The Brief

Lawmakers and advocates say Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration is making inflated estimates about the cost of legislation, with some suggesting his subordinates have been trying to kill the bills without making the governor politically accountable for the outcome.

“While people are dying on the streets from a lack of access to behavioral health care treatment, state agencies continue to fabricate exorbitant cost estimates,” Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from Campbell, told CalMatters after one of his mental health proposals died recently in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco who authored another mental health bill that died recently, said in a public hearing last month that the administration’s cost estimate of his bill was “extreme and outrageous.”

The pointed accusations from Democratic lawmakers and health care advocates who tend to be friendly with the Democratic governor are extraordinary because such criticism is rarely made in public. The examples also stand out because they challenge the administration’s response on one of the governor’s top priorities, mental health.

The administration did not accept an interview request with CalMatters and would not provide more detail – to CalMatters or to lawmakers – to explain the cost estimates. By email, however, a spokesperson insisted the costs were accurate and rejected the idea that they were intentionally inflated.

“It’s outrageous and inaccurate for anyone to suggest these numbers are fabricated or artificially inflated,” Rodger Butler, a spokesperson for Newsom’s Health and Human Services Agency, said in an email. “Legislative fiscal analyses from state government departments are informed by real-world, on-the-ground experience implementing legislative mandates.”

Whatever the motivations, four health care bills with controversial cost estimates died quietly earlier this month in the Senate and Assembly Appropriations committees even after each had advanced without a single “no” vote from a Democratic legislator.

The Appropriations Committees are focused on the cost of legislation, especially in a year when the state is struggling with a budget deficit. The four bills were moved to the committees’ “suspense files” along with 263 other controversial or costly bills. Each committee then killed the bills in their respective suspense file with a single vote.

Mike Gatto, a former Democratic lawmaker from Los Angeles who chaired the Assembly Appropriations Committee, said inflated cost estimates from a governor’s administration are nothing new.

When an executive-branch agency provides “a significantly exaggerated cost” on a piece of legislation “it’s generally a big flashing light that the administration dislikes the bill and that the governor would likely veto it,” he said.

It can be advantageous for the governor when legislators quietly kill those bills, he said.

“Having the appropriations committee there to kill it and to take the arrows (of criticism), that is a tremendous benefit politically for any governor,” Gatto said.

Gatto has a hand-written note framed on his wall that former Gov. Jerry Brown gave him expressing Brown’s appreciation for keeping bills from reaching the governor’s desk.

In a corner of the note are two words: “Keep holding.”

But Thad Kousser, a former legislative staffer who’s now a professor of political science at UC San Diego, said the integrity of the legislative process is jeopardized if cost estimates are not accurate.

“You’ve got to have reasonable and realistic estimates that are not part of a political strategy in order for everyone to make informed decisions,” he said.

This year alone, according to the Digital Democracy database, lawmakers considered 2,522 bills, many of them with large potential costs to taxpayers.

Democrat calls costs ‘extreme and outrageous’

Sen. Wiener’s legislation, Senate Bill 294, would have required an automatic review of cases in which commercial health plans denied children and young people mental health treatment.

Wiener, the chair of the Senate’s mental health caucus, said in the public hearing last month that the measure “does nothing more than require health plans to provide the coverage that they’re required to provide and stop denying covered behavioral health care treatment to children.”

So he said it was “outrageous” when the Department of Managed Health Care estimated that the bill would cost $87.6 million per year by 2028 and would require 340 new employees. That’s a 55% increase over the 610 positions in the department’s budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year. A separate state office, the Department of Insurance, also said the bill would require it to hire an additional five positions by 2026 for $1.2 million. There is no description in the cost estimate about how the departments arrived at the estimate or what jobs the new positions would perform.

The estimate also was a surprise to supporters of Wiener’s bill. In June, they sent a three-page memo to the chair of the Assembly Appropriations Committee, Democrat Buffy Wicks from Oakland, saying that a similar bill that failed last year had a significantly lower cost estimate. They also noted that the pending bill was more narrow in scope.

