A new initiative in collaboration with LAPD and Los Angeles Animal Services looks to investigate and halt cases of animal cruelty on Skid Row, Mayor Karen Bass announced Thursday.
The joint effort aims to increase animal welfare in the downtown area through specialized investigators and added resources, officials said.
The pilot program will begin in Skid Row, an area that has a higher call volume in requests for animal welfare checks, according to Bass. The initiative then has the potential to “expand citywide.”
“I launched this new initiative to keep pets with their owners whenever possible while holding those who commit crimes of animal cruelty and neglect accountable,” said Mayor Bass. “This collaborative approach will use more than 50 specially trained LAPD officers, working with Animal Services staff to support animal welfare by bringing dedicated personnel, strategic investigation practices, a uniform approach to accountability and immediate relief whenever possible.”
LAPD officers already assigned to the Skid Row area will be trained to recognize animal cruelty cases and to collect evidence.
More components of the initiative include:
Dedicated Personnel: Specifically selected LAPD Operations-Central Bureau Officers and investigators will receive intensive animal cruelty-focused training and be assigned to work directly with a dedicated Animal Control Officer. Investigations will be supported by Central GIT, a LAPD specialized unit with extensive experience in coordinating comparable initiatives.
Strategic Investigation: A variety of investigative methods, such as electronic and physical surveillance and the execution of search warrants, will be utilized to ensure the efficient and thorough collection of evidence.
Uniform Enforcement: LAPD and Animal Services will establish a consistent, unified approach to investigating potential animal cruelty and neglect across Skid Row, the pilot area.
Accountability: LAPD and Animal Services personnel will escalate incidents to the City Attorney and District Attorney for prosecution.
Immediate Relief: Alongside enforcement efforts, trained officers will partner with local organizations to identify and act on opportunities to provide immediate relief, expanding current efforts by LAPD and Animal Services to proactively support pet owners in need by offering essentials like food, leashes, bowls, and beds.
Los Angeles residents are urged to report crimes against animals to Crimestoppers at LAcrimestoppers.org or by using their tipline at 800-222-TIPS.
A man was fatally shot in Skid Row early Saturday after an argument with another man that was captured on surveillance video, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police were called at 4:24 a.m. to the 500 block of San Pedro Street, where they found a man suffering from gunshot wounds, a police department spokesperson said.
The man, who was not identified, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, police said. The gunman fled the scene.
Surveillance video showed the victim arguing with another man, who then shot him, authorities said. Police did not have a detailed description of the gunman and no arrests have been made.
The sale of one of Los Angeles’ largest collections of homeless housing was approved by a judge Wednesday, marking a final step in averting a catastrophic loss of permanent shelter in Skid Row.
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Stephen Goorvitch said the $10-million purchase price for 17 buildings to be paid by Beverly Hills developer Leo Pustilnikov was in the best interest of formerly homeless tenants and L.A. taxpayers who had been financing the portfolio’s maintenance and repairs for 16 months.
“This is a solution that is the product of collaboration, hard work and checks and balances,” Goorvitch said. “Only time will tell whether this will be a success story, but I am optimistic.”
Goorvitch on Wednesday approved the sale of an additional building, the New Genesis, to KE Ventures, an entity affiliated with a Washington D.C.-based multifamily developer, for $2.1 million. Both deals are scheduled to close next month. Along with the earlier transfers of 11 other properties to nonprofit landlords, all 29 buildings previously controlled by the Skid Row Housing Trust have found new owners.
The trust was once considered a national model for taking old single-room occupancy hotels and small apartment complexes in Skid Row and rehabilitating them into supportive housing for homeless residents. But in February 2023, the nonprofit announced it could no longer pay its bills after years of leadership problems and financial challenges. The decision left its 2,000-unit portfolio in disarray as tenants, many of whom were elderly, disabled or dealing with drug addiction, faced broken plumbing and heating, vermin infestations and other terrible conditions.
Mayor Karen Bass, City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto and other city leaders pushed for a court-ordered receivership last year to oversee the portfolio and search for new owners. Without urgent action, they said at the time, more than a thousand people could be forced to the streets and a critical source of homeless housing would be abandoned.
