LA’s highest-paid homeless helper CEO lives luxe in Hawaii away from heinous street conditions — on $1.6M of your cash

A Los Angeles homeless nonprofit CEO earned more than $1.6 million in salary, bonuses and vacation payouts — despite living thousands of miles away in Hawaii.

Carol Adelkoff, from 1736 Family Crisis Center, was the highest paid executive in the industry in the city after earning the whopping figure over the last two years.

She collected $907,923 in 2023 and another $742,181 in 2024, compensation that dwarfed the pay of leaders running much larger homeless service organizations across LA County, the LA Times reports.

The nonprofit, which operates domestic violence shelters, crisis hotlines and homeless programs across LA and Orange counties, brings in about $15 million a year, with roughly 94% of its revenue coming from taxpayer-funded government grants, according to its latest tax filings.

Adelkoff defended the massive payouts, claiming they were largely the result of cashing out decades of unused vacation time rather than a dramatic salary increase.

“The salary didn’t jump like that,” Adelkoff said.

She said her base salary has remained around $405,000 for several years and that roughly $824,000 of the money paid over the two-year span represented accumulated vacation dating back decades.

The next-best-paid employee, the finance director, made $206,000.

“It was simply a matter of reducing accrued vacation liability on the books and paying it out,” Adelkoff said. 

The nonprofit’s attorney Kerry Garvis Wright said the board worked with legal and financial advisers to reduce the growing vacation liability before Adelkoff’s eventual retirement.

Wright said the executive had accumulated the leave because the demands of leading the organization made it difficult for her to take time off over her 40-year tenure. 

Still, nonprofit governance experts questioned both the payout and the oversight behind it.

“The bigger question is, was it appropriate for a person to be able to accrue that much money and suddenly get it paid out?” said Brian Mittendorf, an Ohio State University expert in nonprofit accounting.

Laurie Styron, CEO of nonprofit watchdog CharityWatch, called the payout “highly unusual.” “How was this decision made?” she asked. 

Experts also noted that while California employers cannot force workers to forfeit unused vacation, most nonprofits cap how much paid time off employees can bank.

The Times reported 1736 Family Crisis Center capped vacation accrual for other employees — but not for Adelkoff. The executive has also been living far from the nonprofit’s headquarters.

Adelkoff has listed the Big Island of Hawaii as her primary residence for more than a decade, according to the outlet.

Property records show she owns a 3,700-square-foot, four-bedroom home, and court records include testimony from her daughter that she was raised in Hawaii and that her mother lives there “year-round.” 

Adelkoff declined to confirm where she lives, telling the newspaper that revealing her location could pose a security risk because the nonprofit serves victims fleeing abusive situations. She also did not answer questions about how often she travels to Southern California for work or who pays for those trips. 

Other nonprofit leaders told The Times that while some executive duties can be handled remotely, regularly visiting shelters and meeting with staff, donors and clients is a key part of running community-based organizations.

“I’m sure that that’s an operational challenge,” Mittendorf said. “My big question would be, does it create more of a financial burden on the organization?” 

The nonprofit said Adelkoff works an average of 70 hours a week and that her pay has returned to its historical level now that the vacation payouts have been completed. 

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