Lishaun Francis, director of behavioral health for the advocacy group Children Now, told CalMatters the Department of Managed Health Care, which is intended to protect consumers, inflated the cost of Wiener’s bill, presumably to try to kill it.

“This is not an analysis in good faith,” she said. “The unfortunate thing here is that DMHC has fallen into a trap where they are trying to be here for consumers while also inflating costs to make sure bills don’t get to the governor when there is a tight budget year.”

Before the bill died, it passed the Senate and an Assembly committee without any Democrats voting against it, according to the Digital Democracy database.

Are there ‘multiple layers of fiscal review?’

The Department of Managed Health Care, which issued the cost estimates, is part of the state’s Health and Human Services Agency. Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly, a Newsom appointee, oversees the agency.

CalMatters requested an interview with Ghaly or another top official to talk about the cost estimates, but the administration would not talk beyond providing the emailed statement from Butler at the Health and Human Services Agency.

“It’s important to note there are multiple layers of fiscal review throughout the process,” he said, citing the policy and appropriations committees in the Legislature and the governor’s Department of Finance.

But Department of Finance spokesman H.D. Palmer told CalMatters “we rely principally on (agencies and departments) to provide us with the personnel and fiscal estimates.”

Policy committees, meanwhile, don’t evaluate the costs of bills.

“To say that policy committees vetted the finances of a bill is almost uniformly incorrect,” said Gatto, the former Assembly Appropriations chair. “Policy committees don’t do that.”

That independent fiscal review is supposed to happen at the Assembly and Senate Appropriations Committees, whose staffers are widely regarded as some of the smartest people in the Capitol. Their job is to independently vet the administration estimate and provide their own cost estimates for bills, Kousser and Gatto said.

“These people are professionals,” Kousser said. “They’re trying to get it right.”

Yet when it came to these four disputed bills, the analysis written by the staffs of the Appropriations Committees described the administration cost estimates and nothing more. Each of the four analysis included language similar to SB 999, which said only: “The Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) reports the total costs of this bill as follows:”

Luis Quinonez, chief of staff for Sen. Anna Caballero of Merced, who chairs the Senate’s Appropriations Committee, declined to discuss specific bills, other than to say the committee’s consultants perform their own analyses.

Representatives for Assemblymember Wicks, who chairs the Assembly Appropriations Committee, did not return messages.

Another Democrat calls costs ‘exorbitant’ 

Regarding his mental health bill, Sen. Cortese said in an email he has “serious concerns about how the health care agencies are coming up with these cost projections.” Senate Bill 999 would have required health insurers to make sure they have mental health and addiction experts review claims for treatment, something advocates say already is required under state law.

This was the second time Cortese introduced the bill. A previous version made it through the Legislature in 2022 before Newsom vetoed it, saying the issue could be addressed by new regulations that would be issued soon.

After he felt draft regulations last year were inadequate, Cortese introduced a pared down version of the 2022 bill. But advocates were surprised to see the department’s cost estimate increase significantly to $18 million over five years and about $4 million annually after 2028 to pay for 13 permanent positions. The estimate does not explain how the department determined the number of positions needed or what jobs they would perform.

Advocacy groups supporting the bill noted that, in recent years’ budget allocations, the Department of Managed Health Care already received millions of dollars to cover some of the costs of implementing the proposed rules so it didn’t make sense that the costs would be so high.

“It’s sad to see some of these good faith efforts by advocates to try to bring accountability to the system kind of fall under the weight of a cost estimate that we don’t have a lot of insight into from the department,” said Lauren Finke, policy director for The Kennedy Forum, one of the bill’s sponsors.

Santa Cruz Democratic Assemblymember Gail Pellerin similarly couldn’t understand why there was such a high cost associated with her Assembly Bill 3260, which would have required health insurers to expedite reviews of mental health claims that doctors deem urgent.

