county official

Local officials and advocates for the homeless are fearful that President Trump will take draconian action against homeless people, including pushing them into detention camps, when Los Angeles hosts the Olympic Games in 2028.

In recent weeks, Trump has appointed himself head of an Olympics task force and has seized control of local policing in Washington, D.C., declaring that homeless people will be given places to stay “FAR from the Capital.”

“Based on everything that has happened so far … I think you would have to be irrational not to worry about a worst case scenario [during the Games], where federal troops are effectively forcing poor people on the street to relocate to what is essentially a detention center somewhere out of sight,” said Gary Blasi, a professor emeritus at UCLA School of Law and a leading homelessness researcher.

On Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that for now, D.C. police and federal agents will clear homeless encampments in the capital and give people the option of accepting shelter beds and services or facing fines and jail time. The administration, she said, is also exploring how it can move homeless people far from the city.

The White House did not answer questions about whether it has a plan to address homelessness in L.A. in preparation for the Olympics. But White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said, “The people of Los Angeles would benefit tremendously if local officials followed President Trump’s lead to make the city safe and beautiful, especially as they prepare to welcome 15 million people from around the world as the Olympics’ host city.”

When hosting the Olympics, local officials typically try to present the best image of their city, which can include refurbishing landmarks and sports venues or cleaning up areas where homeless people congregate.

“The eyes of the world will be on Los Angeles,” and officials don’t want “people coming to the city and see this visual problem manifest right in front of them,” said Benjamin F. Henwood, director of USC’s Homelessness Policy Research Institute.

French authorities bused homeless people out of Paris before the 2024 Games, and in 1984, the Los Angeles Police Department used mounted horse patrols to scatter homeless people into less visible areas of downtown.

This time, L.A. city and county officials said they will not deviate from their efforts to place homeless people in interim and permanent housing locally.

Last year, in an interview with The Times, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said that unlike during previous Olympics, she would not bus homeless people out of the city and instead would focus on “housing people first.”

Similarly, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors has ordered county staffers to develop an encampment plan for upcoming sporting events, including the 2026 World Cup and the Olympics, that will emphasize permanent housing solutions.

But the supervisors also noted that encampments near Olympic venues will need to be “addressed,” in part to “establish adequate security perimeters.”

In D.C., in addition to taking over the city police department, Trump has deployed the National Guard to, as he put it, “reestablish law and order.” He has threatened to resend the Guard and the military to the Los Angeles area, where they were stationed this summer during federal immigration raids, if needed to maintain safety during the Olympics.

In a statement, Supervisor Janice Hahn said that federalizing local law enforcement and sending the U.S. military to American cities is “what tyrants do.” She also noted that the Trump administration has cut social safety net programs and is seeking to withdraw support for policies that prioritize placing homeless people in permanent housing before addressing other issues such as substance abuse and mental health.

“What the President is doing in DC should concern everyone,” Hahn said. “If he really wants to solve homelessness, he needs to get us the resources we need to get people housed and keep them housed.”

Nithya Raman, chair of the L.A. City Council’s housing and homelessness committee, said in a statement that given the region’s homelessness crisis, “the repercussions of similar actions as they are threatening in DC would be staggering.”

In her own statement, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath said that despite the Trump administration’s plan of “dehumanization,” the county “will keep doing what’s right — focusing on humane, lasting solutions to homelessness.”

Katie Hill, a former Democratic member of Congress who now runs Union Station Homeless Services, said she fears the Trump administration is working on “mass institutionalization of some kind” for homeless people during the Games, similar to federal immigration detention facilities, where there have been reports of inhumane conditions.

“He doesn’t care about the rules or the norms,” Hill said of Trump. “There is a lot of federal facilities and land that they could use potentially as a detention facility.”

Unlike D.C., which is a federal district where the president holds special powers, Blasi said that in Los Angeles, the federal government cannot legally lock up people for living on the streets but could “make life so miserable for unhoused people” that there are no other options besides “a camp somewhere.”

