The head of an education technology startup that created a highly touted chatbot for the Los Angeles school system has been arrested and charged with fraud.
Federal prosecutors, in an indictment unsealed Tuesday, accused Joanna Smith-Griffin of defrauding investors and charged her with securities fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft.
Smith-Griffin, 33, is the founder and former chief executive of AllHere, the Boston-based company that created “Ed,” an artificial-intelligence tool billed as revolutionary for students’ education and the interaction between the L.A. Unified School District and the families it serves.
After unveiling the chatbot with great fanfare in March, L.A. school officials, months later, quietly disconnected the tool — which was supposed to respond to any question from students or parents in an accurate, helpful and private manner.
Although the episode was embarrassing for L.A. Unified — schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho had stood alongside Smith-Griffin in promotional appearances — the financial damage to the nation’s second-largest school system, which this year has an $18.4-billion budget, appears to be limited.
School district officials say they’ve spent about $3 million of what had been a $6-million commitment to the firm — and received services and technology for that investment. Carvalho recently told The Times that he was optimistic about salvaging the technology for later use.
On Tuesday, Carvalho provided a brief comment on the developing criminal case.
“The indictment and the allegations represent, if true, a disturbing and disappointing house of cards that deceived and victimized many across the country,” Carvalho said. “We will continue to assert and protect our rights.”
According to prosecutors, Smith-Griffin orchestrated “a deliberate and calculated scheme to deceive investors in AllHere Education, Inc., inflating the company’s financials to secure millions of dollars under false pretenses.”
She could not be reached Tuesday for comment.
In July, Carvalho said he would appoint a task force to examine what went wrong with the L.A. Unified project and to chart a path forward. At the time, he anticipated that the task force, once assembled, would complete its work over about three months. No information on a task force or its progress has been provided since then.
AllHere’s website was active as of Tuesday night, but the contact page notes that “due to our current financial position, the Board furloughed the majority of the company’s employees on June 14, 2024.” The most recent update on the company blog is from mid-April.
AllHere is now in Chapter 7 bankruptcy, its employees have been laid off, and the company is under the control of a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
Authorities said Smith-Griffin was arrested Tuesday in North Carolina and was set to appear before a magistrate judge.
According to the indictment, from about November 2020 to around June 2024, Smith-Griffin misrepresented AllHere’s revenue, customer base and cash to investors.
For example, in the spring of 2021, she allegedly told potential investors that AllHere had generated about $3.7 million in revenue in 2020, had around $2.5 million in cash on hand and had major school district customers such as the New York City Department of Education and Atlanta Public Schools.
In reality, AllHere had generated about $11,000 in revenue in 2020, had about $494,000 in cash and did not have contracts with many of the customers it claimed, including the New York City Department of Education and Atlanta Public Schools, the indictment stated.
These misrepresentations allegedly continued through AllHere’s collapse; as the company was sinking, she was able to obtain nearly $10 million from investors and sought an additional $35 million from a private equity investor — who ultimately decided to not invest.
Smith-Griffin used some of the fraudulently obtained funds to put a down payment on a house in North Carolina and pay for her wedding, prosecutors said.
When AllHere’s investors and outside accountant discovered the discrepancy between the company’s actual financials and what Smith-Griffin was telling investors, she allegedly tried to cover up her actions, going so far as to create a fake email account for AllHere’s outside financial consultant, which she used to send additional fraudulent financial documents to her largest investor.
“Joanna Smith-Griffin allegedly misrepresented the composition of her startup company to defraud investors of millions and masqueraded as a financial consultant to perpetuate the scheme once discrepancies were discovered,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge James E. Dennehy. “Her alleged actions impacted the potential for improved learning environments across major school districts by selfishly prioritizing personal expenses.”
Carvalho had touted Ed as an AI-enhanced student advisor that was to be a component of a unique Individual Acceleration Plan, or IAP, for every student.
The full rollout of the IAP is on hold. And it’s hard to find students, teachers or other staff who have used any part of the system since its official launch. It’s not available at most schools.
All the same, LAUSD officials said, parents and students have current online access to a wide array of information related to grades, test scores, assignments and general school-district information about programs, courses and schools.
Federal investigators looking into the treatment of Black pregnant patients at Cedars-Sinai Health System have found evidence that federal laws against discrimination may not have been followed, according to a “letter of concern.”
“Our investigation has uncovered evidence that Cedars-Sinai may have engaged in a pattern of inaction and/or neglect concerning the health risks associated with Black maternity patients,” the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights said in its Nov. 12 letter to Cedars-Sinai officials.
The federal agency said its review, which began more than two years ago, hadn’t reached any “final determinations” about whether Cedars-Sinai violated federal statutes against discrimination.
However, its letter said its investigation to date “raises concerns that a lower standard of care is provided to Black patients compared to their white counterparts — especially leading up to and during obstetric hemorrhage.”
The Office for Civil Rights urged Cedars-Sinai to take several steps to ensure it was complying with federal law. Doing so, it said, “would allow us to suspend our investigation and work towards voluntary resolution of this matter.”
In a statement, Cedars-Sinai said that “we respectfully disagree with the department’s assertions but pledge to continue working to improve maternal health equity.” It thanked the federal department for its work and said the health system shared its concerns about racial inequities in maternal care nationally.
The health system said it had started instituting measures to improve health outcomes for Black mothers well before the initiation of the federal review, including introducing implicit bias training for obstetrician-gynecologists and nurses, creating new roles focused on “equity for patients and inclusion among our work force,” and distributing more than $2.2 million in grants to local nonprofits working to improve Black maternal health.
Cedars-Sinai also emphasized that “the recent department letter contains preliminary findings with no final conclusions or decisions.”
