Comics have long been on the front lines of democracy, the canary in the cat’s mouth, Looney Tunes style, when it comes to free speech being swallowed by regressive politics.
So Jimmy Kimmel is in good company, though he may not like this particular historical party: Zero Mostel; Philip Loeb; even Lenny Bruce, who claimed, after being watched by the FBI and backroom blacklisted, that he was less a comic and more “the surgeon with the scalpel for false values.”
During that era of McCarthyism in the 1950s (yes, I know Bruce’s troubles came later), America endured an attack on our 1st Amendment right to make fun of who we want, how we want — and survived — though careers and even lives were lost.
Wake up, Los Angeles. This isn’t a Jimmy Kimmel problem. This is a Los Angeles problem.
This is about punishing people who speak out. It’s about silencing dissent. It’s about misusing government power to go after enemies. You don’t need to agree with Kimmel’s politics to see where this is going.
For a while, during Trump 2.0, the ire of the right was aimed at California in general and San Francisco in particular, that historical lefty bastion that, with its drug culture, openly LBGTQ+ ethos and Pelosi-Newsom political dynasty, seemed to make it the perfect example of what some consider society’s failures.
But really, the difficulty with hating San Francisco is that it doesn’t care. It’s a city that has long acknowledged, even flaunted, America’s discomfort with it. That’s why the infamous newspaper columnist Herb Caen dubbed it “Baghdad by the Bay” more than 80 years ago, when the town had already fully embraced its outsider status.
Los Angeles, on the other hand, has never considered itself a problem. Mostly, we’re too caught up in our own lives, through survival or striving, to think about what others think of our messy, vibrant, complicated city. Add to that, Angelenos don’t often think of themselves as a singular identity. There are a million different L.A.s for the more than 9 million people who live in our sprawling county.
But to the rest of America, L.A. is increasingly a specific reality, a place that, like San Francisco once did, embodies all that is wrong for a certain slice of the American right.
It was not happenstance that President Trump chose L.A. as the first stop for his National Guard tour, or that ICE’s roving patrols are on our streets. It’s not bad luck or even bad decisions that is driving the push to destroy UCLA as we know it.
And it’s really not what Kimmel said about Charlie Kirk that got him pulled, because it truth, his statements were far from the most offensive that have been uttered on either side of the political spectrum.
In fact, he wasn’t talking about Kirk, but about his alleged killer and how in the immediate aftermath, there was endless speculation about his political beliefs. Turns out that Kimmel wrongly insinuated the suspect was conservative, though all of us will likely have to wait until the trial to gain a full understanding of the evidence.
“The MAGA gang [is] desperately trying to characterize this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them, and doing everything they can to score political points from it,” Kimmel said, before making fun of Trump’s response to the horrific killing.
You can support what Kimmel said or be deeply offended by it. But it is rich for the people who just a few years ago were saying liberal “cancel culture” was ruining America to adopt the same tactics.
If you need proof that this is more about control than content, look no further than Trump’s social media post on the issue, which directly encourages NBC to fire its own late-night hosts, who have made their share of digs at the president as well.
“Kimmel has ZERO talent, and worse ratings than even Colbert, if that’s possible. That leaves Jimmy and Seth, two total losers, on Fake News NBC. Their ratings are also horrible. Do it NBC!!!” Trump wrote.
This is about making an example of America’s most vibrant and inclusive city, and the celebrity icons who dare to diss — the place that exemplifies better than any other what freedom looks like, lives like, jokes like.
If a Kimmel can fall so easily, what does that mean the career of Hannah Einbinder, who shouted out a “free Palestine” at the Emmys? Will there be a quiet fear of hiring her?
What does it mean for a union leader like David Huerta, who is still facing charges after being detained at an immigration protest? Will people think twice before joining a demonstration?
What does it mean for you? The yous who live lives of expansiveness and inclusion. The yous who have forged your own path, made your own way, broken the boundaries of traditional society whether through your choices on who to love, what country to call your own, how to think of your identity or nurture your soul.
You, Los Angeles, with your California dreams and anything-goes attitude, are the living embodiment of everything that needs to be crushed.
I am not trying to send you into an anxiety spiral, but it’s important to understand what we stand to lose if civil rights continue to erode.
Kimmel having his speech censored is in league with our immigrant neighbors being rounded up and detained; the federal government financially pressuring doctors into dropping care for transgender patients, and the University of California being forced to turn over the names of staff and students it may have a beef with.
Being swept up by ICE may seem vastly different than a millionaire celebrity losing his show, but they are all the weaponization of government against its people.
It was Disney, not Donald Trump, who took action against Kimmel. But Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatening to “take action” if ABC did not sounds a lot like the way the White House talks about Washington, Oakland and so many other blue cities, L.A. at the top of the list.
Our Black mayor. Our Latino senator and representatives. Our 1 million undocumented residents. Our nearly 10% of the adult population identifies as LGBTQ+. Our comics, musicians, actors and writers who have long pushed us to see the world in new, often difficult, ways.
Many of us are here because other places didn’t want us, didn’t understand us, tried to hold us back. (I am in Sacramento now, but remain an Angeleno at heart.) We came here, to California and Los Angeles, for the protection this state and city offers.
But now it needs our protection.
However this assault on democracy comes, we are all Jimmy Kimmel — we are all at risk. The very nature of this place is under siege, and standing together across the many fronts of these attacks is our best defense.
Seeing that they are all one attack — whether it is against a celebrity, a car wash worker or our entire city — is critical.
“Our democracy is not self-executing,” former President Obama said recently. “It depends on us all as citizens, regardless of our political affiliations, to stand up and fight for the core values that have made this country the envy of the world.”
So here we are, L.A., in a moment that requires fortitude, requires insight, requires us to stand up and say the most ridiculous thing that has every been said in a town full of absurdity:
Isadore Hall, a former state legislator and Compton City Council member, launched a campaign Monday to challenge Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
Hall, who is backed by a slew of prominent endorsers, argues that Mejia has been more focused on “social media theatrics” than protecting tax dollars.
He said he would bring common sense leadership and accountability, citing his lengthy track record in elected office and master’s degrees in management and public administration, as well as experience weeding out government waste and fraud in Compton.
Hall, who moved to Los Angeles in 2016 and represented parts of the city in both the Assembly and the state Senate, said he launched his bid after being asked by “some elected officials,” along with several pastors and labor leaders, though he declined to provide specifics.
Hall’s endorsements include L.A. County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger, L.A. City Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, California Treasurer Fiona Ma, Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and five state legislators. If elected, Hall would be the city’s first Black controller; Mejia, who is Filipino American, previously made history as the first Asian American elected to citywide office in L.A.
“It’s one thing to be a great finance person or an auditor or a person who understands numbers … but you also have to have a temperament. You also have to understand the importance of governance,” Hall said, arguing that Mejia’s office is poorly managed and lacks good communication with city department heads and other local leaders.
It’s still unclear whether other candidates will enter the race for controller — a coveted role that is one of three citywide offices, along with mayor and city attorney.
L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez has been rumored to potentially be interested in a bid for either mayor or controller, though she declined to discuss her plans with The Times last week.
Hall and Mejia represent vastly different flanks of the Democratic Party, and the coming race will almost certainly pit L.A. establishment politics against the city’s ascendant left.
Three years ago, despite being heavily outspent, Mejia made political mincemeat of Paul Koretz, who had held elected office since before he was born. Young voters who were previously unaware that L.A. even had a controller were galvanized by Mejia’s unorthodox campaign, which directed an unprecedented spotlight toward L.A.’s chief accounting officer, auditor and paymaster.
Mejia’s successful campaign coincided with a moment where faith in L.A. City Hall was at a nadir amid numerous criminal scandals and an explosive leaked recording of some City Council members frankly discussing politics in sometimes racist terms. The question in 2026 will be whether the civic pendulum has shifted and if the phrase “veteran politician” still doubles as an effective slur. Mejia will also now be running as the incumbent rather than an outsider.
Hall, 52, has spent roughly 15 years in elected office, beginning with the Compton school board in his mid-20s.
Like Mejia, who is now 34, Hall found success in politics relatively young. But his career ascended the old-fashioned way — through incrementally higher offices and with the support of the pastors, labor and community groups who have long powered the Democratic political machine in South L.A. and surrounding cities.
After losing a hard-fought bid for Congress in 2016, Hall was appointed by then-Gov. Jerry Brown to the California Agricultural and Labor Relations Board. Hall was originally seen as a shoo-in victor during his congressional campaign, but underdog challenger Nanette Barragán succeeded, in part, by hammering him on his ties to special interests in the oil, alcohol and tobacco industries, according to prior Times reporting.
Mejia first made his name with unsuccessful runs for Congress as a Green Party candidate. He found his stride and exploded as a political pied piper of sorts during the 2022 election, where his energetic TikTok videos, sharp billboards and occasional dances in a Pikachu costume helped fuel the energy of the moment.
Attempts by critics to paint Mejia in 2022 as too “extreme” because of his anti-police positions and past bombastic tweets largely fell flat.
As the race heats up, Mejia will almost certainly attack Hall for a number of controversies involving campaign finance.
During his 2014 campaign for state Senate, rivals attacked Hall for his use of campaign funds to pay for expensive dinners, limousine rentals, luxury suites at concerts and trips — expenses he defended as legitimate campaign costs.
Hall said last week that he hadn’t been an expert in the complex rules of congressional campaign finance but held his accountant accountable for the error and learned from the experience.
When Leah Marx began visiting Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles in 2010, it did not immediately raise alarm among the people who ran it. Most of the time, jailers just looked at her federal ID and let her in without asking why she was there. If they did, she said she was investigating a human trafficking case. It was a good-sounding story. Believable. Perfect to deter further questions.
Marx was in her late 20s, just beyond her rookie year at the FBI. She had been sitting at her desk when her supervisor handed her a letter from an inmate alleging jailers were brutalizing people in their custody. It was different from other letters. It had details.
Now she and her FBI colleagues were at the jail conducting secret interviews, trying to separate fact from rumor. The L.A. County Sheriff’s Department ran the jails. With a daily population of 14,000 inmates or more, it was the nation’s largest jail system, and had been known for years as a cauldron of violence and dysfunction.
An inmate at Men’s Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
The agency was in the hands of a would-be reformer, Sheriff Lee Baca. He’d promised transparency. He’d won praise for his ambitious inmate education program. But stories persisted of violent and corrupt jailers, of deputy gangs, of an institutional culture so entrenched it resisted all efforts to root it out.
Marx seemed an improbable federal agent (at first, even to herself). She had been getting a master’s degree in social work when someone suggested she try the FBI. She did not know they hired people like her.
She was new to L.A., and living alone with her dog. As she gathered inmate stories, she made it a point to emphasize that their charges were irrelevant to her.
“I think they started to believe that I was there to actually hear what was going on,” she told The Times.
Inmates were telling her versions of the same story. A jailer would assault an inmate while yelling “Stop resisting,” then charge the inmate with assault on a police officer.
Then-Sheriff Lee Baca meets with inmates at Men’s Central Jail in Los Angeles in October 2011 to listen to their complains and issues about the jail.
(Los Angeles Times)
As she weighed the credibility of inmates against jailers, Marx was informed by a painful episode in her family history. Growing up in Wisconsin, she knew only the outlines of a tragedy too painful for the family to discuss — her grandmother and uncle had long ago died in a house fire in California.
In high school, she learned that the fire had been intentionally set, that the suspected arsonist worked at the local police department. He’d benefited from the air of impunity his position afforded.
“Someone’s position doesn’t dictate whether they are more truthful or less truthful than anyone else,” Marx would recall. “You don’t get instant credibility due to your position or your role.”
In this series, Christopher Goffard revisits old crimes in Los Angeles and beyond, from the famous to the forgotten, the consequential to the obscure, diving into archives and the memories of those who were there.
At the jail, she found an inmate eager to help — Anthony Brown, a bank robber waiting to be transported to state prison on a 423-year prison sentence.
He told her about a jailer who had offered to bring him a contraband cellphone for the right price, and she orchestrated a sting in summer 2011. An undercover agent handed over the money, and the jailer delivered the phone to Brown.
The phone was supposed to help Brown document what he saw. And it gave the FBI leverage to launch an ambitious operation. The FBI would rent out a warehouse said to be full of drugs, and use the compromised jailer to recruit corrupt colleagues to moonlight as guards.
But the plan was dead before it could even get off the ground. Nor did Brown get anything useful with his phone during the week and a half that he had it. On Aug. 8, 2011, deputies found the phone in his cell, stashed in a Doritos bag.
Baca shakes hands with a trainee at a 2022 graduation ceremony at the Sheriff’s Training Academy and Regional Services Center in Whittier.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca did not talk like other lawmen. He often sounded like a social worker, or a panelist at a self-improvement seminar. “I tend to be one that says, ‘All right, constant growth, constant creativity,’” he would say. “All humanity matters.”
Baca had been raised by his grandparents in a Mexican American family in L.A. He dug ditches, washed cars and hauled barley sacks. He joined the Sheriff’s Department at age 23 in 1965, got a PhD from USC and worked his way up to become one of the state’s highest-ranking Latino law officers.
When he took over the Sheriff’s Department in 1998, he promised a new age of law enforcement at the vast, scandal-plagued agency. By the summer of 2011, he was almost 70 and had run the department for 13 years. Voters had reelected him three times.
Baca celebrates with supporters at a Pasadena hotel in November 1998 after hearing he leads the sheriff’s race.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
When it became clear that the FBI had been secretly investigating his jails for a long time, the man who preached reform and accountability faced an unprecedented test. He could cooperate fully with the federal investigation. Instead, he decided to go to war.
His department turned Marx’s informant into a ghost, shuttling him between facilities under a series of fake names, as Marx tried doggedly to find him. Even a federal writ failed to produce him. When Marx finally found him 18 days later, at Lancaster State Prison, he met her with hostile silence — he believed the FBI had left him for dead.
