She Fought the AIDS Crisis. He Helped Changed State Law. West Hollywood Just Honored Them Both

West Hollywood was the first city in Los Angeles County to create an aging in place plan. On Wednesday, the City honored two community members whose decades of advocacy have helped make that promise real, naming Lynn LeMay and Larry Block as recipients of its 21st Annual Older Adults Service Awards. The ceremony was held during a special televised meeting of the Older Adults Advisory Board at Council Chambers, 625 N. San Vicente Boulevard.

Mayor John Heilman attended the ceremony, as did Councilmember John Erickson. “We couldn’t do our work without you, and truly, it means the world,” Erickson said.

Councilmember Lauren Meister was also there in support. “Now that I’m an older adult, I even appreciate it that much more,” Meister said, “and understand the issues more of the things, the challenges that we face as we age and attempt to age in place.”

Lynn LeMay

LeMay has lived in West Hollywood since 1984, the year the City was incorporated. She has volunteered with Project Angel Food since its founding in 1989 and is one of the organization’s Telephone Angels, a buddy telephone program designed to combat social isolation among elderly clients. She has also served as a tenant rights advocate for older adults, securing maintenance repairs for her apartment building and others nearby. Her current advocacy focuses on long-time transgender survivors of HIV, many of whom are now over 60.

LeMay said she used a degree in psychology to assist people dying from AIDS and their families during the height of the epidemic. She was an early volunteer with the Center for Living, founded by Marianne Williamson, which became Project Angel Food. “Some of the same individuals that received food back in 1989 are still receiving food today,” LeMay said. “They are lucky enough to still be alive. And so they still need the help.”

LeMay spoke about appearing before the City’s Rent Stabilization offices many times on behalf of elderly tenants in her building and others. “They get tired of me many times,” she said. “But I’m there to fight for the elderly community.”

LeMay turned 80 last year. “Having turned 80 last year, I qualified,” she said. “I do find it hard to believe that over 42 years have passed since I first moved into an area of Los Angeles that became my later home of West Hollywood.”

She said she has applied to become a member of the Older Adults Advisory Board.

p>Mayor Heilman spoke as LeMay approached the podium. “For those of you who weren’t around during the height of the AIDS epidemic, Lynn was there at every single event, volunteering, checking people in, making sure people donated, really being such an important advocate for everyone in the community,” Heilman said, “as she has continued to do so today.”

Ged Kensler, who is approaching 30 years on staff at AIDS Healthcare Foundation, attended the ceremony after LeMay personally invited him. He brought flowers. “Lynn has been a tireless supporter of a number of LGBT organizations over the years,” Kensler said. “I think she is a beloved elder in the community, and greatly appreciated for her efforts.” Kensler said LeMay had been pivotal to AHF fundraising and other events over the decades he has known her. He said he saw her most recently at the dedication of Project Angel Food’s new wing.

Speaking for myself, I have enjoyed Lynn’s company – chatting, gossiping and catching up on all things WeHo over a good margarita at Marix through the years. Thank you, Lynn. You are a true West Hollywood treasure. 

Larry Block

Block has been a West Hollywood resident and business owner since 1985. He has served on the boards of numerous nonprofits and commissions, including as chairman of the Disability Advisory Board. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he distributed masks to the community, including to drivers, and worked to keep senior meals-on-wheels programs operating. Through his business, he provided COVID and monkeypox vaccines to the public.

Block is also known for originating the idea that became AB 1620, the 2023 state law giving seniors and people with disabilities the right to transfer from upper-floor to ground-floor units at the same rent when a first-floor unit becomes available. He described pitching the concept to the City’s Rent Stabilization Commission after watching a neighbor, Yola Dore’, crawl sideways up stairs to her second-floor unit because her landlord refused to allow a swap to an available first-floor apartment. “It was a joke at first,” he said. “It was laughed out of the box.” City staff and department director Elizabeth Savage kept the idea alive, he said. Then-Councilmember Sepi Shyne, elected in 2020, called Block and said they were going to take the idea forward. Shyne and Councilmember John Erickson brought it to the full City Council, which approved moving the item forward. Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur introduced the bill and carried it to Sacramento. Governor Newsom signed it. Block called the law “the most advanced update to the Costa-Hawkins Rent Stabilization Act that has happened in a lifetime.”

Block said older adults are underserved in the City’s priorities. “About a third of our city is 50 and above,” he said. “And everything you see the people doing is mostly not for the 50 and above.” He called for a greater share of the City budget directed toward senior housing and assisted living facilities so residents can age in place without being displaced by development. He cited the late Bernice Levin, a former board member who was forced out of her apartment on Norton Avenue by development and never returned to the City.

“No matter how old we get, we’re all still boys and girls inside,” Block said.

Edd Holman, a longtime West Hollywood resident, said Block’s presence in the community goes back decades. “Larry has been a contributing member of this community for a very long time,” Holman said.. Holman said Block cares about his community and shows up in different ways. He pointed back to the  pandemic as one example. Block was among the first to get masks out to the community, helping to make sure people of West Hollywood were taken care of.

Demographic Shift

Wendy Jane Carrel, the newest member of the Older Adults Advisory Board and a West Hollywood resident since 1973, said the City’s aging population represents a significant and growing demographic. “West Hollywood older adults now make up approximately 16% of our population, over 6,000 residents,” Carrel said. She noted that 2026 marks the year the first cohort of baby boomers turns 80, calling it a major demographic shift. She said the board’s mission is to advocate for current and future older adults and to bring their concerns to the City Council.

The awards and board meeting were broadcast live on WeHoTV on Spectrum Cable Channel 10 and streamed at youtube.com/wehotv and weho.org/wehotv. You can catch it below too. 

Board member Leah Walker, a West Hollywood resident since 1992, put it plainly. “If you have an opportunity to choose aging in place as opposed to going to assisted living or some other situation,” Walker said, “aging in place is by far the better opportunity.”

In West Hollywood, that choice is made and supported every day. By a City that has decided its older residents matter.