Identifying new owners has been challenging, for some of the same reasons that the trust failed. Many buildings are aging and need extensive repairs; federal housing subsidies haven’t covered growing monthly costs to operate them; the tenant population has grown more difficult as leasing practices prioritize those with mental health and addiction needs. Kevin Singer, the current receiver, said in recent court filings that some of the properties had such negative value that they couldn’t be given away.
But that plan faltered in the spring as city and state budgets dried up. A deal for some of the remaining buildings with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation broke down in April amid concerns about the charity’s track record in Skid Row, disputes over providing tenants with social services and the foundation’s assertion that conditions in the buildings were worse than they had believed.
Pustilnikov, who had long been interested in the properties, emerged as a buyer in the aftermath. The developer is better known for his plans to leverage a state law to build 3,500 new apartments in Beverly Hills, Redondo Beach and other wealthy Southern California communities. His attempt to amass a large downtown portfolio alongside two wealthy investors a decade ago fell apart amid litigation.
Pustilnikov has said that he’s stepping in to prevent worsening conditions in Skid Row and that he’s learned the complexities of financing and managing affordable housing in the neighborhood. He’s committed to maintaining social services for tenants, a key demand of Bass and the city.
“I would like to thank the city, county and state for their efforts in protecting this vulnerable population and I look forward to continuing to work with the mayor, City Council and County Board of Supervisors in turning around these challenging and neglected properties,” Pustilnikov said in a statement.
No formal opposition emerged to the sale, which Goorvich said was a significant factor in his approval following a 90-minute hearing in which he questioned city lawyers and the receiver. Goorvich said he was persuaded this decision would avoid an outcome that would threaten vulnerable tenants’ housing and that the city had sufficient regulatory authority to ensure the new owners would improve the properties.
“To put it in colloquial terms, something is better than nothing,” the judge said. “But I think this is a good something.”
Ann Sewill, general manager of the Los Angeles Housing Department, said after the hearing that she’s been impressed with Pustilnikov’s attention to the properties since he’s been engaged in the deal. She said he’s attempted to visit tenants units across the portfolio, asked detailed questions about building operations and has worked collaboratively with the city.
“We have a clear-eyed view of how to put these buildings back into financial and physical viability,” Sewill said.
The team gathered at 4th and Crocker streets and headed south, into the blue-tented netherworld of social collapse, armed with life-saving drug-overdose kits and injectable, long-acting anti-psychotic medication.
“We’re trying very aggressive treatment on the streets,” said Dr. Susan Partovi. “Housing definitely saves your life, but there’s a small sub-group of people who won’t accept housing because of their mental illness.”
She figures that if she administers medication that lasts a month and can help stabilize patients — with their consent — they’ve got a chance.
“They don’t think there’s anything wrong, and they think they don’t need housing,” Partovi said. “They don’t think rationally, and so once you treat their delusions and their irrationality, they start to realize, ‘Oh, I do need resources.’ ”
California is about to be hit by an aging population wave, and Steve Lopez is riding it. His column focuses on the blessings and burdens of advancing age — and how some folks are challenging the stigma associated with older adults.
Partovi, who began practicing street medicine in 2007 in Santa Monica, has never been shy about her lack of patience with the official response to the entrenched humanitarian crisis. In 2017, I shadowed her as she walked through Skid Row with County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, advocating for broader authority to assist those in obvious acute mental and physical distress, even if they refused help, and despite opposition from civil rights attorneys and others.
By administering long-acting meds, Partovi—author of the just-published “Renegade M.D.: A Doctor’s Stories From the Streets”—is once again pushing boundaries. She’s acting out of a belief that her approach is medically sound, and with frustration sharpened by her street-level view of the countless bureaucratic cracks and canyons in the system. She’s driven, too, by an uncompromising compassion for homeless people who are so sick, she can sometimes predict who will die next.
Critics might say a person in the throes of impairment isn’t competent to give consent for a month-long dose of medication, and that such meds are neither a panacea nor a substitute for intensive ongoing case management. But to Partovi, the slow pace of intervention — along with multiple daily deaths on the streets — add up to a human rights violation and a moral failure, so she’s stepping into the breach.