Baca, furious about the intrusion onto his turf, told the local FOX 11 morning show “Good Day L.A.” that the feds had broken the law by planting a phone on one of his inmates.
“Who polices the police?” a host asked.
“We police ourselves,” Baca replied.
Even as he spoke, his department had a surveillance team on Marx. That afternoon in September 2011, as she approached her apartment, two sheriff’s sergeants were waiting for her.
“I’m in the process of swearing out a declaration for an arrest warrant for you,” said Sgt. Scott Craig. He had his jacket off, and his gun was showing.
Marx interpreted it as an attempt to intimidate her. She told him to call the FBI.
“And the first thought I had is if they were willing to come to my house and do this, what else are they capable of?” she said.
U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte Jr. announces indictments of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department officials in 2013.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca confronted U.S. Atty. Andre Birotte, who had approved the jail investigation. According to Birotte’s trial testimony later, Baca erupted angrily, “I’m the goddamn sheriff. These are my goddamn jails. You want to gun up in here? Is that what you want?” Birotte took the phrase to mean, “Do you want our agencies to go to war?”
Inside the FBI, there was an ongoing debate about whether to include Baca in the jail investigation. He was a valuable law enforcement ally. His deputies worked with the feds on many task forces. But the incident outside Marx’s apartment largely ended that debate.
“If that isn’t a clear indication that we cannot work with them, I don’t know what is,” said Carlos Narro, who was the FBI’s public corruption supervisor in L.A. at the time.
The sheriff had catastrophically misjudged his adversary. Instead of quashing the probe, his heavy-handed tactics had only fueled it. Was it possible to expand the case beyond civil rights violations to an obstruction of justice case? How exactly was Brown made to vanish inside the jail system?
James Sexton had some answers. The son of a Southern sheriff, he had joined the LASD hoping to make his name. He was only a few months into his job as a custody deputy at the downtown jail in 2009 when he learned the price of nonconformity. A robbery suspect sucker-punched him, he says, and his colleagues ostracized him for failing to retaliate with a beating.
Still, Sexton’s tech prowess and other skills began to win him some attention, and ultimately earned him a job with an elite intelligence unit. In August 2011, his expertise with the jail computer system made him useful. The brass had an unusual request. They wanted him to make an informant disappear.
“We were going to make it difficult for other law enforcement agencies to find him on the computer,” he said. “And then they all looked at me.”
Sexton had learned the price of defiance. He helped to change Brown’s name. The aliases included John Rodriguez, Kevin King, Chris Johnson and Robin Banks.
When sheriff’s officials decided to unload Brown on the state prison system, Sexton wrote an email notifying his bosses.
“Gents,” Sexton wrote, “I’m going to handle booking our friend back under his true alias.”
The email would become a crucial piece of evidence. In it, Sexton coined the term that would become inseparable from the whole scheme. The subject line: Operation Pandora’s Box.
Sexton thought the Brown episode was behind him. But in early 2012, he said, he was scared. He had reported misconduct on an unrelated case, involving another jailer’s possible association with a skinhead gang.
He knew he would never be trusted again. Co-workers were calling him a rat.
He decided to become an informant for Leah Marx. He was surprised at how little she acted like a cop. “I got a social worker,” he said. “You gotta love the calculation of the FBI. She is easy to talk to. I should have been smarter.”
The main exercise yard on the roof of Men’s Central Jail.
(Los Angeles Times)
Sexton talked to the FBI dozens of times. He told a federal grand jury how he had manipulated the jail computers to hide Brown from his federal handlers. This admission would hurt him severely. In December 2013, he was indicted, one of 18 current or former sworn members charged with civil rights violations, corruption, inmate abuse or obstruction. Among them were the two sergeants who had confronted Marx outside her home.
At trial, Sexton’s attorney portrayed him as an “overeager kid” trying to help the FBI, a low-ranking jailer who exaggerated his importance in the scheme. The attorney compared him to Walter Mitty, the character with the boring office job who escapes into elaborate imaginative worlds — a defense Sexton hated. He was convicted and received an 18-month term. He was thrown into solitary confinement. He counted the days by plucking teeth off a comb.
After four months in prison, Sexton appeared before a federal judge and said, “I stand before you as a broken man.” The prosecutor agreed to let him go home.
The sheriff was not an easy man to pin down. As he sat down to face questions from the feds, his sentences traveled winding paths through vague precincts to fog-filled destinations.
He bragged about the thousands of inmates who were getting an education in his jails, thanks to programs he had established. “No one is a greater believer in inmate rights than I am,” he said.
His answers were frequently long-winded, muddled and incoherent. Again and again, he denied having advance knowledge of what his department had done — from making Brown disappear, to threatening Marx with arrest.
The FBI had not asked his permission to infiltrate his jails because it had not trusted him, but Baca seemed to find this fact intolerable, if not incomprehensible. He seemed personally hurt by it.
“There’s no evidence of a malicious intent on my part to undermine the mission of the FBI,” Baca said. “You wanna catch all the crooked deputies I have; in fact, it’s helpful because I don’t have enough budget to do it all myself.”
For Baca, this interview — which prosecutors would portray as a web of falsehoods — represented the culmination of a long series of misjudgments and self-inflicted wounds.
Baca announcing in January 2014 that he would not seek a fifth term.
(Los Angeles Times)
Baca had once told the ACLU, “I will never, ever resign. I intend to be sheriff as long as I live.” He had run unopposed at the last election, his fourth. But in January 2014, he stood outside the department’s Monterey Park headquarters, fighting emotion as he announced his resignation. He had been sheriff for 15 years and had worked at the department for nearly half a century.
In late 2016, the 74-year-old Baca went to trial. His supporters wore lapel pins in the shape of a badge. His defense: He had been in the dark about what his subordinates were doing to foil the feds. Some of Baca’s prominent friends, including two former L.A. County district attorneys, testified to his law-abiding reputation. The jury deadlocked.
At the retrial, prosecutors called convicted high-ranking co-conspirators to the stand. A former captain said Baca had personally approved the plan to send sergeants to Marx’s house, adding: “his advice to us was just not to put handcuffs on her.”
In March 2017, Baca became the 10th and highest-ranking participant in the obstruction scheme to be convicted. His lawyer pleaded with the judge, saying Baca had Alzheimer’s disease that amounted to its own terrible punishment, “a sentence that will leave him a mere shell of his former self.” But the judge gave Baca three years, excoriating him for abusing the public trust.
Baca, flanked by attorneys David and Nathan Hochman, leaves federal court in Los Angeles after he was arraigned on charges of obstructing justice, and lying to the federal government. Nathan Hochman is now L.A. County district attorney.
(Los Angeles Times)
At 77, Baca turned himself into a low-security facility outside El Paso. According to a friendly biography, he reorganized the prison library and renovated the prison pond, and cleared brush from the grounds. He inspired other inmates by his example. He made friends, he gave advice. He told people to make use of their time.
He went home in 2021. Three years later, at age 82, he wandered away from home in San Marino. He turned up six miles away at a Denny’s, badly confused.
If not for Baca’s decision to “gun up” against the feds, they probably would have brought a handful of civil rights cases against jailers — and Baca would have won reelection.
“All the big prosecutions we did was because of how they reacted,” says Brandon Fox, the former prosecutor. “This was an existential threat to the Sheriff’s Department, but it was of their own making because of what they did.”
Brown is in state prison serving his 423 years. He filed suit claiming the Sheriff’s Department had effectively kidnapped him during those 18 days, and the L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved a $1-million payout to settle the claim. Among the ironies: He got nothing of value on the cellphone that so enraged the sheriff, and prosecutors never called him to testify at trial, knowing the defense was likely to eviscerate him.
In the end, 22 members of the Sheriff’s Department were convicted as a result of the probe initiated by special agent Leah Marx. It seems likely her youth and inexperience helped her, that veteran agents would have weighed the odds and decided it wasn’t worth pursuing.
“We don’t know how many more civil rights cases we could have brought because the department came in and disrupted our investigation,” Marx says. “They tried to intentionally stop what we were doing. And so, sadly, we don’t know where it would’ve gone. And that’s a little frustrating.” The podcast “Crimes of the Times,” featuring “Pandora’s Box: The Fall of L.A.’s Sheriff,” is now available wherever you get your podcasts.
California lawmakers just paved the way for a whole lot more housing in the Golden State.
In the waning hours of the 2025 legislative session, the state Senate voted 21 to 8 to approve Senate Bill 79, a landmark housing bill that overrides local zoning laws to expand high-density housing near transit hubs. The controversial bill received a final concurrence vote from the Senate on Friday, a day after passing in the California assembly with a vote of 41 to 17.
The bill had already squeaked through the state Senate by a narrow margin earlier this year, but since it was amended in the following months, it required a second approval. It will head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk in October.
One of the more ambitious state-imposed efforts to increase housing density in recent years, the bill was introduced in March by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who stresses that the state needs to take immediate action to address California’s housing shortage. It opens the door for taller, denser housing near transit corridors such as bus stops and train stations: up to nine stories for buildings adjacent to certain transit stops, seven stories for buildings within a quarter-mile, and six stories for buildings within a half-mile.
Single-family neighborhoods within a half-mile of transit stops would be subject to the new zoning rules.
Height limits are based on tiers. Tier 1 zoning, which includes heavy rail lines such as the L.A. Metro B and D lines, allows for six- to nine-story buildings, depending on proximity to the transit hub. Tier 2 zoning — which includes light rail lines such as the A, C, E and K lines, as well as bus routes with dedicated lanes — allows for five- to eight-story buildings.
An amateur map released by a cartographer and fact-checked by YIMBY Action, a housing non-profit that helped push the bill through, gives an idea of the areas around L.A. that would be eligible for development under SB 79. Tier 1 zones include hubs along Wilshire Blvd., Vermont Ave., and Hollywood Blvd., as well as a handful of spots in Downtown L.A. and the San Fernando Valley.
Tier 2 zones are more spread out, dotting Exposition Blvd. along the E line, stretching toward Inglewood along the K line, and running from Long Beach into the San Gabriel Valley along the A line.
Assembly members debated the bill for around 40 minutes on Thursday evening and cheered after it was passed.
“Over the last five years, housing affordability and homelessness have consistently been among the top priorities in California. The smartest place to build new housing is within existing communities, near the state’s major transit investments that connect people to jobs, schools and essential services,” said Assemblymember Sharon Quirk-Silva (D-Orange County) in support of the bill.
Other assembly members, including Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale) and Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) voiced their support.
Proponents say drastic measures are necessary given the state’s affordability crisis.
“SB 79 is what we’ve been working towards for a decade – new housing next to our most frequently used train stations. This bill has the potential to unlock hundreds of thousands of new multi-family homes,” said YIMBY Action California director Leora Tanjuatco Ross.
Critics claim the blanket mandate is an overreach, stripping local authorities of their ability to promote responsible growth.
Assemblymember Rick Zbur (D-West Hollywood) argued against the bill, claiming it will affect lower-priced neighborhoods more than wealthy ones since land prices are cheaper for housing developers.
Councilmember Traci Park, who co-authored the resolution with Councilmember John Lee, called SB 79 a “one-size-fits-all mandate from Sacramento.” Lee called it “chaos.”
The resolution called for L.A. to be exempt from the upzoning since it already has a state-approved housing plan.
The bill has spurred multiple protests in Southern California communities, including Pacific Palisades and San Diego. Residents fear the zoning changes would alter single-family communities and force residents into competition with developers, who would be incentivized under the new rules to purchase properties near transit corridors.
However, support for SB 79 surged in recent days after the State Building and Construction Trades Council, a powerful labor group that represents union construction workers, agreed to reverse their opposition in exchange for amendments that add union hiring to certain projects.
In a statement after the deal was struck, the trades council president Chris Hannan said the amendments would provide good jobs and training to California’s skilled construction workforce.
Wiener, who has unsuccessfully tried to pass similar legislation twice before, said the deal boosted the bill’s chances.
The Griffith Park carousel — a “crown jewel” of the park, where Walt Disney first dreamed up Disneyland — is getting a new lease on life just in time for its 2026 centennial. The city of Los Angeles’ Recreation and Parks Commission inked a million-dollar deal to buy the historic amusement ride late last month.
Beloved by Disney, who snapped up a similar historic wooden ride to serve as the King Arthur Carrousel at his Anaheim theme park, the Griffith Park merry-go-round took its last twirl in 2022.
Its previous operator, Julio Gosdinski, died suddenly near the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving the amusement in limbo just as COVID restrictions were starting to ease. It was reopened briefly in the spring of 2021 but was closed again a year later, in need of repairs and without a clear owner to make them.
Gosdinski’s stake in the historic amusement remains tied up in Los Angeles County probate court, where Gosdinski’s mother and sister are vying with another owner for control, records show.
After the parks commission agreement, the stable of hand-carved basswood and poplar horses will spin under city auspices, part of a broader restoration of the section of the park, which is slated to be completed ahead of the Olympic Games in 2028.
The carousel is one of the oldest wooden merry-go-rounds in California, and one of just a handful designed by the famous Spillman Engineering Corp. and its predecessor that remain in operation in the state.
Others are operated at the Pike in Long Beach, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, Balboa Park in San Diego, and at Tilden Park in Berkeley, where Griffith Park’s original merry-go-round remains the state’s fastest wooden spinner.
Visitors ride the Griffith Park merry-go-round, a favorite haunt of Walt Disney and his daughters, on Aug. 24, 1951.
(USC /Corbis via Getty Images)
The current merry-go-round was built in 1926 and relocated to Griffith Park in the depths of the Great Depression in 1937. Like others of its ilk and era, the carousel includes horses carved by the famous artist Charles Looff, creator of the Santa Monica Pier.
“Walt Disney regularly frequented the Merry-Go-Round on Saturdays, watching his daughters ride around and daydreaming of one day creating his own theme park,” the city agreement said.
