L.A. nonprofit rented luxury Santa Monica apartment, BMW for CEO living in Hawaii

For more than four decades, the 1736 Family Crisis Center has offered care for victims of domestic violence, running shelters and crisis hotlines in L.A. and Orange counties on what today is a $15-million budget.

But the primary residence of the nonprofit’s chief executive has been in Hawaii for at least the last 10 years. And for at least part of that time, the organization has paid for a luxury beachside apartment in Santa Monica for her visits to the region, and leased a BMW for her personal use at home on the Big Island, according to nonprofit records reviewed by The Times and a lawyer who fielded employee concerns in 2019.

It’s unclear how long the 1736 FCC paid for the $6,500-a-month apartment or if it continues to do so. Board members for the nonprofit, which runs domestic violence shelters in the L.A. area, approved the arrangement in 2018, according to emails. The nonprofit was paying rent the following year, according to a bank transaction. The center’s attorney, Kerry Garvis Wright, would not provide details about how long the payments lasted.

In a letter to the Times, Wright said the 1736 FCC rented the apartment for its CEO because it was a more predictable expense compared with one-off hotel stays for her visits to L.A.

Wright also said it offered high-level security for an executive concerned about her safety.

In August, The Times reported the unusually large compensation paid to the nonprofit’s chief executive, Carol Adelkoff. According to the organization’s latest tax filings, Adelkoff was paid $1.6 million over two years, roughly half of which came from a payout of unused vacation accrued over four decades.

Actor Jane Sibbett, Carol Adelkoff and Los Angeles Councilmember Jan Perry attend the 1736 Family Crisis Center’s 40th Anniversary Gala in 2013 at the Bel-Air Bay Club in Pacific Palisades. (Barry King / WireImage) Since 1984, Adelkoff has run the 1736 Family Crisis Center. In that time, the nonprofit grew from an organization with a $200,000 annual budget to a multimillion dollar operation, with a significant portion of its work funded by taxpayer money from government contracts, including federal, county and city grants.

Nonprofit service providers, such as the 1736 FCC, have become the government’s go-to response to the homelessness crisis. The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, for example, has doled out billions of dollars since 2021 to local nonprofits trying to house people, including at least $25 million to the 1736 FCC.

This government spending has come under growing scrutiny from federal lawmakers and agencies. Auditors have found lax oversight and mismanagement of funds and LAHSA, a joint powers agency of the city and county, is now fighting to survive an investigation by the Trump administration.

In some instances, federal agencies have mounted criminal cases against recipients of taxpayer money earmarked for homelessness services.

No investigations are known to be pending against the 1736 FCC.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has claimed that some of the national attention is politically motivated and skipped a September U.S. House subcommittee hearing on alleged fraud in homelessness spending. In a letter calling on her to testify at that hearing, a Republican lawmaker noted Adelkoff’s compensation package.

In 2019, three senior employees of the 1736 FCC hired attorney Dorsey Kleger-Heine, saying they were alarmed by the use of nonprofit funds on various benefits for its CEO, who has resided in Hawaii, where the organization has no shelters or clients, for at least a decade. They alleged this spending constituted a misuse of funds.

In a letter, Kleger-Heine laid out these accusations, which she presented to the board in December 2019.

Kleger-Heine reiterated the employees’ concerns a couple of weeks later in a complaint to the charities division of the California attorney general’s office, a copy of which she shared with The Times.

Alex Hernandez, deputy press secretary for the attorney general, said he could not confirm whether the office investigated the complaint against the 1736 FCC because that information was considered confidential. He said the attorney general’s office had no record of charges ever being filed against the nonprofit or its executive.

In response to the allegations presented in 2019, the board president at the time put Adelkoff and the nonprofit’s chief financial officer on leave for several weeks, according to Kleger-Heine. They returned to work later that month, according to emails.

The center’s attorney said there was “no basis” to put Adelkoff on leave.

A Times reporter was unable to speak with the three senior employees who provided information to Kleger-Heine; one has passed away, another said a nondisclosure agreement prevented her from speaking and a third did not respond to messages sent to phone numbers and email addresses listed for her.

Six months after the board heard their concerns, the three employees sued the organization for retaliation and wrongful termination.

According to online court records, two of the three cases were settled and one was withdrawn. In those lawsuits, all three employees said there was never any investigation done into the concerns they raised in 2019.

But Wright, the center’s attorney, refuted this, telling The Times that two investigations were done by independent third parties. She declined to provide details of the investigations but said the CEO was “fully exonerated.”

The Times asked Wright for copies of these investigations and the names of the firms that conducted them. She did not respond to these requests.

According to the 1736 FCC records reviewed by The Times, the nonprofit paid $6,500 a month for an apartment in Santa Monica two blocks from the sand and 11 miles from its office. An online listing for the condo building boasts a menu of luxury amenities, including a gym, rooftop pool and pet spa.

The center leased the one-bedroom, 900-square-foot apartment for Adelkoff to use when she visited L.A.

