And later, they debate what the hell is going on with Caroline Brooks
Rachel Lindsay welcomes Chelsea Stark-Jones back to the podcast to break down all of the Bravo news from the past two weeks (2:27) before they launch into a recap of the promising Season 18 premiere of The Real Housewives of Orange County (17:39). Then, Rachel is joined by Callie Curry to discuss Season 2, Episode 6 of The Real Housewives of Dubai and debate what the hell is going on with Caroline Brooks (42:06).
Host: Rachel Lindsay Guests: Chelsea Stark-Jones and Callie Curry Producer: Devon Baroldi Theme: Devon Renaldo
Want a house in California? It’ll likely cost you over $900,000.
The statewide median sales price for a previously owned single-family house surpassed $900,000 for the first time in April, a shocking figure that underscores just how unaffordable housing has become across the Golden State.
The April median of $904,210 is up 11.4% from the same month a year earlier, according to data from the California Assn. of Realtors. The median — the point where half the homes sold for more and half for less — has now climbed more than $100,000 in just over two years.
That rise in home prices comes despite the fact mortgage rates are sky-high relative to recent memory. Last week, the average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage was 7.02%, more than double the 3% and below rates seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Freddie Mac.
High prices and high rates have created the most unaffordable housing market in a generation, but economists say prices keep rising because many homeowners refuse to sell and give up their sub 3% rates, creating an extreme shortage of inventory.
Wealthy Californians also have hordes of excess cash they can plow into down payments that help offset high borrowing costs.
If prices keep rising at 11% a year, the California median house price would climb above $1 million in 2025.
That may not happen, however.
In recent weeks, more homes have started to come onto the market as some owners start to decide a new home is more important than a low rate.
Inventory is still extremely tight and economists don’t expect the floodgates to open. But in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties, total listings in April climbed above year-ago levels for the first time since the first half of 2023, with each county recording an increase of at least 5%.
Orange County was the only county to see a decline, while in San Diego County, inventory has risen for two consecutive months and is 18% above what it was a year ago.
Some experts say the supply increase likely isn’t enough to send home prices down, but it should make values climb at a slower pace.
That might mean a $1-million median is a bit further off, but not by much.
“If we don’t hit it in 2025, we will probably hit it in 2026 — minus a big downturn in the economy,” said Jordan Levine, chief economist with the California Assn. of Realtors.
Workers at big retail and grocery stores in unincorporated L.A. County can retain a little more control over their schedules — and rely a little less on managers’ whims — starting next summer.
On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors voted to require that employers give those workers their schedules two weeks in advance, compensate them for last-minute schedule changes and space out their shifts by at least 10 hours.
The ordinance, which will go into effect July 2025, applies to any retailer and grocer in unincorporated L.A. County with 300 or more employees nationwide.
The county has estimated that the ordinance would affect about 200 businesses, many of them large chains, and up to 6,000 workers. Supervisor Holly Mitchell, who spearheaded the policy, said Tuesday’s vote would benefit both.
“It is a win for retailers committed to a work environment that gives them a competitive edge and for our retail workers who deserve the dignity of a predictable schedule so they can plan for childcare, school and other life obligations,” she said.
The policy closely mirrors the “fair work week” ordinance the City of Los Angeles passed in 2022.
Like the city’s version, the county’s policy requires that retailers provide “predictability pay” if they change a worker’s schedule last-minute and get employee’s approval before assigning them so-called “clopening” shifts — a closing shift followed immediately by an opening shift the next day. The ordinance also bars an employer from retaliating against an employee who reports violations.
Several business and trade groups argued that the policy needlessly complicates the delicate art of scheduling staff. The Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce said it would hamper businesses already struggling to compete against e-commerce companies, saddling them with fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. The California Grocers Association argued it would create needless bureaucracy, making eleventh-hour staffing changes “extremely challenging.”
Both groups said they wished the policy included a grace period for a store to solve “honest clerical mistakes” without getting penalized.
“Scheduling flexibility is one of the industry perks that many enjoy about working in grocery stores, yet this ordinance will make schedule changes, especially within a week of a shift, nearly impossible,” wrote Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the grocers association. “Taken together, its pay penalty requirements and the likely increase in needless lawsuits, will only lead to higher costs at the grocery store for Los Angeles shoppers.”
The county’s Department of Consumer and Business Affairs would be responsible for enforcing the policy. Each violation comes with a penalty of $500 to $1000.