The Department of Managed Health Care estimated the bill would cost nearly $140 million in the first five years and $32 million annually after 2029 to pay 144 new positions – a 23% increase in staff size, Pellerin said in an interview. The estimate, which also includes an additional $238,000 annually for the Department of Insurance, does not provide any further description about the need for the positions.

Sal Rosselli, president emeritus of the National Union of Healthcare Workers, which supported the bill, said in an email that his organization reached out to agency officials to ask for an explanation of the cost analysis, “but they declined to engage with us.”

Eleven other states, plus Washington, D.C. have already adopted similar laws, he said, with no evidence that those laws resulted in a major increase in workload.

Pellerin said she and her staff also couldn’t get an answer from the department about how it came up with what she called “inflated” numbers.

“Is this taxpayer-funded state department doing the job it is required to do?” she asked.

For Pellerin, the issue is personal. She knows first-hand how an urgent mental health crisis can spiral out of control. Her husband died by suicide in 2018.

“My family, we’ve experienced this kind of situation,” she told CalMatters.

Are agencies not showing their work?

Advocates for Health Access California also were frustrated by the cost estimates associated with Assembly Bill 236 by Pasadena Democratic Assemblymember Chris Holden. The bill would have given state regulators the authority to fine health insurers if their publicly available lists of in-network doctors and specialists aren’t accurate.

In testimony supporting the bill’s promises to crack down on so-called “ghost networks,” a therapist described having a patient end up in the emergency room from a suicide attempt after she called through a list of 50 mental health providers and couldn’t find one who’d see her.

The bill would have added teeth to a law that insurers and doctors are already supposed to be following and that state regulators are supposed to be monitoring.

The Department of Managed Health Care estimated its cost to be $3.5 million annually after 2029 for 14 new positions. In its one-sentence description, the Department of Health Care Services said its cost for the bill would be "approximately" $24 million. In an email, the department told CalMatters the bill would lead to “increased costs in the Medi-Cal managed care and behavioral health delivery systems and staffing requirements.”

“This $24 million is just mind-blowing,” said Rachel Linn Gish, a spokesperson for Health Access. “We do not understand how they came up with this number.”

Michael Genest spent four years as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s director of the Department of Finance. At CalMatters’ request, he reviewed the cost estimates of the four bills.

He said he could expect high costs for Wiener’s and Pellerin’s bills, but he said it wasn’t possible for him to independently evaluate the figures without more detail.

But he said the other two estimates definitely seemed out of line based on the information the administration and the committees provided.

He said it wouldn’t surprise him if the agencies were inflating the projected costs of the bills to try to get more money to backfill their budgets – or if top officials in Newsom’s administration had told departments to oppose bills that weren’t the governor’s priorities.

Either way, he said the agencies should do a better job of explaining their cost projections.

“It’s poor practice,” he said. “It’s not a good thing that they’re not showing the detail.”

Genest worked in the Capitol when Willie Brown was Assembly speaker and when John Burton was president of the Senate. He said those leaders, known for their aggressive leadership styles, would never let the governor’s administration get away with blowing off lawmakers’ concerns. Back then, he said, lawmakers would have threatened to cut the departments’ budgets if they felt they were getting the runaround.

“If a member was disrespected to that extent by a member of the bureaucracy,” he said, “there would be consequences.”

Proposition 36, which passed in November 2024, promised California voters a new era of “mass treatment” for people struggling with addiction and a crackdown on repeat petty thieves amid a spike in retail theft.

The debate around the measure, called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” was fueled in part by a series of videotaped smash-and-grab robberies splashed across local TV news and images of unhoused residents shooting up drugs in the streets.

Voters signaled they wanted a crackdown and they approved Prop. 36 with nearly 70% casting ballots in favor of it.

A little more than a year later, the measure is getting mixed reviews.

Supporters say it's been effective in holding repeat offenders accountable. Critics say it's been a return to mass incarceration without the promised treatment for people with substance abuse.

