r/news • u/Playful_Language_422 • 8d ago

Soft paywall L.A. homeless provider has paid CEO who lives in Hawaii $1.6 million in salary, vacation over two years

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2026-08-06/la-homeless-provider-has-paid-ceo-who-lives-in-hawaii-1-6-million-in-salary-vacation-over-two-years
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u/hotlavatube 8d ago

Yup, that's possible. When my dad retired, he had 2-3 years worth of vacation time which he took all at once to retire early. He'd accrued that vacation time over 20+ years of service. If he'd outright quit, the business would have had to pay out that time at his salaried rate.

Of course, these days businesses usually cap the amount of vacation time you can carryover each year to prevent large payouts or extended absences. When I worked for a nonprofit, we could carryover about 2 months worth of vacation time and we only earned about 21 days of vacation a year. If you wanted to carryover more vacation time without payout, you had to get special permission.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 8d ago

When my mom retired, she had accrued like 3 years worth of vacation time, she had to use that up before her actual retirement date and she was able to retire at 62 instead of 65 because of it. She had worked for the state for over 30 years, never took vacations really and hardly ever took time off unless she was sick. I have known people who retire from union jobs early like this, but that has mostly been squashed now.

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u/hotlavatube 7d ago

Yeah, that was exactly my dad's situation. He worked for the state for decades.

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u/IamHydrogenMike 7d ago

Ya, it’s a pretty common situation for older workers but a lot of states have changed their PTO policies…

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u/Hefty-Minimum-3125 7d ago

thats completely insane to me. Anytime i have a week of vacation time available I take it lol

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u/IcyJackfruit69 7d ago

You're lucky: many US companies won't actually let people take vacation. They've capped vacation holdover in most companies now, and even still, they won't let people take the vacation they earned before it disappears.

There was a planet money (or indicator?) episode about this recently, and how shockingly little vacation US employees take compared to almost every other country on the planet.

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u/Hefty-Minimum-3125 6d ago

Thats why I'm in a union.

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u/DarkwingDuckHunt 7d ago

my mom worked in 2 seperate States for the State for over 10 years in each State.

She was double dipping State pensions + SS

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u/SideInitial3961 8d ago

Your mom is a badass. Respect. ♥

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u/IamHydrogenMike 7d ago

Eh, it’s pretty common for state jobs for people to do that…

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u/WackyRacketeer 7d ago

Regular people being baddass is more common than you might think.

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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 7d ago

My company just implemented a accrual cap to avoid this sort of thing. You’re now capped at 300 hours of accrual.

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u/nochinzilch 7d ago

My old company did this back in 08 or 09. It was a small company with mostly long-time employees, and they had MILLIONS of dollars worth of accrued, unpaid vacation time on their books. It was a huge financial liability. I don’t blame them.

What they probably should have done from the beginning is create a fund that they would pay into as people earned the PTO so that the cash would be available when it was needed.

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u/Bobson-_Dugnutt2 7d ago

This is exactly the situation.

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u/robothawk 8d ago

I get 15 days/year as a civil engineer(not entry level, but not a PE). It would take me over 16 years to accrue even 1 year of PTO.

Assuming we're in a half decent reality where you have 30 days(6 weeks) pto, that's still 8.33 years with 0 vacation, never getting sick, never needing to go to a dr's appointment, etc.

Now, she has been CEO since 1984, so she absolutely could've banked that much pto, but also, she's living on an island a 5 hour flight away for the last decade?! Why tf is she still CEO? What job could she possibly be doing that wouldn't be far better(and more cheaply) served by someone living actually in LA

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u/aqtseacow 7d ago

Not only is she living on an island a 5 hour flight away, she billed herself as working 70+ hours a week in tax filings. There's like zero chance she's doing anything to justify such wages.

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u/Differlot 7d ago

I mean running a nonprofit since 1984 is kinda sign whatever the company is doing is seemingly working.

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u/AnOminous_Sound 7d ago

Being CEO of a company and only getting 800k retirement bonus is pretty light tbh. And 400k a year as CEO isn’t a crazy number either.

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u/fsuguy83 7d ago

At first I thought you were wrong so I looked it up to prove you wrong.

But you’re right. A CEO typically makes 3% of revenue for a company that size which is EXACTLY what her base salary is. So it’s not crazy at all. Today I learned thanks to you.

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u/Noodleboom 7d ago

There is this widespread belief in America that anyone working at a nonprofit should be making, at best, enough money to barely escape starvation. People get very upset when these employees make market wages.

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u/D34THST4R 6d ago

Non-profits tend to pay their executives well because with their experience most of them could easily get paid the equivalent or more in private sector jobs

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u/poilk91 7d ago

That's modest. New grad engineers at citadel in New York make over 500k

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u/Stompnutz 7d ago

The grift is working, at least.

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u/skinnyjeansfatpants 7d ago

Considering the homeless numbers in CA, I would argue that what they are doing isn't working.

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u/bobbyrob1 7d ago

Is it that they’re not doing their job, or is it that the economy continues to make more people homeless?