Janna Shadduck-Hernández, project director at the UCLA Labor Center, said she believes the policy will bring stability to the lives of thousands of low-income workers. A 2018 study from the center found that the vast majority of retail workers, many of whom are people of color, get their schedules a week or less in advance.
“What this allows is people to organize their lives,” she said.
In recent years, major cities including Chicago, Seattle, Philadelphia and New York City, as well as the state of Oregon, have passed laws to protect the time of shift workers. Kristen Harknett, a professor of sociology at University of California, San Francisco who studied the impact of Seattle’s policy, said she found workers’ well-being improved as their schedules became more predictable.
“When you don’t know when — or how much — you’re going to work from one day or the next, it’s very disruptive,” she said. “It really just messes up your ability to plan.”
Harknett said the county’s version has the same components as the other jurisdictions, with one key difference: food service workers aren’t included.
“The carve-out for the restaurant and food industry is pretty unique,” she said. “Food service is pretty unstable and unpredictable, [and] those workers are not going to experience the enhanced protections that their counterparts in retail will.”
The county indicated in a report last May that it would look at providing “coverage for workers in several other vulnerable industries, particularly food service” in the future.
Amardeep Gill with the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy, an advocacy group that pushed for the county policy, said she hoped other industries would enact a similar ordinance for their own sectors.
“We’re hoping the work that we’ve done here really lays like a strong foundation where others can build upon this,” said Gill.
Hays County Courthouse, San Marcos, TX – The Hays County Commissioners’ Court approved the Professional Services Agreement with Austin Pets Alive! (APA!) to be extended through June 30, 2024.
Nearly 4 in 10 renters in Los Angeles County have worried about losing their homes and becoming homeless in the last few years, according to the results of a new survey from UCLA. A similar share have worried that they or their family would go hungry because they cannot afford the cost of food.
The 2024 Quality of Life Index, prepared by UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, suggests that the county‘s renters are feeling particularly intense strain from the steep cost of housing combined with inflation.
“Everybody feels they’re being squeezed by the cost of living, even affluent people,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, the former longtime county supervisor and city councilmember, now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School. But for renters, that pressure is especially acute, he added.
Overall, researchers found the high cost of living, especially housing, is pushing down quality of life for people across the county.
This year, the overall quality of life rating reported by survey respondents dropped to 53 on a scale of 10 to 100 — tying with 2022 for the lowest rating since the survey launched in 2016. The rating for cost of living dropped to 38, the lowest score ever observed in any category.
Renters reported lower satisfaction with the cost of living and jobs and the economy than nearly every other major demographic group in the survey of 1,686 county residents.
Fewer than a quarter of renters said they thought they would ever be able to buy a home in a part of L.A. where they would want to live. And about half, 51%, of renters reported being pessimistic about their economic future in L.A. County, while 61% of homeowners said they felt optimistic.
Pablo Estupiñan, campaign director for the tenant advocacy group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, or SAJE, said the findings reflect his experience working with tenants across Los Angeles.
“Community members are very concerned about facing an eviction or becoming homeless,” he said. “That’s kind of been the trend we’re seeing, with wages that are pretty stagnant as rents keep going up.”
Median rent in Los Angeles is $2,083, according to Apartment List. That’s down slightly from last year but still high enough to create significant challenges for renters across the region.
Earlier this year, a report from the Housing Initiative at Penn estimated that between 97,000 and 153,000 households in the city of L.A. were behind on rent as of August 2023. While much of that rent debt was accumulated during the pandemic, a lot of it piled up more recently, indicating that economic strains since the pandemic are challenging renters.
“As much as possible, it will be easier and less expensive to keep people housed than to find people new housing after they are evicted or become homeless,” the Penn report concluded.
Last year, there were more than 47,000 eviction court filings across the county, the most since 2016, according to data compiled by Kyle Nelson, senior policy and research analyst for SAJE.
Advocates expect that number could increase again this year, after the last of COVID-era renter protections expired in February.
The survey, conducted in English and Spanish from late February to mid-March, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
On March 23, in partnership with the Central Texas Food Bank, the Hays County Pet Resource Center hosted a drive-up food distribution for people and pets at McCormick Middle School in Buda. The event was open to anyone in Hays County and served over 250 families. Of the 250 families, an estimated 98% were in need of pet food.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that developers and home builders in California may challenge the fees commonly imposed by cities and counties to pay for new roads, schools, sewers and other public improvements.