But she’s not a psychiatrist, and her street medicine team’s approach is not fully embraced by the L.A. County Department of Mental Health. DMH has psychiatric street medicine teams operating in several parts of the county. The Skid Row unit —which is led by Dr. Shayan Rab and injcludes psychiatric nurses, social workers and addiction counselors, and sometimes conducts sidewalk court hearings for those who resist treatment — was featured in a September 2022 article by my colleague Doug Smith.
Dr. Susan Partovi, left, and Dr. Steven Hochman talk to a woman during their medical outreach.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Dr. Curley Bonds, chief medical officer of the department, says DMH psychiatrists first establish a working relationship with the client and invest time in determining a clinical history, including prescribed medications and dosage. It can be difficult, he said, to distinguish between psychosis and the effects of street drugs like methamphetamine, but trained psychiatrists have an advantage over doctors with other specialties. Treatment would ordinarily begin with short-term oral medication, Bonds said, to establish the “efficacy and tolerability of the agent.”
Only then would long-acting injectables be an option, he continued, but even then, the civil rights of the patient would have to be a consideration.
“We are more cautious about making sure there is informed consent and … we really want to respect a person’s autonomy for decision-making,” Bonds said. Despite procedural differences and quibbles over the Partovi team’s approach, Bonds added, “I don’t want to put us at odds with them … because what they are doing is important work.”
A glance at the reality on the streets of Los Angeles makes clear that far more help and substantially greater urgency are badly needed. And Partovi is not alone in practicing what she calls “low barrier bridge psychiatry.”
Dr. Coley King, director of homeless healthcare at the Venice Family Clinic, is not a psychiatrist, either. But as a street medic in L.A., the national capital of homelessness, he works in what is essentially an outdoor mental hospital, with tents instead of beds. King treats mental illness and whatever else he sees — and what, often, no one else is treating.
He told me he has used both short-term and long-term anti-psychotics, depending on the situation. The risks posed by medication are not as great, he said, as the risk of being homeless, sick and untreated.
“The need is so dire, and the patients are dying at such a young age, and the lack of available psychiatry is so marked,” said King, who leads a street medicine team through Westside streets four days a week and often works with a psychiatric nurse practitioner. “We’re not doing this in any sort of cavalier fashion. We’re doing it very thoughtfully with a mind to knowing our medications and knowing our diagnosis and treatment are based on a ton of experience and a lot of exposure to working side-by-side with psychiatrists in the field.”
In 2020, I wrote about a formerly homeless Santa Monica woman whose life had been turned around after King treated her for her addiction and physical and mental ailments. The treatment included a long-acting injection the woman agreed to, and when I met her, she was living in a hotel before moving into housing arranged by the outreach team.
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When I met with Partovi last month on Skid Row, her team consisted of Dr. Steven Hochman, an addiction specialist; David Dadiomov, director of USC’s psychiatry pharmacy program; and social worker Sylvia Meza. It was Meza who established this nonprofit outreach team — it’s called SUDIS, for Substance Use Disorder Integrated Services — and brought in Partovi as medical director last year.
Overdose bags contain Naloxone — a medication designed to reverse an opioid overdose — fentanyl strips to detect the presence of fentanyl and reading materials about avoiding overdose.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
As someone who works the aging beat, I was struck by how many of the people we encountered were late middle age and beyond. Partovi estimated that about 50% of the people served by the team are 50 and older.
“They got caught up in Skid Row when they were young and were never able to get out of it,” Meza said. “Skid Row is like bondage. People are trapped in there. They have this poverty mentality where they feel like they can’t get out, but they can. It’s just about motivating them to see the cup as half full and not half empty.”
A gray-haired man crossed the street before us, and just up ahead, 63-year-old Israel stood near a tent, not far from a woman named Diane, who said she was 60 and was caring for her two cats, Gold and Silver, along with two dogs owned by a woman who’s in jail.
“That’s French Fry,” Partovi said as one of the dogs, a white terrier, crossed the street.
