Two major state programs to combat illegal cannabis recently sent out news releases lauding their collective seizures of some $544 million worth of illicit weed.
But when it comes to reining in California’s sprawling black market, experts say it’s just a drop in the bucket.
Those in the thick of the fight against illegal pot, like Mendocino County Sheriff Matthew Kendall, can’t help but roll their eyes.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love when those guys [state law enforcement officers] show up to help,” he said, “but I would need 50 police officers for 50 days to even begin putting a dent in it.”
Mendocino County Sheriff Matt Kendall stands near an illegal cannabis grow in January 2022 in the Halls Valley area near Covelo, Calif.
Despite these alarming numbers, some law enforcement leaders say the raids are barely slowing the black market — which, according to a study by Beau Whitney, founder of cannabis economics research firm Whitney Economics, makes up more than half the state’s marijuana sales.
“If we examine the statistics, it is clear that these operations are not effectively or aggressively putting a dent into the illegal market,” said Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue.
For example, operations by the state Department of Justice’s Eradication and Prevention of Illicit Cannabis program, or EPIC, have seized about 77,000 cannabis plants in 36 counties this year. Yet, Siskiyou County alone produces an estimated 12 million to 16 million illegal plants per year. Therefore, if EPIC only focused on Siskiyou for a year, it would eradicate just 6% of the estimated local black market, he said.
A member of a Siskiyou County sheriff’s task force drags cannabis plants out of a greenhouse for burial during a Mount Shasta Vista raid.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
This sentiment was echoed by Kendall, who noted that in Mendocino County’s 35-square-mile Round Valley alone there are an estimated 1 million illegal marijuana plants.
“The black market is as big and bad as ever,” he said.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s marijuana enforcement team told The Times there is still a lot of work to do to address that county’s black market, which has not gotten any smaller in the last two years.
Since then, many law enforcement leaders say they believe the state has done little to address the problems fueling the black market — onerous taxation and regulations for legal producers, few consequences for illegal operators and limited access to legal marijuana in wide swaths of California.
“It’s like [state leaders] came to our counties, they sprayed the whole thing with gasoline and lit it on fire,” Kendall said. “Then they start talking about EPIC doing this work that is basically showing up with a garden hose.”
A spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom referred questions about the concerns raised by local law enforcement leaders to the state Department of Cannabis Control, which did not respond to a request for comment.
California legalized weed through Proposition 64, a 2016 ballot measure that promised “to tax the growth and sale of marijuana in a way that drives out the illicit market.” Eight years later, the illicit market continues to thrive.
“California did a horrible job of incentivizing [illegal] cultivators to convert over,” said Whitney, the cannabis economist. “They taxed them heavily, they regulated them heavily, they couldn’t make any money.”
California charges a 15% excise tax on marijuana sales on top of additional local marijuana taxes. A recent study by cannabis industry research and analysis firm GreenWave Advisors found that legal weed companies owe the state more than $730 million in back taxes, 72% of which is owed by companies that have gone out of business.
Johnny Casali, center, and partner Rose Moberly talk with state cannabis control inspectors at Casali’s Garberville farm in 2022. Casali and other growers face steep taxes and onerous rules.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Another challenge is that more than half of California counties don’t allow the sale of marijuana, which restricts access to legal weed in wide swaths of the state and drives demand to the black market.
There are also major incentives for sellers to opt into the illegal market — they can dodge taxation and licensing fees, while knowing that the penalty for selling or transportation of marijuana without required licenses is only a misdemeanor.
“From the criminal mindset, there is minimal downside and massive upside to cultivating marijuana illegally and selling it on the black market,” said San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Lt. Larry Lopez.
Siskiyou County Sheriff LaRue said that, although there are enhanced penalties for certain violations involving tax evasion and environmental crimes, most of the illegal-cultivation offenses do not have harsh enough penalties to deter production.
Because enforcement measures are limited, Mendocino County Sheriff Kendall said the raids conducted by state agencies are like a game of Whac-A-Mole.
“We can chop it down and, by golly, it pops up again the next day,” he said.
Mendocino County sheriff’s deputies destroy cannabis in a 2022 raid.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Raids are also a limited enforcement tool, because they mostly lead to the arrest of laborers — not owners.
“It is a frequent strategy for the black-market organizers to hide behind the labor force and remain shielded from law enforcement,” LaRue said. “It is rare that higher-level organizers are anywhere near the cultivation areas.”
Despite the drawbacks and frustrations, Sheriffs LaRue and Kendall and Lt. Lopez still support conducting raids and welcome state assistance.
But they say that, to have a meaningful effect, raids need to be accompanied by policy changes that address the narrow profit margin for legal cultivators and the minor penalties for illegal ones.
And after years of calling for change, there’s a growing sense of exasperation among those on the front lines.
“We have reached a time in the state of California where the architects of these laws — the governor, the legislators — they’re refusing to speak with the carpenters, and that’s the sheriffs and the police chiefs,” Kendall said. “When we say this isn’t going to work, it’s falling on deaf ears.”