Blasi said the Trump administration could try to invoke emergency laws to incarcerate people but doubted that courts would approve.

Since she was elected in 2022, Bass has made homelessness her signature issue. In her marquee Inside Safe program, before an encampment is cleared, residents are all offered housing and services, which are voluntary, with no fines or jail time if the person rejects the help, said Bass spokesperson Zach Seidl.

Seidl said the mayor is “laser-focused on addressing homelessness through a proven comprehensive strategy” and that “this is progress she would’ve made regardless of the Games.”

Homelessness in both the city and county has dropped in the last two years, particularly the number of people who are unsheltered, which has fallen 14% in the county and nearly 18% in the city since 2023, data show. About 47,000 people live on the streets in L.A. County.

Eric Sheehan, a member of NOlympics, which opposes holding the Olympics in L.A., said he is concerned about how the Trump administration will act during the Games. But he said the federal approach to homelessness may not differ much from what local officials are already doing.

Sheehan pointed to the city of Los Angeles’ no sleeping zones, encampment cleanups monitored by police and interim housing he characterized as jail-like.

“I don’t think there is a version of this Olympics that doesn’t hurt Angelenos,” Sheehan said.

Amy Turk, chief executive of the Downtown Women’s Center, said that using the police and military to address homelessness is “an expensive intervention that is just moving someone from one place to another place.” She is particularly concerned about the impact on people fleeing domestic violence.

To mitigate the damage the Trump administration could do, Turk said it’s important for nonprofits like hers to keep working to find people permanent housing and services.

One hurdle is funding.

State and local budget constraints have reduced funding for homeless services this year, including for a temporary housing subsidy that officials said was key in reducing homelessness in the last several years.

Hill said more funds are needed so L.A. County can tackle homelessness on its own terms, not those of the Trump administration.

“Where is the money going to come from to set up something that is more humane?” she said.

L..A. County plans to pay more to upgrade the Gas Company Tower than it did to buy the downtown skyscraper in the first place.

County officials agreed last November to pay $200 million for the 52-story tower, which they planned to make the new headquarters for county employees.

The estimated price tag to earthquake-proof the tower: more than $230 million. Lennie LaGuire, a spokesperson for the county Chief Executive Office, said the tower is already safe, and the upgrades are “proactive.”

County officials had said some improvements to the tower might be necessary, but the cost and extent had been murky until now.

This week, the county received final proposals from firms looking to secure a contract for “voluntary seismic upgrades” to the Gas Company Tower, located at 555 W. 5th Street.

The Chief Executive Office, which negotiated the purchase, stressed in a statement that the seismic work was expected and far cheaper than the estimated $1 billion it would take to retrofit the county’s current downtown headquarters, the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration, which was built in 1960 and is vulnerable to collapse during the next major earthquake.

The Gas Company Tower “does not require any seismic work to provide a safe, up-to-code and modern workplace for County employees. The County is choosing to perform this work proactively with an eye to the future, to ensure that the building performs optimally in the decades ahead,” LaGuire said. “The cost of this work, even when combined with the cost of the building, is a fraction of the cost of making urgently needed and long-overdue seismic and life safety improvements to the Hall of Administration.”

The $200-million sale was considered a bargain compared with the building’s appraised value of more than $600 million a few years earlier — a symptom of plummeting downtown office values.

Supervisor Janice Hahn, the only board member who opposed the purchase, said Friday that county officials never should have entered into the real estate transaction before they “had all the facts” on the cost.

“This is turning out to be a bigger boondoggle than was originally sold to the public,” said Hahn, who said she had not been told about the upgrade costs. “I am only more convinced that we are better off retrofitting the historic Hall of Administration and keeping the heart of county government in our Civic Center.”

At the time of the sale, Hahn argued that the purchase would be a fatal blow to downtown’s civic heart and make the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration obsolete. The building is named after her father, who served a record 10 terms as a supervisor.

The Hall of Administration is one of several county-owned properties considered vulnerable in an earthquake. The Gas Company Tower, built in 1991, was considered much safer, but at the time of the county purchase, it was unclear whether it was fully earthquake-proof.