How Prop. 36 works

Prop. 36 stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenders.

Here’s how the measure works: If you have been convicted of two misdemeanor thefts of $950 or less, prosecutors have the option of charging your third petty theft as a felony, which carries up to a three-year prison term.

Before Prop. 36, petty theft was a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times you did it.

When it comes to drug offenses under Prop 36, if you have been convicted of two possessions of a small amount of hard drugs (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), prosecutors have the option of charging your third possession as a felony. But you don’t have to go to prison if you agree to go into drug treatment.

In 2025, California prosecutors filed more than 19,000 Prop. 36 felony drug cases and more than 15,500 felony theft cases, according to a study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice released in March. Most people were released on bail pending the outcome of their case.

Nearly 900 Californians have been sent to state prison under Prop. 36, since it went into effect in December 2024. County jail populations have grown by nearly 3,000 since the measure passed, driven by a surge in felony bookings of people who have not yet been sentenced.

In Los Angeles County alone, there are about 1,150 individuals in jail because of Prop. 36 — about a 9% increase in the jail population, according to county Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. The surge in defendants is adding caseloads to his already overworked attorneys, he said.

The same is happening across the state.

“This is really compounding the workload crisis,” said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association.

The data represents a reversal of yearslong declines in incarceration, and they are occurring amid all-time lows in California’s crime rate.

“It really is a return to mass incarceration,” Chatfield argued.

Black people overrepresented

Black people are dramatically overrepresented in Prop. 36 charges, according to the study. In Contra Costa County, for example, Black residents account for more than half of all Proposition 36 theft charges, despite making up less than one-tenth of the population.

Prosecutors say the law has been effective.

“It’s been a valuable tool to go after chronic and repeat thieves,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

Hochman said his office brought more than 3,300 Prop. 36 felony cases against people charged with their third petty theft in 2025.

He said his office brought over 1,900 felony cases against people charged with their third possession of hard drugs.

He said he couldn’t immediately provide numbers on how many of the drug defendants opted for rehabilitation over prison.

Statewide, fewer than 1 in 5 people arrested on Prop. 36 drug charges have been ordered to treatment, and fewer than 1 in 100 have completed a program, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study.

Lack of treatment beds

One reason for the low treatment numbers is a scarcity of treatment beds throughout the state.

“There just isn’t enough treatment to meet the need,” said the center’s Maureen Washburn. “People aren’t getting connected to treatment. They aren’t succeeding in treatment programs once they’re in them.”

Treatment, a major promise of Prop. 36, has been an “abject failure,” she said.

Hochman agreed treatment is lacking.

“We do not have anywhere close to enough drug treatment and mental illness beds in a county of 10 million people,” he said.

The district attorney argued the state needs to provide more funding for treatment beds.

“Sacramento has not funded at any meaningful level,” he said.

In a March letter to the chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the co-author of Prop. 36 — Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) — said at least $400 million dollars in new funding is needed for treatment facilities.

“I think spending taxpayer dollars on drug treatment — both in the short term and in the long term — is a smart way to address public safety issues,” Umberg told LAist.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested in his budget $100 million dollars for treatment over three years.

But Chatfield said people facing Prop. 36 charges shouldn't be locked up in the first place. Drug offenses should be handled as a public health issue, she argued.

“Even the low level misdemeanors for theft are economic crimes,” she said. “These are crimes of poverty.”

Unequal application of Prop. 36

In addition to a paucity of treatment beds, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found charging rates vary dramatically by county. Orange County alone accounted for nearly 20% of Prop. 36 drug charges and 40% of theft convictions in 2025 despite representing just 8% of the state’s population.

“This inconsistency across counties exacerbates California’s longstanding problem of providing differing ”justice by geography,” the report stated.

Empirical evidence of the effect of Prop. 36 on the crime rate is lacking. But Umberg said he believes it has reduced retail theft.