A famed architect to the stars designed it. A renowned Hollywood producer occupied it. A relative of a reviled international terrorist abandoned it. And now a Mediterranean villa on a hillside in genteel Bel-Air has become the latest target of mysterious graffiti vandals.
Sometime late last week, spray-paint-wielding intruders turned the pink walls of this seven-bedroom mansion into a helter-skelter canvas of pop art, obscure quotations and political insinuations — the third hillside home in Los Angeles to be defaced in recent days.
Police detained one man at the two-acre property on Stone Canyon Road late Friday, but the real estate agent who oversees the property said a security guard believed the uninvited visitor was only taking pictures of the home. She declined to press charges.
Police and the private security firm that patrols the verdant neighborhood near the Hotel Bel-Air said they had no further clues about who vandalized the house, with missives and sketches filling most of the walls both inside and outside the once luxurious residence.
Graffiti covers interior walls of the home, and on the floors are empty cans of spray paint and beer.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
On Sunday morning, emptied paint cans and beer bottles littered many of the rooms and a front patio. Windows above the front door had been shattered. Others had been rendered opaque with black and red paint. An elegant stone archway had been emblazoned with “Hopes” in black paint.
“They really completely destroyed everything. There is broken glass everywhere. It’s been defamed, vandalized,” said the agent who is selling the property and spoke on condition that she would not be named. “It’s so horrible. Horrible.”
Two large homes in the Hollywood Hills got a similar treatment recently. The property crimes follow the much-publicized defacing of downtown high-rises with graffiti.
A guard who has patrolled the neighborhood for years said he had chased others off the property, most recently three young men who were also shooting video Saturday night.
“They asked me, ‘Can we stay and take pictures?’ “ recalled the guard. “I said to them, ‘Can I just come into your house without an invitation and then stay?’“
The guard, who also requested anonymity, wondered whether the intruders wanted photos “as part of some kind of competition or something.” He said that, several months ago, squatters backed a moving truck up to the home, apparently ready to take up residence. He told them they had five minutes to get lost. They did.
The Bel-Air mansion sits at the end of a long driveway, shielded from the street by tall stands of trees and bamboo. Three Bel-Air neighbors said they had not heard about the vandalism until a reporter told them about it Sunday.
Police and private security said they had no clues about who was responsible for the vandalism.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The vandalism marks a low point for a home born in Hollywood splendor.
Architect John Elgin Woolf designed the villa, one of many he helped create for luminaries including Bob Hope, Cary Grant, Judy Garland and Errol Flynn.
Producer Arthur Freed lived there for years. He made classics including “Brigadoon,” “Showboat,” “An American in Paris,” “Gigi” and “Singin’ in the Rain.” He also co-wrote the song “Singin’ in the Rain” with Nacio Herb Brown.
Freed also served as an associate producer (uncredited) on “The Wizard of Oz” and, by one account, was among those who fought to keep the song “Over the Rainbow” in the film after some of the filmmakers wanted to cut it.
Freed served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. He died in 1973 in Los Angeles.
Ibrahim bin Laden, a member of the wealthy Saudi construction dynasty, bought the Bel-Air home in the 1980s. He is the half-brother of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Bin Laden brother and his family used the Bel-Air property as a vacation home, but they have not lived there for more than 25 years, the real estate agent said. For a time, a manager lived in a guest house and tended to the property, but he fell ill and moved out several years ago.
The family considered leasing the home and hired a contractor to improve the bathrooms and kitchen. But work crews only tore out walls and never completed the work, the agent said.
Architect John Elgin Woolf designed the villa that sits behind tall trees on the two-acre property on Stone Canyon Road.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The house has been listed for sale since 2021, with the asking price as high as $28 million. It’s currently listed for $21.5 million. One buyer who had placed an offer is deciding what to do, after being apprised of the graffiti damage, the agent said.
Among the messages scrawled on the interior walls are an expletive and “Osama!” Nearby, another message reads: “G.W. Bush Helped You.”
The agent said she sent a video of the damage to her clients, who maintain several other homes around the world. “They are very, very upset,” she said. “I mean, it is really devastating.” She also pleaded for the public to understand that the owners had nothing to do with the faults of their famous relative.
At one massive home nearby, a man who answered via intercom said he had not heard anything about the vandalism. At another gated mansion, a housekeeper came on the speaker phone and said she did not want to talk.
One prominent Bel-Air resident had no doubt whom he blamed for the crime — the city’s political leaders.
“L.A.’s woke. It’s also broke,” said Fred Rosen, the onetime chief executive of Ticketmaster, the computer ticketing giant. “The city’s broken. There’s crime, people leaving and politicians lying more than usual.”
Rosen, who lives not far from the graffitied mansion, blamed L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón, in particular, for what he said was a lack of accountability for wrongdoing.