The justices said these “impact fees” may be unconstitutional if builders and developers are forced to pay an unfair share of the cost of public projects.
Developers have contended that limiting California’s high fees would lead to the construction of more affordable new housing.
California state courts had blocked claims arising from “a development impact fee imposed pursuant to a legislatively authorized fee program” for new development in a city or county.
But the 9-0 Supreme Court decision opened the door for such challenges. The justices revived a constitutional claim brought by an El Dorado County man who put a manufactured home on a small lot and was told he would have to pay a “traffic mitigation fee” of $23,420.
The decision could have wide impact in California, since local governments have increasingly relied on impact fees rather than property taxes to pay for new projects.
But the justices did not spell out when such fees become unfair and unconstitutional.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they joined the majority opinion in Sheetz vs. El Dorado County because it merely allows such challenges.
In a separate opinion, conservative Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said he saw merit to the “common government practice of imposing permit conditions, such as impact fees, on new development through reasonable formulas or schedules that assess the impact of classes of development rather than the impact of specific parcels of property.”
State and county attorneys had made just that argument. They said it was fairer to impose a development fee on all the lots in an area.
But the justices nonetheless ruled that homeowners and developers may sue to challenge these fees as an unconstitutional taking of their private property. The case will now go back to the California courts.
The Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento hailed the ruling as a significant victory for property rights.
“Holding building permits hostage in exchange for excessive development fees is obviously extortion,” said attorney Paul Beard, who represented the El Dorado County homeowner. “We are thrilled that the court agreed and put a stop to a blatant attempt to skirt the 5th Amendment’s prohibition against taking private property without just compensation.”
Beard said El Dorado County “failed to show — and cannot show — that the fee is sufficiently related and proportionate to the traffic impacts” of his client’s “modest home.”
The debate over development fees is especially relevant in California, where local governments have increasingly relied on the charges to finance parks, streets, schools and other infrastructure and services since the 1978 passage of Proposition 13 limited property tax revenues.
The fees have come under scrutiny in other cases as developers and others have blamed them for driving up the cost of housing and for a wide disparity in cities’ fees.
For decades, the Supreme Court has cast a skeptical eye at California’s regulation of private property. In a pair of decisions, it limited the power of government officials to demand concessions from a property owner in exchange for a building permit.
In 1987, justices ruled for the owner of a beach bungalow in Ventura who was told he could not obtain a permit to expand his home unless he agreed to allow the public access to the beachfront. The conservative majority at the time described this demand as akin to “extortion” and said it violated the 5th Amendment’s clause that forbids the taking of “private property … for public use without just compensation.”
In a follow-up decision involving a store owner who was forced to allow a bike path on her property, the court said the government may not impose such special conditions on property owners unless it can show an owner’s new development would cause direct harm to the community.
But since then, it has been unclear whether this property right applies to development fees or in situations where fees are set by legislation rather than imposed on a single owner seeking a permit.
Writing for the court in Friday’s ruling, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that “there is no basis for affording property rights less protection in the hands of legislators than administrators. The Takings Clause applies equally to both — which means that it prohibits legislatures and agencies alike from imposing unconstitutional conditions on land-use permits.”
The case arose when property owner George Sheetz sought a permit to put a manufactured home on a lot he owned in Placerville, outside Sacramento. El Dorado County required him to pay a “traffic impact mitigation” fee to obtain the permit. Some of the money was to go toward upgrades to Highway 50, which runs through the area, but most was to go toward new or expanded roads in the county.
Sheetz paid the fee and obtained his permit, then sued to challenge the fee as unconstitutional. He argued that the taxpayers of the county, not the new owner of a small home, should be required to pay for road building.
The justices agreed to hear his appeal after he lost in the California courts.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who has supported legislation to rein in developer fees, said he didn’t expect Friday’s decision by itself to have a significant effect on the debate in Sacramento because it only called out one extreme situation.
“Ultimately, the solution is the same today as it was yesterday,” Wiener said. “The California Legislature needs to put in place an actual structure for impact fees. Right now, it’s all over the map.”
Wiener said he sympathizes with local governments that turn to the fees because it’s easier than raising revenue through broad-based taxes — but he said some cities use sky-high fees to block housing development.