But the amusement will require significant repairs before it can reopen, document show.
Today, the merry-go-round cannot even be moved by hand.
Still, L.A. could be getting the carousel for a song. It is among the dwindling number of four-across merry-go-rounds of its type still in existence, and still retains nearly all its original features, according to appraisals commissioned by the city.
According to the department’s proposal, the sellers had higher offers but wanted the merry-go-round to keep twirling in its longtime home.
Three years from now, millions of tourists will pour into L.A. for the 2028 Olympics. For most of them, a hotel room or Airbnb will suffice.
Some require a more extravagant stay.
Ten bedrooms. Twenty bathrooms. A private movie theater and infinity pool overlooking the city. A battalion of chefs, butlers and drivers catering to the smallest of whims.
The Earth’s elite — not just the athletes, but the royals, oligarchs and uber-wealthy families coming to watch them — won’t be here for three summers. And the market for mega-mansion rentals is already getting competitive.
“We’re getting five to 10 inquiries per week,” said Hank Stark, founder of LuxJB.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
“We’re getting five to 10 inquiries per week,” said Hank Stark, founder of ultra-luxury vacation rental company LuxJB. “There are only so many homes of this size in L.A., and people want to secure their spot as early as possible.”
LuxJB owns 14 mansions around L.A., including in Beverly Hills, the Hollywood Hills and West Hollywood. Three of them have already been secured for the Olympics — not just for the last two weeks of July while the Games are taking place, but for most of the year.
“If you’re an Olympic federation from a specific country, you’ll be here all year training athletes before the Games begin,” Stark said. “If you’re a major sports brand, you’ll want a presence in L.A. before and after July.”
The crown jewel of LuxJB’s collection is a 39,000-square-foot behemoth complete with nine bedrooms, four kitchens, a gym, spa, movie theater, pickleball court, basketball court and a team of three maids. A client just rented it out from January to August 2028 for $300,000 per month.
That’s $2.4 million total. Pre-paid.
It’s an eye-popping price, but there’s a bit of savings to be found since LuxJB covers utilities. They run about $25,000 per month once you factor in heating the pool.
The home is on the pricier end of LuxJB’s offerings, which start at $1,900 per night for smaller five-bedroom villas and $150,000 per month for larger mansions.
The backyard and pool of a LuxJB mansion.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark said the rentals make sense for many. For example, a superstar athlete who travels with an entourage and wants some privacy.
“You can’t put [Cristiano] Ronaldo in a hotel room surrounded by strangers. He’s the most valuable player in the world,” Stark said. “Plus, our place has a $6,000 zero-gravity massage chair.”
LuxJB is currently fielding interest from two Olympic committees looking for a large enough place to hold news conferences and host media outlets, as well as U.S. companies wanting to book houses for their top brass.
The mansion’s downstairs gaming room.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark said it’s common for companies to rent their mansions for months at a time, and far in advance. Studios rent them for red carpet season during the fall and spring to host celebrities nominated for Emmys, Grammys and Oscars. Nine of LuxJB’s 14 homes are already booked for next summer, when the 2026 World Cup brings a handful of major matches to L.A.
But bookings three years out?
“It’s rare,” Stark said. “But rentals are disappearing, especially after the [January] fires, when so many were leased to house victims long-term. So I don’t think demand will slow down any time soon.”
The main reason why the market isn’t hotter is because there aren’t that many rooms or houses available yet. Most hotels don’t accept reservations more than a year in advance, and rental companies such as Airbnb and VRBO typically don’t accept bookings more than two years out.
There’s a reason for such policies: A lot can change in three years. Homeowners can sell their homes, take them off the market, or die.
“There are only so many homes of this size in L.A., and people want to secure their spot as early as possible,” Stark said.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Stark doesn’t have to worry about major changes, since LuxJB owns its homes. But other luxury rental companies, such as the Nightfall Group, rent out homes on behalf of owners, so three years out can be a bit too soon for some.
That hasn’t stopped the calls from coming, though.
Nightfall founder Mokhtar Jabli said he has received a steady stream of inquiries since the company created a 2028 Olympics landing page on its site highlighting available rentals. They’ve already booked one: a 10,000-square-foot home with six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, a movie theater and infinity pool in the Hollywood Hills.
For the month of July 2028, the guest paid $160,000.
“That house rents for around $110,000 during a typical year, but they paid a premium to book it so far in advance,” Jabli said.
It came from a longtime client who knew which house they wanted and locked it in before it was blocked by a long-term lease. The owner typically doesn’t take bookings so far out but was willing to make an exception — as long as the guest was willing to pay more.
Jabli said prices for Olympic bookings are around 40% higher than usual, but he expects that number will go up as the Games get closer.
Nightfall has rentals in luxury markets across the globe, and around 100 in Los Angeles. Its homes typically start at $50,000 per month, but the company also offers concierge services, so the house is only the start. Jabli said some clients pay $500,000 per month for swanky add-ons such as private jets, yacht rentals, security guards, drivers, chefs and housekeepers.
The company regularly hosts international athletes: soccer stars Ibrahima Konate from France and Amine Adli from Morocco, most recently. Jabli expects wealthy Olympic athletes in more lucrative sports, such as basketball or soccer, to book homes to share with their families rather than staying in the Olympic Village on UCLA’s campus.
One of the bathrooms in a LuxJB mansion.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Another factor in the Olympic rental market is Southern California’s uneven, sporadic enforcement of short-term rental regulations. Rules change from year to year and city to city, and a legal booking today could be outlawed by 2028.
For example, on Aug. 5, Beverly Hills banned short-term rentals entirely, requiring initial leases to be at least 12 months. Los Angeles beefed up its Home-Sharing Ordinance in March, calling for increased fines and more staff to monitor violations. But the city’s scaled-back budget has put many of those enforcement plans on pause.
It’s unclear whether exceptions will be made for the Olympics, when millions of visitors will descend on a region already starved for housing.
Either way, the glut of deep-pocketed tourists should serve as a shot in the arm to a luxury market that has been waning since the COVID-19 pandemic. Homes will rent for thousands per day. Millions per year.
“L.A. is going through a crisis, both in the high-end luxury rental business and beyond,” Jabli said. “Hopefully, 2028 brings it back to the L.A. we know.”
That’s ridiculous in a city known for its year-round get-outdoors climate.
“It’s not a good look,” a city repairman told me while fixing a sprinkler at Griffith Park Recreation Center, where the historic swimming pool is an empty tank, out of service since 2020.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
With the city about to host World Cup soccer matches next year, and just three years out from hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, the repairman had a thought:
“This would be a good time to boost the parks,” he said.
No kidding. But that would mean jumping over a set of hurdles higher than any you’ll find in an Olympic event.
The Trust for Public Land’s annual rankings for municipal parks are based on acreage, investment, amenities, access and equity. Washington, D.C., is No. 1, Irvine No. 2 and San Francisco No. 6. Other California cities ranked higher than L.A. are San Diego (22), Sacramento (32), Fremont (38), San Jose (41), Oakland (44), Long Beach (56), Santa Clarita (63), Santa Ana (79), Stockton (80), Riverside and Anaheim (tied at 81), and Chula Vista (84).
Jimmy Kim, general manager of the City of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department, says staffing has plummeted from 2,400 to about 1,200.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
A synopsis by the trust, which released its latest findings in May, said Los Angeles “has one of the most challenged big-city park systems in America.” Five years ago, according to the report, the city was in the middle of the pack at 49th, only to sink steadily into a gopher hole. “The cause? A century of disinvestment.”
Jimmy Kim, general manager of the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, told me that since he first worked in the department as a lifeguard in the ’90s, staffing has plummeted from 2,400 to about 1,200, making it harder to maintain aging, deteriorating facilities.
Several pools were in no shape to open this summer. Outside the Griffith Park pool, which is slated to replaced in the next couple of years, the children of two families played in the sandbox. It was 90 degrees, and the parents said they’d be in the water if the pool were in operation. I stepped into the men’s bathroom, near the tennis courts, only to find yellow caution tape stretched across a toilet stall.
“A lot of our rec centers are very old, so our pools and park resources all need some level of renovation or replacement,” said Kim, who conceded it’s a constant struggle to keep up. “We do try to stay on top of it as best we can, but it’s almost like whackamole.”
Money is a problem. A big problem.
The current tab for deferred maintenance?
How about $2 billion, give or take.
Kim said a needs assessment is under way, to prioritize projects and make the most efficient use of limited resources.
A person playing basketball at the Eagle Rock Recreation Center.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
Joe Halper, a former Recreation and Parks board member, has been flagging these challenges for me since I began talking to him in January about losing his home in the January Palisades fire. Halper, 95, has been more interested in talking about his lifelong passion — public parks — than his own losses.
About 40% of the city’s population doesn’t live within a half-mile walk of a park or open space, Halper said. That’s a key metric in the trust’s ratings. As Halper notes, “The lack of opportunity for physical exercise has been associated with the high-level of diabetes and obesity,” especially in low-income communities of color.
But as disappointing as the park shortage is, there’s a readily available, tragically underutilized resource that Halper has been promoting in his role as a member of the non-profit L.A. Parks Foundation.
Open the gates of locked schools — on weekends and school breaks — and make those public assets available for recreational activities.
This is not a new idea. I first heard former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley make that pitch on the presidential campaign trail 25 years ago, when he was talking about how it makes no sense to lock the doors to school libraries and gymnasiums at 3 p.m. every day and all day on weekends. Community School Parks exist in New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Oregon, as well as the ones in L.A.
Other cities have done it, and Los Angeles has begun its own initiative. Ten LAUSD sites are already operating as Community School Parks on weekends, and this week, there was some good news about the possibility of adding more to the mix.
After years of negotiations to address liability and access issues, beginning with an initiative under former Mayor Eric Garcetti and a motion in 2023 by City Councilmember Nithya Raman, the L.A. Unified School District Board voted unanimously Tuesday to approve a Joint powers agreement with the city.
Given budget constraints, Raman told me, “opening up existing resources is a much lower cost option for providing parks.”
“Ten is great,” school board member Nick Melvoin said at Tuesday’s meeting, “but 1,000 is where we need to get to.” He said he’d like to see two or three school gates unlocked “in the next few weeks and 20 or 30 by the end of the calendar year.”
“Any public space, in my mind, that is closed to the public, is a tragedy,” he added.
Not that the several hundred LAUSD schools have the greatest recreational facilities. The district has its own aging infrastructure problem, with a multi-billion-dollar backlog of deferred maintenance tab, according to Melvoin. There’s also a blacktop problem, as in, too much of it, and not enough greenery and shade (although some redesign projects are in the works).
Hikers enjoy Runyon Canyon Park near the north entrance on Mulholland Drive in the Hollywood Hills.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times; Photo illustration by Jade Cuevas / Los Angeles Times)
Halper was concerned that the joint powers agreement appeared to prohibit use of gyms and other indoor spaces, which would limit some organized sports. But at the school board meeting, where board members Melvoin and Kelly Gonez raised the same issues, a district staffer said the doors can be opened on a school by school basis if enough resources are available.
That’s the biggest challenge going forward. The district intends to open and lock school gates on weekends, and the city will provide staff to cover the grounds. But there’s no dedicated funding source, and Kim said the city will look to the community for help.
“I think the key is philanthropic and partner support,” he said.
Here’s where the city needs to leverage its hosting of the 2028 Olympics. The games will cost billions and generate billions, and L.A.’s kids shouldn’t be stuck with shabby recreational facilities while the elite athletes of the world compete at first-rate, dressed up facilities.
Kim said there’s already been a substantial benefit, with 1 million L.A. kids having participated in city recreation and parks athletic programs through a $160 million commitment from the International Olympic Committee and LA28, the local organizing body of the Games.
That’s a good start. Now let’s see a commitment to financial help in unlocking school gates. From the IOC and LA28, the Dodgers, the Rams, the Chargers, the Lakers, the Clippers, the Kings, the Galaxy, Angel City FC, LAFC, the Sparks.
“For all the money being spent, the public needs to see a lasting benefit from the Olympics, and I think it can be done,” said L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose district includes San Pedro, where the Peck Park pool has been closed for several years.
The county has had its own challenges with parks, and Hahn said her efforts to extend swim season have been frustrating.
“It never made sense to me that pools closed in mid-August when some of our hottest days are in late summer and early fall,” she said.
As for the Community School Parks, I’m going to keep score, checking on how many are opened and how long it takes. Raman said with some fanfare, neighborhood involvement and the programming of activities, she thinks the new Community School Parks can thrive.
Melvoin said that’s an admirable strategy, but first things first.
For the last four years, Katherine Taylor rented out her Westside guesthouse on Airbnb. She came to rely on the extra income at a time when it felt like everything was getting more expensive.
But this spring, she took the listing down.
“I’m out,” Taylor said. “The rules are too much. All these new regulations kept popping up, and it felt like it was only a matter of time before I got fined.”
Across the L.A. region, many people who rent out their homes for income seem to be changing their preferences. Short-term rentals are much more lucrative than longer stays, but the steady turnover often creates headaches for landlords, and increasingly they are in the crosshairs of local ordinances, including the risk of fines.
Because of this and other factors, short-term rental registrations have dipped over the last year.
Last July, there were 4,228 active Home Sharing registrations in the city of L.A., according to the Planning Department. This July, there were 3,972 — a 6% decrease.
Short-term rental software platforms show a decrease in listings as well, to varying degrees. In analyzing a sample set of short-term rentals in the L.A. metro area, Hospitable estimated a 44% drop in listings year over year, with steady declines each month. AllTheRooms reported a 13% drop in Airbnb listings across L.A. County over the same stretch.
The data sources vary, since companies have different access to listing data. AirDNA reported an 8% increase in Airbnb and VRBO listings in the L.A. metro area over the last year, but noted a decrease since January fueled by big drops in fire markets: a 56% decrease in Altadena, 36% decrease in Pacific Palisades and 25% decrease in Malibu.
