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MONDAY, MAY 08-MAY 14, 2023
NO. 119
VOLUME 11,
L.A. Care, Health Net spending $114M to help county’s homeless crisis
Clarence Thomas had a child in private school. Harlan Crow paid the tuition.
By City News Service
By Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. Series: Friends of the Court larence Thomas’ Beneficial Friendship With a GOP Megadonor In 2008, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas decided to send his teenage grandnephew to Hidden Lake Academy, a private boarding school in the foothills of northern Georgia. The boy, Mark Martin, was far from home. For the previous decade, he had lived with the justice and his wife in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Thomas had taken legal custody of Martin when he was 6 years old and had recently told an interviewer he was “raising him as a son.” Tuition at the boarding school ran more than $6,000 a month. But Thomas did not cover the bill. A bank statement for the school from July 2009, buried in unrelated court filings, shows the source of Martin’s tuition payment for that month: the company of billionaire real estate magnate Harlan Crow. The payments extended beyond that month, according to Christopher Grimwood, a former administrator at the school. Crow paid Martin’s tuition the entire time he was a student there, which was about a year, Grimwood told ProPublica. “Harlan picked up the tab,” said Grimwood, who got to know Crow and the Thomases and had access to school financial infor-
C Photo courtesy of Los Angeles County Homeless Initiative
L
.A. Care Health Plan and Health Net Wednesday announced an investment of approximately $114 million over five years to help address the homelessness crisis by securing more housing units in the private rental market. The money will bolster the county’s efforts to secure leases on as many as 1,900 housing units and pay for vacancy coverage, damage repair, trash services, greenspace, maintenance and pest control. It will also help the county identify people experiencing homelessness who require assistance with daily living, to move into permanent housing. Each year, the county receives permanent and timelimited housing vouchers through a combination of local, state and federal funding. A recent study by Abt Associates in partnership with the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation found that only 65% of people issued a voucher are able to lease a unit, a process that took an average of 122 days, which was the report said was due to L.A.’s “tight” rental market and alleged landlord discrimination against voucher holders, many of whom are people of color. “When people experiencing homelessness try to use their rental vouchers in the private housing market, they often contend with unaffordable rent, tough competition, and historic and systemic housing discrimination,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said. “We’ve entered into this collaboration with L.A. Care and Health Net during a moment of urgency, but it will expand our housing portfolio over the long term and maximize the use of federal and local rental vouchers to bring people indoors.” The investment will enable the county to create assessment teams that will visit shelters and other interim housing sites to identify people with ADL needs, as well as connecting them with caregiver help in interim or permanent housing. “Housing is critical for good health. This collaboration will help address housing inequities, which have resulted See Homeless crisis Page 2
Photo courtesy of Justice Clarence Thomas. | Photo courtesy of Stetson University (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
mation through his work as an administrator. Before and after his time at Hidden Lake, Martin attended a second boarding school, Randolph-Macon Academy in Virginia. “Harlan said he was paying for the tuition at RandolphMacon Academy as well,” Grimwood said, recalling a conversation he had with
Crow during a visit to the billionaire’s Adirondacks estate. ProPublica interviewed Martin, his former classmates and former staff at both schools. The exact total Crow paid for Martin’s education over the years remains unclear. If he paid for all four years at the two schools, the price tag could have exceeded $150,000,
according to public records of tuition rates at the schools. Thomas did not report the tuition payments from Crow on his annual financial disclosures. Several years earlier, Thomas disclosed a gift of $5,000 for Martin’s education See Clarence Thomas Pg 32