“There is something a little odd about effectively taxing new housing to pay for societal needs that should be paid generally by taxpayers — by the entire community,” he said.
Graham Knaus, executive director of the California State Assn. of Counties, said in a statement Friday that the organization was still reviewing the ruling to understand its implications.
But he said that “limiting the ability to legislatively enact fees will negatively impact the ability of our 58 counties to protect the health and welfare of their communities and drastically limit the building of vital local infrastructure.”
“In many cases,” Knaus said, “these fees are the only tool available to pay for new infrastructure around certain development projects.”
Times staff writer Liam Dillon in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
Los Angeles County has agreed to a $12-million settlement to resolve allegations that its home improvement lending program wrecked the finances of many borrowers and left them vulnerable to foreclosure.
The settlement, granted preliminary approval Monday by an L.A. County Superior Court judge, comes six years after some homeowners sued the county in twin suits alleging that local officials knew, or should have known, the program would harm vulnerable homeowners and then looked the other way as problems piled up.
The county did not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement and continued to deny the allegations. It said it settled to avoid further litigation costs.
“Without this, I think people would stand to get absolutely nothing,” said Stephanie Carroll, an attorney with Public Counsel, which along with Bet Tzedek and Hogan Lovells represented homeowners in the two lawsuits. “Now they stand to get some compensation for what happened to them.”
Launched in 2015, the county’s Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE, program had the stated goal of enabling homeowners to finance energy- and water-efficient home improvements, including solar panels and low-flow toilets.
The program, a public-private partnership, was overseen by the county but largely operated and funded by private finance companies, which in turn relied on home improvement contractors to sign up borrowers.
Other PACE programs have been set up across the country. The loans require government approval because they are repaid as a line item on a homeowner’s property tax bill.
PACE programs, including L.A. County’s, have been dogged by allegations that consumers — particularly elderly and non-English-speaking homeowners — didn’t understand what they were getting into and couldn’t afford their loans, which, if unpaid, could lead to foreclosure.
Initially, lenders handed out loans based on the amount of equity a homeowner had in their property and didn’t consider the borrower‘s income to determine if they could repay the loan.
Contractors who signed borrowers up for the loans have been accused of misleading consumers on how they would work.
It wasn’t until 2018, following passage of state reform legislation, that lenders in California had to conduct an ability-to-repay analysis based on income.
Still, complaints from homeowners continued, including that home improvement contractors charged inflated costs and forged their signatures to get the loans processed.
In 2020, L.A. County shut down its program in part, it said, because it could not be sure there were sufficient protections for consumers.
PACE companies say the vast majority of their customers come away happy and that foreclosures are rare. Some firms have blamed new California consumer protection rules for knocking out too many qualified candidates.
The settlement, preliminarily approved Monday, resolves two lawsuits filed against the county and two of its private lender partners, Renew Financial and Renovate America. The suits allege that the parties committed financial elder abuse and that the private lenders encouraged predatory lending by not considering a consumer’s ability to repay while telling contractors how much of a loan a consumer qualified for based on their home equity.
Like the county, Renew Financial continued to deny allegations as part of the settlement. Renovate America has since gone out of business, but previously said it found “no merit” in the allegations.
Under the terms of the settlement, the county will pay $9 million, while Renew Financial will pay $3 million. The amount for attorney and administrative fees will be capped at $2 million, with the rest going to homeowners.
Consumers can receive money if they took out a Renew Financial or Renovate America loan through the county program from March 1, 2015, to March 31, 2018.
The county partnered with a third lender as part of the program, PACE Funding Group, which was not a party to the suits and homeowners with those loans are not entitled to relief.
Homeowners who are eligible will receive extra compensation if their PACE loans caused very large debt burdens. In addition, those with big debt burdens who at the time of origination were 65 and older or had limited English proficiency will receive even more money.
“For those people who particularly were kind of victimized … I think it will be very significant,” said Michael Maddigan, an attorney with Hogan Lovells.
Though L.A. County no longer offers a PACE program, PACE loans remain available to many county residents because their cities —including Los Angeles — allow PACE financing through statewide programs.
Homeowners who took out loans through those programs are not part of the settlement and not entitled to relief — even if their loan came from Renew Financial or Renovate America.
Eligible homeowners will receive written notification of the settlement by mail.
L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis said that the county remains committed to servicing PACE loans taken out under its program before it closed, as well as improving protections for those consumers.