Expert opinions differ on the cause of the drop-off, but the fires are definitely a factor. Thousands of homes burned down in the Palisades and Eaton fires, taking many rentals off the market. But in the wake of the disaster, many short-term rentals were converted to mid- or long-term rentals to house fire victims.
Other hosts are opting for mid-term rentals — stays of longer than 30 days but less than a year — independent of the fires.
“The short-term rental space got stuck. Regulations hit, and people are finding that the next best option is mid-term rentals,” said Jesse Vasquez, an entrepreneur who runs a mid-term rental summit every year.
Vasquez said L.A. is the best market for mid-term stays because so many people visit the city for extended periods with no permanent plans: travel nurses, students, digital nomads or people working on long-term projects such as films or construction.
He said mid-term rentals rake in about 15% to 20% less than short-term rentals, but in exchange, homeowners deal with less turnover. If a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in a popular neighborhood can make around $10,000 per month as a short-term rental, it could still bring in $8,000 per month as a mid-term rental, Vasquez said.
Last year, Airbnb Chief Executive Brian Chesky identified mid-term stays as a “huge growth opportunity” for the company, and said such bookings make up 18% of the company’s business compared with 13% to 14% before the pandemic.
Mark Lawson used to rent out his San Fernando Valley home on VRBO for weekend stays, but last year he set the parameters to only accept bookings of 30 days or more.
“I got tired of having someone new in the house every few days,” he said.
Short-term rentals have long been contentious. While advocates say sites such as Airbnb and VRBO offer income for homeowners and options for tourists, critics claim home-sharing removes long-term rentals from a market in the midst of a housing crisis.
To prevent L.A.’s housing stock from being converted into short-term rentals, Los Angeles in 2018 passed the Home-Sharing Ordinance, which regulates short-term rentals by restricting hosts to renting out only their primary residences and requiring them to get a license.
The regulatory framework worked — somewhat. Listings dropped 70% from 2019 to 2023, though much of the drop could be attributed to the pandemic. Last year, the restrictions spread to unincorporated areas in L.A. County, which previously weren’t subject to the rules.
But despite the new requirements, thousands of hosts still operate without a license, or fake their registration numbers, due to lack of enforcement.
Last year, a report from the L.A. Housing Department said that as of October 2024, there were an estimated 7,500 violations of the Home-Sharing Ordinance, but only 300 citations. So in March 2025, the L.A. City Council approved a slew of recommendations to beef up the ordinance even more, arming the city with a war chest of new enforcement tools.
The plan calls for 18 staffers to monitor violations and increased fines based on the square footage of the rental: $1,000 for rentals less than 500 square feet, up to $16,000 for homes greater than 25,000 square feet. The fines double and quadruple on the second and third violation, respectively.
The recommendations even call for city staffers to go on spy missions in illegal rentals. Under the proposed plan, Housing Department staff would use prepaid cards to book home-sharing rentals and stay in homes to gather evidence that they’re operating illegally.
However, two months later, the city’s $14-billion budget scaled back spending for many city departments. As a result, no new enforcement officers have been hired, and many of the plans have yet to be implemented.
But simply the threat of higher fines and stricter enforcement has had a chilling effect.
“Talking to our customers, regulation is the biggest factor in short-term rental inventory decreasing,” said Derek Jones, Hospitable’s vice president of sales and partnerships. “L.A.’s ordinance combines all the strict rules from other markets around the country.”
Jones said the potential for $1,000 fines — now able to be doled out without a warning beforehand — are causing some hosts to remove listings from the market out of fear, since the fines far exceed the nightly revenue brought in by the average listing.
“Housing is expensive already, then you add high penalties and zoning that limits supply,” Jones said. “All that put together, it creates a market where housing investors are cautious to invest. And that proved to be the case this year.”
Taylor is one such investor. She specifically bought her Westside home because it had a guesthouse she could rent. But she found herself frustrated by the maximum days she could rent it annually under the Home Sharing Ordinance — 120 days.
Her space was larger than 500 square feet, so under the new rules, it could be subject to a $2,000 fine for the first violation, $4,000 for the second, and $8,000 for the third. Ultimately, she decided it wasn’t worth the hassle.
“I’ll keep an eye on how the city is enforcing the rules. Maybe I’ll try it again someday,” she said. “But for now, it’s gonna stay empty.”
While the number of immigration raids in Southern California have slowed in recent weeks, the focus on Home Depots appears to have intensified.
Parking lots at those stores have become a key new battleground in the federal government’s evolving strategy of immigration enforcement.
“Home Depot, whether they like it or not, they are the epicenter of raids,” said Pablo Alvarado, the co-executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a group that represents the tens of thousands of day laborers working in L.A.
On Thursday, agents moved on a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia, sending laborers running, including a man who jumped a wall and onto the 210 Freeway, where he was fatally struck. A day prior, fear of a possible raid at a Ladera Ranch location sparked warnings across social media.
Since a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order prohibiting federal agents from targeting people solely based on their race, language, vocation, or location, the number of arrests in Southern California declined in July.
But over the last two weeks, some higher-profile raids have returned, often taking place at Home Depot locations, where immigrant laborers congregate looking for work.
The renewed burst of raids outside neighborhood Home Depots began Aug. 6, when a man drove a Penske moving truck to a Home Depot in Westlake and began soliciting day laborers when, all of a sudden, Border Patrol agents jumped out of the back of the vehicle and began to chase people down. Sixteen people were arrested.
The raid — branded “Operation Trojan House” by the Trump administration — was showcased by government officials with footage from an embedded Fox News TV crew. “For those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on X.
The next day, federal agents raided a Home Depot in San Bernardino. Then, on Aug. 8, they conducted two raids outside a Home Depot in Van Nuys in what DHS described as a “targeted immigration raid” that resulted in the arrest of seven undocumented immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico.
Over the weekend, activists say, a Home Depot was targeted in Cypress Park and word spread that federal agents were at a Home Depot in Marina del Rey. On Monday, day laborers were nabbed outside a Home Depot in North Hollywood, and on Tuesday more were arrested at a Home Depot in Inglewood.
“And it’s not just day laborers they are taking,” Alvarado added, noting that when federal agents descend on the hardware store’s parking lots, they question anyone who looks Latino or appears to be an immigrant and ask them about their papers. “They also get customers of Home Depot who look like day laborers, who speak Spanish.”
The national hardware chain — whose parking lots have for decades been an unofficial gathering point for undocumented laborers hoping to get hired for a day of home repair or construction work — was one of the first sites of the L.A. raids in June that kicked off the Trump administration’s intense immigration enforcement across Southern California.
Nearly 3,000 people across seven counties in L.A. were arrested in June as masked federal agents conducted roving patrols, carrying out a chaotic series of sweeps of street corners, bus stops, warehouses, farms, car washes and Home Depots. But the number of raids and arrests plummeted dramatically across L.A. in mid-July after the court order blocked federal agents across the region from targeting people unless they had reasonable suspicion they entered the country illegally.
On Aug. 1, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied a Trump administration request to lift the restraining order prohibiting roving raids. But within just a few days, federal agents were back, raiding the Westlake Home Depot.
“Even though we’ve had two successful court decisions, the administration continues with their unconstitutional behavior coming and going to Home Depot stores,” L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said at a news conference Thursday. “They are violating” the temporary restraining order, she added.
Advocates for undocumented immigrants question the legality of federal agents’ practices. In many cases, they say, agents are failing to show judicial warrants. They argue that the way agents are targeting day laborers and other brown-skinned people is illegal.
“It’s clear racial profiling,” said Alvarado.
The Department of Homeland Security did not answer questions from The Times about how many people have been arrested over the last week at Home Depots across L.A. or explain what why the agency has resumed raids outside hardware stores.
“What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S. — not their skin color, race, or ethnicity,” McLaughlin said. “America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists — truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities.”
Activists say that federal agents are targeting Home Depots because they are hubs for a constant flow of day laborers — mostly Latino and many of whom are undocumented.
“They know that at the Home Depot there will always be people who are day laborers, many of them undocumented,” said Ron Gochez, a member of the Unión del Barrio, a group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps. “And so they figured it would be a much easier, faster and more effective way for them to kidnap people — just to go to the Home Depot.”
Another reason the hardware store parking lots had become a focal point, Gochez said, is that they present a wide, open space to hunt people down.
“There’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” Gochez said. “And when some of the day laborers started running inside of the Home Depot stores, the agents literally have chased them down the aisles of the store.”
In Los Angeles, pressure is mounting on Home Depot to speak out against the targeting of people outside their stores.
“They haven’t spoken out; their customers are being taken away and they are not saying anything,” Alvarado said. “They haven’t issued a public condemnation of the fact that their customers have been abducted in their premises.”
This is not the first time Home Depot has found itself in the center of a political firestorm.
In 2019, the Atlanta-based company faced boycott campaigns after its co-founder Bernie Marcus, a Republican megadonor, announced his support for Trump’s reelection campaign. Back then, the chain tried to distance itself from its founder, noting that Marcus retired from the company in 2002 and did not speak on its behalf.
But in a global city like L.A., where civic and political leaders are rallying against the raids and public schools have developed policies blocking federal agents from entering their premises, there are growing calls for the national hardware chain to develop consistent policies on raids, such as demanding federal agents have judicial warrants before descending on their lots.
On Tuesday, a coalition of advocacy groups led a protest in MacArthur Park and urged Angelenos to support a 24-hour boycott of Home Depot and other businesses that they say have not stopped federal immigration agents from conducting raids in their parking lots or chasing people down in their stores.
“We call them an accomplice to these raids, because there is no other location that’s been hit as much as they have,” Gochez said. “We think that Home Depot is being complicit. They’re actually, we think, in some way collaborating, whether directly or not.”
Home Depot denies that it is working with federal agents or has advance notice of federal immigration enforcement activities.
“That’s not true,” George Lane, manager of corporate communications for Home Depot, said in an email to The Times. “We aren’t notified that these activities are going to happen, and we aren’t involved in the operations. We’re required to follow all federal and local rules and regulations in every market where we operate.”
Lane said Home Depot asked associates to report any suspected immigration enforcement operations immediately and not to engage for their own safety.
“If associates feel uncomfortable after witnessing ICE activity,” he added, “we offer them the flexibility they need to take care of themselves and their families.”
The targeting of day laborers outside L.A. Home Depots is particularly contentious because day laborers, primarily Latino men, have for decades represented an integral part of the Los Angeles labor force.
Since the 1960s, day laborers have formed an informal labor market that has boosted this sprawling city, helping it expand, and in recent months they have played a pivotal role in rebuilding L.A. after the January firestorms tore through Pacific Palisades and Altadena destroying thousands of homes.
“It appears they’re targeting and taking the very people rebuilding our cities,” Alvarado said. “Without migrant labor, both documented and undocumented, it’s impossible to try to rebuild Los Angeles.”
In many L.A. neighborhoods, day laborers are such a constant, ingrained presence at Home Depots that the city’s Economic and Workforce Development Department sets up its resource centers for day laborers next to the stores.
Day laborers are also a reason many customers come to Home Depot.
“Day laborers are a part of their business model,” Alvarado said. “You come in, you get your materials, and then you get your helper.”
Alvaro M. Huerta, the Director of Litigation and Advocacy of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, part of a coalition of groups suing Homeland Security over immigration raids in L.A., said the growing number of raids at Home Depot parking lots was “deeply troubling” and raised serious concerns that the federal government was continuing to violate the July temporary restraining order.
“This looks a lot like it did before a temporary restraining order was in place,” Huerta said. “My sense is they feel they can justify raids at Home Depots more than roving raids.”
Lawyers, Huerta said, were investigating the raids and asking some of the people taken into custody a series of questions: Did agents ever present a warrant? What kinds of questions did they ask? Did you feel like you were able to leave?
“One of the things we’ve been arguing is that some of these situations are coercive,” Huerta said. “The government is saying, ‘No, we’re allowed to ask questions, and people can volunteer answers.’ But we’ve argued that in many of these cases, people don’t feel like they cannot speak.”
Attorneys will likely present information about the arrests to court at a preliminary injunction hearing in September, Huerta said, as they press Trump administration attorneys for evidence that the arrests are targeted.
Huerta said some of the people caught up in recent Home Depot raids were not even looking for work at the parking lot.
One man, a 22-year-old who was getting gas across the street from a Home Depot last week, Huerta said, was detained even though he had special immigrant juvenile status as he was brought to the U.S. as a teen. The man had an asylum application pending, work authorization and no criminal history — and yet a week after he was arrested he was confined in Adelanto Detention Center.
Times staff writer Julia Wick contributed to this report.
Ever since federal immigration raids ramped up across California, triggering fierce protests that prompted President Trump to deploy troops to Los Angeles, the state has emerged as the symbolic battleground of the administration’s deportation campaign.
But even as arrests soared, California was not the epicenter of Trump’s anti-immigrant project.
In the first five months of Trump’s second term, California lagged behind the staunchly red states of Texas and Florida in the total arrests. According to a Los Angeles Times analysis of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data from theDeportation Data Project, Texas reported 26,341 arrests — nearly a quarter of all ICE arrests nationally — followed by 12,982 in Florida and 8,460 in California.
Even in June, when masked federal immigration agents swept through L.A., jumping out of vehicles to snatch people from bus stops, car washes and parking lots, California saw 3,391 undocumented immigrants arrested — more than Florida, but still only about half as many as Texas.
When factoring in population, California drops to 27th in the nation, with 217 arrests per million residents — about a quarter of Texas’ 864 arrests per million and less than half of a whole slew of states including Florida, Arkansas, Utah, Arizona, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and Nevada.
The data, released after a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government, excludes arrests made after June 26 and lacks identifying state details in 5% of cases. Nevertheless, it provides the most detailed look yet of national ICE operations.