“We’ve had a basic breakdown of consequences for bad behavior,” Rosen said. “I don’t know anybody — from the Valley, to the Westside, to Compton — who’s not afraid, or isn’t concerned.”
Muslim communities ended the holy month of Ramadan on Wednesday and celebrated the holiday Eid al-Fitr.
Ramadan is the month on the Islamic lunar calendar during which Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, focusing on worship, charity and good deeds.
The Islamic Society of West Valley celebrated its Eid al-Fitr, which means feasting, festival or breaking the fast, at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Women gather on the infield turf for the Islamic Society of West Valley’s Eid celebration in Woodland Hills.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The faithful gather for the Islamic Society of West Valley’s Eid celebration at the Pierce College football stadium in Los Angeles.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A boy stands as men kneel in prayer on the infield turf during an open air prayer service at the Pierce College football stadium in Los Angeles.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A woman with henna tattoos prays during the Islamic Society of West Valley’s Eid celebration and open air prayer service at the Pierce College stadium in Los Angeles.
The church on Oildale Drive and Minner Avenue has stood on the corner since 1954, built after an earthquake damaged the Oildale Church of Christ’s building. Since then, the church has passed through a variety of denominations and congregations until it was abandoned in 2021.
But the Kern County Housing Authority saw another life for the church building, in an often-overlooked area of the county. Oildale, an unincorporated town north of Bakersfield, borders the Kern River Oil Field, one of the largest active oil fields in California. The town was founded in the early 1900s as workers flooded into the area to work the oil rigs. It’s where musicians Buck Owens and Merle Haggard were raised and shaped.
Today, the barren hills of the Kern River Oil Field are still peppered with working rigs. But Oildale, population 36,000, has largely stagnated. Nearly a third of its residents live in poverty, and community leaders grapple with high rates of opioid addiction, dilapidated housing and commercial vacancies. The church is nestled in a quiet neighborhood of modest homes with overgrown yards and bleached white fences.
The housing authority, a county agency charged with creating affordable housing opportunities, saw potential in the building’s graceful touches and sturdy walls. Its Sunday school classrooms could become studio and one-bedroom units for former foster youth still struggling to get their footing. The chapel, with its stained glass window, soft-lit chandeliers and walls adorned with hand-written Bible verses, could be converted into a community room. So, over the course of two years, the church was given a second life.
Isabel Medina is both on-site manager and a resident at Project Cornerstone. Like other young residents, she is a former foster care ward who struggled to find stable employment and housing after aging out of the system.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s been an anchor for the neighborhood for a number of years and went through different phrases, and is now in a completely different phase,” said Stephen M. Pelz, executive director of the housing authority. “Oftentimes when you get vacant buildings that aren’t sold right away, they end up having issues or vandalism, or catching fire. It was nice to be able to preserve the building.”
With funding from Project Homekey, the state’s multibillion-dollar effort to convert dilapidated motels and commercial properties into supportive housing, and in partnership with Covenant Community Services, the authority purchased the church from Shekinah Ministries in 2022 for $1.5 million. After extensive renovation, the site reopened in January as the Project Cornerstone housing complex.
Today, the hallways smell faintly of fresh paint, and all 19 air-conditioned units are occupied by young residents also getting a fresh start.
About a mile away in a commercial strip, the housing authority is attempting another novel do-over: converting a former doctor’s office — that also had a stint as a tattoo parlor — into 15 units of housing. The project is in a tumbledown section of Oildale, situated between an optical lens store and aquatic pet shop. The storefront being converted had been vacant for years.
“It was really just awful, an eyesore for the whole community,” said Randy Martin, chief executive of Covenant Community Services, a nonprofit community group that will manage the two locations.
The housing authority purchased the storefront for $510,000 in 2022. As renovations began, Martin said, the group dealt with drug addicts breaking in, stealing appliances and starting fires behind the building.
Still, the project is moving forward. Each unit will have a doorbell and space for a bed and kitchen. The plan includes a front patio where residents can relax and socialize.
Housing at the church complex is open to young people, 18 to 25, who have aged out of the foster care system, along with their spouses and children. The converted doctor’s office is reserved for former foster youths ages 18 to 21. Tenants pay rent as they are able, on a sliding-fee scale, and utilities are covered.
Pelz said the subsidies and upkeep will be covered by a mix of rental income and state and local funding for rental assistance.
Al’Lyn Cline, a former foster youth, lives in a small but tidy apartment at Project Cornerstone. It marks the first time in years that he has had his own bathroom.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
When he moved into the converted church on Oildale Drive, Al’Lyn Cline, 22, was the only person living there for about two weeks. After months of construction, the church began to “settle,” and at night he would hear the creaking of the pipes and floorboards.
Cline, a Texas native, bounced around foster homes as a child. Before coming to the church, he stayed at a sober-living home with 12 other men. They shared one refrigerator, cramped bathrooms and limited parking space.