“The settlement demonstrates that commitment and our support for homeowners who sought to improve the energy and water efficiency of their homes under the program,” Solis said in a statement.
For Zenia Ocana, the prospect of help is welcome news.
In 2016, Ocana and her husband Juan decided to get solar panels on their North Hollywood home and ended up with a Renew Financial loan through the county’s program that left them with no residual income to live on, according to a complaint in one of the settling suits.
In an interview, Ocana, 54, said the contractor who signed them up for the loan told them the solar panels would be paid for by the government and cost her family nothing.
The Ocanas received no documents in Spanish from Renew Financial even though they don’t understand complex documents in English and were charged nearly three times the normal rate for solar panels, the lawsuit alleged.
To afford the nearly $4,500 in annual loan payments, Ocana said she and her husband have cut back on food, relied on help from family and delayed other bills.
The settlement, Ocana said, provides her hope that “we can be free of this nightmare.”
Airbnbs and other short-term rentals in unincorporated areas will be restricted to hosts who are renting out their primary residence, under a proposal that gained preliminary approval from the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
Officials say the rentals have proliferated across the county’s unincorporated areas, sometimes leaving a trail of raucous parties and trash-strewn streets.
The proposed ordinance, five years in the making, would prohibit hosts from listing second homes, guesthouses, accessory dwelling units or investment properties in unincorporated L.A. County.
The supervisors, who unanimously passed the ordinance on Tuesday, must vote on it one more time, likely early next month, before it becomes law.
Under the proposed ordinance, hosts in unincorporated areas — home to roughly 1 million residents — would have to register with the county and pay an annual fee of $914. A property could be rented for no more than 30 consecutive days at a time. And so-called “corporate hosts,” who rent out multiple properties, would have to pull their listings.
“It takes them right out of the game,” said Randy Renick, head of Better Neighbors LA, which pushes for regulations on short-term rentals.
Better Neighbors LA says the ordinance would return desperately needed housing to the market. The group has estimated that there are more than 2,600 houses available for short-term rental in unincorporated county areas.
The ordinance was supported by several tenant advocacy groups and public officials, who argued that short-term rentals were displacing long-term residents and replacing them with unruly tourists. Some residents have told news outlets that their street has been turned into a “de facto hotel.”
“All around the County, residents must suddenly deal with commercial enterprises in the middle of their neighborhoods, bringing in rowdy parties, parking difficulties, high volumes of trash, loud noise, and guests that have no stake in safeguarding the community,” a coalition of city officials wrote in a joint letter.
Some hosts — as well as the rental platforms they use — have opposed the proposed ordinance, arguing that it is an “attack” on mom-and-pop landlords, disincentivizes tourists from visiting and cuts off a much-needed income stream.
At a county board meeting last month, Airbnb host Ellen Snortland said she felt she was being unfairly lumped with corporate landlords. She said she is in her 70s and uses Airbnb to stave off foreclosure.
“Do you think people like us Airbnb hosts do it to get rich?” she said. “We do it for survival.”
Vrbo, an online platform for vacation rentals, said it believes the county’s regulations would harm both tourists and the families that want to host them.
The proposal “severely limits the options available to traveling families visiting the area and economic opportunity for residents who own, manage, and service these accommodations,” a spokesperson for the Expedia Group, which oversees Vrbo, wrote in a statement.
The county’s crackdown comes more than five years after the city of Los Angeles passed its own short term rental restrictions, which barred Angelenos from renting out second homes on platforms such as Airbnb. The county’s version would bring unincorporated areas roughly in line with the city.
Maria Patiño Gutierrez, director of policy with the tenant rights group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, said residents will sometimes report illegal vacation rentals in their neighborhoods, only to discover that the homes are actually in unincorporated L.A. County and, therefore, completely legal.
“The housing crisis is in all of L.A. County,” she said.
Some supporters of the ordinance hope there will be one significant difference from L.A. city: enforcement with teeth.
Researchers have found that hosts in L.A. regularly flout the city’s rules, with little consequence. A studyfrom 2022 found that nearly half the short-term rentals in the city were illegal.
Renick with Better Neighbors LA said he believes the county will do a better job of enforcement, though he said details on how that will be done are “thin.”
“We’re confident, given what the various supervisors have told us, that the county’s going to take enforcement seriously,” he said.