The tower is one of many L.A. skyscrapers that incorporates a “steel moment frame” as part of its structure. In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, buildings with the frame did not collapse, but some were badly damaged.

Most of the seismic strengthening for the Gas Company Tower would involve “reinforcing of the welded steel moment frame connections,” according to the request for proposal for the $234.5-million project.

The contract will be awarded in October, according to the bidding documents, and the tower could be occupied during construction. County officials said they have already begun moving employees into the tower.

Times staff writers Roger Vincent and Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report.

PALM SPRINGS — Along the main thoroughfare of this desert city, just a block from a vibey, adults-only hotel and a gastropub serving boozy brunches, a new apartment building with a butterfly-wing roof inspired by Midcentury Modern design is nearing completion.

The property, called Aloe Palm Canyon, features 71 one-bedroom units with tall windows offering natural light and sweeping views of Mt. San Jacinto, plus a fitness room and laundry facilities. When it opens this summer, serving lower-income seniors over age 55, the complex will become the latest addition to the Coachella Valley’s growing stock of affordable housing.

A decade ago, this desert region known for its winter resorts, lush golf courses and annual music festivals produced just 38 units of affordable housing a year, while the low-wage workers powering the valley’s lavish service industry faced soaring housing costs and food insecurity. Fast-forward to this year, and affordable housing units are planned or under construction in all nine Coachella Valley cities, including the most exclusive, and in many unincorporated areas.

Aloe Palm Canyon, geared toward low-income seniors, will feature affordable one-bedroom units with sweeping views of Mt. San Jacinto and an airy communal room.

At least some of that momentum can be credited to a Palm Desert-based nonprofit organization that in 2018 set an ambitious 10-year goal to reduce rent burden — or the number of people spending more than 30% of their income on housing costs — by nearly a third. Lift to Rise aimed to do this by adding nearly 10,000 units of affordable housing in the Coachella Valley by 2028.

Some seven years into its decade-long push, Lift to Rise appears well on its way to that goal. It counts 9,300 affordable housing units in the pipeline as of April. That figure includes those in the early planning stages, as well as 940 units starting construction soon, 990 under construction and 1,405 affordable housing units completed.

It is notable progress in a state where the dire shortage of low-income housing can seem an intractable problem. Now, some officials and elected leaders say Lift to Rise may offer a path forward that could be replicated in other regions.

The Coachella Valley, in Riverside County, stretches from the San Gorgonio Pass to the north shores of the Salton Sea. Its major employment sectors — leisure and hospitality, retail and agriculture — generally produce the area’s lowest-paid jobs, putting the cost of renting or buying a home out of reach for many.

Coastal areas have a reputation for being unaffordable, but the desert region has a higher share of rent-burdened households than Riverside County as a whole, the state or nation, according to American Community Survey data compiled by Lift to Rise.

Addressing the situation comes with its own complications.

Lift to Rise helped create a loan program to smooth the flow of funding for affordable housing, including the Vista Sunrise II complex in Palm Springs.

Many California housing and climate policies tend to support the development of affordable housing in dense, pedestrian-friendly communities with easy access to public transportation, said Ian Gabriel, Lift to Rise’s director of collective impact. Such adaptations are difficult in the Coachella Valley, where suburban-style neighborhoods, limited public transportation and months of triple-digit heat have lent themselves to a car-centric lifestyle, he said.

And although state policy — and funding priorities — often focus on alleviating chronic homelessness in major urban areas, he said, the Coachella Valley also needs housing for low-wage farmworkers who aren’t homeless but are living in dilapidated, financially untenable conditions.

All of that makes it harder for the region to compete for state affordable housing dollars, he said.

“We’re not saying other folks in coastal areas shouldn’t be getting money,” Gabriel said. “We’re saying we need more equitable distribution and a path forward that isn’t just a one-size-fits-all, because it’s not fitting for our region.”