At the church, Cline has a studio that came furnished with a microwave, stove and fridge. He has his own bathroom for the first time in years. His room — a space that used to hold cassette recordings of weekly sermons — is on the second floor and has a skylight that allows a flood of natural light.
Al’Lyn Cline stores his boots in a neat line in his apartment.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“It’s really just profound, and it has a uniqueness of its own,” Cline said of the setup.
Cline, who is Christian, feels connected to the church in a religious sense as well. He tries to be respectful of the building, knowing its history as a place of worship.
Randy Martin is chief executive of Covenant Community Services, a community group managing Project Cornerstone.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Project Cornerstone is one in a spate of recent efforts Kern County has undertaken to create affordable supportive housing options for homeless people and those at risk of being homeless. Those working with foster youths know all too well that housing instability is a danger they face as they age out of the system.
The county’s 2023 point-in-time count found 1,948 people lacked permanent housing, according to the Bakersfield-Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative. About 48% of the population was sheltered, a figure that’s been trending upward as the county has expanded emergency shelters and transitional housing initiatives. About 120 of the homeless counted were people younger than 24.
Martin, with Covenant Community Services, said the housing project is “stemming the tide of homelessness for foster youth.” Residents are assigned case managers and mentors to help them find educational and employment opportunities, and can learn job skills at the organization’s coffee shop.
Isabel Medina, left, watches as her daughter runs toward program manager Samantha Imhoof Tran. Rosalinda celebrated her second birthday at Project Cornerstone, with a party in the old chapel.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Isabel Medina, 23, is both on-site manager and a resident at the Project Cornerstone complex. At 13, she was removed from an abusive home and put in foster care. For years, she moved among foster families before aging out of the system at 18. She has struggled to maintain a stable job, working in the fields, at a mall, at Goodwill. She was homeless twice, and slept in her car for four months. At 21, she became pregnant with her daughter, Rosalinda.
With the help of a program manager at Covenant Community Services, Samantha Imhoof Tran, Medina was made on-site manager at Project Cornerstone.
Rosalinda celebrated her second birthday there in December, with a party in the old chapel. A stained glass image depicting a shepherd lit up the room. The two-year-old with a quick smile and high laugh ran up and down the stairs, and they danced on the stage, Medina said.
“It definitely can be spooky, especially at night when I have to check all the doors and make sure everything’s secured,” Medina said. “But when you fill this room up, it’s very hopeful and magical at the same time.”
You can sense it in the ubiquitous “Help Wanted” posters in artsy shops and restaurants, in the ranks of university students living out of their cars and in the outsize percentage of locals camping on the streets.
This seaside county known for its windswept beauty and easy living is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in home-starved California. Santa Cruz County, home to a beloved surf break and a bohemian University of California campus, also claims the state’s highest rate of homelessness and, by one measure based on local incomes, its least affordable housing.
Leaders in the city of Santa Cruz have responded to this hardship in a land of plenty — and to new state laws demanding construction of more affordable housing — with a plan to build up rather than out.
Many Santa Cruz business owners back the city’s plan for high-rise development, saying the city needs more affordable housing for servers and retail workers.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A downtown long centered on quaint sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue has boomed with new construction in recent years. Shining glass and metal apartment complexes sprout in multiple locations, across a streetscape once dominated by 20th century classics like the Art Deco-inspired Palomar Inn apartments.
And the City Council and planning department envision building even bigger and higher, with high-rise apartments of up to 12 stories in the southern section of downtown that comes closest to the city’s boardwalk and the landmark wooden roller coaster known as the Giant Dipper.
“It’s on everybody’s lips now, this talk about our housing challenge,” said Don Lane, a former mayor and an activist for homeless people. “The old resistance to development is breaking down, at least among a lot of people.”
In recent years, Santa Cruz has approved development of modern multistory housing complexes, part of a broader effort to add housing stock.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Said current Mayor Fred Keeley, a former state assemblyman: “It’s not a question of ‘no growth’ anymore. It’s a question of where are you going to do this. You can spread it all over the city, or you can make the urban core more dense.”
But not everyone in famously tolerant Santa Cruz is going along. The high-rise push has spawned a backlash, exposing sharp divisions over growth and underscoring the complexities, even in a city known for its progressive politics, of trying to keep desirable communities affordable for the teachers, waiters, firefighters and store clerks who provide the bulk of services.
A group originally called Stop the Skyscrapers — now Housing for People — protests that a proposed city “housing element” needlessly clears the way for more apartments than state housing officials demand, while providing too few truly affordable units.
City officials say the plan they hope to finalize in the coming weeks, with its greater height limits, only creates a path for new construction. The intentions of individual property owners and the vicissitudes of the market will continue to make it challenging to build the 3,736 additional units the state has mandated for the city.
“We’ve talked to a lot of people, going door to door, and the feeling is it’s just too much, too fast,” said Frank Barron, a retired county planner and Housing for People co-founder. “The six- and seven-story buildings that they’re building now are already freaking people out. When they hear what [the city is] proposing now could go twice as high, they’re completely aghast.”