She knew the dog’s name because that’s how outreach works— you get to know people, their routines, their histories, even their pets. Neither Diane nor Israel was interested in medication on this day, but a connection was made, the first step in building trust.
Hochman spoke to Israel in Spanish and English, letting him know he’d be back again, and that medication was available. He told me the outreach team tries to determine a patient’s medical history, and at times does prescribe short-term medication if there are concerns about tolerability. But people often lose their daily medication, Hochman said. Or they forget to take it. Or it gets stolen, or swept away in storms or street-cleaning sweeps. A month-long dose can up the chances of turning things around.
On Crocker Street, where the team distributed Narcan kits to slow the epidemic of overdose deaths, Meza was joking with a 68-year-old man when we noticed that Partovi, a half block away, was waving for the team to join her.
Dr. Steven Hochman, left, Dr. Susan Partovi and Sylvia Meza check on the well-being of a man in downtown Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
The doctor had spotted a woman she thought would be a candidate for an injection. Amanda, 51, said she had been diagnosed with two psychiatric conditions. She listed her most recent medications and said she wanted something to treat her depression.
Partovi asked several questions, including whether Amanda had a history of adverse reactions. Partovi has a network of psychiatrists she can consult, but she didn’t think she needed to in this case. She informed Amanda that with the injection, she’d be medicated for a month. Amanda gave her approval.
“I’m gonna hold your hand,” Meza said as Partovi rolled up Amanda’s sleeve and poked a syringe into the soft tissue of her right shoulder.
“We want to do this every month,” Partovi said as Amanda grimaced from the sting.
“Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, almost done,” Partovi said before adding: “OK, now you’re good.”
Partovi said that in the best scenarios, the “word salad” dissipates, patients express themselves more clearly, and they make better decisions about recovery. “In my experience, once they get their mental health stabilized, then they want to work on substance abuse,” she said.
I asked how she can distinguish between mental illness and the effects of drug use.
“We’re not treating a diagnosis,” she said. “We’re treating symptoms. If someone is having psychiatric symptoms, the literature shows that whether it’s meth-related or organic schizophrenia, the anti-psychotics are going to work. That’s been my experience as well.”
Among the homeless people of Skid Row or anywhere else, the back stories are usually long and messy narratives involving childhood trauma, domestic abuse, sexual assault, chronic disease, poverty, incarceration, a lack of affordable housing, mental illness and self-medication with increasingly dangerous street drugs.
Amanda said she’d been homeless since 2017 after doing some jail time and that she couldn’t recall having a place of her own. Meza promised Amanda she would investigate options for housing and other services.
“Do not lose my number,” Meza said, handing Amanda her business card. “This is my personal cell number.”
They posed together for a photo, and then the team kept moving, getting approval for injections from two more clients over the next 20 minutes.
I first connected with Partovi many years ago, after I’d met a homeless Juilliard-trained street musician whose career had been derailed after a diagnosis of mental illness. In full disclosure, at her request, I interviewed Partovi about her work and “Renegade M.D.” at her book-launch party last month.
In the book — a compelling and personal front-lines look at who becomes homeless and why, complete with triumphs and tragedies and an unflinching examination of a fragmented system that is a often a barrier to recovery — Partovi says that as a Westside teenager, she traveled to a leprosy clinic in Mexico with a Christian service group and medical team. She knew then what she wanted to do with her life.
“I made the commitment to become a doctor and focus on patients who experience the worlds of poverty and injustice,” she writes.
In 2007, while working as a street doctor in Santa Monica, she came upon “a woman who looked to be in her 80s but was probably younger. Living on the streets ages people quickly.”
She thought of her own grandmother, who had passed away in her 90s.
“If my grandmother had wanted to panhandle on the Promenade in her flannel nightgown, I would have picked her up … and thrown her into my car. … I would never allow my family member to live on the streets. … Why do we, as a society, allow it?”
Los Angeles police fatally shot a man near Skid Row on Saturday afternoon, according to the Police Department.
A statement from the LAPD said the shooting occurred after officers responded to a call about a man threatening employees at a manufacturing business.
The man, described as a male in his late 30s or early 40s, had a stick and was “possibly under the influence,” according to police.