An HHS spokesperson confirmed that, saying that the letter is “only a preliminary document that does not contain any formal findings of noncompliance” and that Cedars-Sinai had cooperated throughout the investigation.
“We look forward to their continued cooperation and work towards reaching a voluntary resolution soon to improve upon health disparities and maternal health outcomes — a goal shared by Cedars-Sinai and HHS,” the agency spokesperson said.
In its letter, the Office for Civil Rights said its investigation suggested that Cedars-Sinai had deviated from its own standards on hemorrhage care with respect to Kira Johnson and other Black patients.
Johnson died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a caesarean section eight years ago, spurring a public uproar and lawsuits by her husband against Cedars-Sinai and several physicians, which were ultimately settled. Her death was the result of hemorrhagic shock due to blood loss, according to the letter.
The federal office said it had scrutinized medical records, testimony and interviews that “showcase how severely delayed Kira Johnson’s diagnosis and care was.” Cedars-Sinai medical staff had failed to follow up on imaging and lab orders and delayed taking Johnson back to the operating room until nearly 10 hours had passed since her C-section, the letter said.
The Office for Civil Rights added that in an interview with the office, a doctor who had attended her, Arjang Naim, “espoused stereotypical, non-scientific opinions about Black women,” including that Black patients respond differently to hemorrhaging than white patients and “don’t complain as much about pain.”
Dr. Naim “purported to attribute to his opinions to the medical literature,” but was unable to provide any citations when prompted, the letter said. The Office for Civil Rights said its review also found that Naim had failed to provide appropriate care for at least four other Cedars-Sinai maternity patients while he had privileges there.
Naim didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The physician went on probation, which he completed two years ago, after being accused by the Medical Board of California of “gross negligence” in his treatment of several obstetric patients.
Black women in California have suffered a maternal mortality rate more than three times that of white women in the state. Health researchers have faulted numerous factors for that disparity, including inequities in healthcare, chronic conditions and structural racism.
In its letter to Cedars-Sinai, the federal office said that it examined records of 38 patients who had suffered postpartum hemorrhaging. In 14 of those cases, the treatment concerned investigators as “potentially deviating from protocols” partly because of race, the letter said.
In one instance when a Black woman suffered postpartum hemorrhaging, “management of her bleeding appeared severely delayed” and out of step with Cedars-Sinai guidelines, the letter said. In contrast, a white woman with similar signs of hemorrhage “appears to have received care in line with the guidelines.”
Federal investigators also said they had been reviewing other alleged incidents of racial discrimination reported by patients, including a Black patient who alleged she was denied an epidural injection or medication for pain, although they did not issue findings on those allegations. Data from Cedars-Sinai show that on average, Black patients reported higher levels of postpartum pain compared with their white counterparts, the letter said.
The federal agency also stressed that Black women consistently had higher rates of caesarean sections than other Cedars-Sinai patients and lower rates of a successful vaginal delivery after a previous caesarean. C-sections can save lives in some circumstances but also have a higher risk of hemorrhage, the office said.
Its said its review suggested that doctors for Johnson “steered her towards a non-medically indicated repeat C-section without fully disclosing the benefits and risks.” Doing so “may suggest motivations of racial bias or false notions that Black women are poor candidates” for vaginal birth after a C-section, the office said.
Cedars-Sinai had acknowledged the need to improve Black maternal health and put additional policies in place after Johnson died, the letter said. Despite those efforts, “there is evidence that the problems continue,” the civil rights office concluded.
It urged the health system to take additional steps, including creating an online tool for patients to report incidents of suspected bias. The office also called for the health system to provide the federal agency with its written policies and protocols for any “early maternal warning systems” designed to prevent maternal deaths, among other recommended actions.
Taking such steps could lead to a “voluntary resolution of this matter rather than further, protracted investigation with possible enforcement,” the civil rights office said in its letter.
Nick Rowley, an attorney representing the Johnson family, said the federal agency had outlined “steps in the right direction,” but amid “this epidemic of Black women dying in healthcare, dying in labor and delivery, baby steps aren’t going to stop this from happening.”
“We need radical change if we’re going to save lives and keep Black mothers from dying,” Rowley said.
FRESNO — Dez Martinez greeted the homeless dwellers of Santa Clara Street on a recent October afternoon with open arms and a warm smile. As she walked through Fresno’s version of Skid Row, homeless residents waved in greeting from the tents and tarps lining both sides of the street.
“I need help,” one man told her as she offered him a hug. She gave him her cellphone number and email.
She also offered a warning: He should be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. The city was preparing to sweep the street encampment, and this time would be arresting people under a new ordinance that bans camping in public spaces.
Homeless advocate Dez Martinez, left, converses with Pua Vang at a homeless encampment in Fresno.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Martinez has been advocating for Fresno’s homeless population for a decade. She’s angry and deflated at the city’s aggressive move to label homelessness a crime. More than 160 people have been arrested and charged with misdemeanors since the ordinance took effect in September, and could face up to a year in jail or a $1,000 fine if they turn down shelter or treatment.
At the same time, two affordable housing projects have stalled, incensing advocates who say the government is leaving homeless people with few options other than leaving town or jail time.
“Our homelessness has gotten worse in Fresno. It’s climbing every single day,” Martinez said. “We’re hurting, we’re suffering, and we’re losing all hope.”
City officials, conversely, champion the camping ban, saying public spaces have been cleared of trash and more homeless people are being connected with treatment and shelter beds. Individuals with outstanding arrest warrants have been detained during the sweeps. And there is “overwhelming support” from residents, said Mayor Jerry Dyer.
“For the past four years, we have been heavy on compassion and light on accountability,” Dyer said. “We have to deal with them, and absent the ordinance, it would be challenging for us.”