Frank Barron is among the activists who say the City Council’s development plans are out of character for the laid-back beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Susan Monheit, a former state water official and another Housing for People co-founder, calls 12-story buildings “completely out of the human scale,” adding: “It’s out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
Housing for People has gathered enough signatures to put a measure on the March 2024 ballot that, if approved, would require a vote of the people for development anywhere in the city that would exceed the zoning restrictions codified in the current general plan, which include a cap of roughly seven or eight stories downtown.
The activists say that they are trying to restore the voices of everyday Santa Cruzans and that city leaders are giving in to out-of-town builders and “developer overreach laws.”
The nascent campaign has generated spirited debate. Opponents contend the slow-growth measure would slam on the brakes, just as the city is overcoming decades of construction inertia. They say Santa Cruz should be a proud outlier in a long string of wealthy coastal cities that have defied the state’s push to add housing and bring down exorbitant home prices and rental costs.
Diana Alfaro, who works for a Santa Cruz development company, said many of the complaints about high-rise construction sound like veiled NIMBYism.
“We always hear, ‘I support affordable housing, but just not next to me. Not here. Not there. Not really anywhere,’ ” said Alfaro, an activist with the national political group YIMBY [Yes In My Back Yard] Action. “Is that really being inclusive?”
Zav Hershfield, a renters’ rights activist, advocates rent control caps and housing developments owned by the state or cooperatives.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The dispute has divided Santa Cruz’s progressive political universe. What does it mean to be a “good liberal” on land-use issues in an era when UC Santa Cruz students commonly triple up in small rooms and Zillow reports a median rent of $3,425 that is higher than San Francisco’s?
Beginning in the 1970s, left-leaning students at the new UC campus helped power a slow-growth movement that limited construction across broad swaths of Santa Cruz County. Over the decades, the need for affordable housing was a recurring discussion. The county was a leader in requiring that builders who put up five units of housing or more set aside 15% of the units at below-market rates.
But Mayor Keeley said local officials gave only a “head nod” to the issue when it came to approving specific projects. “Well, here we are, 30 or 40 years later,” Keeley said, “and these communities are not affordable.”
Santa Cruz County, known for its windswept beauty and easy living, is in the midst of one of the most serious housing crises anywhere in California.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Today, with 265,000 residents, the county is substantially wealthy and white.
An annual survey this year found Santa Cruz County pushed past San Francisco to be the least affordable rental market in the country, given income levels in both places. And many observers say UC Santa Cruz students contend with the toughest housing market of any college town in the state.
State legislators have crafted dozens of laws in recent years to encourage construction of more homes, particularly apartments, across the state. While California has long required local governments to draft “housing elements” to demonstrate their commitment to affordable housing, state officials only recently passed other measures to actually push cities to put the plans into practice.
Under the new regulations, regional government associations draw up a Regional Housing Needs Assessment, designating how many housing units — including affordable ones — should be built during an eight-year cycle. The state Department of Housing and Community Development can reject plans it deems inadequate.
For years 2024 to 2031, Santa Cruz was told it should build at least 3,736 units, on top of its existing 24,036.
For decades, Santa Cruz culture has centered on quaint shops and restaurants along sycamore-lined Pacific Avenue.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Santa Cruz and other cities have been motivated, at least in part, by a heavy “stick”: In cases when cities fail to produce adequate housing plans, the state’s so-called “builder’s remedy” essentially allows developers to propose building whatever they want, provided some of the housing is set aside for low- or middle-income families. In cities like Santa Monica and La Cañada-Flintridge, builders have invoked the builder’s remedy to push ahead with large housing projects, over the objections of city leaders.
The Santa Cruz City Council resolved to avoid losing control of planning decisions. A key part of their plan envisions putting up to 1,800 units in a sleepy downtown neighborhood of automobile businesses, shops and low-rise apartments south of Laurel Street. Initial concepts suggested one block could go as high as 175 feet (roughly 16 stories), but council members later proposed a 12-story height limit, substantially taller than the stately eight-story Palomar, which remains the city’s tallest building.
City planners say focusing growth in the downtown neighborhood makes sense, because bus lines converge there at a transit center and residents can walk to shops and services.
“The demand for housing is not going away,” said Lee Butler, the city’s director of planning and community development, “and this means we will have less development pressure in other areas of the city and county, where it is less sustainable to grow.”
Santa Cruz planning director Lee Butler advocates concentrating new development downtown, rather than building in areas where growth is less sustainable.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
A public survey found support for a variety of other proposed improvements to make the downtown more attractive to walkers, bikers and tourists. Among other features, the plan would concentrate new restaurants and shops around the San Lorenzo River Walk; replace the fabric-topped 2,400-seat Kaiser Permanente Arena, which hosts the Santa Cruz Warriors (the G-league affiliate of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors), with a bigger entertainment and sports venue; and better connect downtown with the beach and boardwalk.