1. Balconies at the Seychelle Condominiums on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica where the nonprofit 1736 Family Crisis Center paid for an apartment for its CEO Carol Adelkoff. 2. People enjoy the beach about two blocks from the Seychelle Condominiums. 3. The nonprofit paid for the Santa Monica apartment for its CEO despite her living thousands of miles away in Hawaii. (Photographs by Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Board members approved the apartment expense in June 2018, according to emails, and labeled the apartment and associated costs a “business travel expense”; no different than paying for a hotel, they wrote.

These associated costs included weekly cleaning services and internet and TV subscriptions, according to Kleger-Heine’s letter and credit card statements viewed by The Times. In total, expenses for the apartment amounted to about $7,200 a month.

In response to questions from The Times, Wright said the board allowed Adelkoff to choose her own apartment “as an alternative to hotel lodging.” She picked the Santa Monica apartment, Wright said, because it offered 24-hour on-site security personnel, video surveillance and an escort to and from the parking garage.

In an interview in July, Adelkoff said safety concerns — primarily because the work she does makes her a target for abusers — prevented her from confirming to a reporter which state she lives in.

The Times spoke to two CEOs of other organizations that aid people escaping domestic violence in the L.A. area. Both said abusers had threatened staff and, in the case of one organization, abusers had shown up to the office parking lot in pursuit of victims. Both leaders said they’d never heard of an abuser going to a staffer’s home or of someone in their position needing to institute personal security measures.

Yael Fuchs, a lawyer who spent a decade in the charities enforcement division of the New York attorney general’s office, said luxury executive benefits paid for by a nonprofit would likely interest a state or federal oversight body.

“I think any charity regulator would be very concerned about that expense,” she said.

Wright, the center’s attorney, confirmed to The Times that the apartment was considered an expense and not part of the CEO’s compensation, and therefore Adelkoff did not have to pay taxes on it.

In letters to the nonprofit board and the attorney general, Kleger-Heine stated that the nonprofit also paid for the lease on a BMW Adelkoff drove in Hawaii, plus gas, repairs, maintenance and insurance for the vehicle. Before Adelkoff left California, Wright said, the nonprofit paid for a vehicle and related expenses as part of her compensation package. The board agreed to continue that arrangement when she left the state in 2002.

“A vehicle and vehicle-related costs have been a component of the CEO’s compensation package since her employment began, so both when she lived and worked in California and now out of state, where the CEO performs important agency work, including but not limited to raising money for 1736, overseeing program and business operations, and developing/implementing expansions, etc.,” Wright said.

At the time the 1736 FCC paid for these additional benefits, Adelkoff was already earning one of the highest base salaries among nonprofit executives overseeing homelessness programs in the L.A. area.

In 2018, she was paid $405,040, excluding any bonuses or other compensation. By comparison, the CEO of People Assisting the Homeless, or PATH, earned $250,374 that year — despite the fact that the organization recorded revenue nearly six times that of the 1736 FCC.

In recent years, Adelkoff’s compensation package has nearly doubled. Over 2023 and 2024, the nonprofit paid her $824,000 in unused vacation hours, which she was able to collect because the 1736 FCC did not limit how much unused vacation she accrued, according to a lawyer for the organization.

That bumped Adelkoff’s compensation far above that of her peers. The Times looked at the compensation of 16 leaders of other nonprofits in L.A. County that provide similar services and found the median annual compensation for CEOs was $159,737, including base salary, bonuses and other benefits.

Ultimately, the board of directors had to sign off on Adelkoff’s vacation payout, apartment and car. Nonprofit boards, by law, function as oversight bodies.

“Boards are technically the representatives of the people — in this case, California — and their job is to make sure that the organization keeps true to its mission and does what it says and does it legally and in an appropriate way,” said Geoff Green, the CEO of CalNonprofits, an organization that advocates for nonprofits in the state, speaking generally about boards.

Nonprofit experts have raised questions about the length of service of the 1736 FCC’s board members. Five members, including the current president, Ron Troupe, have sat on the board for at least 14 years over the last two decades.

While the state doesn’t require board members to have term limits, nonprofit experts said they consider it best practice. According to a national survey of nonprofits, nearly all boards had terms for their members and just over half of nonprofits surveyed had term limits.

Experts also said it was unusual that one of the nonprofit’s board members was paid. Troupe, who has been on the board in some capacity since at least 2000, was regularly paid $66,000 a year and at least one year he earned $97,500 — despite the nonprofit’s own bylaws, which state that members should not be paid for their work on the board.

The Times asked the center’s attorney if Troupe was compensated for work outside of his board duties, but she did not respond.

The Times emailed a list of questions to the board members at the time. Only one responded. She said that when she didn’t see “adequate progress being made” to address the issues raised by these three employees, she resigned from the board. The former board member did not answer follow-up questions from a Times reporter.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

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Audrey McGlinchy covers income and affordability for the Los Angeles Times. Before coming to The Times, she was a Knight-Bagehot journalism fellow at Columbia University. McGlinchy spent a decade in public radio, reporting on local politics and housing at Austin’s NPR station and in 2021 won a national Edward R. Murrow award for her feature reporting. She is a native of Philadelphia, and once appeared in a Sufjan Stevens music video.

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