Oudom Thammavong, a longtime homeless resident, said he has tried to live in a city shelter before and found it difficult sleeping with three other men in a cramped room.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
The city of Fresno, with more than 500,000 residents, is in some ways a test case of what happens when a city cracks down on homelessness without growing systematic efforts to increase the affordable housing stock.
During the COVID pandemic, Fresno became one of the nation’s fastest-growing cities, and its rent increases outpaced rents in every large city in the nation. Although nearly half of Fresno County is dominated by agriculture, the city of Fresno is California’s fifth-largest city and long ago shed its identity as a quaint farm town.
Along the way, Fresno’s homeless population exploded. The city says about 1,400 people are homeless in Fresno proper, and an estimated 4,500 people are homeless across Fresno and Madera counties, up from 2,500 in 2019.
Before 2020, Fresno had no city-run shelters. Today, it has more than 800 beds.
Among its strategies to combat homelessness, the city has used state and federal funds to buy up motels and convert them into affordable housing. Before 2021, the city had no housing division. Today, it has a staff of 16.
Still, some homeless advocates say they’ve seen a dramatic shift in the last year, as elected officials nix or stall affordable housing projects that had already secured competitive state funding.
One proposed project, Libre Commons, is envisioned as a four-story project with 86 units. The project, priced at $56 million, secured $14 million in state funds. Although the project is within city limits, it fell to the county to offer supportive services through its behavioral health services agency. The city of Fresno initially pledged $3 million for the project but pulled the money back in February, citing a budget shortfall.
In August, county Supervisor Steve Brandau surprised the developers when he asked the board to vote on withdrawing county support for the project, jeopardizing the state funds. He said the city’s funding withdrawal led him to believe the project was not financially viable, a claim the developers disputed.
The board instead gave the developers until January to secure full funding. In the same meeting, the county approved its own homeless camping ban, introduced by Brandau.
One speaker, a mother, said she was on the verge of being homeless again after timing out of the county’s shelters. “A lot of us are not on drugs. A lot of us are actually trying,” the woman said. “Where are we going to go?”
Erick Lopez prepares a bagel with peanut butter at a homeless camp in Fresno.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
In an interview, Brandau said he didn’t have an answer to that question. Instead, he cited residents’ concerns that the Libre Commons project would bring congestion on roads adjacent to the project. The neighborhood, Old Fig Garden, is one of the wealthiest in Fresno County; homes are valued at more than $1 million.
“This is not NIMBYism,” Brandau said. “If they even move that thing across the street, you know, 100 yards, I think we’d all be fine with it, because they wouldn’t be driving on these tiny little roads.”
Jessica Hoff Berzac, president of UPholdings, which developed the project in partnership with Self-Help Enterprises, said she has been frustrated by the flip-flopping by officials, who initially supported the plans. Libre would offer permanent housing for people at risk of homelessness and in need of mental health services.
Hoff Berzac’s company has worked with the county before. Just two miles south of the dirt lot where Libre is planned, UPholdings secured state and local funding to renovate Crossroads Village, a former inn, into permanent housing with 143 units that will open in January and feature a pool, playground and multi-bedroom units. Another project, Butterfly Gardens in Clovis, received state and county funding.
“I have no understanding of why they would proactively block housing,” Hoff Berzac said. “That could delay the creation of those units by years.”
Jackie Simms, homeless for three months, cuddles one of her dogs in a makeshift shelter on a Fresno sidewalk.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
At some level, Fresno leaders are reacting to the same voter mutiny that is playing out across the state, from Orange County to Bay Area cities. Residents are fed up with sprawling tent encampments and the associated drug use and street crime. And they want their cities to be less welcoming.
During the pandemic emergency, the Fresno City Council was an eager participant in the state’s Project Homekey program, a multimillion-dollar effort to convert underused motels into housing for homeless people.
But last December, the council made a stunning U-turn and blocked the latest conversion proposal.
In April 2023, the council had unanimously approved a developer’s request to apply for state funding for a project that would revamp a Quality Inn on a quiet tree-lined street surrounded by medical offices. Eight months later, after securing $16.4 million in Project Homekey funding, the developer returned to the council for final approval.
But at a Dec. 7 council meeting, employees of the medical offices turned out to decry the project, saying they already felt unsafe because of the number of homeless people in the area.
Councilmember Miguel Arias, who had been an advocate for motel conversions, led the opposition. He cited concerns from residents who said they felt they’d been left out of the conversation.
City Manager Georgeanne White warned the council that rejecting the proposal could result in the state punishing the city on its next application for Homekey funding. The vote was 5 to 2 against approval, effectively killing the project.
“Our homelessness has gotten worse in Fresno. It’s climbing every single day,” says homeless advocate Dez Martinez, left. “We’re hurting, we’re suffering, and we’re losing all hope.”
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Arias, in an interview, said he was concerned about partnering with a private developer. Previous motel conversions have remained public assets, he said.
“We’ve been very intentional, because after the transition to affordable, we want to guarantee that they’re going to remain affordable,” he said. With private developers involved, that is not always the case, he said.
In his district, 27 motels have been converted into housing projects. An area previously known as Motel Drive, where illicit sex and drug sales once were rampant, has been transformed as the city bought up dilapidated motels.
Still, Arias said, the city has to set limits on its benevolence. He said he has family members who struggled with drug addiction and homelessness for years before finding their footing, and the city can’t wait years before taking back its streets.
“We have done a lot more than we’ve ever done before, and we know there’s more to be done,” Arias said. “But we also have to draw a line, like any family does.”
Similar to L.A.’s Skid Row, Santa Clara Street has long been home to a heavy concentration of homeless campers because of its proximity to Poverello House, a nonprofit that offers three meals a day and access to services.
