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Section 8 vouchers, and if so, what income and creditworthiness criteria each used to qualify applicants.Jamison, a group of family-run real estate companies, has been lauded for its civically active CEO and its efforts to turn underused office space into housing.
But Jamison stands out among other large L.A.-area landlords Capital & Main investigated for its near nonparticipation in the Section 8 program, the largest housing assistance program in the country. The investigation found that Section 8 applicants were repeatedly turned down or discouraged to apply, often being asked to provide minimum income and credit scores. Between 2021 and 2024, only one Section 8 tenant moved into a Jamison property.One of the biggest landlords in Los Angeles has been turning away people seeking apartments under the Section 8 housing assistance program in many of its buildings, in apparent violation of state law, a Capital & Main investigation found. Jamison, a group of family-run real estate companies, has been lauded for its civically active CEO and its efforts to turn underused office space into housing. But Jamison stands out among other large L.A.-area landlords Capital & Main investigated for its near nonparticipation in the Section 8 program, the largest housing assistance program in the country, the investigation found. In a statement, a Jamison company spokesperson said “the management companies overseeing Jamison’s portfolio accept and welcome tenants utilizing Section 8 vouchers.” Section 8 is a powerful tool for fighting homelessness and the housing crisis across the nation. But it is especially needed in L.A. County, where wages haven’t kept pace with rising rents. Housing Choice Vouchers, as they’re officially known, subsidize rent for about 85,000 households in L.A. County that don’t earn enough to afford a market-rate rental. At its best, Section 8 and its federally funded assistance vouchers offer a way out of poverty for low-income residents — affordable rent in a community of their choice.voucher holders in the U.S. never find housing at all, even after years on Section 8 waiting lists, according to a 2021 study by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.Terri Reynolds, who oversees programs at the nonprofit Asian American Drug Abuse Program to help clients in the L.A. area find housing, said they’re “so happy” to obtain rental assistance. But they are often disappointed, she said, “because landlords don’t want to mess with Section 8.” The reluctance of landlords to participate is one of the Section 8 program’s biggest problems, even though a state law bars them from rejecting tenants because they use vouchers. Dan Yukelson, executive director of the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles, said red tape and hard-to-understand rules make Section 8 “an administrative nightmare” for some of his members, who are mostly mom-and-pop landlords. Capital & Main investigated seven of L.A. County’s largest landlords to determine whether they open their doors to Section 8 tenants. Unlike smaller landlords who might be unfamiliar with the rules, these multifamily real estate giants have abundant administrative resources to interpret and comply with state law. Capital & Main’s findings are based on data collected by testers hired by the news organization to pose as Section 8 voucher holders. From late 2024 to early 2025 the testers contacted leasing agents to ask about available apartments in 65 buildings owned or operated by Jamison, Equity Residential, Essex Property Trust, AvalonBay Communities, G.H. Palmer Associates, Prime Residential and Greystar. The tests were limited to buildings where advertised rents were low enough for Section 8 recipients to be able to move in. Testers asked leasing staff at each building if they accepted Section 8 vouchers, and if so, what income and creditworthiness criteria each used to qualify applicants. Jamison buildings were the only ones where leasing agents said they could not rent to Section 8 tenants. Of 21 properties that testers contacted, agents at 15 said they could not accept vouchers. At one property, an agent described income requirements that would automatically exclude voucher holders. Agents initially said they would accept Section 8 at five of the properties, but either described minimum credit scores that would exclude many voucher holders, or did not respond to follow-up inquiries. Capital & Main contacted Jamison with its key findings and a list of questions. In its statement earlier this month, the company spokesperson said many of the issues raised were “completely wrong and/or misleading” but did not comment on many of the specific problems the reporting found. Last fall, a tester called to inquire about an apartment at Jamison’s Atlas House in L.A.’s Koreatown with some attractive amenities, including state-of-the-art appliances, a swimming pool and hot tub. But they were told the building was not accepting Section 8 vouchers. “We are actively seeking approval to begin accepting Section 8 vouchers, and when that approval goes through, we will publicly make an announcement,” the representative said. But the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles has no such approval or inspection process, said its Section 8 director, Carlos Van Natter. “We would not inspect the whole building,” Van Natter said, adding that the agency only inspects individual apartments to ensure habitability after a landlord has accepted a tenant’s rental application. At the Sienna on Serrano and the Roya, both relatively new Koreatown buildings that offer features like modern kitchens, gyms, pool decks and even a karaoke room, leasing agents also said they were awaiting city approvals for their Section 8 participation, which they said they expected within a few months.The cold shoulder for Section 8 voucher holders clashes with company CEO Jaime Lee’s community-spirited reputation. Last year the Los Angeles Times featured Lee on itsone of the “bosses, elected officials and A-list names calling the shots from the seats of power” alongside Gov. Gavin Newsom and Archbishop José Gomez.and positioned her family’s