Lift to Rise has built a network of more than 70 people and organizations — among them residents, county officials, funders and developers — with a shared goal of increasing affordable housing in the region.

One of the group’s early steps was to create an affordable housing portal to track developments in the pipeline and, maybe more important, determine what factors are holding projects back.

In assessing those bottlenecks, Lift to Rise identified a need for stronger advocacy, both at the local level and in the policy sphere. So it has launched an effort, Committees by Cities, to help residents develop leadership skills and advocate for affordable housing at public meetings.

The Vista Sunrise II complex, located on a DAP Health campus, offers affordable housing for low-income people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS.

Modesta Rodriguez is a member of the Indio chapter, attending city council hearings and passing along information to her neighbors. Although she and her family have lived in a development specifically for farmworkers for a decade, she wants to ensure her four children — the oldest of whom graduated from San Diego State University this month — can find housing in the eastern Coachella Valley.

“It’s not as if they are going to begin their careers making a lot of money,” Rodriguez said, seated in the kitchen of her tidy three-bedroom apartment. “For us, these projects are very good, because I know at least they will help my daughter.”

Mike Walsh, assistant director of Riverside County’s Department of Housing and Workforce Solutions, said Lift to Rise and its army of advocates should get credit for helping to change the narrative around affordable housing in the Coachella Valley.

“When affordable housing projects pop up, they have a built-in network to turn folks out and support those projects, where in the rest of the county, there’s not that same sort of ease of turning people out,” Walsh said.

Walsh recalled that a teacher, a farmworker and a social worker — essentially a cross-section of local residents — spoke up at a recent county meeting. “It drowns out NIMBYism,” said Heidi Marshall, director of the county’s housing and workforce solutions department.

Lift to Rise aims to spark wider conversations about the need for affordable housing in the Coachella Valley with billboards along the 10 Freeway.

The organization aims to spark wider conversation about the fight for affordable housing and living wages through eye-catching billboards that the nonprofit buys along the 10 Freeway during spring music festival season in the Coachella Valley. “Born too late to afford a home, and too early to colonize Mars” is among their slogans.

And when an analysis revealed low-income housing developers were having trouble getting predevelopment financing, Lift to Rise set out to create a funding mechanism to help get projects off the ground.

The result is a revolving loan fund known as We Lift: The Coachella Valley’s Housing Catalyst Fund. The $44-million fund, supported by public and philanthropic dollars, is intended to bridge financing gaps and accelerate development.

Solar panels rise above a parking lot at the Aloe Palm Canyon complex in Palm Springs.

The developer behind the Aloe Palm Canyon complex in Palm Springs, the West Hollywood Community Housing Corp., benefited from three loans from the fund totaling more than $11 million. It has already paid back two of those loans.

“I don’t know any other regions in California that are doing this at this level of support,” Anup Nitin Patel, the corporation’s director of real estate development, said during a toasty morning tour of the construction site.

Another Palm Springs project — a partnership between the Coachella Valley Housing Coalition and DAP Health, a local healthcare provider — received a $750,000 predevelopment loan that was repaid at the start of construction.

“It’s going to be something I can sustain, a game-changer for me,” Sean Johnson said of his new home in DAP Health’s Vista Sunrise II development in Palm Springs.

Last June, Sean Johnson moved into that development, which is for low-income people who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS. After struggling to find stable housing, he said it’s a relief to pay a monthly rent of $718 for a studio apartment.

“It’s going to be something I can sustain, a game-changer for me,” he said.

Lift to Rise is seeking a $20-million allocation in the next state budget to scale up its work. As part of that request, it is asking for a one-time $10-million investment into the Catalyst Fund to expand lending capacity across Riverside County.

Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) and Sen. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) submitted a budget request on the organization’s behalf. Padilla said it’s a worthy expenditure, especially as California faces a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.

In lean budget situations, Padilla said, the state should focus its investments on programs that are having meaningful impact and have the data to prove it.

“In tough budget times, you have to be very strategic,” he said. “And this is a good example of [an effort] that’s proven some pretty impressive results.”

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.