(Tomas Ovalle / For The Times)
Just how the camping ban will play out remains to be seen. One longtime homeless resident, Oudom Thammavong, said he would take shelter over being jailed. But he said he has tried to live in a city shelter before and found it difficult sleeping with three other men in a cramped room.
Advocates say they are continuing to pull together resources for families struggling to find housing.
Jimmy Morris and his three children — two teenage sons and a teenage daughter — are among the families that might fall through the cracks. They had been staying at Crossroads Village but had to leave while it underwent renovations. In recent weeks, they spent their nights behind a Family Dollar store dumpster.
Martinez, whose nonprofit We Are Not Invisible raises funds for homeless needs, put out a late-night plea on Facebook as the temperature dropped below 50. Within an hour, residents showed up with hats, gloves and pillows. Arias asked city staff to find housing for the family, but their three dogs made them ineligible for the shelter available.
On Santa Clara Street, city crews swept in Nov. 1 to clear out tents, belongings and piles of trash. That day, 42 people accepted shelter, Dyer said.
Similar to L.A.’s Skid Row, Santa Clara Street has long been home to a heavy concentration of homeless campers because of its proximity to Poverello House, a nonprofit that offers three meals a day and access to services. Clinica Sierra Vista workers routinely head there to find their clients and dole out medications to those suffering from terminal illnesses. Some people have camped on Santa Clara Street for years.
Dyer promised that would change.
“Street sweepers, sanitation crews took all of the property and much of the garbage that was out there, and as of this morning, it remains clean,” Dyer said in early November. “And it will remain clean as long as I’m the mayor.”
For four months, two people terrorized older residents in South L.A., Boyle Heights and the MacArthur Park area, gaining their trust through friendly conversation in order to kidnap and rob their victims at gunpoint, authorities said.
The Los Angeles Police Department recently arrested two suspects in connection with a serial “kidnap for robbery” scheme and are searching for additional victims.
The slew of robberies took place from June through November, when two assailants would approach victims in a gray Ford Focus, police said. One would exit the car and engage the victim in conversation, on some occasions claiming to be affiliated with a church to win their trust, police said.
Then, the robbers would suddenly turn on their victims, brandishing a handgun, threatening them with physical force and demanding they get in the car, police said. The assailants would drive their victims to another location and demand they provide jewelry or money, police said.
The pair threatened violence if victims refused to comply, police said.
Detectives identified the suspects’ vehicle and subsequently arrested two people believed to be responsible for the scheme, police said. Police have not yet identified the suspects.
Detectives believe there are more victims who have yet to report similar crimes and are asking anyone with further information to contact the LAPD Newton Robbery Section at (323) 846-6572.
During non-business hours or on weekends, calls can be made to (877) 527-3247. Anonymous tips can be left at (800) 222-8477 or at the L.A. Crime Stoppers website.
WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump has promised to arrest thousands of homeless people sleeping on American streets and move them to large tent cities on “inexpensive land,” one of several planks of his agenda that would upend a national strategy that focuses on finding people housing on a voluntary basis.
“We will use every tool, lever and authority to get the homeless off our streets,” Trump said in a video announcing his policy last year. “There is nothing compassionate about letting these individuals live in filth and squalor, rather than getting them the help that they need.”
Homeless advocates, who have fought for decades to remove the stigma around people who lack a place to live, are bracing for a multipronged battle against policies they deem inhumane.
But Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, who is trying to combat one of the nation’s largest homelessness crises, said she is eager to work with the incoming administration and believes she and Trump can find common ground in housing the city’s estimated 46,000 homeless people.
“I’m certainly going to begin that way,” Bass, a Democrat who was sworn into office by Vice President Kamala Harris, said in an interview. “Over the years that I spent in Congress — 12 years that I spent in Congress — I have very significant Republican relationships.”
The city doesn’t have cheap or remote land, and Bass does not believe she would need to use more aggressive tactics to get people off the street, she said. But she would be eager to use federal property for temporary shelters — as some Trump administration officials proposed during his first term in office — Bass said.
“We’re on the same page on that,” Bass said, suggesting the city could erect shipping containers or other modular units for more stable forms of housing rather than tent cities.
Bass is trying to navigate a shifting political terrain around homelessness, as public sentiment and a recent Supreme Court decision have opened the door for cities and states to take more punitive actions against a homeless population that has swelled in recent years amid rising housing costs.
“The ground is fertile,” said Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center, which fights laws aimed at criminalizing homelessness.
Trump has not yet chosen a Housing secretary and his transition team’s statement to The Times did not answer specific questions about his plans.
“The American people reelected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like lowering housing costs for all Americans. He will deliver,” said Karoline Leavitt, the Trump-Vance transition spokesperson.
But homeless experts and advocates who have reviewed public statements from Trump and his closest advisors and donors have identified a number of possible changes. They include more aggressive policing, less funding for some low-income housing and shelter programs, a return to forced institutionalization of people with substance and mental health problems and an end to the national strategy that seeks to house people without imposing conditions such as sobriety, mental health treatment or participation in religious-based treatment programs.
“Everybody’s just trying to assess what we should do next,” said Sharon Rapport, director of California state policy for the Corporation for Supportive Housing, an advocacy group that also works with homeless nonprofits.
Trump campaigned in large part on the idea that cities have become chaotic and unruly and that he could impose more order by cracking down on homeless encampments and open drug use.
“We have horrible, disgusting, dangerous, filthy encampments of junkies and homeless people living in places that our children used to play Little League baseball, which they don’t get to play very much anymore, do they?” Trump said at a rally in Uniondale, N.Y., in September.