company as part of the solution. Lee, who is a member of the LA28 Olympic organizing committee andby Gov. Newsom in September, has said the company offers apartments for people at a wide range of income levels. What Jamison appears to lack is Section 8 tenants, who are among the lowest earners and the hardest to house; in Los Angeles, for example, most make less than $53,000 per year for a single person. Section 8 tenants pay about 30% of their incomes in rent and the government covers the rest. Between 2021 and 2024, only one Section 8 tenant moved into a Jamison property, according to records Capital & Main obtained from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles under the California Public Records Act. The Jamison spokesperson’s statement did not address the lack of Section 8 tenants in its properties, but said that the management companies overseeing its portfolio “take proactive steps, including engaging a broker and non-profits, to help identify individuals and families who hold vouchers or qualify for income-restricted Affordable Housing units.”. But the findings raised concerns for L.A. County Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who, as a state senator, authored the 2020 state law that makes it illegal to reject tenants because they pay rent with government assistance.Jamison’s three dozen or so residential buildings in the L.A. area were built since 2013, and thus too new to be covered by local rent control laws or the state’s maximum 10% per year limit on rent increases. Under the Section 8 program, however, the company would be required to get housing authority approval for annual rent hikes. Jay Lybik, a real estate expert who until recently was the CoStar Group’s National Director of Multifamily Analytics, said that given state and local rent caps, Jamison may exclude voucher holders so that it can freely raise rents on its units. Lybik, who now directs market research for Continental Properties, said Jamison “most likely needs to hit certain return hurdles for their investors and will need to be squeezing every percentage of rent growth. Thus, they don’t want to be hampered by the lower yearly increases allowed.”Jamison is one of the fastest-growing multifamily developers in Los Angeles. In just 12 years, the company has accumulated a residential portfolio that includes more than 6,000 units — including both ground-up construction and office-to-residential conversions. At least 2,500 additional units are either planned or under construction. The company has benefited from L.A.’s lucrative apartment market with its low vacancy rate and through-the-roof home purchase prices that send highly paid workers into the rental market. Jamison has also been able to maximize profits by participating in the city of L.A.’s builder incentives. Under these programs, developers can include more apartments in a building than the zoning code allows or get waivers from parking or open space requirements. In exchange, developers set aside a small percentage of apartments for lower-income renters. The company has built some Another reason for the company’s rapid-fire growth in residential real estate: a stockpile of aging Koreatown office buildings Lee’s father, David Lee, amassed beginning in the 1990s — before the area became a destination for nightlife, dining and traditional Korean spas. “They were lucky,” said Johnny Choi, a first vice president at commercial real estate firm CBRE and an expert in the Koreatown market. “They were able to purchase property at a time when prices were a lot lower.” Among David Lee’s acquisitions were the former headquarters of iconic U.S. corporations that pulled up stakes after once-prestigious Wilshire Boulevard lost its luster in the 1990s. The former Texaco Oil and U.S. Borax buildings are now the Crosby Apartments and the Westmore, respectively. Jaime Lee has said these conversions and the company’s other residential developments help address L.A.’s housing shortage.from California’s state housing agency — is for housing that L.A.’s poorest people can afford. Section 8 is the only program that meets those needs on a large scale.Capital & Main conducted additional tests a few months later to see if the Roya, Sienna, Atlas House and other Jamison buildings had begun accepting vouchers as some leasing agents had previously said. In a March 2025 call, a representative initially told a tester that the Jamison buildings she inquired about would accept Section 8, but only if tenants earned at least two-and-a-half times the monthly rent. When the tester said those income requirements would disqualify her as a Section 8 participant, the representative promised to double check on the company’s rental criteria and call her back, but she didn’t. Capital & Main’s tester continued trying to get an answer. When she finally reached another agent, she said that none of the 15 Jamison buildings the tester inquired about were accepting Section 8 vouchers, offering the same reason as before: They were awaiting “inspections” and “city approvals.” Leasing representatives for five other Jamison buildings said they accepted Section 8 vouchers. But three insisted all applicants, including voucher holders, meet specific credit scores. Two didn’t respond to follow-up calls. That requirement appeared to run afoul of another state housing law. Since January 2024, it has been illegal for landlords to reject Section 8 applicants solely based on their credit history. Landlords must also consider pay stubs or other verifiable evidence of their ability to pay their share of rent. If a large landlord turns Section 8 tenants away, “it would be a major resource that our folks can’t access,” said Section 8 director Van Natter. Jamison proved to be an outlier among the seven companies Capital & Main tested. It was the only big landlord that categorically rejected voucher holders in many of its buildings. At the six other companies, agents at all 44 properties said they accepted Section 8, but 22 said they would reject voucher holders for poor credit. Four would not say whether poor credit history would exclude Section 8 applicants and two others didn’t respond to follow-up calls about income