“I have been told by a huge number of folks in law enforcement and also in the business community — particularly in the retail community — that it has had an effect on retail theft,” Umberg said.

Hochman said it's too early to tell if people are being deterred by Proposition 36.

“We’re waiting on statistics that we’ll probably get sometime this year to see if the deterrent aspect is also working — that we actually have fewer people going ahead and committing these crimes,” Hochman said.

But crime was on the way down before Proposition 36 passed. Violent crime fell 6% and property crime dropped 8.4% in California in 2024 — the year Prop. 36 passed.

Chatfield of the California Public Defenders Association maintains voters were “sold a bill of goods” on the measure.

“They were told this was about homelessness. They were told this was about treatment. And it absolutely was not," she said. "It was about increasing incarceration.”

Using a tablet or TV to calm a fussy child might work in the short-term, but a new study out of UC Irvine finds it could backfire later.

The study, published in Developmental Psychology, found that higher device use was linked to more behavior issues among toddlers, like biting or hitting or kicking — as well as more parental stress.

The study followed more than 200 families in Orange County and Washington, D.C., over time, from when a child was 9 months old to 2-and-a-half years old.

“Emotion regulation skills — like their own ability to calm and distract themselves — [they] might be being displaced by devices instead,” said Stephanie Reich, professor of education at UC Irvine. “And if [kids] don't have that skill, they might act out more, have more behavior problems.”

More behavioral problems in turn can make parenting more stressful, which means it’ll make it more likely that kids get devices again, creating a cycle parents can get stuck in, Reich said.

The study also found that mothers experienced more stress later when using devices to distract their children, but that wasn’t the experience for fathers. While higher device use was linked to more behavior problems, fathers did not feel the level of stress as much as mothers.

When mothers were stressed, they were more likely to use devices, Reich said. She couldn’t definitively explain why there was a difference between parents, but said that in general, parenting work falls more to mothers.

“They just might be more overwhelmed, or taking on more than fathers when it comes to day-to-day parenting,” she said.

The study notes the type of parent-child interactions that might be replaced by devices, including picking them up, holding and rocking them, and talking to them calmly and reminding them to breathe.

“All of these types of interactions, from physical touch to language use to breathing tips for calming, offer the developing child opportunities to cultivate their self-regulatory skills,” the authors wrote.

A federal judge said she’ll need more time to decide whether to grant a temporary court order to give immigrants detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center immediate relief.

Immigrants rights groups and a private firm filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security in January. They allege that the approximately 2,000 people currently held at the Adelanto complex are subject to inhumane treatment.

On top of squalid conditions, plaintiffs say detainees are fed cold, unsanitary food and expected to drink dirty water. They also allege detainees must often wait several months to see a doctor, if they ever do.

“The conditions in which these non-citizens are being held in the Adelanto detention facility, as alleged in the petition, are certainly concerning,” said Judge Sunshine Sykes at a hearing Tuesday for the Central District of California. “I think that each of us would never want to be in that position.”

Still, Sykes said she was tentatively inclined to “deny the motion [for a preliminary injunction] without prejudice or to allow plaintiffs to withdraw the motion and refile it,” which would give the immigrants rights groups a chance to address her concerns. She then gave the attorneys the opportunity to respond and, potentially, convince her otherwise.

What’s happening at Adelanto?

Adelanto is about 90 miles away from downtown Los Angeles. According to the lawsuit, the detention center does not accommodate detainees with special needs. Detainees with mobility issues, for instance, are assigned top bunks. And in a sworn declaration, one detainee described being put in handcuffs and ankle chains when she is taken to court appointments, even though she uses a cane.

Plaintiffs also say solitary confinement is used to retaliate against detainees who speak out against these conditions and to isolate those who are experiencing mental health crises. An LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data found that as of January, Adelanto is among the top 10 facilities that put immigrant detainees in solitary confinement across the country.

The detention center is run by The GEO Group Inc., one of the largest private prison operators in the United States.