Nichole Alcaraz,operations chief with the county’s treasurer and tax collector, which spearheaded the ordinance, said they’re still hammering out the penalties for hosts that don’t comply. She said there will be more details in the coming month.
“We do know there’s going to be an enforcement arm. We do have some general ideas about how that’s going to work,” she said. “But the amount [of the penalty] may change.”
The ordinance would go into effect six months after the final vote and would include all property owners in unincorporated L.A. County with the exception of those along the coast. Residents in unincorporated coastal areas — including Marina del Rey, Catalina Island and the Santa Monica Mountains — will need to wait for the California Coastal Commission to consider the ordinance.
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.”
A Rutherford County man pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges on Wednesday for his actions related to the breaching of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, which included picking up a flagpole-like object and throwing it toward a line of police officers.
Anthony Mastanduno, 61, pleaded guilty to a nine-count indictment, including six felony charges, a release from the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Those felonies were:
Civil disorder
Entering and remaining in a restricted area with a deadly and dangerous weapon
Becoming involved in physical violence in a restricted area or groups with a deadly and dangerous weapon
Two counts of assaulting
Resisting or impeding certain officers using a deadly and dangerous weapon
Additionally, Mastanduno pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor charges that included disorderly conduct in a capitol building, an act of physical violence in the Capitol grounds or building, parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
An image from the US Attorney’s Office shows Anthony Mastanduno, circled in red, with a pole-like object as he approaches a line of officers at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. US Attorney’s Office
Mastanduno at the Capitol building in Washington D.C.
The release said court documents showed that on Jan. 6, 2021, in the afternoon, Mastanduno entered the Capitol building via the Senate Wing Door, about four minutes after it was first breached by rioters.
He made his way to the Capitol Crypt, where he was at the front of a line of rioters who overwhelmed police officers in the area. Almost 20 minutes after he first entered, Mastanduno exited the Capitol building and made his way to the Lower West Terrace.
There, police formed a defensive line at the mouth of an archway leading to an entrance of the Capitol building known as the Tunnel. Rioters at the location “battled” with police officers for hours, the release said, in an attempt to storm the Capitol building.
The release said the Tunnel was the site of “some of the most violent attacks against law enforcement” on Jan. 6.
Coordinated attacks on police
Later that afternoon, Mastanduno began participating in coordinated attacks on uniformed police protecting the tunnel after engaging with other rioters.
Picking up a blue, flagpole-like object, Mastanduno threw it into the mouth of the tunnel towards the line of officers “as if throwing a javelin or spear,” the release said.
He then got a police shield, stolen from officers, which he used to push against the same line of police at the mouth of the Tunnel. He also used a telescoping baton while pushing, the release said, to strike police officers multiple times.
The baton can be worn on the hip and expands in length. Mastanduno aimed for the hands and arms of the officers.
He abandoned his position in the Tunnel after being sprayed with a chemical irritant spray.
The FBI arrested Mastanduno on Aug. 23, 2023, in North Carolina. He will be sentenced by a judge on June 27.
A tornado touched down in Kings County Saturday afternoon — the second tornado in two days to hit Central California.
The tornado touched down in the south end of Corcoran around 4:37 p.m., said meteorologist Carlos Molina with the National Weather Service’s Hanford office. The tornado moved eastward and than dissipated by the time it got to U.S. Route 99, he said.
The tornado comes less than a day after a funnel cloud briefly touched down in the county of Madera, about 30 minutes north of Fresno. ABC7 reported the tornado touched down near an elementary school, forcing students to shelter in the cafeteria.
“This is the first time I’ve ever actually observed two tornadoes back to back,” said Molina, noting moisture in the area from a winter storm had brought ideal conditions for such an event.
“Usually, for Central California, we normally would get one, possibly two tornadoes across our area between March and April,” he said.
The back-to-back tornadoes come less than a month after two tornadoes touched down within a minute of each other along San Luis Obispo County’s coast.
Officials said at the time they were the first tornadoes to hit San Luis Obispo County since 2004 and the strongest since before 1950 with winds of 95 mph.
Elsewhere in the state, a blizzard pounded the Sierra Nevada on Saturday with gusts of up to 190 mph and almost 2 feet of snow in some places. A 75-mile stretch of Interstate 80 was shut down and ski resorts were force to close amid the dangerous conditions.