and credit criteria.On the other end of the spectrum was G.H. Palmer Associates, which appeared to roll out the welcome mat for Section 8 tenants, despite owner Geoffrey Palmer’s Scrooge-like reputation and long-documented resistance to government mandates. A 2022called Palmer “the real estate billionaire who hates affordable housing.” But in Capital & Main’s tests, only one Palmer leasing agent out of seven properties contacted would not accept alternative evidence of ability to pay rent in lieu of credit history, the highest rate of compliance among the seven companies investigated. Palmer owns thousands of apartments in the Santa Clarita Valley and the Inland Empire, and is perhaps best known for a collection of hulking faux Italianate apartment buildings in downtown L.A., some of them hugging busy freeways. In contrast to other companies whose leasing agents couldn’t immediately respond to testers’ questions about Section 8, G.H. Palmer’s were knowledgeable and responsive. Palmer, a prolific donor to Republican Party candidates, earned his anti-affordable housing bona fides by winning a court battle against the city of L.A. over a requirement that developers in downtown L.A.’s Central City West area include affordable apartments in their market-rate buildings. The California Court of Appeal ruled in Palmer’s favor in 2009. But more Section 8 tenants moved into Palmer buildings in Los Angeles between 2021 and 2024 than any of the six other companies Capital & Main investigated, even those with far more units, city housing authority records show. And in other areas of L.A. County, G.H. Palmer had more Section 8 renters in its buildings than the other six companies, according to county housing authority records covering the same years. Palmer did not respond to Capital & Main’s questions about the company’s participation in the Section 8 program. “He’s not going to talk to you,” said a staffer at Palmer’s Beverly Hills office. Palmer’s Section 8 stance may be a straightforward case of scrupulous adherence to the law. But it could also be a matter of economics. Unlike Jamison with its portfolio of newer buildings, many of Palmer’s buildings are older and covered by state rent caps. So the need to obtain housing authority approval for annual rent hikes might not threaten the company’s bottom line. It could be that tenant stability and on-time rent payments are a greater priority for Palmer’s business model. Lybik, the real estate expert, noted that Section 8 tenants tend to stay in their apartments longer than unsubsidized renters. And the lion’s share of their rent is reliably paid by the federal government. Whatever the reason, Palmer’s welcoming response to Section 8 applicants was unusual among the large property owners Capital & Main investigated.The typical experience for tenants is far more frustrating and obstacle-ridden, according to housing authority data that shows it is difficult for Section 8 voucher holders to find landlords who will accept their vouchers. “I had so much discrimination,” said Jennifer St. Jude, a Section 8 voucher holder and social work student at the University of Southern California, who finally landed a four-bedroom house in the Santa Clarita Valley with her two adult daughters. “It took me a year and a half, and I not only got lucky, I killed myself to get this house,” St. Jude said. In 2024, the latest year for which data is available, Van Natter of the L.A. city housing authority reported that about 40% of Section 8 voucher holders failed to find housing before their subsidies expired — even after languishing for years on waiting lists. The program gives participants 180 days to find a landlord who will accept their vouchers before they must return them to the housing authority. Yukelson with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles argued that part of the problem is landlords have a hard time getting rent increases approved and with customer service at some local housing authorities.City and housing authority officials have tried to increase Section 8 usage with financial incentives for landlord participation and regular informational seminars. Last year, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass met with property owners to urge them to give the program a try. “We have so many people on our streets with vouchers in their hands,” she said at the public event. “They just need somebody willing to give them a chance.” A spokesperson for Mayor Bass had no comment on Capital & Main’s findings and did not respond to an interview request. But Kevin Kish, who heads the California Civil Rights Department, the state’s fair housing enforcement agency, said Capital & Main’s findings “highlight a need for more education, more outreach and more enforcement”. Statewide, a single attorney and three investigators enforce anti-discrimination laws that protect people who use rental assistance, Kish noted. “I think that we’re using all of the tools available to us,” Kish said. He added: “That’s the hard limit on what we can do. Those are the resources we have to conduct enforcement.” But as Capital & Main’s testers learned through dozens of calls, emails and texts, housing laws on paper don’t necessarily make it easier for Section 8 tenants to get to yes, especially when it’s in big landlords’ financial interest to say no.Annakai Hayakawa Geshlider, Arlen Levy, Jeremy Lindenfeld, Maison Tran, Emily Elena Dugdale and Lita Martinez contributed to this story. Some of the biggest landlords in the Los Angeles area are skirting anti-discrimination laws and turning away people seeking housing under the Section 8 program, a Capital & Main investigation found.The yearlong investigation used public records, interviews and fair housing tests that included hundreds of inquiries to examine Section 8 voucher acceptance by some of the Los Angeles area’s largest landlords: Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Essex Property Trust, Greystar, Prime Residential, G.H. Palmer Associates and Jamison Properties. While many of these landlords have national footprints, Capital & Main focused its investigation on their Los Angeles County operations. The investigation found that most