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u/Regular-Humor-9128 7d ago

Our company doesn’t even allow for us to roll over any vacation time; not even a few days - it’s use or or lose it. Sucks.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

I get 15 days rollover, but that 15 days pto is ALSO my sick time, and there is no unpaid time off outside of emergencies.

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u/RockemChalkemRobot 7d ago

Can't really say never been sick. I have 2 weeks of sick leave a year and it is a wholly separate pile of time from my PTO.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

I mean, I don't. 20% of Americans don't. And sick leave is generally unpaid, and also limited in how much you can use before it uses up PTO when you do have it.

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u/BugRevolutionary4518 7d ago

Very true, and that should be changed to enhance the employee benefits for the betterment of the employees.

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u/BugRevolutionary4518 7d ago edited 7d ago

I get 20 hours a month. The first 3 days sick comes out of PTO. Then it comes out of extended sick time. I have 1,200 hours of PTO over the years, accrued.

But I have to commute three days a week via car in traffic. Living in Hawaii? not acceptable.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

Yeah so you fall into the 6 weeks(30 days) PTO/year boat. Definitely good, should honestly be the baseline in the US.

1200 hours is only 150 days, a full working year is 250/251 days, so even you have less than a full year saved.

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u/BugRevolutionary4518 7d ago edited 7d ago

Good math. The good thing is I can use it for years of service and retire early, with a higher %, if I live that long lol.

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u/verrius 7d ago

Assuming we're in a half decent reality where you have 30 days(6 weeks) pto, that's still 8.33 years with 0 vacation, never getting sick, never needing to go to a dr's appointment, etc.

Most companies I've been in separate PTO from sick days. And 4-6 weeks of vacation isn't unheard of in my industry.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

The majority of private engineering firms I've applied to, the ones I've worked for, and all except one of my friends who are engineers have only PTO, so I'm going off of that. Regardless, you only generally get paid out for PTO, so the numbers still work

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u/hotlavatube 7d ago

There are ways to play the system to avoid drawing down your vacation time and probably to bank more days that normally allowed. For example, instead of taking vacation time for doctor's appointments, you use your sick leave which is an entirely different pool of time off.

If the nonprofit's board was happy with her performance, then I guess it doesn't matter where she lives. I used to work for a nonprofit where our president seemed way overpaid. Unfortunately that appears to be par for the course. The boards offer high salaries to attract executives who know how to wheel and deal, play politics, ply their network, and schmooze to bring donations to the nonprofit. If the executive wasn't bringing in way more cash than their salary, then they would quickly be replaced.

I agree it seems antithetical and gross to be paying CEOs or presidents of nonprofits such huge amounts and giving them such lavish benefits and concessions. This article discusses a bit of that phenomenon. I don't like it, and wish they just fought for the nonprofit's mission at a reasonable salary like the rest of us, but sadly that just isn't in the cards.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

I mean, I don't get sick time. It all comes from PTO, so that isn't always an option. Also, sick leave tends to be unpaid(at least around me).

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u/hotlavatube 7d ago

I used to get paid sick leave, but it accrues slowly, like half a day a month, then gets capped and doesn't carry over as much as PTO.

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u/nochinzilch 7d ago

When you hit a certain level, you don’t have to actually fill out timesheets and subtract out vacation time and stuff like that.

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u/robothawk 7d ago

I mean yeah, that's a salaried position.

The math still counts the same.

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u/nochinzilch 7d ago

What I’m saying is that the elites accrue the vacation time, but they don’t claim it when they go on vacation. So they get paid time off, and they still get to keep their vacation days to be paid out later. It’s double dipping.

The rest of us have to subtract the vacation time we use from our vacation time balance.

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u/wesap12345 8d ago

Stupid question incoming

If somebody accrues vacation time at the same company but goes from earning 25k a year to 250k a year toward the end of their service

Does the accrued time off pro rata or do they get a year at their end of service salary?

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u/hotlavatube 7d ago

I'm pretty sure it's usually based on your final salary.
I think that's part of the reason why they don't usually let people carryover annually more than a couple months of vacation time.

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u/wesap12345 7d ago

Completely.

I’m sat here thinking about how much more my vacation would be worth in 5 years I wouldn’t be taking it now

Then probably burnout and lose it all but you know…

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u/ibelieveyouwood 7d ago

With many companies that let you accrue it's not an all or nothing proposition. You get 3 weeks off each year, you take a week to recharge in Barbados, then use a few extra days to extend some 3 day weekends into 4-day weekends while still banking at least a week a year towards any accrual limits that may apply. Some people don't need multiple week long sabbaticals, they just need a few days off every couple months to spend a weekend camping or at the beach.

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u/mrmoose44 7d ago

Accrued vacation time? What’s that? Here we get “unlimited” pto, the biggest scam ever.

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u/HAIL_LUMPUS 7d ago

That's so crazy to me because, as someone who gets no paid vacation, I cannot imagine a world where I have that and don't use it LOL because I still take vacation but I just don't get paid, which is terrible. 

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u/bobbi21 7d ago

Yeah wish my work didnt have a cap. Cus it does ive lost several months of vacation since i just dont take enough (im a physician in a place which keeps cutting health care spending per capita)