Steve Garvey is not shy about leaning into his baseball stardom as he runs for the U.S. Senate. Garvey has been officially enshrined as a “Legend of Dodger Baseball,” and his uniform number has been retired by the San Diego Padres, but he threw his cap in the campaign ring only after he believed he could win statewide support.
“A Giants fan came up to me,” he told The Times last October, “and said, ‘Garvey, I hate the Dodgers, but I’ll vote for you.’ ”
The primary election is one month away, with the top two finishers advancing to the November final. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) is favored by 25% of likely voters, with Garvey and Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine) tied at 15% each and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland) fourth at 7%, according to a poll released Thursday by USC, Long Beach State, and Cal Poly Pomona.
The poll asked likely voters to identify their favorite California baseball team, then broke down the voting preferences accordingly. Garvey is running as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic state. The counties that are home to California’s five major league teams all have more registered Democrats than Republicans — more so in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Alameda counties; less so in Orange and San Diego counties, according to the secretary of state’s office.
That said, who do the fans of your team prefer?
Dodgers: Schiff 29%, Garvey 16%, Porter 15%, Lee 3%
Angels: Garvey 25%, Porter 22%, Schiff 15%, Lee 2%
Padres: Garvey 26%, Lee 15%, Schiff 15%, Porter 10%
Giants: Schiff 33%, Garvey 15%, Porter 14%, Lee 11%
For five years, vendors hawking grilled meats, fresh fruit and used clothes on the streets of unincorporated L.A. County have been stuck in a strange legal gray area: no longer banned, but not yet regulated.
On Tuesday, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors took a major step toward bringing these sellers out of their regulatory limbo, pushing forward a long-awaited ordinance that would set rules for street vending in unincorporated parts of the county.
In 2018, California decriminalized street vending statewide, opening the door for local jurisdictions to create their own laws around who could sell what and where. Since then, at least 16 cities in L.A. County have created their own rules.
“Now the county must do its part,” said Supervisor Hilda Solis, adding she believed the rule change would bring marginalized entrepreneurs, overwhelmingly from Latino and immigrant communities, into the county’s bustling economy.
Under the ordinance, street vendors setting up in unincorporated parts of the county would have to register with the county’s Department of Economic Opportunity, which would enforce the new rules: no blocking the sidewalk, no selling on private property, no excessive littering, to name a few. Vendors could face fines if they don’t comply.
The Board of Supervisors voted 4 to 0 in support of the ordinance, though they will need to take a final vote before it can pass. The ordinance would go into effect six months later.
The supervisors also voted 4 to 0 to move forward on an ordinance from the county’s Department of Public Health that would change how food carts are regulated.
Supervisor Kathryn Barger abstained from both votes.
Barger said she’d heard from business owners who believed the rule change would create an uneven playing field between bricks-and-mortar businesses and street vendors, who she believed would get off relatively easy for violating the rules.
Kelly LoBianco, head of the Department of Economic Opportunity, said the agency would emphasize a “care first” approach to enforcement, meaning the emphasis would be on educating vendors about the new regulations rather than fining them for flouting them.
“I feel that we have not gone far enough,” Barger said. “The penalties don’t meet what we’re requiring for restaurants that can get shut down and lose a day’s business.”
Business owners said they were also concerned about unnavigable streets and trash — problems, they believed, that would not improve unless the county cracked down.
“Without having a rigorous, effective enforcement, nothing’s going to happen,” said Tony DeMarco, a pawnshop owner and president of the Whittier Boulevard Merchants Assn., which opposed the ordinance.
While bricks-and-mortar business owners lamented an uneven playing field, street vendors and their advocates hailed the rules as some of the best they’ve seen since the state decriminalized street vending.
“Our hope is that L.A. County can actually be the model,” said Doug Smith of Inclusive Action, part of a coalition of groups that have advocated for legalization of street vending. “It does not include some of the things we’ve seen that are really intended to keep them out of the system — things like criminal background checks, really high fees or really significant restrictions on locations.”
Smith said, however, that food vendors, in particular, could still face a challenging path to registering with the county as they would need to get a permit from the Department of Public Health, which enforces the state’s retail food code. Food vendors ubiquitous across the county, such as taco stands, have struggled in the past with the agency’s cumbersome rules, and only a small fraction are believed to have the proper permits.
Barbara Ferrer, director of the Public Health Department, emphasized Tuesday that the rule changes under consideration would not apply to “pop-up food stands” — typically larger food operations with big tables and canopies that she said can’t be permitted under state law.