City News reported that the shooting took place around 2 p.m. in the 600 block of Towne Avenue.
The police shot the man after a less lethal munition was deployed, the LAPD statement said. Paramedics brought the man to the hospital, where he died, police said.
An officer was treated for a hand injury at the scene, police said.
A few knew that Garvey, a Republican, was running for the U.S. Senate. But they all remembered his steely forearms — “Hey Popeye,” one yelled — and success on the diamond in two baseball-mad towns.
“Is he a Republican?” Kenneth Allen, 56, asked a reporter as Garvey toured the San Diego homeless shelter where Allen works. “I’m a Democrat but if he is the best person for the job, I’d think about it.”
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Garvey’s baseball fame is central to a Senate campaign that, at best, is considered a long shot in a state where GOP candidates running statewide often receive an icy reception from California’s left-leaning electorate. He hopes what propels him into contention is a nostalgia for his playing days and a political message light on specifics but heavy with criticism about the declining quality of life in California and the scourge of illegal drugs flowing through cities.
This excitement from older fans trailed the 75-year-old first-time politician as he moved through Southern California last week on a listening tour about homelessness. Last fall, he joined a Senate race already dominated by prominent Democratic members of Congress: Adam B. Schiff of Burbank, Katie Porter of Irvine and Barbara Lee of Oakland.
“Once we get through the primary, I’ll start a deeper dive into the [issues],” Garvey said Thursday outside the San Diego homeless shelter.
“I haven’t been at this very long, so you got to give me a little bit of leeway here. But that doesn’t mean that we’re not full-speed ahead in policy and coming up with ideas that will make a difference.”
Since entering the contest Garvey has offered a range of views, including saying he supported closing the U.S.-Mexico border, but also taking decidedly more liberal positions on subjects such as gay marriage and abortion rights — both of which he supports.
“The people of California have spoken. They have spoken for abortion, and as an elected official my responsibility would be to uphold the voice of the people and I pledge to do that,” Garvey told The Times on Thursday in Compton during one leg of his listening tour.
Since entering the race, Garvey quickly rose to be the field’s top Republican, increasing his chances of finishing in the top two of March’s primary election and advancing to the November general election. In the latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studiespoll, which was co-sponsored by The Times, Garvey finished in third with support from 13% of likely voters. He trailed behind Porter and Schiff, who had 17% and 21% support, respectively.
The Dodgers’ Steve Garvey kisses manager Tommy Lasorda’s forehead in the locker room of Dodger Stadium after the team beat the Philadelphia Phillies 4-3 to win the National League pennant on Oct. 7, 1978.
(Associated Press)
Support for Garvey has nearly doubled since August, evidence that he might have enough momentum to consolidate the Republican vote and attract some No Party Preference voters for a strong showing in the March 5 primary.
It’s why, in part, Porter and Schiff have ramped up criticism of Garvey’s party affiliation and support of former President Trump. The first Senate race debate is this month and the Democrats on stage are expected to go after the late-entering Republican candidate.
“With Trump’s MAGA loyalists turning out to vote for him in the presidential primary the same day as our election, it could give Garvey the boost he needs,” one recent Schiff fundraising email said.
Garvey told The Times he voted for Trump twice, reasoning that he was the best choice on the ballot in 2016 and 2020. There were good things Trump did, he said, but he won’t identify them. He previously said he doesn’t have an opinion on who is responsible for the violent pro-Trump insurrection at the U.S. Capitol three years ago.
News cameras trail Dodgers great Steve Garvey during his visit to Skid Row in Los Angeles on Thursday. Garvey is campaigning to represent California in the U.S. Senate, an office formerly held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
For Garvey to do well in the March primary, he needs the support of California Republicans loyal to the former president. But in doing so, he runs the risk of angering an even larger proportion of the electorate who despise Trump.
On Thursday he sidestepped the question of whether he’d vote for Trump this fall or accept his endorsement, saying with a smile: “That’s a hypothetical question. If he calls, I’ll let you know.”
“I’m a moderate conservative,” he said. “I never took the field for Democrats or Republicans or independents. I took the field for all the fans and I’m running for all the people, and my opponents can’t say that.”
