Court Clears Path to Trial for Elderly Homeowner Defrauded by LA County’s PACE Program
After Seven Years of Fighting, Alma Foster’s Case Against Los Angeles County Will Finally Be Heard by a Jury
In a decisive victory for homeowner Alma Foster, an 80-year-old Los Angeles County resident who spent more than seven years fighting to free herself from the fraudulent debt foisted on her through Los Angeles County’s Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) loan program, the Los Angeles Superior Court on June 4 denied the County’s latest attempt to avoid accountability for its role in collecting tens of thousands of dollars from Alma Foster based on a forged PACE loan agreement. The forged loan agreement left Ms. Foster with nearly $85,000 in debt she never consented to, and a lien that placed her at risk of foreclosure and the loss of her home.
The court’s ruling clears the way for Ms. Foster’s case, originally filed in 2019, to proceed to trial.
Following 1.5 hours of oral argument, the Court adopted its tentative ruling in full, rejecting every argument the County advanced in its January 2026 summary adjudication motion purporting to
be immune from all of Ms. Foster’s claims. The ruling clears the way for Ms. Foster to have the County’s misconduct heard by a jury of her peers.
“For years, Los Angeles County has tried to avoid responsibility for its role in enforcing a fraudulent debt that nearly cost Ms. Foster her home,” said Andrés Rapoport, Director of Litigation at Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County (NLSLA). “An 80-year-old homeowner should not have been forced to spend years fighting to undo the damage caused by a predatory lending scheme she never agreed to and did nothing to create. The Court’s ruling brings Ms. Foster one step closer to accountability and justice, and we look forward to representing her at trial.”
In 2015, Ms. Foster — who needed a minor repair to her roof — was approached by a County-registered contractor who said he could provide it to her at a ‘subsidized’ rate of $7,500 thanks to the Los Angeles County PACE program. What he did not disclose was that the County’s program would place a lien on her home and that she would have to pay nearly $180,000 through her property taxes over the life of the lien, or nearly $9,000 more than her usual property tax bill per year. The County contractor forged her signature on the contract, got paid more than $80,000 by LA County itself, and left Ms. Foster in danger of losing her home to foreclosure. Ms. Foster pleaded with the County to void the forged contract. The County refused.
Ms. Foster, with assistance from NLSLA and the UC Irvine Consumer Law Clinic, filed suit in 2019, alleging that Los Angeles County established and administered a PACE program that lacked meaningful consumer protections, leaving vulnerable homeowners exposed to exploitation.
Although the County was able to get an initial ruling from the trial court that they were immune from suit, that ruling was overturned decisively by the California Court of Appeals, which reinstated three of Ms. Foster’s claims and sent her case back to proceed to trial. Critically, the Court of Appeal also conclusively determined that the contract that the County has continued to try to enforce against Ms. Foster was forged.
Despite that appellate finding, the County filed a new summary adjudication motion in January 2026, again arguing it was immune from liability under different legal theories. The Court’s June 4 ruling denies that motion in its entirety.
As a result of this ruling, Ms. Foster’s case against Los Angeles County will proceed to trial, where a jury will consider the County’s liability for the years of financial harm and threat of foreclosure she has endured after it collected tens of thousands of dollars from Ms. Foster based on a forged PACE contract.