The federal government has declined LAist's request for interviews and comments, and The GEO Group has not responded to those requests.

The arguments for and against an injunction

In the hearing, Judge Sykes raised concerns that The GEO Group and the Adelanto warden are not named in the lawsuit. She also questioned how the court could enforce an order for immediate relief and wondered if there might be a more “efficient” way for the plaintiffs to proceed.

The federal government has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit altogether. Pushkal Mishra, representing ICE and DHS, said “between the government and the alleged injury are the independent, discretionary, uncertain and speculative day-to-day activities of a third party.” The GEO Group and its employees, he argued, “are the proper defendants in the case, not [the] government.”

The advocates' lawsuit underscores that companies like The GEO Group are subject to inspection by the federal government. Recently, ICE gave the Adelanto ICE Processing Center a “good” rating. Since September 2025, at least four people have died in detention at Adelanto, the most recent March 25.

At the hearing, Vanessa Young Viniegra, a fellow at Public Counsel, refuted the federal government’s argument that ICE and DHS should not be named defendants in the case.

“The Supreme Court has been clear that the government has a constitutional duty to care for the people in its custody and the people that it chooses to detain,” she said, “regardless of whether it employs a private company.”

Judge Sykes interjected: “I don't think I'm saying that the government is not a proper defendant. I'm saying that The GEO Group [and] the warden of Adelanto may need to be joined or brought in as defendants as well.”

Young Viniegra noted that the motion for the emergency court order provides the government “some leeway” in terms of how it obligates Adelanto to provide adequate care for detainees.

“We're not asking the court to order, you know, a specific number of staff,” she said. “It's up to the government to comply with its constitutional obligations and exactly how it does that and its relationship with GEO is for it to decide.”

What's next?

Sykes said she’ll need more time to make a decision. In addition to the preliminary injunction, she is also navigating the federal government’s motion to dismiss the case and a motion by the plaintiffs to make this a class action lawsuit, meaning the court’s outcome would apply to all Adelanto detainees.

Learn more about Adelanto

• Is Adelanto's ICE detention facility a ‘concentration camp’? And does it matter?
• Adelanto ICE facility's use of solitary confinement is among 10 highest in US, data shows
• These Angelenos journeyed to Adelanto to protest conditions at immigrant detention centers

When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen anything quite like architect Richard Neutra’s iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like.

But by the end of the century, the Jardinette had become dilapidated, its historic significance hidden behind years of neglect.

Now, this pioneering piece of L.A. architecture is coming back to life.

Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it. With the renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original concept once again is coming into clear view.

“It was a big, heavy lift,” Hassid said, describing the project as the most complicated in his career. “There are so many apartment buildings in L.A. But none of them will have the story or any of the significance that this does.”

First steps for a now-famous architect

In the 1920s, Neutra was a young Austrian architect who had recently moved to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.

Historians cite the style he would go on to develop — with its flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors — as defining the language of mid-century California modernism.

Neutra's Palm Springs Kaufmann Desert House from 1946 and his Silver Lake VDL Research House II from 1965 became iconic homes of the period.

Richard Neutra's family lived in the VDL Research House II, located in Silver Lake and designed by Neutra with his son, Dion.

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Michael Locke via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

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But the Jardinette, built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A., coming just a few years after his arrival in the United States.

Architecture historians say Neutra’s goal was to strip down the Jardinette’s design, maximizing light and fresh air in the building’s 43 modestly sized apartments, all in keeping with the burgeoning International Style.

Long ribbon windows are the most striking feature in an otherwise unadorned facade. Windows join at corners and stretch across nearly entire walls, connecting living rooms and kitchens. Panes in the walls of interior closets bring “borrowed light” into shadowy interiors.

Neutra outfitted many of the apartments with balconies that cantilever off reinforced concrete. The balconies were ideal for outdoor plants — hence the name Jardinette, or Little Garden.