Business owners say they favor the housing plan for a couple of reasons: They hope new residents will bring new commerce, and they want some of the affordable apartments to go to their workers, who frequently commute well over an hour from places such as Gilroy and Salinas.
Restaurateur Zach Davis called the high cost of housing “the No. 1 factor” that led to the 2018 closure of Assembly, a popular farm-to-table restaurant he co-owned.
“How do we keep our community intact, if the people who make it all happen, the workers who make Santa Cruz what it is, can’t afford to live here anymore?” Davis asked.
One opponent calls the plan to add high-rises to the city’s picturesque downtown “out of scale with Santa Cruz’s branding.”
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s plan indicates that 859 of the units built over the next eight years will be for “very low income” families. But the term is relative, tied to a community’s median income, which in Santa Cruz is $132,800 for a family of four. Families bringing home between $58,000 and $82,000 would qualify as very low income. Tenants in that bracket would pay $1,800 a month for a three-bedroom apartment in one recently completed complex, built under the city’s requirement that 20% of units be rented for below-market rents.
The people pushing for high-rise development say expanding the housing supply will stem ever-rising rents. Opponents counter that the continued growth of UC Santa Cruz, which hopes to add 8,500 students by 2040, and a new surge of highly paid Silicon Valley “tech bros” looking to put down roots in beachy Santa Cruz would quickly gobble up whatever number of new units are built.
“They say that if you just build more housing, the prices will come down. Which is, of course, not true,” said Gary Patton, a former county supervisor and an original leader in the slow-growth movement. “So we’ll have lots more housing, with lots more traffic, less parking, more neighborhood impacts and more rich people moving into Santa Cruz.”
Leaders on Santa Cruz’s political left say new construction only touches one aspect of the housing crisis. Some of the leaders of Tenant Sanctuary, a renters’ rights group, would like to see Santa Cruz tamp down rents by creating complexes owned by the state or cooperatives and enacting a rent control law capping annual increases.
“No matter what they build, we need housing where the price is not tied to market swings and how much money can be squeezed out of a given area of land,” said Zav Hershfield, a board member for the group.
The up-zoning of downtown parcels has won the support of much of the city’s establishment, including the county Chamber of Commerce, whose chief executive said exorbitant housing prices are excluding blue-collar workers and even some well-paid professionals. “The question is, do you want a lively, vital, economically thriving community?” said Casey Beyer, CEO of the business group. “Or do you want to be a sleepy retirement community?”
The town clock is one of several landmarks in the beach town.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Just days after the anti-high-rise measure qualified for the March ballot, the two sides began bickering over what impact it would have.
Lane, the former mayor, and two affordable housing developers wrote an op-ed for the Lookout Santa Cruz news site that said the ballot measure is crafted so broadly it would apply to all “development projects.” They contend that could trigger the need for citywide votes for projects as modest as raising a fence from 6 feet to 7 feet, adding an ADU to a residential property or building a shelter for the homeless, if the projects exceed current practices in a given neighborhood.
The authors accused ballot measure proponents of faux environmentalism. “If we don’t go up,” they wrote, “we have less housing near jobs — and more people driving longer distances to get to work.”
The ballot measure proponents countered that their critics were misrepresenting facts. They said the measure would not necessitate voter approval for mundane improvements and would come into play in relatively few circumstances, for projects that require amendments to the city’s General Plan.
While not staking out a formal position on the ballot measure, the city’s planning staff has concluded the measure could force citizen votes for relatively modest construction projects.
The two sides also can’t agree on the impact of a second provision of the ballot measure. It would increase from 20% to 25% the percentage of “inclusionary” (below-market-rate) units that developers would have to include in complexes of 30 units or more.
The ballot measure writers say such an increase signals their intent to assure that as much new housing as possible goes to the less affluent. But their opponents say that when cities try to force developers to include too many sub-market apartments, the builders end up walking away.
Santa Cruz’s housing inventory shows that the city has the potential to add as many as 8,364 units in the next eight years, when factoring in proposals such as the downtown high-rises and UC Santa Cruz’s plan to add about 1,200 units of student housing. That’s more than double the number required by the state. But the Department of Housing and Community Development requires this sort of “buffer,” because the reality is that many properties zoned for denser housing won’t get developed during the eight-year cycle.
As with many aspects of the downtown up-zoning, the two sides are at odds over whether incorporating the potential for extra development amounts to judicious planning or developer-friendly overkill.
Joyful, left, and Valerie Christy, right, jam for fun and a few dollars in downtown Santa Cruz.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The city’s voters have rejected housing-related measures three times in recent years. In 2018, they decisively turned down a rent control proposal. Last year, they said no to taxing owners who leave homes in the community sitting empty. But they also rejected a measure that would have blocked a plan to relocate the city’s central library while also building 124 below-market-rate apartment units.