Stanford University public policy lecturer Lanhee Chen, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for controller in 2022, said that Garvey starts with an advantage many Republican candidates lack: People know Garvey and have fond memories of him. If he were to make the runoff, which Chen says is possible, he’ll face the monumental challenge of overcoming Democrats’ enormous voter registration advantage.
In the general election, Garvey, who said he wants to serve just one term, would hope to consolidate his hold on Republicans and pick off a small margin of Democrats and No Party Preference voters by appealing to moderates — and in particular, Latino voters — who might be attracted to his Catholic faith and focus on economic issues.
Chen said in a general election he would need to face head-on some of the questions about Trump. The recent Berkeley poll indicated that 34% of likely voters have a favorable view of Trump, compared with 63% who have an unfavorable view, and of that, 58% have a strongly unfavorable view of the Republican presidential front-runner.
“Every Republican candidate, regardless of where they sit on the spectrum of these questions, is having to address them, which is part of the reason why Trump is such a unique challenge for the Republican Party in a place like California,” Chen said.
Democratic political consultant Bill Carrick says that Garvey’s rise is a reflection of the weak Republican bench of candidates. The state has a long history of these sorts of candidates, he said — pointing to Hollywood action star Arnold Schwarzenegger’s election as California governor in 2003, when Democratic Gov. Gray Davis was recalled from office.
Steve Garvey, center, visits Los Angeles’ Skid Row on Thursday, accompanied by executives with the Downtown Center Business Improvement District.
(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)
In that election, Carrick said that voters in Los Angeles in particular didn’t just see Schwarzenegger as a film star. They saw someone who had been doing charity work in the community and was known to voters on a very human level.
Garvey, who lives in the Coachella Valley, has flirted with politics for decades after his successful baseball career, which included a World Series title and 10 National League all-star selections that ended in the late 1980s.
“The Republicans have no farm system now, so nobody moves up the ladder,” Carrick said, pointing to the small Republican minorities in the state Legislature.
“That leaves it open for people, like Garvey, who have their own capacity to jump in.”
Still, a general election in which 47% of the electorate are registered Democrats, 24% are Republicans and 22% are No Party Preference will be an uphill battle, Carrick said.
During his campaign swing last week, Garvey toured a shelter in downtown San Diego before visiting Los Angeles’ Skid Row alongside the head of the Downtown Industrial Business Improvement District Estela Lopez and a local business owner named Sergio Moreno. He took photos with five uniformed Los Angeles police officers and told them, when elected, he’d make sure that people “you arrested weren’t back on the streets before you finished the paperwork.”
After explaining the challenges of owning property in the vicinity of Skid Row, Moreno told Garvey about the joy he experienced getting a ball signed by him at an event at the Glendale Galleria’s JCPenney in the mid-1970s.
Dodgers and Padres great Steve Garvey, right, visits Ruben Ramirez Jr., owner and operator of Ruben’s Bakery and Mexican Food in Compton, on Thursday.
The business’ interior was essentially destroyed after a crowd of more than 100 people robbed the bakery during an illegal street takeover this month.
But Thursday the 48-year-old establishment was back open and Ruben Ramirez Sr., 83, and his wife, Alicia, 76, were behind the counter in Dodgers gear.
Both recalled watching games as a family and the joy Garvey brought their family — including Ruben Ramirez Jr., who now runs the store.
“All my life I wanted to meet him,” Alicia said in Spanish — a Dodgers scarf around her neck. “He’s such a handsome man.”
She clutched a ball he signed for her and snapped a photo to send to her family. Ramirez Jr. said their family wasn’t political and just works hard. They had little interest in talking politics, he said.
Garvey didn’t either. He just smiled and shook their hands.
When Norelis Vargas heard about housekeeping work at a hotel near Los Angeles International Airport, she did not hesitate to sign up.
Vargas, 39, who migrated from Venezuela and entered the U.S. about three months ago seeking asylum, had been living with her husband and four children for months at Union Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter on Skid Row, and needed the income. But when she arrived at Four Points by Sheraton on Oct. 6, Vargas said she was surprised to find a group of hotel employees picketing.