Immigration experts say it is not surprising that California — home to the largest number of undocumented immigrants in the nation and the birthplace of the Chicano movement — lags behind Republican states in the total number of arrests or arrests as a percentage of the population.
“The numbers are secondary to the performative politics of the moment,” said Austin Kocher, a geographer and research assistant professor at Syracuse University who specializes in immigration enforcement.
Part of the reason Republican-dominated states have higher arrest numbers — particularly when measured against population — is they have a longer history of working directly with ICE, and a stronger interest in collaboration. In red states from Texas to Mississippi, local law enforcement officers routinely cooperate with federal agents, either by taking on ICE duties through so-called 287(g) agreements or by identifying undocumented immigrants who are incarcerated and letting ICE into their jails and prisons.
Indeed, data show that just 7% of ICE arrests made this year in California were made through theCriminal Alien Program, an initiative that requests that local law enforcement identify undocumented immigrants in federal, state and local prisons and jails.
That’s significantly lower than the 55% of arrests in Texas and 46% in Florida made through prisons or jails. And other conservative states with smaller populations relied on the program even more heavily: 75% of ICE arrests in Alabama and 71% in Indiana took place via prisons and jails.
“State cooperation has been an important buffer in ICE arrests and ICE operations in general for years,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a Sacramento-based senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “We’ve seen that states are not only willing to cooperate with ICE, but are proactively now establishing 287(g) agreements with their local law enforcement, are naturally going to cast a wider net of enforcement in the boundaries of that state.”
While California considers only some criminal offenses, such as serious felonies, significant enough to share information with ICE; Texas and Florida are more likely to report offenses that may not be as severe, such as minor traffic infractions.
Still, even if fewer people were arrested in California than other states, it also witnessed one of the most dramatic increases in arrests in the country.
California ranked 30th in ICE arrests per million in February. By June, the state had climbed to 10th place.
ICE arrested around 8,460 immigrants across California between Jan. 20 and June 26, a 212% increase compared with the five months before Trump took office. That contrasts with a 159% increase nationally for the same period.
Much of ICE’s activity in California was hyper-focused on Greater Los Angeles: About 60% of ICE arrests in the state took place in the seven counties in and around L.A. during Trump’s first five months in office. The number of arrests in the Los Angeles area soared from 463 in January to 2,185 in June — a 372% spike, second only to New York’s 432% increase.
Even if California is not seeing the largest numbers of arrests, experts say, the dramatic increase in captures stands out from other places because of the lack of official cooperation and public hostility toward immigration agents.
“A smaller increase in a place that has very little cooperation is, in a way, more significant than seeing an increase in areas that have lots and lots of cooperation,” Kocher said.
ICE agents, Kocher said, have to work much harder to arrest immigrants in places like L.A. or California that define themselves as “sanctuary” jurisdictions and limit their cooperation with federal immigration agents.
“They really had to go out of their way,” he said.
Trump administration officials have long argued that sanctuary jurisdictions give them no choice but to round up people on the streets.
Not long after Trump won the 2024 election and the L.A. City Council voted unanimously to block any city resources from being used for immigration enforcement, incoming border enforcement advisor Tom Homan threatened an onslaught.
“If I’ve got to send twice as many officers to L.A. because we’re not getting any assistance, then that’s what we’re going to do,” Homan told Newsmax.
With limited cooperation from California jails, ICE agents went out into communities, rounding up people they suspected of being undocumented on street corners and at factories and farms.
That shift in tactics meant that immigrants with criminal convictions no longer made up the bulk of California ICE arrests. While about 66% of immigrants arrested in the first four months of the year had criminal convictions, that percentage fell to 30% in June.
The sweeping nature of the arrests drew immediate criticism as racial profiling and spawned robust community condemnation.
Some immigration experts and community activists cite the organized resistance in L.A. as another reason the numbers of ICE arrests were lower in California than in Texas and even lower than dozens of states by percentage of population.
“The reason is the resistance, organized resistance: the people who literally went to war with them in Paramount, in Compton, in Bell and Huntington Park,” said Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio Los Angeles, an independent political group that patrols neighborhoods to alert residents of immigration sweeps.
“They’ve been chased out in the different neighborhoods where we organize,” he said. “We’ve been able to mobilize the community to surround the agents when they come to kidnap people.”
In L.A., activists patrolled the streets from 5 a.m. until 11 p.m., seven days a week, Gochez said. They faced off with ICE agents in Home Depot parking lots and at warehouses and farms.
“We were doing everything that we could to try to keep up with the intensity of the military assault,” Gochez said. “The resistance was strong. … We’ve been able, on numerous occasions, to successfully defend the communities and drive them out of our community.”
The protests prompted Trump to deploy the National Guard and Marines in June, with the stated purpose of protecting federal buildings and personnel. But the administration’s ability to ratchet up arrests hit a roadblock on July 11. That’s when a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking immigration agents in Southern and Central California from targeting people based on race, language, vocation or location without reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.
That decision was upheld last week by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But on Thursday, the Trump administration petitioned the Supreme Court to lift the temporary ban on its patrols, arguing that it “threatens to upend immigration officials’ ability to enforce the immigration laws in the Central District of California by hanging the prospect of contempt over every investigative stop.”
The order led to a significant drop in arrests across Los Angeles last month. But this week, federal agents carried out a series of raids at Home Depots from Westlake to Van Nuys.
Trump administration officials have indicated that the July ruling and arrest slowdown do not signal a permanent change in tactics.
“Sanctuary cities are going to get exactly what they don’t want: more agents in the communities and more work site enforcement,” Homan told reporters two weeks after the court blocked roving patrols. “Why is that? Because they won’t let one agent arrest one bad guy in the jail.”
U.S. Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino, who has been leading operations in California, posted a fast-moving video on X that spliced L.A. Mayor Karen Bass telling reporters that “this experiment that was practiced on the city of Los Angeles failed” with video showing him grinning. Then, as a frenetic drum and bass mix kicked in, federal agents jump out of a van and chase people.
“When you’re faced with opposition to law and order, what do you do?” Bovino wrote. “Improvise, adapt, and overcome!”
Clearly, the Trump administration is willing to expend significant resources to make California a political battleground and test case, Ruiz Soto said. The question is, at what economic and political cost?
“If they really wanted to scale up and ramp up their deportations,” Ruiz Soto said, “they could go to other places, do it more more safely, more quickly and more efficiently.”
Twenty-five years from today, Santa Ana winds will scream through Los Angeles on a dry autumn morning, turning a small hillside campfire into a deadly, fast-moving blaze.
At that moment, the city will spring into action.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
Satellites will team up with anemometers, pairing live aerial footage with wind patterns to tell firefighters exactly where the fire is going. Fleets of autonomous Black Hawk helicopters and unmanned air tankers will fill the skies, dropping fire retardant in the path of the flames.
Wearable technologies will guide us in the city below: “ALERT: A wildfire has been spotted 2.4 miles from your location and will reach your location in approximately 43 minutes.” Angelenos will receive a live satellite map of the blaze’s trajectory and directions for a safe evacuation.
People in threatened neighborhoods will quickly run through to-do lists: close vents, check on neighbors, etc. Some renters and homeowners will arm fire-retardant sprayers on their roofs and jam valuables into fireproof ADUs tucked in their backyards. Others will have outfitted their super-smart homes with technology that cuts down on decision-making for an even quicker get-away. Apartment safety teams will follow their well-rehearsed plans to ensure evacuation.
Then, everyone will follow their community evacuation plan by driving their electric vehicles or ride-sharing to safety, eased along by a steady flow of green lights programmed by the city to divert all traffic away from the fire. Fleets of self-driving vans will circle back through the neighborhoods, picking up any stranded residents.
Michael Kovac’s house stands among burned homes in Pacific Palisades.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The scenario might seem improbable, but according to firefighters, architects and futurists, it’s a realistic outline of what L.A.’s fire defense could look like in 2050.
Devastating fires have pummeled Southern California in the last several decades, shifting the public conversation from fire suppression to fire preparedness and mitigation as governments begrudgingly acknowledge the disasters as regular occurrences. In the wake of the deadly January fires that burned through Altadena and Pacific Palisades, many people are wondering: Can we truly fortify our city against a firestorm?
:
Architect Michael Kovac thinks we can. Kovac, a Palisades resident whose clients include celebrities, built his home to be fire-resistant knowing that, at some point, it would be subject to a firestorm.
Michael Kovac designed his home in Pacific Palisades The house is clad in fiber cement; the roof is made of fireproof TPO (thermoplastic polyolefin); the deck is made with specially treated wood for fire resistance; and a fire suppression system in the back of the house sprayed fire retardant onto the vegetation.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
On Jan. 7, his entire street burned, but his house survived. Now, it serves as a blueprint for fire resistance. “We built it to be able to withstand a small fire,” Kovac said. “We never imagined our whole community would be erased.”
Kovac’s home is wrapped in fire-resistant fiber cement-panel siding. The green “living” roof is topped with grass and more than 4 inches of fire-resistant soil. The windows feature three panels of quarter-inch glass, which lessen the possibility of breakage in the face of scorching temperatures and protect the interior from radiant heat — one of the primary ways fires can enter a home.
Before fleeing the fire, Kovac loaded all his valuables into a room wrapped in concrete and equipped with a fire door capable of keeping out smoke and flames for three hours. He monitored the blaze from afar using security cameras. As the flames approached, he activated three sprinklers that sprayed fire retardant along the perimeter of the property, keeping the fire at bay.
Fire-proofing safeguards generally aren’t cheap. Fire-proof doors run from a few hundred dollars into the thousands, and fire-retardant sprinklers can cost tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the system. But Kovac also installed some DIY upgrades for next to nothing, including dollar-store mesh screens on all his vents to block embers from entering — another frequent cause of fires spreading.
Every improvement helps, but the harsh reality of the next 25 years is that across L.A., older structures that don’t comply with modern fire codes will burn. The collective hope is that by 2050, they’ll be replaced by fire-resistant homes, adding a herd-immunity defense to neighborhoods.
“The 1950s housing stock in the Palisades — smaller, older homes more vulnerable to fires — are all gone. I’m sad because I enjoyed the texture they brought, but whenever one burned, it made it likelier that the home next to it would also burn,” he said. “Now there’s a clean slate, so the neighborhood we build next will be more fire-resilient.”
The front garden at Michael Kovac’s home is filled with succulents and native plants and covered in volcanic rocks instead of mulch.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
:
Ken Calligar has the same hope.
“The housing replacement cycle is slow. It upgrades every 50 years or so, with 2% of homes being replaced per year,” said Calligar, the chief executive of resilient building company RSG 3-D. “But large-scale incidents like fires or earthquakes are an opportunity for a migration to a better system.”
Calligar’s company creates insulated concrete panels that are made with fire-retardant foam sandwiched between two wire-mesh faces, which are, in turn, wrapped in concrete.
The future of fire mitigation, he said, boils down to building with non-combustible materials.
“In California, 98% of homes have wood frames. All those homeowners have a future tragedy on their hands,” he added. “You can’t knock down all of California and start new, but you can mitigate portfolio damages by making new parts of the portfolio better.”
In addition, Calliger said, “By 2050, Californians should have a fire-proof place to store their assets in case of a fire. That way, you at least have something to get back to.”
Some home builders and designers are offering fire-resilient designs as demand continues to grow in the wake of the fires. KB Home recently unveiled a 64-home fire-resilient community in Escondido equipped with covered gutters, non-combustible siding and defensible space. The Santa Monica-based architectural firm SweisKloss offers fire-rated glazes and foam-retardant sprayers on its custom-built designs. By 2050, experts say, the vast majority of home builders will offer fire-resistant homes.
There’s a reason so many California homes are built with wood: It’s relatively cheap. There are plenty of futuristic building materials — including graphene, hempcrete and self-healing concrete, which is capable of repairing its own cracks after damage — but they’re not cost-efficient for most home buyers. Even traditional concrete, which stands up to the elements better than wood, runs roughly 20%-50% more than wood for home building, and building a fire-resistant home adds tens of thousands of dollars to the building cost, according to most experts.
For Daniel López-Pérez, the solution is a return to wood. Mass timber, specifically.
In addition to being a professor of architecture at the University of San Diego and a futurist, López-Pérez is the founder of Polyhaus, a home-building startup that says it can assemble a house in three days. To prove it, he put together a small prototype in his La Jolla backyard over a weekend in February. The 540-square-foot ADU is wrapped in 60 mass timber panels made of three 1.5-inch layers of plywood sealed together.
With traditional wood construction, the wood, studs and insulation leave plenty of room for oxygen, which fuels fires. With mass timber, the three layers are sealed with no air gaps, making them much more fire-resistant. When exposed to fire, the mass timber charcoals and burns a half-inch every hour — so a 4.5-inch panel would last six or seven hours before fully burning, he said.
The 540-square-foot Polyhaus ADU was assembled over a weekend in Daniel López-Pérez’s back yard.
(Daniel López-Pérez)
“It’s like in forest fires where big, old-growth trees survive by charcoaling. The exterior chars, but the inside survives.”
Mass timber is a new trend in fire-proofing; in this year alone, there are multipleconferences across the country dedicated to the engineered wood.
Lever Architecture, a firm with offices in Portland, Ore., and L.A., has helped pioneer the use of mass timber in the U.S. Among Lever’s projects are mass timber buildings for Adidas and the Oregon Conservation Center in Portland — and a mixed-use office/retail building at 843 N. Spring St. in Chinatown.
Though his backyard prototype is his only model so far, Polyhaus has been flooded with inquiries after the January fires. He’s been telling customers that he can put a unit up in six weeks from start to finish, with 540-square-foot units running $300,000 all-in.
For López-Pérez, the future is also about using new technology, such as the robotic arms that assemble panels, to get more out of the stuff we’re already using.