The last time locals got this worked up about their downtown may have been at the start of the new millennium, when the City Council considered cracking down on street performers. That prompted the owner of Bookshop Santa Cruz, another local landmark, to print T-shirts and bumper stickers entreating fellow residents to “Keep Santa Cruz Weird.”
Santa Cruzans once again are being asked to consider the look and feel of their downtown and whether its future should be left to the City Council, or voters themselves. The measure provokes myriad questions, including these: Can funky, earnest, compassionate Santa Cruz remain that way, even with high-rise apartments? And, with so little housing for students and working folks, has it already lost its charm?
After a long and tiring day at work, Mark headed to an East Hollywood movie theater that he called “always a fun, chill” time — and bought an eight-hour ticket.
At this cinema house, there were no movie posters touting “Barbie,” no IMAX screens, no buckets of buttery popcorn. This month’s curated selections include “Tiny & Tight Size Queens 2” and “Stepmom Seductions.”
Mark had come to the Tiki Theater: the last porn theater in Los Angeles.
It is a place that has outlasted more vaunted film houses such as the ArcLight Hollywood and its historic Cinerama Dome, which shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A cyclist rides past the entrance to the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“I just want to feel free here, watching something very primal,” said Mark, 34, during a recent screening at the Tiki.
“I think sex is beautiful, and I like sharing it with others — whether the energy is weird or not,” said Mark, who described himself as “gay with a side of bi” and declined to share his last name because, well, he had come to watch porn.
The Tiki, a red-tiled storefront theater next to a snack bar selling “natural juices,” is a Santa Monica Boulevard institution — an X-rated bulwark against online porn, videos that can be watched privately at home, and other factors that have all but rendered adult film theaters obsolete.
Three miles west on Santa Monica Boulevard, West Hollywood’s Studs Theater — a straight and LGBTQ+ porn house in a 1940 building that once housed one of the legendary Pussycat theaters — shut down last year.
Now, Tiki is the last adult film theater in a city that once had scores of them, according to L.A. Department of Building and Safety permit records reviewed by The Times.
Open 24 hours a day, the Tiki beckons customers with signs in both English and Spanish: CINE XXX PARA ADULTOS and XXX ADULT THEATER.
Passersby in front of the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Curious passersby sometimes peek inside. On a typical day, most shuffle away, a few linger, and only a handful stand at the ticket counter — right there on a bustling sidewalk — and pay for a ticket: $20 for four hours, $25 for eight hours and $30 for 12 hours.
No refunds.
Inside, patrons are welcomed by a darkness penetrated only by the light of the theater’s sole silver screen.
At the Tiki, the ringmaster of porn is Juan Martinez, the theater’s longtime manager.
Most days, the 59-year-old immigrant from El Salvador works 12-hour shifts in a tiny box office with a mini fridge and stacks of neatly organized porn DVDs. He has been working there for more than 15 years.
“Honestly, I don’t even need to work that much anymore,” Martinez said in Spanish. “I just need enough for my food. But I appreciate this place because it was one of the places where I started out when I came to the United States.”
Signs inform patrons on the front doors to the Tiki Theater.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
The hardcore sex and nudity on screen do not faze him, he said. Martinez described himself as a romantic — even though he recently had to break up with a girlfriend because her mom did not like his job.
Martinez is Tiki’s projectionist, maintenance worker — and bouncer, if need be. He also programs Tiki’s 24/7 screenings, which, as advertised by the black signs taped on the outside hallway, feature “3 new movies, very recent” every day.
“I have a lot of appreciation for this place,” Martinez said. “I go about maintaining it, fixing everything, whether it’s the plumbing, electricity. I adjust the cameras, I take care of everything. I do it like it’s something personal. I do it with lots of care.”
Juan Martinez, the manager of the Tiki Theater, has worked at the establishment for more than 15 years.
(Juan Martinez)
Martinez’s early life hardly would have suggested a future at the Tiki. In his homeland, Martinez studied health and medicine.
The Salvadoran military drafted him at 17, enlisting him as a battlefield nurse during the country’s grueling civil war.
Martinez said he retrieved drowned bodies from rivers and corpses booby-trapped with bombs. He said guerrillas hid explosives within tree branches, waiting for the moment soldiers would touch them.
“Boom! Boom! Boom! And people would die,” Martinez recalled. “Sometimes, I saw people without eyes, without hands.”
At 19, Martinez left the military. He immigrated to the United States with his two sisters and younger brother.
Before he found work at the Tiki, he was a busboy at a Thai barbecue restaurant, a maintenance worker at the Hollywood Cabaret, another now-defunct porn theater on Hollywood Boulevard. Now, he uses his Tiki earnings to help build a home for a granddaughter in Santa Clarita.
As he told his life story from the box office, the groans and awkward dialogue of a porno could be heard coming from the theater. Martinez paused his story as a man approached the ticket stand.
Tiki Theater manager Juan Martinez is pictured at age 20, one year after he immigrated to Los Angeles from El Salvador.