Advocates say some jurisdictions have taken a punitive approach when formalizing rules on street vending. In Fontana, for example, unlicensed sellers could be arrested on misdemeanor charges. The city of Los Angeles, which passed its ordinance in 2018, has been sued over its “no-vending zone” — tourist-friendly areas such as Dodger Stadium and Hollywood Bowl where city officials contend vendors will add to congestion.
Ritu Mahajan Estes of Public Counsel, which represents the vendors suing Los Angeles, said the law firm supports the county’s ordinance, which doesn’t have any significant no-vending zones.
Newsletter
Get the lowdown on L.A. politics
Sign up for our L.A. City Hall newsletter to get weekly insights, scoops and analysis.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
She said there were some small tweaks she’d like to see: namely nixing the requirements on distancing. Under the draft ordinance, sidewalk vendors cannot be within 500 feet of a day-care nor farmers market.
“It’s not perfect, but it has a lot of good things,” she said.
Other vendors said they worried about how much it could end up costing them to get licensed. The department says it would need to set the registration fee at $604 to offset the regulatory program costs. Officials say they don’t plan to charge the first year and have found funding that will allow them to charge $100 annually through mid-2028.
Many of the vendors warn that a fee of $600 — if it came to fruition years later— would be a death knell to their business.
“Rent is high. Food is high. The cost of living is high,” Alfredo Gomez, a street vendor in East Rancho Dominguez, told the board through an interpreter. “Please, look at the cost, the fees.”
Torrential rains over the holiday weekend have left Humboldt County reeling, with several roads flood-damaged and impassable, and more rain is on the way.
“The storm came and hit us hard on Saturday,” said Thomas Mattson, the county public works director. He said his agency had been working round the clock to repair washed-out roads that had left some residents stranded.
In Redwood Valley, off Highway 299, flooding from the Mad River damaged both main access roads Saturday, cutting off residents from outside aid. The 113-mile river flows northwest through the county and the rural unincorporated community. Repairs to the roads were not expected to be completed until late Wednesday.
Eureka’s daily newspaper the Times-Standard reported that at least 30 households were struggling with flooded homes and power outages amid dwindling supplies and no way to access help.
During an eight-hour stretch Saturday, 2 to 5 inches of rain fell throughout Humboldt County, according to Tyler Jewel, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Eureka office. The community of Whitethorn recorded nearly 8 inches of rainfall.
“It’s a very small watershed,” Jewel said. “This last storm just happened to dump a ton of rain there. … It’s really rare for that river to flood.”
Mattson said the county’s public works crews had reopened 15 flooded roads since Saturday but were still dealing with half a dozen that sustained serious damage.
Ryan Derby, emergency services manager with the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, said there had been “county-wide flooding” over the last several days. The agency declared a local state of emergency Tuesday to expedite emergency repairs and state and federal aid.
Derby said flooding from the Mad River affected Tyee City and other agricultural land in that area, along with parts of Mad River Road, or what’s locally known as the “Arcata Bottom.”
Small creeks and streams overflowed into the Blue Lake area, not far from the Blue Lake Rancheria tribal land, about a 10-minute drive from Arcata.
Other flooding stretched from Hoopa in the north down to Shelter Cove in the southwestern tip of the county along the coast.
Some of the affected areas are “sparsely populated,” Derby said, and no evacuation orders were issued, though some residents fled during the rainstorms on Saturday. No deaths or injuries have been reported.
County officials are still assessing how much damage was caused by the rain so far, Derby added, and they will meet Thursday to discuss the situation and this weekend’s expected rain. Derby said the county is referring affected residents to the Red Cross at (800) 733-2767.
Derby said the storms caused damage to county roads and culverts, and with more rain set to arrive Friday, he worries that additional flooding could interfere with recovery efforts.
“It’s not anticipated to be as severe,” he said of the rain forecast. “But there could be compounding factors with the incoming storm that pose additional issues.”
Forecasts indicate 2 to 3 inches of rainfall are expected throughout Humboldt County — though the King mountain range in the southwest could receive up to 5 inches — between Friday and Monday, with the first wave of rainfall arriving Friday morning through Saturday morning and the second from Saturday night until Monday afternoon.
Higher rainfall amounts of 4 to 6 inches were expected throughout Mendocino County south of Humboldt, with both the Russian and Navarro rivers having the potential to flood, Jewel said.
