The mayor’s office claimed my investigation was wrong. Here’s how I overcame doubt and made sure I was right.

After six months of reporting on how sanitation sweeps impacted the health of unhoused residents living in Los Angeles, I finally reached the point in my reporting when it was time to contact the person I was investigating.

“No surprises” is one of the guiding principles that the best investigative journalists live by. The phrase is a reminder that nothing in your story should come as a surprise to the person, business or government agency that you’re investigating.

Following this practice ensures that you get your facts straight before you publish your investigation, not after.

In my case, my reporting revealed that very few people had been moved into temporary shelter through the Cleaning and Rapid Engagement (CARE) program — a sanitation program that was intended to offer unhoused people services and housing — and almost nobody had been moved into permanent supportive housing.

The data that I obtained had never been reported and it contradicted the narrative pushed by city officials and elected representatives who regularly claimed that sanitation cleanings helped move people living on the streets indoors, rather than displace people.

In early September of 2022, I composed an email with my key findings and sent it to a spokesperson for former Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

“Hey Lexis, happy to help get you a comment here,” the spokesperson responded. “This is all helpful context — maybe we can discuss a little further tomorrow morning?” 

A day or two later during a phone call though, the spokesperson took a different tone.

According to the spokesperson, I had misunderstood the data.

Instead of showing that very few people had moved into temporary or permanent housing, the spokesperson argued that the data showed that very few people had left their housing.

In other words, according to this spokesperson, the data showed that the program I was investigating was highly successful and not a failure.

My heart dropped.

Had I just spent six months tirelessly working on one of the biggest investigations of my career, just to discover I was wrong?

Although the spokesperson provided no evidence to support their claims, their insinuation that I misunderstood the data was enough to make me question my reporting and myself deeply.

I was in a fragile state, having spent the past two years reporting on the pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests non-stop.

After speaking with the spokesperson for the mayor, I was forced to slam the brakes on publishing my story.

The timing of all this was not ideal.

Mayor Garcetti, the main target of my reporting, was scheduled to leave office in a few months and was in the midst of a mostly positive farewell tour to cement his legacy. And by then I had already pushed my deadline back by several months.

Regaining my confidence and evaluating the mayor’s office’s claims took time.

But after several weeks and a handful of emails to three city departments, eventually I confirmed that my interpretation of the data was correct.

Then the mayor’s office raised another point that challenged my analysis: Due to the pandemic, for about a year and half the program that I investigated was “offline.”

Unlike their first concern, this was actually a legitimate caveat to consider.

The CARE program started in late 2019, just a few months before the pandemic hit, which led the city to put the outreach portion of the CARE+ program on hold.

The information was important to include in the story but it didn’t invalidate my analysis. Even though the program was suspended for a period of time, the data still showed that tens of thousands of people had been enrolled in the CARE program (including during the time period when the program was supposedly offline) with the hopes of moving off the streets, and very few of them successfully moved indoors.

To bolster my analysis though, I went back to the agency that I got the data from and filed another request for more up-to-date data.

I also interviewed unhoused residents and service providers that told me there was a brief period of time when street sweeps slowed down, but when they resumed during a historic heatwave they were devastating.

The new data that I obtained was almost identical to the previous data, which showed that only around 10% of people that were engaged by outreach workers through the CARE program moved into interim housing. 

The new numbers changed my analysis ever so slightly, but overall my main point stood: The CARE program failed to move significant numbers of people indoors.

During this time period I was reading “News Junkie” by Jason Leopold, the veteran investigative reporter known for being one of the reporters to break the Enron story and his prolific FOIA requests. In the book, Leopold chronicles his intense behind-the-scenes battles with spokespeople and flaks of people in power. 

Reading about how Leopold learned to both admit when he was wrong or made a mistake but also fiercely stood up for his reporting when he was right, at a time when I was struggling to find confidence as a reporter, gave me a renewed sense of conviction.

In early November I wrote the mayor’s spokesperson a very direct email explaining that I checked with the appropriate agencies and their interpretation of the data was wrong. “This is the second time you've made false or misleading statements to discredit my reporting. If you're interested in commenting on the story, please send me a statement ASAP. We'll likely run it on Monday.”

I may have gone a little far by suggesting they were lying, but it was time to put my foot down.

After a bit more back and forth about the program being offline for part of the pandemic, we moved on. 

A few days later I heard back: “Hey Lexis, just gave [the 2022 data] a look,” the spokesperson said in an email. “Looks like the placements are around 10%. Keep me posted on your timing here and I can get you a comment before you post.”

Two months after I initially reached out for comment with my findings, the mayor’s office issued an on-the-record statement to me. 

“This is the first year that CARE+ outreach efforts have lasted longer than six months, and as a result, we’re seeing that our services-led approach is continuing to produce better results: in just seven months, we housed over a thousand Angelenos through this program alone. The outreach attached to CARE+ is just one piece of our efforts to connect people experiencing homelessness with housing – and we’ll continue to take every opportunity we can to offer our unhoused neighbors resources and housing in a way that is compassionate and responsive to the urgent need in our communities,” said Jose Ramirez, deputy mayor for city homelessness initiatives.

Finding out that your hypothesis is wrong at the end of a big project is an investigative reporter's worst nightmare. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case here.

Standing up for myself and going back and reconfirming all of my reporting took courage — and more hard work. I’ve never been more challenged by a story in my career. But ultimately the experience helped ensure my Impact Fund project for the Center was bulletproof and accurate.

The experience taught me that it’s important to adhere to the “no surprises” rule and reach out to the person or agency you’re investigating before you publish. But you also have to know when to stick up for your reporting.

On Dec. 1, 2022, I published my investigation on sanitation sweeps, about a week before Garcetti left office. The city never challenged my reporting or asked for any corrections.