“By 2050, we’ll be mixing ancestral materials with high-tech solutions,” he said. “Think Star Wars: a lightsaber in a cave.”
In the meantime, he suggests that instead of tearing down the 1950s tinderbox houses strewn across L.A.’s fire-prone hills, we should tack mass timber panels onto their exterior or interior to give firefighters hours, instead of minutes, to try to save homes once they catch on fire.::
Mass timber is one of multiple approaches that would make Brian Fennessy’s job easier. Fennessy, who serves as fire chief of the Orange County Fire Authority, has been fighting wildfires for 47 years. But over the last few decades, as blazes penetrate deeper into cities, he’s dealing with a different kind of problem: urban conflagrations.
Wildfires burn forests or brush, but urban conflagrations are fires that burn through cities. They’re becoming more common, and the toxic fumes released when homes burn present new dangers to his squad. “These are typically wind-driven fires, and they’re driving smoke into the lungs of firefighters,” he said. “We do blood draws, and early testing shows higher levels of heavy metal.”
Firefighters have a 14% higher chance of dying from cancer than the general population, according to a 2024 study, and the disease was responsible for 66% of career firefighter line-of-duty deaths from 2002 to 2019.
He hopes 2050 brings more safety precautions for his team, such as personal respirators for every firefighter and fleets of trucks that share their location in real time for better communication between departments, and he imagines fleets of drones flying alongside firefighting aircraft.
He’s also optimistic about funding and said he’s never seen so much legislative interest in putting money toward fire services as he has in the wake of the January fires. The Los Angeles Fire Department is one of the few city departments poised to gain new hires under Mayor Karen Bass’ $14-billion spending plan released in April, which proposed adding 227 fire department jobs while cutting 2,700 jobs in other departments.
A few weeks after the January fires, a California Assembly bill was introduced to explore the use of autonomous helicopters to fight fires. The choppers, including Black Hawk helicopters traditionally used for military operations, can be remotely programmed to take off, find fires and drop water where it’s needed. By 2050, experts hope firefighting stations will have entire fleets at their disposal to limit risk to pilots during shaky weather conditions.
In March, Muon Space launched a low-orbit satellite designed to detect wildfires early. By 2030, the company expects to have a fleet of 50 satellites circling the globe.
“The next few years are a pivotal moment for both fire services and citizens,” Fennessy said. “We have to get it right.”
Arrests of undocumented immigrants have dropped significantly across the Los Angeles region two months after the Trump administration launched its aggressive mass deportation operation, according to new figures released Wednesday by Homeland Security.
Federal authorities told The Times on July 8 that federal agents had arrested 2,792 undocumented immigrants in the seven counties in and around L.A. since June 6. Homeland Security updated that number Wednesday, indicating that fewer than 1,400 immigrants have been arrested in the region in the last month.
“Since June 6, 2025, ICE and CBP have made a total of 4,163 arrests in the Los Angeles area,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement provided to The Times.
While 1,371 arrests across the L.A. region since July 8 is still a much higher figure than any recent month before June, it represents a notable drop from the 2,792 arrests during the previous month.
The new figures confirm what many immigration experts suspected: The Trump administration’s immigration agenda in L.A. has faltered since federal courts blocked federal agents from arresting people without probable cause to believe they are in the U.S. illegally.
McLaughlin said Wednesday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s agenda remained the same.
“Secretary Noem unleashed ICE and CBP to arrest criminal illegal aliens including terrorists, gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and sexual predators,” McLaughlin said in a statement Wednesday. “We will continue to enforce the law and remove the worst of the worst.”
Trump administration officials have long maintained they are focused on criminals. But a few days after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller announced in late May he had set a new goal of arresting 3,000 undocumented migrants across the country a day, federal agents fanned out across L.A. to snatch people off the streets and from their workplaces.
White House top border policy advisor Tom Homan suggested federal officials adopted the strategy of raiding streets and workplaces to get around “sanctuary” jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles, that bar municipal resources and personnel from being used for immigration enforcement.
“If we can’t arrest them in jail, we’ll go out to the communities,” Homan told CBS News.
But after local protesters rallied to resist and Trump deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to the city, the administration’s ability to ramp up deportations across L.A. was dealt a blow in the federal courts.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong, an appointee of President Biden, issued a temporary restraining order that blocks federal agents in southern and central California from targeting people based on their race, language, vocation or location without reasonable suspicion that they are in the U.S. illegally.
That decision was upheld last Friday by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. It is likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court.
“If, as Defendants suggest, they are not conducting stops that lack reasonable suspicion,” the panel wrote, “they can hardly claim to be irreparably harmed by an injunction aimed at preventing a subset of stops not supported by reasonable suspicion.”
It’s hard to know whether July numbers signal a permanent change in tactics.
On Tuesday, Border Patrol agent carried out a raid at the Home Depot in Westlake, arresting 16 people.
“For those who thought Immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli posted on X shortly after the raid. “The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government.”
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said her office was looking into the matter but added: “From the video and from the stills, it looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing before.”
In L.A.’s jam-packed real estate market, an acre is huge. Five acres is a dream. But 100-plus acres is historic.
The Robert Taylor Ranch, a massive equestrian estate sprawled in the hills of Brentwood, is hitting the market for $70 million.
At 112 acres, it’s the largest residential estate to hit the market in the city of L.A. since at least the 1980s, when the Multiple Listing Service started tracking home sales. For reference, the property single-handedly makes up more than 1% of Brentwood, which spans just over 15 square miles.
There are a handful of larger residential properties around L.A. — including the Mountain, a prized 157-acre undeveloped parcel in Beverly Crest that once listed for $1 billion — but none with homes on them that have officially hit the market.
The ranch has roughly 20,000 square feet of living space spread across three structures. There’s a 12,000-square-foot main house with seven bedrooms, a dog spa, art studio and massage room, as well as a guesthouse, barn and workshop.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime estate,” said Rochelle Maize of Nourmand & Associates, who’s handling the listing.
The main house spans 12,000 square feet with seven bedrooms, a dog spa and art studio.
(Barcelo Photography Inc.)
Designed in 1950 by architect Robert Byrd, the ranch was built for oil baron Waite Phillips and later owned by actors Robert Taylor and Barbara Stanwyck, who hosted parties at the residence. In its Old Hollywood heyday, it once featured a secret casino accessed by hidden doors; the casino has since been removed, but the hidden door and hallway, found through a rotating bookcase, remain.
In the ’70s, the property was bought and remodeled by Ken Roberts, the concert promoter who turned KROQ-FM into a rock radio giant. Roberts tried selling the ranch a handful of times over the next few decades, asking $45 million for it in 1990, but it was eventually seized by a hedge fund in 2010 after Roberts was unable to repay a $27.5-million loan from New Stream Capital.
The property was auctioned off two years later to Chicago real estate developer Fred Latsko for $12 million and most recently traded hands for $18.7 million in 2015.
Titanic estates have dotted L.A. over the last century, but most have been whittled down by developers subdividing the lots and selling them as separate properties. With so many owners over the years, Maize said it’s a surprise that it hasn’t been chopped into pieces.
“When it last listed, there were two other offers from people that wanted to subdivide the land,” Maize said. “But my client wanted to keep it together and update the property while maintaining the original feel, and it’s one of the reasons why their offer won.”
During the most recent ownership, a four-year remodel brought new finishes including bronze windows, reclaimed timbers, limestone floors and hand-laid stucco both inside and out.
The property features 13 flat, buildable acres, while the rest of the hillside estate is navigated by hiking trails. It includes eight Assessor’s Parcel Numbers, meaning a buyer could divide it into eight different properties. It would bring an end to the ranch’s impressive acreage, but offer plenty of incentive for a developer looking to add housing.
“The potential will be attractive to some,” Maize said. “But either way, the buyer will be someone that values privacy. The setting here is second to none.”
Almost since the first suburbs were built in Los Angeles, there have been worries that adding density would “Manhattanize” L.A., rendering it so crowded with new vertical development as to be unrecognizable to longtime residents. In the 1980s, as battles over growth heated up, one local slow-growth group dubbed itself Not Yet New York.
But Los Angeles has always been a city with a knack for reshaping itself by looking to its own architectural past. In particular, medium-density designs such as bungalow courts and dingbat apartments have welcomed waves of newcomers for more than a century while becoming architectural emblems of upward mobility and a particularly Southern Californian design sensibility — informal and optimistic.
We have never needed a return to that kind of development more than now, in the wake of the Eaton and Palisades fires, even as public discussion has focused mostly on rebuilding exactly what was lost. With affordability pressures as intense as ever, now is the time not to Manhattanize but, once again, to Los Angelize L.A.
As longtime advocates for design excellence and policies to boost housing production, we believe there is nothing more Angeleno than the reinvention of the so-called R1 neighborhood, the single-family zone that first emerged in L.A. with the Residential District Ordinance of 1908. R1 zoning shifted into overdrive in 1941 when tract houses emerged to replace the bean fields of Westchester, near what is now Los Angeles International Airport.
It wasn’t until 2016, with the appearance of a new state law allowing accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, that the R1 neighborhood evolved in any meaningful way. Even the most ardent champions of ADUs — aka granny flats or casitas — couldn’t have foreseen how widely popular they’d become. Today, about one-fifth of new housing permits in California and a whopping one-third in the city of L.A. are ADUs.
Still, the granny flat is no silver bullet. The housing affordability crisis in Los Angeles demands a more ambitious approach than adding new residential development one small unit at a time. State laws allowing as many as 10 apartments on a single-family lot have been on the books for several years now. But homeowners and developers have been slow to take advantage of them, and many California cities have dragged their feet in making them truly usable.
The result has been a stalemate, with Los Angeles among the cities struggling to take the important step past the ADU to begin producing additional missing-middle housing in real volume, even as rents and home prices continue to climb. The city‘s Low-Rise LA design challenge was organized in 2020 to help break this logjam. Many of the winners incorporated design lessons clarified by the COVID-19 pandemic, when we learned that second, third and fourth units in R1 zones might offer not just rental income or an extra bedroom but the flexibility to quarantine or work from home while building stronger ties with extended family and neighbors.
A new initiative — Small Lots, Big Impacts — organized by cityLAB-UCLA, the Los Angeles Housing Department and the office of Mayor Karen Bass builds on Low-Rise LA with a focus on developing small, often overlooked vacant lots, of which there are more than 25,000 across the city, according to cityLAB’s research. The goal is straightforward: to demonstrate a range of ways that Los Angeles can grow not by aping the urbanism of other cities but by producing more of itself.
Different views of the “Mini Towers Collective” and the “Shared Steps” proposals. Both favor shared outdoor space balanced with individual architectural identity.(courtesy of cityLAB UCLA)
Winners of this design competition, announced at the end of May, placed six or more housing units on a single site, sometimes dividing it into separate lots. One proposal created rowhouses, slightly cracked apart to identify individual homes and entrances as they cascade along an irregular site. A communal yard opens to the street in another project, with roof gardens between separated, two-story homes atop ADUs that can be rented or joined back to each of several main houses on the site. Other designs show that vertical architecture, in the form of handsome new residential towers from three to seven stories, can comfortably coexist with L.A.’s low-rise housing stock when the design is thoughtful enough.
A key goal of the competition was to produce new models for homeownership. When land costs are subdivided and parcels built out with a collection of compact homes, including units that can produce rental income or be sold off as condos, a different approach to housing affordability comes into focus. Those who have been shut out of the housing market can begin to build wealth and contribute to neighborhood stability.
The traditional R1 paradigm, in addition to limiting housing volume, suffers from a rigid, gate-keeping sort of logic: If you can’t afford to buy or rent an entire single-family home in an R-1 L.A. neighborhood, that part of town is inaccessible to you. Many of the winning designs, by contrast, create compounds flexible enough to accommodate a range of phases in a resident’s life. In one development, there may be units perfect for single occupants (a junior ADU), young families (a ground-level unit with a private yard), and empty-nesters (a home with a rooftop garden). As with the granny flat model, construction can proceed in phases, with units added over time as circumstances dictate.
Having served on the Small Lots, Big Impacts jury, we see signs of hope in its rendering of L.A.’s future. The real proof lies in the initiative’s second phase, set for later this year, when the city’s Housing Department will issue an open call, based on the design competition, to developer-architect teams who will build housing on a dozen small, city-owned vacant parcels, with tens of thousands of privately owned infill lots ready to follow suit. If the winning schemes are built, Los Angeles will once again demonstrate the appeal and resiliency of its architectural DNA. Manhattan: Eat your heart out.
Dana Cuff is a professor of architecture, director of cityLAB-UCLA and co-author of the 2016 California law that launched ADU construction. Christopher Hawthorne, former architecture critic for The Times, is senior critic at the Yale School of Architecture. He served under Mayor Eric Garcetti as the first chief design officer for Los Angeles.
On a sunny Tuesday in Anaheim in the parking lot of a firefighter training center, a tiny house burst into flames while its neighbor survived.
The fiery display was part of a demonstration showcasing the effectiveness of wildfire defense strategies, and it could serve as a road map for Pacific Palisades and Altadena as the communities begin to rebuild in the wake of the devastating January fires.
The event — co-hosted by the nonprofit research group Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety and the California Building Industry Assn. — pitted two tiny homes, about the size of sheds, against a fire. One was built to typical standards, and the other was built above and beyond, employing a handful of fire-mitigation techniques.
Predictably, the unprotected home met the fate that thousands of structures did during the windy and dry Jan. 7 disaster.
A firefighter lights small ignition points around test houses at an Anaheim site June 10, 2025.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
First, firefighters used drip torches to simulate embers landing around it. Four industrial fans provided the wind, spreading the fire across dry wood mulch onto small shrubs lining the house’s exterior.
Five minutes in, the shrubs crackled as a stack of firewood on the side of the home — a common storage place for properties with wood-burning fireplaces — ignited. Soon, the flames crawled up a tall juniper bush planted on the side of the home, spreading flames onto the exterior wall and roof, shortly before a wood fence burst into flames.