The restoration of the Jardinette Apartments is nearly complete.

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Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian who consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette, said Neutra’s approach would have seemed utterly alien amid the 1920s development boom in L.A.

“All these other revival styles were happening: Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival,” said Lamprecht, the author of Neutra: Complete Works from the publisher Taschen. “This was not a milieu that encouraged, fostered or remotely understood the tenets of early modernism.”

Once-lauded edifice falls on hard times

The Jardinette helped secure Neutra’s fame far beyond the confines of Southern California. His work on the Jardinette was included in a landmark 1932 architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But by the 1990s, the Jardinette had all but lost its visionary purity. It was painted pink and green. The previously uniform steel windows were mismatched, using cheap materials. The walls were graffitied.

By the late 20th century, the Jardinette had fallen into disrepair.

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“It was sad,” said Corey Miller with June Street Architecture, who worked on the renovation.

“It's just what happens when buildings get neglected,” he said. “It's important to look back on these ideas and not lose them and try to maintain them and not cover them up. Now, hopefully for another 100 years, more generations of people can experience the design the way it was originally intended.”

Working with the limits of a century-old building

The team behind the Jardinette’s renewal said the building was not easy to renovate. It was originally built without a cooling system. Its electrical system couldn’t meet modern energy needs. It didn’t have stand-up showers.

Installing those modern amenities while preserving Neutra’s original design proved challenging at times, said Anant Topiwala with June Street Architecture.

The team preserved whatever original materials they could, Topiwala said, but they needed to order custom tiles, windows and other parts in order to match historic photographs and documents.

A historic photograph shows the Jardinette in its original state.

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“We were like archeologists, in a way,” he said. “There was a lot of peeling back. What do we think the paint color was? What do we think that wood detail was?

“Neutra didn't like angles. We needed to make sure, for example, the casing around the doors didn't meet at a mitered corner. There's just so many interesting things.”

Pulling permits for a protected landmark

The Jardinette has multiple historic designations. It’s in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And it’s protected as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Those classifications limit what kinds of changes are allowed in a renovation. Getting all the necessary permits was a job in itself, one handled by Michael Norberg with Cali Planners.

“Everything you can think of that could come up did come up on this building,” Norberg said. “But I think the bones have been reinforced. The historic aspect has been retained. The entire nature and history and spirit of this building is still here.

“And I love the fact that the city was willing to work with us on maintaining that,” he said.

How the past informs future plans

Hassid said the renovation should be completed by this summer. He added that he’s not yet sure what the building’s future will be, but he won’t sell it to a typical real estate investor. He recently put it on the market with Neema Ahadian of Marcus & Millichap.

“We've sold some really beautiful buildings, but nothing that has the history that you can find here,” Ahadian said. The buyer will need to be someone who understands the value of preserving a piece of architectural history, he said.

“This building's been through a few ownerships that have not necessarily had the same vision,” Ahadian said.

Two windows join at a right angle and a door opens to a balcony in one corner of a Jardinette apartment.

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When he first took on the project, Hassid said, colleagues told him he was nuts. But he said ultimately the effort was worth it to preserve an L.A. architectural gem.

“I hope we made Richard Neutra proud, bringing his building back to life,” he said.

What does real luxury look like? 

Neutra built the Jardinette at a time when movie studios were growing. The Paramount studio lot is just a few blocks away.

Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian with expertise in Neutra's work, consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette.

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Lamprecht, the Neutra historian, said she’s looking forward to seeing how people occupy the apartments. She said Neutra designed the Jardinette to bring a new kind of luxury to occupants who might have included up-and-coming actors or below-the-line production workers.

“The luxuries in life are access to sunlight, to views,” Lamprecht said. “This was the raison d'être for this entire building: to provide graceful, expansive lives to people who weren’t in single-family dwellings in the Hollywood Hills.”

Whoever the next tenants will be, Lamprecht said, “I feel like, for the first time, this building is not invisible any longer.”