Nationally, more than 650,000 people were estimated to be homeless on a single night in 2023, according to the most recent data available. Of those, more than 250,000 were unsheltered. California has the largest homeless population, at more than 180,000. Such counts are widely believed to underestimate the true number of homeless people.
Though many homeless people struggle with addiction and mental illness, the strongest driver of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing, research shows.
West Virginia, for example, has the highest opioid death rate but its homeless population is a fraction of California’s, even when accounting for its small population. Mississippi, despite extremely high poverty, has one of the nation’s lowest rates of homelessness. But addiction, mental illness and poverty can make it harder for people to come out of homelessness.
Most of the country’s homeless policy is organized around the principle called “housing first,” which means allowing people into housing without demanding sobriety, mental health treatment or religious-based treatment. The theory is that many homeless people do not need additional services and those who do are more likely to accept them once they are off the street, given the stress caused by living without shelter.
But the sense of disorder created by open drug use and street camping has prompted an increasing number of cities to crack down on homeless people with more laws that allow removing and arresting them. Even liberal politicians such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom have begun ordering more aggressive tactics to clear encampments.
And the Supreme Court ruled in June that cities can enforce camping bans, even if they lack shelter space for homeless people.
Trump, whose Republican Party will control both the House and Senate in January, has said that he will seek a national ban on urban camping. Violators would be given a choice to accept services or be forcibly located to tent cities, where doctors and other specialists would assess their needs, he has said.
It’s unclear whether Trump could accomplish this part of his plan without local and state cooperation.
Federal park police can arrest people on federal lands, but Trump would probably need city and county police to enforce camping bans in most areas of the country. Trump floated a similar proposal to Los Angeles during his first term, including the use of federal land for temporary homeless shelters. But it broke down, in part because city and state officials would not agree to his demands to forcibly clear Skid Row and other encampments.
Rabinowitz predicted that Trump would probably start building tent cities in more conservative states such as Florida, which passed a statewide camping ban that took effect in October.
Devon Kurtz, public safety director for the conservative Cicero Institute, said designated camping sites offer an effective way to reach those people who resist shelters, by bringing traveling teams of doctors and social workers to a central location.
“It’s a lot easier to do that, and really the only way you’ll be able to do that is if everyone is in one place,” he said.
The Cicero Institute, which has been active in promoting the passage of laws that crack down on camping throughout the country, was founded in 2018 by Joe Lonsdale, a venture capitalist who has donated more than $1 million to Trump’s campaign.
Kurtz said he also sees other changes in store, including laws that could set the table for committing more people into mental health institutions and using more federal housing money for local homeless programs that force people to stay sober or set other lifestyle requirements as a condition of housing.
“It’s unlikely that the pot of money shrinks and I think there’s even a possibility it could increase,” he said.
But homeless advocates worry Trump could cut programs, including housing vouchers that supply California with about $5.6 billion a year to place low-income people into homes, or Medicaid, which funds some housing programs that include social services.
More broadly, they argue that Trump’s approach will strip homeless people of dignity and liberty for the crime of having nowhere to live, removing them from public view without increasing the affordable housing supply.
They argue that focusing on housing people regardless of their sobriety status has led to successes, such as a recent drop in veteran homelessness, that would be undermined if Trump reverses course.
”We know from years and years of evidence that requiring somebody to get well, get sober, before they can access housing just means more people are going to fall down on that journey before they get back into housing,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy advisor for the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
Though cities and states set their own homeless policies, the federal government controls most of the money and can shift the balance by tying grant money to requirements that force localities to shift tactics.
“We are concerned about a federal government that gives local governments the green light to follow their worst political instinct, instead of what we know works,” Visotzky said.
When the Mountain fire broke out more than two weeks ago, Samuel and Florentino witnessed the all-too familiar hazy, gray sky and the smell of smoke as they harvested strawberries in an Oxnard field.
The men were more than 25 miles from the blaze but a combination of high winds and smoke was enough to foul the air. Despite having N95 masks, they could endure work for only about two hours before they were sent home because of worsening air quality.
The men provided only their first names to The Times, citing job security concerns.
It was not the first time that a wildfire has kept field workers from earning a living.
Samuel said he experienced a similar episode while picking fruit in Ventura County during the Thomas fire of 2017-2018.
“The smoke affected me so much that I had to be taken to the hospital because I was having trouble breathing. It felt like I couldn’t breathe,” he said.
The nearly 20,000-acre Mountain fire was 98% contained as of Tuesday and has already destroyed 240 structures, damaged an additional 125 and scorched about 3,000 acres of agricultural land.
Another problem caused by the fire is the loss of wages for field hands in Ventura County’s fruit and vegetable farms.
Samuel and Florentino lost two full days of pay, straining them both financially.
“Who can make money for you to pay everything that’s needed in order to live if it isn’t you,” Samuel said.
Ventura County officials are gathering information and resources for residents and farmers who have lost their property or suffered damage, but there isn’t a financial safety net for field workers because of their undocumented immigration status, according to local nonprofit groups.
Preliminary findings estimated more than $7 million in agriculture losses from the fire, which scorched avocado, citrus, raspberry and other fields as well as rangeland, said Korinne Bell, Ventura County’s agricultural commissioner.
A majority of farming operations in Ventura County are smaller growers that might not have crop insurance or are underinsured because fire coverage is not available for all farms. California’s basic fire insurance program is limited to coverage for farm structures and is prohibitively expensive, said Maureen McGuire, executive officer for the Farm Bureau of Ventura County.
“People are really scared and they’re assessing whether or not they’re going to return to farming,” McGuire said.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture operates natural disaster relief programs for eligible farmers that aim to help repair damage to farmlands, provide financial assistance or offer emergency loans, depending on their situation.
Even with some type of disaster relief, Bell said loss of land, crops and infrastructure, such as sprinkler heads, valves, pipe fittings and hoses, can set a farmer back about six years or more.