The vinyl rain gutter sagged and melted, its plastic material flapping in the wind like a flag, and the window shattered shortly after, letting the flames enter the interior. Fifteen minutes in, the fire burned from the inside out, roaring through the walls and roof. The home’s tan color burned to black, and smoke billowed hundreds of feet into the sky.
The test house unprepared for wildfires is fully engulfed in flames.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
After twenty minutes, the house was engulfed in an inferno before the frame gave way, collapsing into a smoking heap of charred debris.
The wildfire-prepared home had a perimeter of cement pavers, surrounded by gravel, and no bushes against the house. The mulch blew onto the gravel and burned out. A few hydrangeas were singed five feet from the walls of the house, but the home was unscathed.
“This is a tale of two homes,” said Anne Cope, chief engineer for the insurance institute.
Roy Wright, the company’s chief executive, said the burned home showcased architectural features all too common across properties in wildfire-prone areas: plastic gutters, open eaves and flammable landscaping surrounding the home such as juniper, bamboo or eucalyptus.
“We’re not going to eliminate wildfires, but we can restrict their reach,” Wright said. “The easiest way starts at home.”
The main emphasis was what fire-prevention specialists call Zone 0: the first five feet of defensible space surrounding a structure. To stop a fire in its tracks, firefighters suggest removing all landscaping from the 5-foot perimeter and replacing fire-prone materials such as grass or mulch with cement or brick.
A firefighter watches a house-burning demonstration at an Anaheim site to show the effectiveness of ember-intrusion prevention.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
Pavement and a cleared area next to a houselike structure at an Anaheim site show the effectiveness of what’s called ember-intrusion prevention during a house-burning demonstration.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
In contrast to the one that burned, the fire-protected house featured metal gutters, fiber cement siding, enclosed eaves, a metal fence, metal patio set of a table and chairs and cement pavers. When torched with embers, the fire burned up to the 5-foot perimeter and then halted.
“You can still have plants, just keep them five feet away from your house,” Wright said.
Wright visited Pacific Palisades and Altadena a week after the fires to analyze how they spread so quickly from house to house and found that homes generally burned in clusters, which suggests that houses either helped or hurt others around them.
If a house was a century old and not up to code, it often burned quickly and passed the fire on to its neighbors, he said. But if a house was built with fire-prevention in mind, with defensible space, fire-resistant materials, enclosed eaves and mesh coverings over vents, in some cases, it served as a shield for the houses downwind.
Modern fire-prevention strategies already are being implemented in new master-planned communities in Southern California, where home builders have the hindsight of previous disasters and implement tighter building codes. A recent success story is Orchard Hills, which survived a 2020 blaze unscathed due to meticulous planning and specialized home design.
But L.A.’s housing stock is generally older, and many homes scattered across the region’s hills and mountains are sitting ducks — architecturally vulnerable if a fire sweeps through. That’s why Wright stresses clearing out Zone 0, since it’s the quickest, cheapest way to make sure that if a fire comes to your door, you’re not fueling it.
“We need to do what we can to narrow the path of destruction and give firefighters a chance to beat it down,” Wright said.
There may be no weather pattern more iconically associated with Los Angeles than the Santa Ana winds.
One of the earliest written descriptions of the Santa Anas comes from the diary of Commodore Robert Stockton on the night of Jan. 6, 1847; the next day his forces captured Los Angeles on behalf of the United States.
And as the city has grown to assume a prominent place in American pop culture, it has given global renown to this local phenomenon, name-dropped by Raymond Chandler, Nancy Meyers and the Beach Boys.
The Santa Ana winds are notorious for being hot, dry, and dusty — traits that have earned them the nickname “devil winds” — but the quality that really defines them is their direction.
Unlike the prevailing winds in Southern California, which flow generally from west to east, carrying temperate air from the Pacific, the Santa Anas flow from northeast to southwest out of the Mojave Desert. What causes this reversal, and why does it produce such a diabolical result?
Aggressive and impactful reporting on climate change, the environment, health and science.
To form the Santa Ana winds, the typical first ingredient is a chilled autumn day in the high desert of southern Nevada.
The chill creates cold, dense air, which is squeezed from aloft by a high pressure system. Normally the surface air would be contained within the Great Basin formed by the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, but the second ingredient is a low pressure system off the California coast, which creates enough gravitational potential to force the air out of the basin and pull it west toward the Pacific.
As it flows downhill, the air is compressed due to the higher weight of the atmospheric column above it. The ideal gas law (PV=nRT, if high school chemistry is just a hazy memory) tells us that when the pressure on a gas increases, its temperature does too. The result is that the descending air heats up by almost 30 degrees Fahrenheit for every vertical mile it sinks.
The dry desert air, warmed by its descent, rushes toward the coast. But the Transverse Ranges stand in the way, so the air seeks the path of least resistance through the Cajon and San Gorgonio passes. Like water spraying through a narrow nozzle, the winds are accelerated as they enter the canyons, often reaching gale-force strength by the time they exit into Los Angeles and San Bernardino.
A mild Santa Ana wind can be irritating, giving people nosebleeds and blowing sand in their eyes, but the more severe events can have deadly consequences. The most obvious risk is the high winds — during a particularly forceful episode in December 2011, gusts in excess of 50 mph toppled trees, damaged hundreds of buildings and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people.
The atypical wind direction can pose a specific risk for boats and maritime infrastructure, as harbors that are usually well protected on the leeward side of the Channel Islands are suddenly exposed to forceful gusts and waves.
Strong offshore Santa Ana winds blast incoming waves at Huntington Beach in October 2018.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
An even greater danger comes from the increased potential for wildfires. Hot, dry air can rapidly extract moisture from vegetation, especially when that air is being continuously replenished by strong desert winds. The Santa Anas often bring triple-digit temperatures and a relative humidity below 10%, leading to drier fuel that can ignite more easily. Moreover, strong winds cause fires to grow and spread more quickly, since the winds provide a steady supply of oxygen, carry sparks and even bend the flames closer to the unburned material ahead of the fire.
In the last few decades, Santa Ana winds have been associated with several large wildfire clusters, including the 2007 Witch Creek fire, the 2008 Sayre fire and the 2017 Thomas fire, which was the largest wildfire in state history at the time.
A firefighter battles the Silverado fire amid heavy Santa Ana winds in Irvine in October 2020.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Until recently, the Santa Ana winds were thought to be one of the few bright spots in climate change; a paper from 2019 predicted a future decrease in the frequency of Santa Ana winds, particularly in September and October. The authors suggested that this is due to a projected northward migration of the “Great Basin high” that tends to form over Nevada.
However, recent analysis published two years later by the same authors suggested that the decreasing trend was mostly confined to a distinct “flavor” of Santa Ana winds that, while they originate from the same location, are caused by a different mechanism and bring intense cold to Southern California instead of heat.
Although these “cold Santa Anas” can still cause wind damage, they are not typically associated with wildfire activity, and a decrease in frequency would have little effect on fire risk. Unfortunately, it seems those hot, dry days when the wind stings your eyes and sparks fly are here to stay.
Ned Kleiner is a scientist and catastrophe modeler at Verisk. He has a doctorate in atmospheric science from Harvard University.
The Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels knows the names and life stories of the people who sleep in their cars near St. Mary, a century-old church in Palms.
In the past, homeless people have spent the night in St. Mary’s Sunday school room.
So it wasn’t a huge leap for Daniels to think about building affordable housing on the church property.
A place to sleep, bathe and cook “provides a basic dignity” that can turn around someone’s life and also help the neighborhood, said Daniels.
“The unhoused are a part of this community,” he added. “Not only in the sense that we shelter them, but also in the sense that they live literally around the property.”
Across Los Angeles, some religious leaders are sizing up their own properties, encouraged by new legislation making it easier to develop the land.
A California law that went into effect Jan. 1 allows affordable housing projects on property owned by churches, temples, mosques and other religious institutions to bypass an extensive review process and to be built in single-family neighborhoods. The city of Los Angeles is considering even more exemptions.
An aerial view of St. Mary in Palms, center, where some of the land owned by the church may eventually be leased for affordable housing.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
In L.A., which has little vacant land, sky-high rents and a homeless population that topped 45,000 at last count, affordable housing proponents view religious institutions — often land-rich but cash-poor — as an untapped resource.
For religious leaders, building their own housing could be a way to fulfill their missions of helping needy people. And with many congregations shrinking as Americans become less religious, revenue from the developments would help make up for dwindling collection boxes.
But some real estate experts question whether many religious organizations will ultimately seek to build, considering the buy-in required from their members and governing boards. Years of construction near their sanctuaries could be a deterrent, as could opposition from neighbors.
Some cities, including Chino, Rancho Palos Verdes, Santa Clarita and Thousand Oaks, opposed the new state law as it was being debated in Sacramento. Then-Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse said it would strip local governments of their power to control development, “overriding carefully crafted, locally informed plans.”
Leaders at St. Mary, an Episcopal church in the Anglo-Catholic tradition, are in the early stages of studying the idea. The small congregation is close-knit, with a few dozen people attending a typical Sunday service in the diminutive, brown-shingled church. An affordable housing project would enrich church coffers, probably through leasing fees paid by the developer.
The St. Mary property includes two main buildings, a house and six parking spaces on a narrow strip of land in a neighborhood of apartment buildings. Daniels, who has led St. Mary since 2022, said it’s too soon to say where on the property the new housing would go.
The Rev. Paul Anthony Daniels, the rector of St. Mary in Palms.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
In South Los Angeles, with its abundance of historically Black churches, many congregations are still reeling from the pandemic and a decline in attendance.
Regina Fair, a board member at Bethel AME-Los Angeles, said her church draws a few hundred people on Sundays but has cut back to a single sermon.
Like other churches, Bethel AME, which was founded in 1921, relied on livestreaming during the pandemic lockdown and uses social media to reach younger people. That all means fewer dollars in the collection plate.
“People became OK with doing church in their home, on their couch,” Fair said. “And when you’re not in the church, it makes a big impact on the giving.”
Bethel AME, which faces a stretch of South Western Avenue lined with businesses and apartment buildings, has embarked on a multiyear plan to develop affordable housing on its parking lot.
The 53-unit project, which benefited from city rules intended to fast-track affordable housing, will cater to some of the homeless men who sleep in the church on cots during the winter. The church also plans to build housing on two nearby parcels it owns.
Logos Faith Housing, which is co-developing the property, was started by a pastor to help churches build affordable housing. Bethel is leasing the land to a collection of backers in what the church’s leader, the Rev. Kelvin T. Calloway, describes as a “perfect model” to bring in revenue over a long period.
Calloway has seen gentrification change other neighborhoods in South L.A., leaving fewer worshipers in church pews. That isn’t happening much yet in Bethel AME’s neighborhood of Manchester Square, but “it’s a real possibility,” he said.
Pastor Martin Porter, managing partner of Logos Faith Development LLC, a real estate development company focused on partnering with religious entities, on the parking lot of Bethel AME Church in Los Angeles.
(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)
“Christianity is in crisis,” said Logos founder Pastor Martin Porter, who leads Quinn African Methodist Episcopal in Moreno Valley. “You’re seeing a lot of empty pews. The natural question is: What do we do with excess property that’s not being used?”
Bethel AME didn’t need the new state law, sponsored by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), to develop its property.
But in L.A., at least 600 sites owned by faith-based groups in single-family neighborhoods are now eligible to build affordable housing, according to the city Planning Department. City officials couldn’t provide information about whether any applications have been filed under the law in the last eight months.
Wiener predicted it will take a few years for a substantial number of projects to launch — particularly as religious institutions figure out how to approach the opportunity.
“They’re typically not major financial players,” he told The Times. “They’re a church or synagogue, not a development company.”
“This is a big deal,” said Pastor John Oh, project manager of faith in housing at L.A. Voice, a community organization that supported the law.
Oh sees it as a potential “domino” that could lead to more zoning changes in single-family neighborhoods, which have long been treated by political leaders as off-limits for multi-unit development.
The city of L.A.’s planning department has put forward a version that, unlike Wiener’s law, does not require paying construction workers prevailing wages, or, on larger projects, providing them with healthcare.
The proposal, which is expected to come before the City Council in the next six months, is meant to appease affordable housing developers who say that the higher wages and benefits can add 30% to their costs.
Labor unions, including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters, are opposed.
Pete Rodriguez, the brotherhood’s western district vice president, called the proposal “outrageous” and suggested it could worsen the homelessness crisis by impoverishing workers.
“When will the city of L.A. realize that so many of our problems, from homelessness to budget deficits, are caused by the simple fact that too many Angelenos cannot make ends meet?” he said.
Wiener declined to comment on the city’s proposal. He said his law prioritizes protections for construction workers, who can be targets of wage theft.
Some development experts privately question whether religious entities in single-family neighborhoods will want to build affordable housing, in the face of possible resistance.
In Laguna Beach, some residents are protesting a church’s plans to build affordable housing under Wiener’s law. A petition against the development on the property of Neighborhood Congregational Church has collected about 1,500 signatures.
“It affects the entire community by altering the neighborhood’s character and exacerbating existing issues such as traffic congestion and parking shortages,” the petition said.
But Bishop Lovester Adams, who heads Greater New St. Matthew Missionary Baptist Church in a single-family residential area in South L.A., isn’t shying away. He called Wiener’s law and the city proposal “a game changer.”
Adams, who is also a senior associate at Logos Development, said he can’t afford to build housing on his church’s parking lot at 36th and Crawford streets unless the city passes the labor exemption.
The church, which dates to the 1960s, is nestled between homes and duplexes. Church leaders regularly give out food and toys to needy residents.
Attendance has fallen since the pandemic, Adams said. Sunday services draw 50 to 70 people, who fill fewer than half the seats. Some older people stay away because of concerns about COVID-19.
