed L.A. leaders said. They said they didn’t want to commit to defending tenants in months-long eviction cases if the city could abruptly pull funding.

“When [the previous] contract was disrupted, it did impact our ability to serve more and more vulnerable tenants,” said Joanna Esquivel, Stay Housed L.A.’s program manager at the Legal Aid Foundation. “We are really excited to continue doing this critical work.”

The City Council passed a “right to counsel” program last year, aiming to provide low-income tenants with the right to a free attorney in eviction court. The program does not yet guarantee an attorney to all qualified renters but is trying to expand access in phases by building up the Stay Housed L.A. program.

A California appeals court this week sided with state utility regulators in a case seen as crucial to the spread of solar panels on the rooftops of California homes.

Three appeals court judges ruled that the California Public Utilities Commission was justified in reducing the rate utilities pay customers for excess energy the customers’ solar panels generate.

Environmental advocates who brought the case say the decision will exacerbate California’s energy affordability crisis. Regulators believe it vindicates a decision they took “to ensure that rooftop solar programs remain fair, sustainable and aligned with California’s clean energy goals,” CPUC spokesperson Terrie Prosper said Tuesday.

The case centered on the state’s “net energy metering” program, which governs how much solar customers are paid for excess power from their panels. Earlier versions of the program guaranteed customers the retail rate, which is how much utilities charge other customers when they resell the energy.

But a 2022 commission decision reduced this payment by about 75%. The commission’s decision backed utilities’ position, which was that those who have rooftop panels don’t pay their fair share of costs such as maintaining the grid, shifting the expenses disproportionately to non-solar customers. The decision resulted in a significant drop in new customers signing up for rooftop solar.

Advocacy groups sued over the decision, including the Center for Biological Diversity, The Protect our Communities Foundation, and the Environmental Working Group. They argued that commissioners didn’t properly take into consideration the benefits to disadvantaged communities and customers of having local energy generation.

The case reached an appeals court, which applied, in a decision siding with commissioners, a legal standard granting them significant deference. The Supreme Court of California then unanimously ruled last August that the lower court should not have applied this standard and must delve more deeply into the substance of the arguments.

Roger Lin, senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said this week’s decision is “disappointing” and the groups are “evaluating all of our options.” They can appeal again to the state supreme court.

“The whole reason the utilities created the ‘cost shift’ narrative was to preserve their profits,” Lin said. Under state law, utilities can earn a rate of return on everything they build, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars from ratepayers every year. They can’t earn that return on customers’ rooftop solar.

The decision comes amid renewed attention on California’s energy affordability crisis. Golden State residents pay the second highest rates in the country for energy after Hawaii, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Ratepayers routinely admonish state utility regulators for their high bills at public meetings. And Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced an upcoming replacement of the head of the utilities commission as part of a move to focus on bill affordability.

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