(LOS ANGELES TIMES) DOUG SMITH, BENJAMIN ORESKES, MARCH 26, 2023

In 2016, hoarding by the tenants of more than two dozen downtown residential buildings had become so pervasive that employees felt it posed a health and safety hazard.

The Skid Row Housing Trust, a nonprofit that owned the buildings, hired a specialist — clinical psychologist Danielle Schlichter. Her job was to set up a training program for graduate students who would help tenants overcome the obsessions that set them up for eviction.

But soon, the trust began falling behind on its payments to Schlichter and eventually stopped them, according to emails attached in a lawsuit. She was forced to stop working even as the problems at the buildings persisted, the emails said.

Schlichter’s lawsuit was one of many filed by tenants and creditors, alleging uninhabitable living conditions seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid bills. They marked the early signs of management and financial disarray, which festered for years before culminating in the meltdown of an institution that had long stood as a model for housing homeless people.

Read More: Los Angeles Times