(Juan Martinez)
Martinez talks to customers through an opaque window. Theatergoers can’t see him, nor can he really see them.
The man slid a crisp $25 into the window’s deal tray.
“Hello,” the customer said. “How are you?”
“Good, how many hours?” Martinez replied.
“Eight.”
The customer grabbed the ticket from Martinez’s tan hands.
From his side of the window, Martinez removed the rod that serves as the outdoor turnstile, allowing the man to step inside, into the darkness.
The Tiki’s single viewing room, about the size of four parking spaces put together, has black-painted walls and six rows of cushioned leather seats. It can seat about 30 people.
An adult film on the screen inside the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Men tend to sit toward the back, watching the main screen while a smaller television propped in the room’s upper right corner consecutively plays a second porn film.
Among the patrons on a recent weekday was Mario Lopez, visiting for the first time after a friend recommended it. Lopez, 37, was unimpressed. He bought a four-hour ticket but said he probably wouldn’t return.
“It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” Lopez said in Spanish with a laugh. He expected “más ambiente” — more ambiance. Nevertheless, he stayed for over an hour because he struck up a conversation with Luis Arjeta, another customer.
Arjeta, 51, has been frequenting the Tiki for five years. He used to come up to five times a week, but this was his first visit in about three months.
“I like the type of movies they show here,” said Arjeta, who bought a 12-hour ticket. He likes the longer tickets — eight and 12 hours — because they allow reentry and he can enter and leave at his own discretion during the allotted time period.
Arjeta, who is, like Martinez, a Salvadoran immigrant, described Tiki as “a refuge.”
“What happens when police shut down places like these?” Arjeta said in Spanish. “These are places that grant us the opportunity to be more comfortable.”
Back in the 1970s and ’80s, there were a lot more places like the Tiki in Los Angeles.
With names like Copenhagen Adult Cinema, The Cave, Sin-O-Rama (which, in a 1977 advertisement in The Times, said customers could “Get your sex education here”), and more, these adult theaters were a common sight in Hollywood and East Hollywood.
“There used to be a lot more of them,” said Kim Cooper of Esotouric, a tour company that advocates for historic preservation and public policy. “And clearly with the spread of porn onto people’s phones, it really changed the way that people perceive that sort of material.”
An employee mans the ticket booth at the Tiki Theater.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Before video cassette recorders became common in American households in the latter half of the 20th century, making pornography viewable in the privacy of one’s home, those who wanted to see sexual content had to go into public spaces to view it.
“That has now become part of American history and going there is an act of nostalgia,” Cooper said, “but it’s also showing that there’s always been a need for this type of content.”
Construction of the Metro Red Line and large-scale redevelopment in the 1990s helped transform seedy Hollywood streets that had become known for their drugs, prostitution and porn purveyors into round-the-clock tourist destinations.
Richard Schave, who co-runs Esotouric with Cooper, his wife, said the sex shops near Hollywood and Western “are all really important spaces that are all gone.”
All but Tiki.
“Tiki is the real deal,” Cooper said. “You walk in there, you’re part of something that’s very old. I think it’s kind of magical.”
Though Tiki is the last porn theater standing, that doesn’t mean it’s a stranger to change.
Originally known as the Mini Theater in the early 1970s, it welcomed nude performers to its stage. Now, that stage is occupied by cleaning supplies.
Tiki once had an iconic sign: a bright-red marquee with a palm tree, a totem pole, and the words: “Tiki Theater Xymposium / ADULT XXX LIVE NAKED GIRLS.”
It’s unclear, Cooper said, when it was torn down.
“One day, we go by, and we were like, ‘What just happened?’” Cooper said. “This beautiful thing, this jewel of the city.”
The Tiki Theater is believed to be the last porn theater in Los Angeles.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
“It had such a Polynesian exotic look to it,” Willard said. “I say, ‘Maybe there’s hula dancers in here. Maybe there’s mai tais.’ I went in and I realized I was the only one awake and sober and conscious.”
He also tweeted: “lousy film, but theater would make a terrific racquetball court.”
Nowadays, a sign outside the theater warns: “Movie theater viewed by LAPD.”
The Los Angeles Police Department “doesn’t have any cameras in that area and did not post that sign,” said Capt. Kelly Muniz, an LAPD spokeswoman. “That sign was likely posted by management or the property owner.”
And in somewhat fractured Spanish, the theater also used to have handwritten signs saying smoking and drinking were prohibited and warned patrons: “No habran el pantalon or el zipper.” Don’t open your pants or the zipper.
Willard said at the time that he thought porn theaters no longer existed.
It’s a sentiment echoed by Mark, the recent customer, more than a decade later.
“I always wonder how these places survive,” he said.
As he pondered the Tiki’s future, Mark’s eyes kept drifting to the screen, to a tight shot of actors’ private parts.
“I’m too distracted by what’s happening on the screen,” he said, “to share any last words.”