The effect on field workers can also be devastating.
Without crops to harvest, more than 42,000 field workers in Ventura County are without a paycheck in such disasters, said Primitiva Hernández, executive director of 805 Undocufund, a joint effort of immigrant-serving organizations in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.
Three days after the fire started, 805 Undocufund launched a needs assessment of field and domestic workers affected by the Mountain fire.
More than 2,800 people responded as of Thursday, with 91% of those responses coming from field workers. Of the total responses, 72% stated they lost wages because of air quality or school closures that forced them to leave their jobs to pick up their children, and 14% were evacuated from their homes.
The organization raised $150,000 to provide each of the 300 evacuated households or farmworkers who lost wages with $500 in financial relief assistance, “which is not even close to the level of need,” said Hernández.
On average an undocumented worker makes approximately $16 an hour, according to the California Immigrant Data Portal. A study on the economic contributions of undocumented workers in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties found that 20% of the immigrants in Ventura County live below the poverty line.
Unlike U.S. citizens or green card holders, undocumented farmworkers do not qualify for federal unemployment or disaster benefits.
“They [can’t] afford not [to] work, even in incredibly dangerous situations,” said Lucas Zucker, co-executive director at Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy.
Hernández said she learned from the 805 Undocfund needs assessment that some farmworkers were told by their employers it was optional for them to work the three days after the start of the fire. The workers, however, were not provided with any information about air quality, health risks or protective measures to help them make an informed decision for themselves, she said.
Some job sites, including Samuel and Florentino’s, provided them with masks and a paper to sign, acknowledging they were given a face covering.
Working with a face mask is difficult and slows down his regular pace, Florentino said. “The mask doesn’t fit correctly, falls and sometimes the smoke still feels like it’s coming through,” he said.
The men feel they can’t miss a day’s work. “It doesn’t matter if there is a fire or a storm” because without a paycheck they won’t be able to pay rent or utilities or for childcare, food and other basic necessities and then “we’ll be taken out of our homes if we can’t pay our bills,” Samuel said. “Even if we don’t want to work in these conditions, your [financial] need, it pushes you to continue working.”
In September, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed Senate Bill 227, which would have created a program that resembles unemployment insurance for workers who are undocumented.
On the first two days of the Mountain fire, the worst days for air quality, advocate groups, the county agriculture commissioner and the Farm Bureau of Ventura County gave many farmworkers N95 masks.
But Florentino and Samuel said there is still a lack of support to help recover their lost wages.
“I want people to understand where help is going and where it’s still needed,” Florentino said.
“I think a boss should take care of his [employees] so his people can continue to work for him because if he doesn’t support his people then he’ll lose his harvest,” he said.
Proposition 6, the ballot measure that would have amended the California Constitution to prohibit involuntary servitude in prison, failed. That’s troubling. Do voters really believe forced prison labor is acceptable?
The state Constitution (like its federal counterpart) has long outlawed slavery and involuntary servitude except “to punish crime.” Maybe voters thought prisoners should be made to work as part of their punishment, which would be in keeping with the broader “tough on crime” tilt of this year’s electorate. Whatever the voters’ reasons, forcing incarcerated individuals to do work against their will is immoral and does no one any good — neither prisoners nor those in the outside world to which most will return. The practice should be abolished.
Prison itself is the punishment prescribed for those held in one. Prisoners should be able to choose their jobs — of which there are many in prison — as well as the educational and treatment programs they need to prepare for life after prison. “The goal should be changing behavior,” says Jay Jordan, a longtime criminal justice reform activist who spent 7½ years in prison and advised the Proposition 6 campaign.
Former prisoners have recounted being assigned work that they didn’t want or that interfered with classes or drug and alcohol treatment programs they wanted to take. Their labor is for the most part barely compensated, at rates far below minimum wage. And refusing work often results in discipline, they have said, such as loss of various privileges. Some former prisoners said they waited years to get the jobs or treatment they wanted.
Not that jobs go undone: More than 90,000 people are in California‘s prisons, and only about 35,000 have jobs. And if Proposition 6 had passed, prisoners still would have been able to work on a voluntary basis.
This system needs to be changed. The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has already made a few improvements. Up to 75% of full-time jobs are being converted into part-time jobs, which would leave prisoners with more time to pursue education and treatment. The prison system also doubled the paltry wages it pays for work, although the jobs pay a pittance even with that increase. Most prisoners make 16 to 74 cents per hour, though firefighters can be paid up to $10 an hour.
But state law requires that all able-bodied prisoners work, and prison officials can’t change that.
The state Legislature, however, could — and should. In fact, lawmakers passed and the governor signed legislation to do away with the work requirement this year, but it was contingent on voter approval of Proposition 6.
The Legislature should pass a bill to remove mandatory work from the Penal Code that doesn’t rely on a constitutional amendment. While the Constitution allows forced labor in prison, it is the Penal Code that mandates it. Only voters can change the constitutional provision, but lawmakers have the power and duty to change the law.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom should also explore the possibility of an executive order directing prison officials to end forced labor.
In addition, the Legislature should give voters another opportunity to do away with the constitutional exception, particularly given the possibility that the language of Proposition 6 could have been clearer. Nevada voters decisively passed a similar measure that, in contrast to California’s initiative, used the word “slavery.”
There should be no place in the California Constitution for anything as morally offensive as forced labor. It is a remnant of a national atrocity that should not be tolerated in prisons or anywhere else.
A Southern California couple who lost their French bulldog have gone to great lengths over the last two months to find the pooch, resorting to bloodhounds, animal psychics, cash rewards and door-to-door canvasing.