skirted anti-discrimination laws.The nation’s largest housing assistance program, Section 8, is a lifeline for tenants across the nation who would otherwise be priced out of expensive housing markets. Under the program, tenants pay about a third of their income in rent, and the government subsidizes the rest. That’s life-changing in Los Angeles, where a one-bedroom apartment costs about $2,200 per month on average, and rent increases have outpaced wage growth, fueling an affordability crisis.The nation’s largest housing assistance program, Section 8, is a lifeline for tenants across the nation who would otherwise be priced out of expensive housing markets. Under the program, tenants pay about a third of their income in rent, and the government subsidizes the rest. That’s life-changing in Los Angeles, where a one-bedroom apartment costs about $2,200 per month on average, and rent increases have outpaced wage growth, fueling an affordability crisis. About 85,000 L.A. County residents rely on the Housing Choice Voucher program, as Section 8 is officially known, to afford their rent. Participants are allowed to live anywhere they choose, provided rents fall within limits set by local housing authorities. Yet many tenants have difficulty finding landlords who will accept vouchers, even though in California and nearly two dozen other states, it’s illegal for landlords to reject Section 8 applicants solely because they pay rent with government aid. Under a California law that took effect last year, landlords also aren’t allowed to reject voucher holders based solely on their credit history. Instead, they must give them a chance to show pay stubs or other “lawful verifiable alternative evidence” they can pay their share of rent. But some of the biggest landlords in the Los Angeles area are skirting anti-discrimination laws and turning away people seeking housing under the Section 8 program, a Capital & Main investigation found. The yearlong investigation used public records, interviews and fair housing tests that included hundreds of inquiries to examine Section 8 voucher acceptance by some of the Los Angeles area’s largest landlords: Equity Residential, AvalonBay Communities, Essex Property Trust, Greystar, Prime Residential, G.H. Palmer Associates and Jamison Properties. While many of these landlords have national footprints, Capital & Main focused its investigation on their Los Angeles County operations. As part of its reporting, Capital & Main hired and trained testers, who posed as Section 8 voucher holders and contacted leasing agents to ask about apartments listed on company websites. Agents’ responses to testers’ questions suggested widespread violations of California housing law that would exclude many Section 8 voucher holders. Only one company — Jamison — categorically rejected Section 8 vouchers in many of its buildings. In a statement, a Jamison spokesperson wrote “the management companies overseeing Jamison’s portfolio accept and welcome tenants utilizing Section 8 vouchers.” Capital & Main based some of its findings on data collected by hired testers who called, emailed and exchanged text messages with leasing agents at 65 buildings across Los Angeles County in late 2024 and early 2025. The U.S. Department of Justice, the California Civil Rights Department and nonprofit fair housing organizations have used such testing to ferret out evidence of illegal discrimination, and courts have held that theprovide outweighs the necessary deception in discovering it. Journalism organizations don’t often employ such testing, but when they have, as in a 2019investigation of real estate agents, they have brought to light evidence of discrimination that would have otherwise remained unknown to the public. Marin County-based Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California provided training and materials for Capital & Main’s tests. Capital & Main tested at six to nine buildings owned by each company. Then, after several Jamison agents said their buildings could not accept vouchers, Capital & Main conducted additional tests of its properties to determine how widespread such rejections were. The news organization tested only buildings with rental units priced within the limits set by the housing authorities in their areas. Testers made repeated attempts to understand leasing policies and practices at each building, sometimes reaching out several times to ensure accuracy. The findings are also drawn from public records requests to local housing authorities for data on how many Section 8 tenants each company had. In all, the news organization reviewed documents obtained under the California Public Records Act from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, and the Los Angeles County Development Authority, which covers unincorporated L.A. County and 62 cities within the county. Housing authorities in Glendale, Pasadena, Burbank, Santa Monica, Norwalk, Torrance and Long Beach also provided records. Several local housing authorities, including those in Inglewood, Compton, Culver City, Pomona, Hawthorne, Baldwin Park and South Gate declined to provide records, citing privacy concerns, or failed to respond to Capital & Main’s requests. Capital & Main contacted each company several times to share test results and give each an opportunity to respond to its findings and answer specific questions about its policies.The Roya Apartments in Koreatown is one of more than a dozen Jamison-owned properties where agents said they were not accepting Section 8 tenants. Photo by Barbara Davidson.Jamison, a group of family-run real estate companies based in L.A.’s Koreatown, was the only landlord whose leasing agents turned away testers posing as Section 8 renters, saying they could not accept their vouchers. Only one Section 8 tenant moved into a Jamison building between 2021 and 2024, according to documents Capital & Main obtained from the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles through a public records request. Jamison entered the multifamily residential market in 2013 and has since built more than 6,000 residential units with at least 2,500 planned or under construction. Last fall, leasing agents at some