The LA Reporter - Issue 1

The elevators are broken at the 15-story Mayfair Hotel in downtown LA that shelters unhoused residents as part of Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe program. Residents with disabilities say it’s taking them 45 minutes to more than an hour to climb the stairs to get back to their rooms.

Anna, a resident on the 12th floor who is disabled and uses a cane to walk, said she has felt like a prisoner in her room ever since all three elevators broke a couple weeks ago. On one trip up the stairs while carrying a bag of medication, Anna said she dropped her cane, which clattered down nine steps of stairs. She had to scream to get someone to help her.

Simone Carr, who lives on the 10th floor, told The LA Reporter this week that each trip up the stairs to her room takes an estimated one and a half hours. Because of some recent injuries she sustained that affect her back, Simone has to stop frequently to rest.

The elevators have not been fully functional for months, some residents say, with some reporting that at least two are usually down at a time. But things got worse when all three elevators went down. According to a 2023 report by LA’s City Administrator’s Office, the elevators have been in need of modernization, with the building in general needing more than $26 million in renovations.

Naomi Roochnik, a spokeswoman for the area’s City Council member, Eunisses Hernandez, said in a statement to The LA Reporter on Thursday “that all three elevators at the Mayfair have been experiencing intermittent outages for several days.”

But some are concerned their situation is being downplayed. Another Mayfair Hotel resident, Samson Tafolo, disagreed Thursday with Roochnik’s characterization of the elevator outages as “intermittent.” He told The LA Reporter the elevators had been “down for 11 days … to the point that elderly folks are crawling up and down the stairs.”

Some residents noted the elevator was sometimes briefly functional in the last week, but people would be stranded once they broke down again.

Roochnik also said in her statement that their office was communicating with LA Mayor Karen Bass’s office and other agencies involved in the Inside Safe program at the Mayfair Hotel “to underscore the serious habitability concerns that this poses, and we will continue working with them until this issue is resolved.”

The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, also known as HACLA, manages the building, the Weingart Center provides services to the residents, and Bass’s office leads the city’s Inside Safe program.

Public officials have so far released few official details about the status of the elevators’ condition. A statement provided by HACLA pointed only to the hotel’s freight elevator being operational, providing few other details.

Meanwhile, Anna’s doctor this week issued a letter, which she shared with The LA Reporter, stating that “she is definitely not able to go up and down 12 flights of stairs to her 12th floor apartment while the elevator is not working. This could be very dangerous, leading to falls, fractures or worsening joint problems.”

Anna said she was disappointed it is taking so long to address the broken elevators. “This is a very serious situation,” she said. 

The LA Public Library last month hired a “re-entry” librarian, Anders Villalta, who will train other library staff and create programs to ensure the library system better serves people released from incarceration. 

Villalta, who previously worked at in Hollywood at the LA Public Library’s Will & Ariel Durant Branch, said in this new role that they have been mapping out existing resources in the community, and connecting with community groups. Their position is considered a “subject specialist” librarian.

The library system has been offering tech literacy workshops, and events to sign people up for library cards and welcome them to use the library’s resources, as part of its services catering to people who were previously incarcerated.

While some may not immediately think of public libraries as a go-to resource for people re-entering the community after being incarcerated, Villalta said they are potential community hubs that are “strategically placed across the city and accessible in terms of public transportation and just spread evenly across the city.”

The website for the library’s re-entry resources can be found here.

In April, LA Mayor Karen Bass sponsored Assembly Bill 630, which was described by authors as targeting ‘vanlords,’ people who rent out recreational vehicles for people to live in. Last Friday, Aug. 29, the bill, which is carried by Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez, advanced out of the state Senate’s standing committee on Senate appropriations. But opponents of the bill say it would hurt those who live in vehicles by allowing their homes to be more quickly destroyed.

The bill’s language was amended so that its proposed provisions would only affect Alameda and Los Angeles counties. LA County includes an estimated 12,000 people living in RVs and vehicles as of the latest 2025 homeless count.

The bill, if passed and signed by the governor, would allow vehicles valued as high as $4,000 to be quickly scrapped. Right now only vehicles valued at $500 or less face that fate.

The bill is supported by several cities, while opposition is coming from many groups advocating on behalf of people who are unhoused, including ACLU California Action and members of a coalition called Equal Rights for Every Neighbor.

Alex Visotzky, of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, says the bill would not address exploitation by vanlords, but instead hurt those bill sponsors say they want to help. He said Bass spoke out out against the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision that said that criminalizing the act of sleeping outdoors was not cruel or unusual — so it was “disappointing not being able to have more fruitful conversations” with Bass around the potential effects of AB 630.

Gonzalez and Bass did not respond to requests for comment from The LA Reporter on this bill.

Sean Geary, a former RV resident, spoke to the state Senate’s public safety committee saying that losing his vehicle home had forced him to use a shelter, which turned out to be “incessantly traumatizing” due to harassment from shelter staff.

“When you take someone's RV and dismantle it, you're taking away their ability to store water, to cook and save food, leftovers, to shelter from wind and rain, the night and all that encompasses in the public,” Geary told the committee. “You take away their agency, their autonomy.”

John Lee’s ethics case could be taken up at the Commission in October: The City Ethics Commission’s case accusing LA Council member John Lee of of multiple ethics violation related to receiving gifts while he worked as chief-of-staff for former City Council member Mitchell Englander, could be taken up again as early as the panel’s next meeting on October 22. The case has been winding its way through the state Office of Administrative Hearings. The final briefs were submitted, and that body’s recommendations is expected to be released within 30 days of the Ethics Commission’s final reply brief for the hearings, which should have been filed Aug. 29.

Charter Reform Commission will be meeting to study ‘better government’: The LA Charter Reform Commission will be holding a meeting at Loyola Marymount University on Saturday, Sept. 6. Commissioners will be hearing presentations from the City Ethics Commission, the department that oversees the city’s neighborhood council system, good government group Fair Rep LA and chair of the elected charter reform commission in the 1990s Erwin Chemerinsky. People will be able to make remote public comment at this meeting. The Charter Reform Commission is in the midst of studying and coming up with recommendations for possible changes to the city’s charter, with proposals that include expanding the number of City Council members.

Imelda Padilla recall effort begins. Five people filed paperwork seeking to recall 6th District City Council member Imelda Padilla, who represents communities in the southeast San Fernando Valley, including Van Nuys, Panorama City, Sun Valley and North Hollywood. The effort is in its earliest stage and the proponents would need to gather valid signatures from 18,524 qualified registered voters in Padilla’s district for their recall question to be put on the ballot.

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