But the dog — Mushie — has yet to turn up and the determined couple are now having to endure scam calls and pranksters barking into the phone line.
Still, Gabriella Sidhu and her partner, Chris Casey, refuse to give up.
“It’s not just a dog like people say,” Sidhu said. “She’s the closest thing we have to a baby.”
No one would be questioning their efforts if they were searching for their daughter instead of a dog, she said.
The drama began when Sidhu, 24, dropped Mushie off with her dogsitter, hired through the pet service company Rover, on Sept. 17 about 6:15 p.m. in the North Hollywood area near Victory Boulevard and Beck Avenue.
Sidhu was on her way to see the “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” movie with Casey and a friend at Universal CityWalk. She said she noticed the sitter was watching at least five other dogs, but thought nothing of it.
“It was the first time we had actually been out in a while,” Sidhu said. “And it turned into the worst night of our life.”
Only 14 minutes later, the dogsitter called her. Mushie was gone, having gotten out of her harness somehow and run out of the gate.
“Traffic was going slow, time felt like it was moving so slow” on their way back to the sitter, Sidhu said. They searched for hours, but could not find Mushie.
She and her partner took time off work and slept in their car for two weeks to stay in the area where the dog was lost rather than returning to their home in El Sereno.
Mushie, who the couple rescued from a breeder, is a spayed black brindle French bulldog with a white chest, perky ears and no tail. She is about 6 years old and requires daily medication and special food because of her health issues — another reason they are worried.
Sidhu and Casey have spent thousands of dollars trying to find her and have offered a $5,000 reward for her return. The couple even hired a bloodhound handler to track Mushie’s scent from the dogsitter’s home to a nearby spot where the trail stopped cold. The handler suspects Mushie has been picked up by someone who took her home, Sidhu said.
The couple also hired several pet communicators, or animal psychics, who claim they can telepathically connect with a pet and help owners understand them. But still no luck, Sidhu said. “It’s hard to know if it’s helpful,” she said.
Rover, the dogsitting company, was initially helpful, offering to pay for fliers and search local shelter websites for Mushie, Sidhu said. The company said the sitter would help them look for Mushie too. But when they reached out to her a few days later, the dog sitter said she couldn’t search for Mushie, Sidhu said, because she was watching another set of dogs.
Sidhu, who works as a federal employee, said she feels Rover hasn’t done enough to find the dog and only removed the dogsitter who lost Mushie from its platform after KTLA-TV reached out to Rover for a comment.
In a statement to The Times, Rover said it has taken several steps to try to locate Mushie.
“To support the search efforts, we have offered a significant reward for information leading to reuniting Mushie with her family, posted in online pet-finding websites that send alerts directly to local shelters and veterinarians, and reached out to members of our sitter community in the area,” Rover said in the statement.
Since the dog disappeared, Sidhu and Casey have reached out to every veterinarian, pet store, library, school and shelter in the area, hoping their dog will show up, or someone will see the hundreds of fliers they have left over the last two months. They spend weekends and evenings after work searching for her, and vow to go door to door until they reach every house in the San Fernando Valley to find her, Sidhu said.
Sidhu has also had to fend off scam calls from people pretending to have her dog and demanding the reward money. Some callers threaten to keep the dog or say they’ve run Mushie over with their car. Others mock her by barking into the phone, she said.
“We’ve received awful calls and had awful interactions, but we’ve encountered way more good, kind people than bad,” she said. “So we’re hopeful the right person will help us and Mushie.”
One of the couple’s fears is that Mushie is on her own and waiting for them to come and rescue her, Sidhu said.
“The one thing we can control is our actions, our effort,” she said “We can’t give up on her.”
If you see Mushie or know where she is, Sidhu asks you to call her at (760) 960-9272.
Sir Lady Java, a pioneering transgender performer and activist who boldly challenged discriminatory laws and police harassment as a star of the Los Angeles nightclub scene in the 1960s, died Saturday following a stroke, close friends confirmed Tuesday. She was 82.
“It’s a big loss for the community,” said actor Hailie Sahar, who is preparing to play Java in a biopic and was one of her primary caregivers over the last two years. “She started an LGBTQ+ movement before there was really an LGBTQ+ community to rally behind her.”
Lady Java, as she was also known, worked as a drag queen, singer, dancer, comedian and “female impersonator” at a time when cross-dressing was forbidden without a permit, winning over crowds in predominantly straight clubs and running in circles with L.A. luminaries such as Lena Horne.
Java was a hat-maker and designer, skills she incorporated into her own ensembles. She got her start waiting tables at the Redd Foxx Club on La Cienega Boulevard in West Hollywood, but was noticed for her beauty and invited on stage, where she was a natural. Soon she was performing regularly, and alongside big names such as Richard Pryor, friends said.
“Her comedic beats were on point,” said Sahar, also a transgender woman of color known for her performance as Lulu Abundance in the award-winning FX series “Pose.”
In 1967, Java joined the American Civil Liberties Union in a lawsuit challenging her arrest by Los Angeles police for performing in drag without a permit, a violation of what was then known as Rule No. 9, a local cross-dressing ordinance. She ultimately lost her case in the California Supreme Court, but the ordinance was repealed two years later.
Java’s stand predated by two years the uprising over similar anti-LGBTQ+ police harassment at the Stonewall Inn in New York, and has never received the same attention. However, it has gained a larger share of the spotlight in recent years as historians and younger queer people have sought to bring more attention to previously overlooked heroes of the queer rights movement — especially transgender people of color such as Java.
“The significant thing about Java,” Sahar said, “is Java came long before the ballroom was created, long before the Stonewall riots in New York, and so she was really a pioneer.”
Sahar said she first heard Java’s name about 15 years ago, when a man at a rehearsal told her she reminded him of Java. Sahar said she went home and started googling Java and “became extremely enamored with her beauty and what she stood for.”