Jamison buildings told testers working for Capital & Main that they were not accepting Section 8 vouchers until they received city approvals. For example, in September 2024 notes taken by a tester show that when she called to ask if the Sienna on Serrano apartments in L.A.’s Koreatown accepted Section 8 vouchers, a leasing agent said:The leasing agent’s statement was misleading: L.A. housing authority officials said no inspection process is required before a building can accept Section 8 tenants. Housing authorities inspect individual apartments once a Section 8 tenant has selected a unit. In March 2025, a Capital & Main-hired tester did another round of inquiries about available apartments at 15 Jamison properties. Again, a leasing agent said the company was awaiting city approvals before it could accept Section 8 tenants. Five other Jamison leasing representatives initially said they accepted vouchers, but two of them didn’t return calls requesting information about income and credit requirements. At three of the those buildings, agents said they would reject Section 8 applicants for poor credit history, even though that’s prohibited under California law. Landlords are required to consider a Section 8 applicant’s pay stubs or proof of government benefits in lieu of credit reports to evaluate their ability to pay.in L.A.’s Koreatown, a tester uncovered another apparent violation of California’s fair housing law. In an April 2025 phone call, a tester’s notes show that a leasing agent described minimum income requirements for Section 8 voucher holders that would be impossible for a Section 8 tenant to meet:A Jamison spokesperson wrote in a statement that the management companies overseeing the company’s portfolio “take proactive steps, including engaging a broker and nonprofits, to help identify individuals and families who hold vouchers or qualify for income-restricted Affordable Housing units.” The spokesperson said “It also appears that the tester misunderstood the income requirement stated for Section 8 tenants. The law permits an income requirement based on the tenant’s portion of the rent, not the full rental amount. All property managers overseeing these buildings have rules and procedures in place to comply with all applicable laws.” Vantage Hollywood Apartments was one of six Equity Residential buildings where an agents said they would reject Section 8 tenants based on credit history alone.Chicago-based Equity Residential owns nearly 15,000 apartments in about 60 properties in the Los Angeles area, its largest market. Its representatives — at eight buildings — said they accept Section 8 vouchers. But at six of the buildings, agents told testers they wouldn’t consider alternative proof of creditworthiness in lieu of credit checks. For example, in response to a query about the Vantage Hollywood Apartments in Hollywood last September, a leasing representative said in this email exchange with a tester posing as a voucher holder that pay stubs would not be accepted as proof of creditworthiness:The Vantage Hollywood Apartments agent and five others at Equity misstated the company’s written policy. Its online rental application says the company accepts Section 8 applicants’ pay stubs, proof of government benefits or bank statements to show ability to pay rent. “If you provide us with that documentation, we will use that documentation instead of credit history,” the application says. But even though Equity’s policy is lawful, its agents’ misstatements would violate fair housing law, said Caroline Peattie, executive director of Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. She noted that prospective renters would likely be deterred from applying after being told their applications would almost certainly be rejected. Equity first vice president Marty McKenna said in a statement, “We are proud of our record of providing homes for our residents who qualify for Section 8 vouchers in a region where there is a shortage of affordable housing.” McKenna didn’t respond to an interview request or comment on specific test results Capital & Main shared with the company. “We are confident that we are operating by applicable regulations regarding Section 8 vouchers,” McKenna wrote. A leasing agent for Santee Court in downtown Los Angeles said they would reject Section 8 tenants based on credit history alone.The California-based company, whose board of directors includes former California first lady Anne Gust Brown, appeared to comply with fair housing law at five of nine buildings testers queried. Capital & Main testers contacted leasing representatives at nine Essex properties, all of whom said they accept Section 8 vouchers. But four of them refused to consider Section 8 voucher holders’ pay stubs or other proof of creditworthiness, even though Essex official policy is to accept such evidence in lieu of credit history. At Essex’s Santee Court in downtown Los Angeles, a leasing representative insisted that a tenant would have to pass a credit check nonetheless, according to a tester’s notes:, an agent said the building would “look at pay stubs and bank statements.” But poor credit, the agent said, would require a “guarantor” — an individual who would take legal responsibility for any unpaid rent. Essex Property Trust representatives didn’t answer Capital & Main’s questions about their agents’ reliance on credit scores to vet applicants. But a company spokesperson said in a statement, “We have reviewed both our written policy and application process and we are in compliance with the law: all Section 8 applicants are approved based on their ability to pay their portion of the rent, not based on credit score.” A leasing agent at AVA Toluca Hills said a Section 8 tenant would have to meet the building’s credit score requirements in order to rent an apartment. A leasing agent at AVA Toluca Hills said a Section 8 tenant would have to meet the building’s credit score requirements in order to rent an apartment.At AvalonBay Communities properties, agents said they accepted Section 8 vouchers, but some representatives of the Arlington, Virginia-based company provided incorrect information about how the program works and described credit