“I thought, it’s good they are fighting for their rights,” Vargas said. But she said she felt uncomfortable. “The people outside, it was their job, and I was the one replacing them.”
Vargas is among those from Skid Row’s migrant population who have been recruited in recent weeks to work at unionized hotels in Santa Monica and near Los Angeles International Airport where workers have gone on strike. In addition to the Four Points by Sheraton hotel, migrants were hired at the Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica and the Holiday Inn LAX, according to interviews with migrants employed as temporary workers and organizers with Unite Here Local 11.
Now Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels based on information brought to him by Unite Here Local 11, which represents workers involved in the largest U.S. hotel strike. Gascón said he is concerned about potential wage theft and violations of child labor law.
“We are going to make sure this is investigated thoroughly. It will be a fair and impartial investigation,” Gascón said at a news conference Monday in front of Le Meridien Delfina.
“If there are violations of the law, there will be severe consequences for this. We want to make sure that our community understands there will be no tolerance for the exploitation of refugees,” Gascón said, citing reporting by The Times on the issue.
Gascón recently claimed the endorsement of the powerful Los Angeles County Federation of Labor in announcing his reelection campaign.
Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón announced at a Monday news conference that he is launching an investigation into working conditions for migrants hired at hotels.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
At Monday’s news conference, state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) expressed outrage over the allegations against the hotels and staffing agencies.
“It makes me furious,” said Durazo, who represents Central and East L.A., and once served as president of Unite Here Local 11.
The hotel’s actions are “indefensible,” said Angelica Salas, executive director of the advocacy organization Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles. “Staffing agencies, companies taking advantage of the desperation of the individual to try to begin their life, and then not pay them their proper earnings, not give them a full accounting of their hours worked — we see this every day here in L.A.”
Since more than 15,000 workers began intermittent strikes at about 60 Southern California hotels in early July, employers have been replacing those union members with managers and temporary workers recruited through apps, such as Instawork, staffing agencies and by other means.
For the record:
4:33 p.m. Oct. 23, 2023An earlier verison of this story misspelled Hannah Petersen’s last name as Peterson.
Unite Here organizer Hannah Petersen, who has been working with the migrants, said some hired at Le Meridien Delfina were among hundreds of migrants Texas Gov. Greg Abbott shipped on buses to L.A. this year as a political stunt meant to harness anti-immigrant sentiment and deride “sanctuary” cities across the country. Frank Wolf, a pastor at Echo Park United Methodist Church, is among those who have greeted migrants arriving on buses from Texas.
“They were exhausted and they were tired and they were scared when they came to Los Angeles,” he said at the news conference. “It’s heart-wrenching to find out that some of these very workers that we welcomed on those buses are being exploited.”
Refugees and asylum seekers are legally allowed to seek work in the U.S. Federal labor law allows employers to hirereplacement workers during unfair labor practice strikes and economic strikes, but unions typically condemn the use of so-called scab labor.
Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said employers who hired migrants “had stooped to a new low” by tapping a vulnerable group of workers to undermine employees striking for a living wage.
“I can’t believe they are forcing these people, who are so desperate, to cross the picket line,” Petersen said. “Instead of addressing L.A.’s housing crisis, the hotel industry prefers to exploit the unhoused as strikebreakers to avoid paying their own workers enough to afford housing themselves.”
Owners and operators of the three hotels did not respond to requests for comment. Real estate investment group Pebblebrook Hotel Trust owns Le Meridien Delfina Santa Monica, and Capital Insight owns Four Points LAX. Highgate Hotels operates both hotels. The Holiday Inn LAX is owned by a subsidiary of Chinese firm Esong Group and is operated by Aimbridge Hospitality.
Eleven people living at the Skid Row shelter confirmed they had been hired at hotels where employees were protesting outside. Most had migrated from Venezuela or Colombia. Many did not provide their names, fearing repercussions.
They described heavy cleaning loads and long hours. Some said they were given no prior information on how much they would be paid hourly, although others said they were told on their first day that they would be paid $19 an hour. Migrant workers said they were not told and did not know the name of the agency that recruited them.