She set out to find and meet Java, and eventually succeeded. Soon enough, Java became her “trans mother” and a queer role model, a fellow “fair-skinned mixed-race woman” who came up from humble roots to take Hollywood by storm — bigotry and discriminatory laws be damned.
She also became a dear friend, Sahar said. “She was the most hilarious person you would ever meet. She was so quick-witted, so intellectual, so classy — but don’t try her because she will let you know exactly how she felt,” Sahar said with a laugh.
Jayce Baron, another one of Java’s caretakers in her final years, said queer people today are “benefiting as a community on the backs and shoulders of trans people of color, and are hardly ever giving them their credit or their just due.”
That should change, he said, because understanding that history will be crucial for continuing the fight for queer rights into the future.
“If Java was able to do the work that she did in the 1960s, we can continue that work today,” he said. “Her legacy is not over.”
In fact, Java’s legacy is particularly relevant today, queer activists said, as LGBTQ+ rights come under attack — bolstered by President-elect Donald Trump’s victory on a campaign centered in part on an anti-transgender agenda.
Trevor Ladner, director of education programs at the One Institute, an LGBTQ+ history and education organization in L.A., said he teaches Java’s story as part of the institute’s youth program, and learned of her death while researching her story with students over the weekend.
He said California law requires that school-age students receive education on the contributions of queer people and people of color, and Java’s “trailblazing fight for her labor rights” in the 1960s fits the requirement perfectly.
“The importance of her story is underscored by ongoing legislative attacks on trans autonomy and drag entertainment,” Ladner said, “and the increasing visibility of trans youth in schools.”
Sahar said Java was “baffled” by the upsurge in anti-transgender sentiment in recent years, because “she came from an era where they helped to build the groundwork” to turn the tide toward acceptance and never thought the country would turn back.
But she also felt good about the biopic of her life, for which Sahar is working to find backing alongside producer Anthony Hemingway.
“She felt that people seeing her life story and understanding what it took to get here, to this point, they would have a better grasp on love and acceptance and equality,” Sahar said. It was something the two agreed on.
“Java told me, ‘Baby, I did my work back in the day. I fought for our rights. You have to figure out what you’re going to do,’” Sahar said. “And I said, ‘Java, that’s why we’re doing your film.”
In her own interview about the biopic before her death, Java said she felt her story was “necessary to tell” — especially today.
“Many of my brothers and sisters got killed in my time,” she said, “so I don’t care who doesn’t like it. I’m going to tell it.”
Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
A key Los Angeles City Council committee signed off on a sweeping rezoning plan Tuesday that would focus new market rate and affordable housing on commercial corridors and in existing dense residential neighborhoods.
The effort is in response to state housing mandates that seek to alleviate the housing crisis by requiring the city find land where an additional 255,000 homes can be built and have the plan in place by mid-February.
In hours of public comment, members of the Planning and Land Use Management Committee heard from Angelenos who wanted to preserve single-family-home neighborhoods and those who wanted to open the areas up to more development to reduce economic and racial segregation.
“We need affordable housing everywhere — in every neighborhood,” said Maria Patiño Gutierrez, a policy director with the nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.
Patricia Carroll, a resident of St. Andrews Square in central L.A., told the committee that though she lives in a multifamily area, she enjoys walking through nearby neighborhoods filled with single-family houses, grass and trees.
“If this was to disappear … L.A. would be a very sad place to live,” Carroll said.
In the end, the committee voted 4 to 0 to approve a recommendation from the City Planning Commission that largely leaves single-family zones alone.
The proposal can still be modified by the full City Council, and some council members not on the PLUM committee have expressed interest in shifting course when it comes to single-family zones.
“By opening up some of these neighborhoods — to some new housing — we would actually be making steps towards undoing the city’s patterns of segregation that in many cases policymakers imposed upon this city,” Councilmember Nithya Raman told the committee.
As now written, the proposed Citywide Housing Incentive program would enable developers to build more than currently allowed in commercial zones and in residential neighborhoods where apartment buildings are already allowed. In order to do so, developers would need to include a certain percentage of affordable units — and the property must be near transit or along a major street near jobs and good schools.
Projects that are 100% affordable would be eligible for incentives across a wider swath of the city.
The incentives would apply in single-family zones only if a property is owned by a public agency or a faith-based organization, which accounts for just a sliver of the city’s single-family lots.
Some tenant advocates feared that by opening up existing multifamily areas to significant new development, it would cause a wave of displacement as existing buildings are knocked down.
These advocates called for imposing further restrictions on demolition, which the Planning Department said could significantly reduce new housing construction, including units that are mandated to be affordable to low-income households.
The PLUM committee did not adopt those additional restrictions, but recommended calling for a report to study them.
In a letter to city officials, the California Department of Housing & Community Development warned such additional restrictions could put the city out of compliance with state housing law.
The PLUM committee, however, did make some changes despite such warnings.
The committee passed an amendment that would reduce the number of homes per lot faith-based organizations would be allowed to build under its program.
The Western Regional Council of Carpenters, along with some council members, have expressed concerns that faith-based organizations constructing housing would choose to use the city incentive program, which does would not mandate union-level wages, instead of using a new state law that gives nonprofit colleges and faith organizations building incentives if they pay such wages.
“We can not solve the housing crisis by driving construction workers into poverty,” carpenter Nicolas Reyes told committee members.
Brooke Wirtschafter, director of community organizing with the Jewish congregation IKAR, told the committee that IKAR is looking to build affordable housing with as many as 78 units.
She urged the city to keep its faith-based proposal as originally proposed, because doing so would create “more opportunities for congregations to build housing, especially in high-resource communities.”