requirements that are now prohibited by California law. At four of the six AvalonBay Communities properties queried, agents said they would reject Section 8 applicants based on credit history. And at one property, representatives didn’t return follow-up calls about credit and income criteria. Several AvalonBay leasing agents showed a shaky understanding of the Section 8 program, suggesting they have little experience with it. When a tester asked in a phone call last October if there was any alternative way to prove their ability to pay if they failed a credit check, an agent atsaid no. The credit check was “something we can’t override,” and proving with pay stubs was not an option, the agent said.erroneously responded, “Normally when you have a voucher it’s because you have no income.” The tester followed up with an email asking “If I failed the credit check, would I be able to prove my ability to pay another way, for example, by showing my check stubs?” The agent responded: AvalonBay representatives didn’t respond to Capital & Main’s interview requests or written questions. A Leasing agent for Park La Brea, a Los Angeles landmark, said that a credit check was required for Section 8 tenants, an apparent violation of state law. A Leasing agent for Park La Brea, a Los Angeles landmark, said that a credit check was required for Section 8 tenants, an apparent violation of state law.The San Francisco-based company owns and operates some 20,000 housing units on the West Coast, including the Park La Brea apartments in L.A.’s Miracle Mile, the largest apartment complex west of the Mississippi, with more than 4,000 apartments. Capital & Main’s hired testers contacted leasing agents at five Prime Residential complexes. All said they accept Section 8 vouchers. At Park La Brea, an agent said in a September 2024 text message that they relied on credit history to screen all applicants:At four other Prime buildings, leasing agents said they didn’t know if credit history would disqualify Section 8 applicants until after credit and background checks were completed. Prime Residential declined an interview request, but said in a statement, “We work hard to comply with all applicable state and federal fair housing laws, including seeking alternative evidence of ability to pay rent and never denying Section 8 voucher holders based on credit. As part of our efforts to help people take advantage of rental assistance programs, leasing agents and other staff at our properties receive annual training on relevant laws and Prime policies.” A leasing agent at the Eden apartments in downtown Los Angeles said a Section 8 applicant who failed a credit check would be denied a rental at the building.Charleston, South Carolina-based Greystar is the largest landlord in the U.S. Leasing agents at all nine Greystar buildings contacted by testers said they accepted Section 8 vouchers. But only two agents said they would consider pay stubs, proof of government benefits or other documents as evidence of a voucher holder’s ability to pay rent. Leasing agents at, built in partnership with the Cesar Chavez Foundation and managed by Greystar, was built to bring homes to “residents who need them most,” according to a 2019 Chavez Foundation news release. A La Plaza agent said the building didn’t require a specific credit score and that applicants could fail credit checks if their records included evictions or money owed to previous landlords. However, the agent said they would not accept a Section 8 applicant’s alternative evidence of creditworthiness, as this tester’s notes of a September 2024 phone call with a leasing staffer show:, in downtown Los Angeles, a leasing agent told a tester in a September 2024 phone call that there was a “waitlist” for Section 8 tenants. However the law prohibits landlords from limiting the number of Section 8 participants in a property. Here’s how the tester recorded it in their notes:A Greystar representative said in a statement, “We remain committed to fair housing practices and to ensuring that all applicants are evaluated consistently and in accordance with the law.” The company provided Capital & Main a copy of a Greystar rental policy document that it says is given to all applicants. The document explains that “in lieu of a credit report, prospective tenants who use housing subsidies in California can show evidence of ability to pay their portion of rent.” The company’s statement said, “While Section 8 vouchers are distinct from the many other affordable housing programs, we understand that depending on how questions are asked, these programs can sometimes be conflatedThe Medici Apartments near downtown Los Angeles is one of several Palmer buildings where a leasing agents said Section 8 applicants were welcome.Geoffrey Palmer, a competitive polo player and a major campaign donor to President Donald Trump, owns G.H. Palmer Associates, based in Beverly Hills. Palmer has built a reputation for hostility toward government housing programs. Nevertheless, his company appeared more welcoming than any other to Section 8 tenants, based on Capital & Main’s test results. Leasing agents at all seven Palmer properties testers contacted said they accept Section 8 vouchers. They also showed familiarity with the program, and easily answered their questions about minimum income and credit requirements. Still, at one complex, the, a leasing agent said Section 8 applicants could not provide pay stubs in lieu of passing a credit check. In a September 2024 phone call, according to a Capital & Main tester’s notes:Neither Palmer nor members of the company’s executive team responded to Capital & Main’s written questions or a request to discuss the company’s Section 8 policies.Published December 16, 2025 11:00 AM A firefighter battles flames from the Palisades Fire in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on Jan. 7, 2025.Echoing state and local officials, a new analysis agrees: hydrant failures in the Palisades fire were ‘the rule rather than the exception.’, the researchers used media reports to confirm that when fires burn urban areas, hydrant flows often sputter out — the result of lost pressure as burnt homes hemorrhage water and