Venezuelan migrant Sebastian Atencio, 34, showed up at Le Méridien Delfina Santa Monica on Sept. 26 during a recent wave of strikes. Atencio said he was given a heavy workload and forced to work without breaks. He was hired to wash dishes at another hotel — but they also asked him to clean bathrooms during the same shift, which he said he felt was unsanitary.
One migrant worker, a 17-year-old student at Belmont High School who requested anonymity, said he skipped two days of school to clean rooms at the Holiday InnLAX.
He and his mother, who secured work as a housekeeper at the Holiday Inn, received payment via banking app Zelle from an agency called Arya Staffing Services Inc. Aimbridge Hospitality did not respond to questions about whether staffing agencies it used had secured appropriate permits to employ minors.
A review of an Oct. 13 pay stub for a worker hired at the Four Points by Sheraton shows that person obtained hotel work through staffing agency AV Professional Services.
Alinne Espinoza, who is listed as the registered agent for both staffing agencies, said her business is properly licensed and operates legally.
“Our company works with many different types of people that come from our local community,” she said in an email. “We work hard on a daily basis to incorporate as many people as possible into the labor market under competent, dignified and just conditions.”
Unite Here Local 11 organizer Hannah Petersen speaks with workers outside the Union Rescue Mission on Skid Row.
(Suhauna Hussain / Los Angeles Times)
Outside the Skid Row shelter on a recent evening, Petersen introduced herself in Spanish to a group of migrants who had been hired at striking hotels. Several pushed strollers. Young children crowded around their parents, one sucking a green lollipop.
“My name is Hannah,” she said to the group. “The union is out there fighting for the rights of immigrant workers.”
Many migrants living at the shelter had told her they wanted permanent jobs, she explained, and so that day she and other organizers would be gathering information to help them create their resumes.
Some of the shelter’s residents approached the organizers, who were armed with clipboards, and fielded questions about the migrants’ work experience, scribbling their answers down. Other migrants, concerned that the organizers were working for immigration authorities, left.
Petersen, the daughter of the union’s co-president, said she first encountered homeless migrant workers Sept. 27 when she was protesting alongside Unite Here Local 11 members at Le Meridien Delfina.
Hotel housekeepers, front desk workers, cooks and other employees are seeking new contracts with higher wages and improved benefits and working conditions. The union members say they don’t earn enough to afford housing near their jobs.
But hotel operators say the union is overreaching in its demands for raises and employer support of housing initiatives unrelated to hotel operations, including a measure set for the 2024 ballot that would require hotels in Los Angeles to rent vacant rooms to homeless people. American Hotel & Lodging Assn. Chief Executive Chip Rogers called it a “dangerous demand,” citing a September poll the industry group commissioned in which 72% of respondents said they would be reluctant to book a hotel room in Los Angeles “if hotels there are forced to house homeless people next to paying guests.”
Petersen said it is hypocritical for hotels to oppose homelessness measures while employing unhoused people as replacement workers during the strike.
Keith Grossman, an attorney representing a group of more than 40 Southern California hotel owners and operators in negotiations with Unite Here Local 11, said in an email that hotels “did not knowingly use unhoused individuals, if they even did so.”
“I do wonder how a hotel is supposed to know whether a person is homeless if they list an address and show up bathed and clean and sober?” he said. “This appears to be another red herring generated by Local 11.”
Unite Here Local 11 has previously criticized hotels’ strike-time use of Instawork, an app that matches businesses with short-term, seasonal workers in hospitality.
In July, the union filed an unfair labor practice complaint with the National Labor Relations Board against Instawork and hotel management company Aimbridge. In one allegation, the union said the company violated federal labor law by disqualifying workers hired through the app from future work when they miss a single shift, even if they do so to participate in legally protected activity, such as respecting a strike.
Vargas, the worker hired at the Four Points hotel, was among a handful of people remaining that evening outside Union Rescue Mission. The rest had dispersed, distrustful and worried that union organizers were sent by immigration authorities. Vargas said she hoped the other residents would come around.
“I’m going to be the one who finds good work so they know it’s not a lie,” Vargas said.
