The City of Los Angeles is in deep trouble, and all the finger-pointing in the world won’t solve it, much less presentations and proclamations. Los Angeles City Hall is a world away from Agoura Hills where developer Izek Shomof was recently cited on October 21, for violating Los Angeles County building codes in converting outbuildings for residential occupancy. According to electronic records provided by Shomof’s brother-in-law whistleblower Patrick Wizmann, this wasn’t even the first time that one of most powerful figures in LA had been found to be in violation of County building rules. After first being identified on February 5, 2024, LA County Public Works issued an additional “notice of violation” writing that they are:

“actively working with the property owner to bring the specific structures with unpermitted occupancy use conversion, back into compliance.”

After all, compliance is a process, and it can be costly to resolve issues.

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Shomof, one of Los Angeles’s most powerful developers, wrote a self-promoting memoir Dreams Don’t Die last year. According to one source, it slightly exaggerates his role in founding the LA Alliance for Human Rights. The 501(c)(3) non-profit’s primary service is litigation, having “successfully” forced the City and County into settlement to ostensibly meet 60% of the housing needs of the unhoused in each City Council District. Now though, even Alliance seems confused about what to do next, as they still have the City and County engaged in regular hearings, and housing is still out-of-reach to so many; with many more falling out of housing each month. The connection between money, power, housing, and elections has never been more clear in Los Angeles as we close in on November 5. We all get to make choices.

Both Izek Shomof and former business partner billionaire Naty Saidoff have recently given downtown Councilman Kevin de León’s re-election campaign $900 each, and in Saidoff’s case his spouse as well. Saidoff and Shomof engaged in litigation over three downtown properties in 2012, with Shomof prevailing and later writing about the dispute in his book. Dreams Don’t Die completely omits former Councilmember José Huizar, who pioneered the so-called “adaptive reuse” model of re-development, which allowed for the conversion of office space and old hotels in the city’s historic core into residential units. Adaptive reuse created hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions in wealth for owners of historic buildings practically overnight. Shomof became the so-called “King of Spring Street”, a bold claim for someone who is not a politician, let alone mayor, considering City Hall itself is at 200 North Spring Street in Downtown LA.

LA Alliance’s Murky Origins

The LA Alliance didn’t just sprout up overnight. In fact, the first so-called meeting of the LA Alliance was held on May 13, 2019 in Palm Court, the beaux-arts style ballroom of a Shomof adaptive reuse property. The Alexandria, located at 210 West 5th Street off Spring Street, is one of the biggest rent-controlled residential hotels in the City after The Cecil Hotel. Formerly Hotel Alexandria, it was first built in 1906 for $2M, constructing an addition that included Palm Court in 1911, according to LA Conservancy. Shomof’s conversion into rental units occurred in 2005, 99 years after its original development by the Bilicke-Rowan Fireproof Building Company. Today it is directly across the street from The Last Bookstore, where Dreams Don’t Die was released.

Then-Mayor Eric Garcetti was slow to warm up to LA Alliance, but the unhoused people of downtown were not completely without representation, even if they were not formally invited by Alliance, which insisted at the time that it included unhoused community members. If Skid Row had a mayor, it would have certainly been the late General Jeff Page, legendary Skid Row activist, who was, according to one source, all but locked out of the initial Alliance hearing, only to meet with presiding Judge David O. Carter outside and become friends after taking a walk together. Perhaps this can be considered the first act of “locking arms” as Mayor Karen Bass has sloganed as part of her signature Inside Safe initiative to get people off the streets.

Corruption runs deep in LA

Multiple LA Alliance settlement agreements haven’t yet resolved homelessness in Los Angeles and are set to expire in June 2027. An “evidentiary hearing” over a planned reduction in shelter-system beds didn’t occur as planned this Friday, October 25, with Judge Carter calling off the affair. The hearing had been insisted upon by the Alliance, frustrating all involved parties including the City and County, who made multiple legal filings to the ever-expanding Alliance docket, which is under the jurisdiction of California’s Central District. While the Alliance itself may not be corrupt, its path has paralleled the exposure of significant corruption in Los Angeles. The City’s longest corruption case to-date began November 7th, 2018 when the FBI raided the Boyle Heights home and Spring Street offices of three-term downtown councilman José Huizar.

Huizar now sits in a Federal prison cell in Lompoc, having been sentenced to 13 years for racketeering. His shoes were filled by State Assemblymember for the 45th district and 50th president pro tempore of the State senate Kevin de León, who now faces a re-election challenge from Ysabel Jurado. Incumbent de León has the political upper-hand, even winning the financial support of Izek Shomof, the Spring Street developer and self-proclaimed “king” who has been one of his biggest critics, chastising de León for withdrawing support for a proposed “Life Rebuilding Center” at the historic Sears, Roebuck & Company Mail Order Building, which both Shomof and Alliance have heavily promoted as a key strategy to addressing Los Angeles’ homelessness emergency. Sometimes, things just converge!

At City Hall on Friday, October 25, Karen Bass could be seen alongside Kevin de León, who once had hopes of running for Lieutenant Governor in 2026, honoring the late Richard Alatorre. Former Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who also represented CD14 prior to Huizar, was present. Villaraigosa is now running for Governor of California again in 2026, in a long-shot bid. It was truly a momentous occasion for politicking with only dignitaries and gadflies present. Unbeknownst to the Council, yet another scandal had been forming right before their eyes as Los Angeles Times journalist Dakota Smith would soon report with the help of colleague David Zahniser. The preceding presentation honoring groups for providing food security had included World Harvest, now the subject of an investigation in regards to Kevin de León for making political donations after receiving $1.91 million in discretionary funding from his officeholder account. The group had even gone as far as to feature his image on their vehicle for weekly food giveaways.

Political ties with developers

Izek Shomof had previously donated to State Assembly members Miguel Santiago and Wendy Carrillo who had both sought to represent CD14 before faltering to Jurado, who has the endorsements of the Los Angeles County Democratic Party as well as the Democratic Socialists of America - Los Angeles (DSA-LA) chapter. Shomof and his family have previously donated to politicians such as former City Council President Nury Martinez, Gil Cedillo, José Huizar, and even Huizar’s ill-fated attempt to install his wife Richelle Huizar as his successor. So as Kevin de Leòn has stated in multiple debates with his challenger Jurado that the solution to Los Angeles’s housing crisis is to go vertical in Downtown Los Angeles, you have to really wonder what he means. Shomof’s book goes as far as quoting Kevin de León making an inflammatory statement about putting the unhoused on 747s to Israel to work on kibbutzes, and yet he also represents himself as the best possible candidate on homelessness, all while attacking County Supervisor Hilda Solis including writing a letter to Judge Carter for failing to address the crisis in his district, which includes Skid Row, the nation’s largest concentration of the unhoused.

Latino politics in Los Angeles have never been more conflicted as Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano documented in his 4-part series, writing in billing the series questioningly as:

“That’s when I asked myself: How did Latino politics in Los Angeles get to this moment?”

In previously interviewing Izek Shomof about the Life Rebuilding Center, he described how he had:

“told Shomof his proposal was too good to be true.”

With Shomof smiling in response, remarking:

“It’s true.”

The Sears building is still empty, and not a word has been said about it in the race for Council District 14 even as its husk shadows over Olympic Boulevard, renamed after the 1932 Summer Olympics. Were the proposed Life Rebuilding Center ever to come to fruition, even at a reduced bed number of 2,500, it would be the largest such facility in the system, and likely more akin to a warehouse or hospital than housing or a comparable shelter.

The project ha...