too many hoses simultaneously draw on a limited supply.into water supply during the Palisades Fire. “Even though there was plenty of water available in the system,” state investigators wrote, “it was not possible to pump enough water to the fire area all at once to meet the flow rate demand created by the leaking water from already destroyed structures and high water use from hydrants.”As firefighters battled catastrophic fires in Los Angeles last January, one question reverberated across the country: Where was the water?, referencing Gov. Gavin Newsom, as the fires raged across L.A. “On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, not firefighting planes. A true disaster!”, director of the UCLA Water Resources Group, set out to uncover whether the intense focus on water supply meant that dry hydrants had uniquely hampered the Palisades firefight, or whether this was a common occurrence., the researchers used media reports to confirm that when fires burn urban areas, hydrant flows often sputter out — the result of lost pressure as burnt homes hemorrhage water and too many hoses simultaneously draw on a limited supply. “Fire hydrant performance in the Palisades seems to represent the rule rather than the exception,” the report says. “The only apparent, factual difference between the Palisades Fire and its comparators is that hydrant performance did not make the headlines of news stories covering the other fires.”“Even though there was plenty of water available in the system,” state investigators wrote, “it was not possible to pump enough water to the fire area all at once to meet the flow rate demand created by the leaking water from already destroyed structures and high water use from hydrants.” Even if the much-implicated empty Santa Ynez reservoir had been full, “the hydrants could not have maintained pressure,” the state report said. Firefighters work to put out a fire in the rubble of a home that burned down on Pacific Coast Highway near Malibu, as a result of the Palisades Fire. Jan. 9, 2025.raced to fact-check claims that water management resulting in dry hydrants was uniquely responsible for the devastation. The repeated refrain: urban water systems aren’t built to put out wildfires. But the spark had caught. And as residents reeled from the devastating losses of entire communities and grasped for explanations, a sense of betrayal — that water and their hydrants had failed to save Los Angeles from the flames — set in.Another survey by Probolsky Research reported that more than a quarter of 1,000 likely primary election voters in California were surprised to hear — or flat out didn’t believe — that fire hydrants are not designed to fight major wildfires. “Sometimes all you need is one idea to catch on a little bit and start spreading. And then once it starts to go viral, it gets accepted by lots of people,” saidDuring disasters, she said, “people are hunting for that understanding and sense of control.”In fire after fire, the researchers found reports of lost water pressure. Paul Lowenthal, division chief fire marshal with the Santa Rosa Fire Department, remembers when the Tubbs Fire roared through Santa Rosa in 2017, destroying “When we had the loss of pressure in Fountaingrove, there was this immediate sense of, ‘The firefighters didn't have the water that they needed to fight the fire,’” he said. “And I think we saw some of the same concerns bubble up out of Los Angeles.” But Lowenthal said the true picture was much more complicated: In the hills, as the fire was pushing into the city, firefighters were too busy getting people out to even use the hydrants. “It was all just purely saving lives,” he said. By the time the winds had died down on the valley floor enough to fight back the flames, he said, the city’s water system had restored enough pressure to hydrants., district manager of Paradise Irrigation District, said that some hydrants in the town of Paradise lost pressure during the 2018 Camp Fire, which remains the When a wildfire destroys a town, like the fires in Paradise or the Palisades, Phillips said, each burned home bleeds water out of the system — sapping its pressure. “Every one of those homes that gets burned is an open sore to the outside,” Phillips said. “Your system basically is dying as every one of those homes are being destroyed.” William Sapeta, fire chief of the Lake County Fire Protection District, agreed. “The Eaton and the Palisades fires really drew a lot of attention to the capabilities of water for fire suppression,” he said. “Yet we experienced in the, Bennett’s bill sets new requirements for certain water suppliers in fire-prone parts of Ventura County to harden their systems and obtain enough backup power or alternate water supplies to keep “You ought to be able to have a system that can at least help you put out the small little ember, the bush that catches on fire — so that you can get it before the house catches on fire,” the Democrat from Oxnard said. Having enough to do that, he added, should be the minimum requirement. But some water suppliers fear they won’t be able to withstand the financial costs of meeting the law’s requirements, and worry about the potential liability if they can’t. “You have smaller water systems that don't even have the capacity or funding to deal with all those things,” said, former Los Angeles County Fire Department chief and now vice president of emergency preparedness, safety & security for California Water Service, an investor-owned water utility.“This feels like the new frontier we're discussing around wildfire, but just part and parcel of California’s really complex, ongoing wildfire issues,” Kearns said. Climate change-fueled, extreme conditions further limit what water and water systems are capable of in response to fire — like in Santa Rosa, where Lowenthal said firefighters were too focused on saving lives to tap the hydrants in the hills. “You might have the best water system in the world, and you still might not have conditions that are safe for fire personnel to go into,” Kearns said. The new UCLA policy brief doesn’t interrogate why the hydrants became such a flashpoint in the Palisades Fire, but Pierce has some hypotheses. Preliminary data for a forthcoming study suggests it’s political — that support for Trump drives the belief that water management was to blame for the fires. “Local influencers, political voices — all the way up to the president and a lot of people in between — quickly seized on the fact that some of the fire hydrants in the Palisades Fire didn’t have water,” Pierce said. That gained a snowball effect. “The same thing kept getting repeated, and then people just thought it was true.” Fazio, the psychology professor at Vanderbilt not involved in the policy brief, said the urge to cling to a culprit may even go deeper: people often seek out simple answers in moments of crisis. Reiner, a longtime Democratic activist, donor and fundraiser, played a critical role in the legalization of same-sex marriage in California, and he was a driving force behind California’s signature early-childhood development program, Reiner, 78, was found stabbed to death along with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, inside their Brentwood home Sunday. Police investigators announced Monday that their son, Nick Reiner, 32, had been arrested and was being held on suspicion of their murder. Rob and Nick Reiner once worked together on“I can’t believe it,” former California Gov. Gray Davis told CalMatters Monday in a phone interview. “I mean, Rob and Michele have been part of Sharon and I's life for over 30 years.” Sharon Davis is the former governor’s wife. Davis said he’ll never forget when Rob Reiner in 1991 invited him — then California’s elected controller — to hang out on the set of Reiner’s “A Few Good Men.” Davis got to watch for hours as actors including Tom Cruise, Kevin Bacon, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson did their scenes.But a few years later, the two became something akin to coworkers. Davis was elected governor the same night in 1998 that Reiner’s Proposition 10 ballot initiative passed. The initiative created a new tax on tobacco that funded the programs for children younger than 5 that are now in every California county. Davis said the two were at the same Election Night party in 1998 as the results came in. Davis said he and his administration later worked with Reiner to ensure the First 5 program got implemented. Davis appointed Reiner to chair the program’s California Children and Families Commission, a position he held until 2006.allegations he was using taxpayer funds to promote his Proposition 82, an unsuccessful ballot initiative that sought to tax the wealthy to fund preschool for all children. “Rob was not just a talker. He was a doer,” Davis said. “A lot of other people would give a nice speech, they would come to a press conference, and then they thought their job was over, and certainly we appreciate that. I mean, they have other things to do, but the difference was Rob called you up and said, ‘What can I do next?’ ” Mike Roos, a former California legislator, political strategist and lobbyist, worked closely with Reiner on the Prop. 10 campaign. He said they got to know each other and it was clear to Roos that Reiner loved his children dearly. “This has been just one of the most horrible things I could ever imagine, knowing him and knowing his love and the investment that he made in every one of those kids in that family,” Roos said, “but particularly how he cared and talked so thoughtfully about the struggles that Nick had in that period of time when I knew him.”Kris Perry, the former executive director of First 5 and a lead plaintiff in the case that got Prop. 8 overturned, said Rob and Michele Reiner also stood by her and her wife, Sandy Stier, as they and the other plaintiffs defended their right to marry in the landmark case. “They continued over a five-year period to champion the cause by speaking out themselves, bringing more support to the case, doing media interviews, and, more importantly, being kind and generous … year after year after year,” Perry said. “They cared about us as people throughout that entire process. They left this indelible impression on all of us of what it means to be a real leader, to not only make something possible, but to stand beside people during the fight.” She said Reiner wasn’t just a figurehead at First 5, either. He attended Children and Families Commission meetings every month and was deeply involved in discussions of “how to invest, where to get results, how to hold people accountable,” she said. Gov. Gavin Newsom over the weekend said Reiner’s impressive body of professional work, which included “When Harry Met Sally,” “Stand By Me” and “The Princess Bride,” taught “generations how to see goodness and righteousness in others — and us to dream bigger.” “That empathy extended well beyond his films,” Newsom said in a statement. “He made California a better place through his good works. Rob will be remembered for his remarkable filmography and for his extraordinary contribution to humanity.” The Reiners donated about $2.7 million to help Democrats over their lifetime, The New York Times reported, including $100,000 to support then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 re-election. He later joined actor George Clooney in urging Biden to drop out, saying “We need someone younger to fight back.” Not everyone had nice things to say about Reiner. President Donald Trump, whom Reiner frequently criticized, called Reiner a “tortured and struggling but once very talented movie director and comedy star” in a social media post. He claimed Reiner’s death was linked to a “mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME.” Democratic U.S Rep. Laura Friedman, who represents the Hollywood area, said in an interview she “really felt sick over seeing Donald Trump’s post about this terrible murder.” Friedman, a former film and television producer, said Reiner’s art reflected his politics. She said he advocated for being decent to each other and against bigotry — unlike Trump who she said has a “unique ability to divide Americans and make people angry.” Reiner, she said, often used humor to “bring us together … and do it in a way that was somehow gentle and loving at the same time.”
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