Adams said he wants veterans to live in the new housing: “There is a great need there.”
IKAR CEO Melissa Balaban stands in the foundation’s parking lot where affordable housing will be developed in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
On South Fairfax Avenue in Mid-Wilshire, the Jewish congregation IKAR is building an affordable housing complex for formerly homeless senior citizens on its parking lot.
The project was built through Mayor Karen Bass’ Executive Directive 1, which fast-tracks affordable housing, said IKAR executive director Melissa Balaban. State legislation pushed by IKAR reduced the amount of required parking.
Balaban said IKAR isn’t relying on the project, which is being funded by a nonprofit developer, to generate revenue for the congregation.
“My hope is that what we’re doing isn’t just going to provide 60 homes but hopefully inspire other faith-based communities,” she said.
In Palms, St. Mary member Julia Bergstrom, 72, is enthusiastic about the idea of affordable housing on the church property.
She has noticed the number of people living in RVs rise and fall, and she finds the years-long wait for Section 8 housing vouchers to be “immoral.”
While she worries about changes to the “very beautiful little church” she has attended since 2008, “it doesn’t stop me, and it doesn’t make me sad about the whole thing,” she said.
A suspected serial rapist wanted in connection with the rape of two women in Massachusetts in 1989 was arrested in Los Angeles on Thursday following a lengthy police chase.
Officers located the suspect, Stephen Paul Gale, 71, who was driving a dark SUV, shortly after 4 p.m. in the Wilmington area and began their pursuit, according to U.S. Marshals.
Gale led police onto the 110 and 405 freeways, eventually exiting the freeway onto surface streets on L.A.’s Westside while driving at a moderate speed, KTLA5-TV and ABC7-TV reported.
The hour and a half pursuit came to an end on Medical Plaza Drive in Westwood near Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, said Kevin Terzes, spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department.
Police surrounded the driver’s vehicle with guns drawn, KTLA5 reported. The driver surrendered and was taken into custody.
His arrest was the result of a decades-long nationwide manhunt for Gale, who was charged with aggravated rape and kidnapping of two women in Massachusetts in 1989.
He was recently identified through genetic genealogy as a suspect in a series of rapes in Boston from 1989-90, authorities said.
At the time of the incidents, Gale’s identity was unknown and he was referred to simply as the “Boston Strip Mall Rapist.”
Gale had been on the run for years before he was finally identified as the suspect in the 1989 case, according to federal authorities. He had last been seen in public in 2008.
In May, the U.S. Marshals Office released a wanted announcement for Gale in connection with the 1989 case and a reward for his capture of up to $5,000. In addition, the announcement said Gale was also wanted for questioning in connection with the series of rapes in the greater Boston area.
Not your home. Probably not a place you’d even want to be your home.
But welcome to some of the Houses of Los Angeles — notorious, historic and just plain fabulous.
Newsletter
Get the latest from Patt Morrison
Los Angeles is a complex place. Luckily, there’s someone who can provide context, history and culture.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
So many superb and significant houses have slipped through L.A.’s civic fingers and into the steel scoop of a bulldozer, yet the city has just chosen to make a stand in Brentwood, preserving in perpetuity as a cultural-historic monument an otherwise undistinguished 1929 Spanish-style house that actress Marilyn Monroe bought in 1962, lived in for six months, and died in.
It’s on 5th Helena Drive. There are 25 Helena Drives in Brentwood, each a cul-de-sac preceded by a different ordinal number — 7th, 19th, etc. It’s the handiwork of a 1920s developer, Richard Peter Shea, a poor man who made good and who also built Shea’s Castle, a grandiose Irish confection in the Lancaster desert. He may have named the cul-de-sacs for his daughter, Helena. In December 1932, two months after Shea’s wife, Jane, died, Shea’s body washed up in the surf near Venice. In his pocket was a glum note, and around his neck was a container holding Jane’s ashes. How’s that for a little excursion down the research rabbit hole?
You already know three kinds of L.A. houses: expensive, ridiculously expensive, and get-the-eff-outta-here expensive.
So now, let’s have a lookie-loo tour of houses of another three kinds.
Here in Southern California, some of the greatest 20th century architectural talents devoted themselves to private residences. Richard Neutra, Paul Williams, Wallace Neff, Rudolph Schindler, John Lautner and his Chemosphere, Pierre Koening and his “case study houses,” made famous by Julius Shulman’s photographs, the Frank Gehry house that elevated plywood and chain link to artistry. Frank Lloyd Wright built eight houses hereabouts, one of them La Miniatura in Pasadena, which he said he “would have rather built … than St. Peter’s in Rome.”
Most are off-limits to public perusal. If only we adopted London-style blue plaques, at least people would know that places of note are in there somewhere.
The historic
The official residence of Los Angeles’ mayor is known as Getty House. Not every mayor has lived at the Windsor Square property — Richard Riordan and Jim Hahn didn’t. Karen Bass does, as did Eric Garcetti and Tom Bradley.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Some adobes are survivors from the Spanish and Mexican eras, and they’re found from Calabasas to Whittier, San Fernando to Compton, Pomona to Long Beach.
A number are closed to the public. The 1852 Gilmore Adobe is one of them, not built by anyone named Gilmore, but named because it sits at the heart of the old Gilmore property that’s now the Farmers’ Market and the Grove.
The oldest non-Native-American house in L.A. County, the Las Tunas adobe, in San Gabriel, was built in 1776, the same time important people on the other side of the continent were doing some other stuff. It’s where the padres of the San Gabriel mission lived for a time, and it’s reputedly where the first orange seedlings in California were planted.
In the city of L.A. itself, the grand old man of adobes is the Avila Adobe, built in 1818 by Francisco Avila, once mayor of the city. More than a century later, it became the anchor to the makeover/restoration of Olvera Street.
To me, the most thrilling of them sits — sat — across from the thrill-ride capital of L.A., Universal Studios. On Jan.13, 1847, on the porch of this now-vanished adobe, two men signed a cease-fire agreement that ended the Mexican-American war in “Alta California,” Mexican California. The treaty’s terms were supposedly proposed by a Californio matriarch named Bernarda Ruiz de Rodriguez, who persuaded the two men to stand down. Andres Pico was a Californio statesmen and acting governor of Alta California, and Lt. Col. John C. Fremont was an American army officer always on the lookout for glory, whatever his orders.
The original adobe itself, 99 by 33 feet, was taken down in 1900 — it had been latterly used as a veterinarian’s office — and an approximate replica was built but, typically for L.A., neglected. In the 1990s, the MTA, about to build more turn lanes, uncovered the actual foundations of the original adobe, roof tiles, and ceramic floor tiles upon which the 1847 treaty-makers probably walked.
What to do? Make drivers wait another 90 seconds or so, or pave over one of L.A.’s most significant sites? At least part of it is preserved under glass at the Campo de Cahuenga historic site. Most drivers still turn into Universal City; the “Psycho” house means more to them than the Cahuenga adobe.
I have a soft spot for the Banning House in Wilmington. Phineas Banning, “the father of the port,” was one of those go-getter Yankees who saw L.A. as a blank slate for the making and the taking. Like a Kansas house landing in Oz, Banning’s 1863 Greek Revival-style house stood out and stood apart in the land of adobes. It’s a miracle it survived to become the museum it is today.
Getty House is the mayor’s official residence in Windsor Square. For its day — 1921 — it was probably a stylish, gee-whiz place but today it’s a large, rather lumbering-looking mock Tudor house. It was given to the city in 1975 and is probably the most modest edifice to bear the Getty name. In the 1990s, mayor Richard Riordan raised private millions to spruce up the fusty place to make it fit for official receptions and events.
In 1997, one day after Riordan launched a crackdown on the 18th Street gang, taggers vandalized the place but ha ha, the joke was on them — Riordan didn’t live there. Neither did mayor Jim Hahn, nor for part of his term did Antonio Villaraigosa. Eric Garcetti did, as does Karen Bass now. She was there on an early April morning when a man broke in, and he now faces charges for it. Mayor Tom Bradley lived there with his wife, Ethel, who did wonders with the garden, but was not fond of the house itself.
In case it had crossed your mind, no, you can’t just drop in. Just ask the accused burglar.
The horrific
A 1992 file photo shows the Benedict Canyon home on Cielo Drive where five people, including actress Sharon Tate, were murdered in 1969. It has since been demolished.
(Reed Saxon / Associated Press)
Crime sensations come and go — some lost in memory, some trumped by grislier crimes. Even the allure of the Hollywood-plus-homicide formula can dwindle. I once drove around Beverly Hills with Merv Griffin, who was well steeped in local history and pointed out the so-and-so-lived-here spots, and some sinister ones, like the house where actress Lana Turner’s daughter stabbed and killed her mother’s thuggish boyfriend. How much does that 1958 banner-headline crime resonate with anyone but “murderinos” today?
Taylor — who had ditched his wife, kids, and his original name — was shot to death in his bungalow in the Alvarado Court Apartments at 404 S. Alvarado in the Westlake neighborhood. When the cops arrived, they found, per The Times, Paramount executives and actors and actresses poking through drawers and closets, and the butler washing dishes as the dead man lay on the floor.
Clues and evidence were muddled — some deliberately. The rumor that Taylor was a ladies’ man was possibly floated by studio execs to divert any gossip that Taylor may have been a man’s man — that is, gay. A neighbor glimpsed the likely killer and was convinced it was “a woman dressed up like a man.” That woman may have been the mother of the young silent star Mary Miles Minter, who had a pash for Taylor. For a long while, Taylor’s address was a must-see for the more ghoulishly minded.
For notorious addresses, it’s hard to outdo the Laurel Canyon townhouse on Wonderland Avenue, the site of the July 1, 1981, quadruple murders that birthed movies and TV shows for more than 25 years.
It has a tabloid-magnet, tawdry cast of characters: four people deep into drugs being beaten to death; a porn actor; a drug-dealing, money-laundering nightclub owner and his bouncer; and a witness who was Liberace’s lover and got plastic surgery to look like the campy Vegas performer. The street name is a character, too, and it tees up the easy tropes about the “dark side of Hollywood.”
Porn performer John C. Holmes was acquitted of the murders and then died of AIDS. The nightclub owner, Eddie Nash, was acquitted of murder in a second trial after a bribed juror hung the jury in the first one. But Nash pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges, including conspiracy to murder.
And what kind of neighborhood was this “Wonderland,” where the locals were so used to hearing chaotic noises from the townhouse that when the screaming began at around 4 a.m. on July 1, one neighbor heard screams and saw lights on there, and rather than call police, she turned on her TV to drown out the sound? And another neighbor said with a shrug in his voice, “Who knows who’s been on primal scream therapy or tripping on some drug?” The ugly ’80s in a nutshell.
Scoot ahead to the 1990s, and a man who was renting the place said that “sometimes I sit in my living room and imagine where so-and-so must have died … but I’m getting a $400 break in the rent, so I’m staying put.”
The rented Tate house, with its ghastly ghosts, was not put up for sale until 1988, and there was a rumor that Tate’s widower, director Roman Polanski, had offered $1.5 million to bulldoze it. In 1994, an investor did indeed tear down the house and start building a Mediterranean villa. (Soon after, You’ve Got Bad Taste, a store near Sunset Junction, was selling what purported to be pieces of wallboard from the destroyed house.)
The Cielo Drive place has been sold several times since, and the street number changed to wipe the past clean. (There are any number of reasons to change the address of a house — a former president and first lady had three. When Ronald and Nancy Reagan returned from Washington, D.C., in 1989, they had the number of their Bel-Air house changed from the biblically ill-omened 666 to 668 St. Cloud.)
And the street number of the other “Manson murder” house, where Leno and Rosemary LaBianca were slaughtered, was also changed at some point. An Anaheim couple bought the place in the 1980s for tens of thousands of dollars below the value of “comps.”
A 1969 file photo shows the Los Feliz home where another Manson killing took place. The home’s address has since changed, and it has been sold several times.
(Associated Press)
“Nobody would buy the home because of the killings,” said Tina Yuvienco, the new owner. “We figured it was historical — like the Ambassador Hotel where Robert Kennedy was killed.” The place has sold several times in the last half-dozen years. One real estate agent’s note read, “Do research before showing.”
Winner of the notorious houses stakes for the last 30 years — does “Rockingham” ring a bell? Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman weren’t murdered at O.J. Simpson’s Brentwood house, but that’s where Simpson ended his melodramatic Bronco chase, where police found a bloody glove, and where guest house guest Kato Kailin heard the three ominous “thumps” on the night of the murders.
For a time there were O.J. tours; you could cruise past his house in a white Bronco. Neighbors were tickled when the house was bought in 1998 and flattened not long thereafter. (That house number, too, was changed.)
It was a little yellow stucco house, and like so many in South L.A. practically elbow-to-elbow with the ones next door. In May 1974, a woman renting the house was offered $100 to let some people stay. “Some people” turned out to be a half-dozen or so members of the SLA, the grandiosely named Symbionese Liberation Army. The urban guerrilla group had kidnapped the teenaged Bay Area newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst three months before, and was on the run.
It didn’t take long before neighbors took notice — one black man leading a group of white people — and one went to the cops. The cops went looking for the SLA, and the battle commenced.
Tear gas started a fire, and the fire blew up some of the thousands of rounds of ammo the SLA had cached in the house. Four of the members died hunkered down inside, and two others died running and gunning as they tried to get away. It was broadcast live on L.A. television.
The address is now a canopied driveway of a large adjacent house.
The glamorous, or a little bit louche
Charles Lummis built El Alisal with rocks dragged out of the Arroyo Seco.
(Annie Wells / Los Angeles Times)
Across the late 19th and into the 20th century, THE “in” address for renowned bohemians and celebrities was a stone house on the lip of the Arroyo Seco. Charles Lummis lived there, a swashbuckling figure whose parties were the Vanity Fair Oscar parties of their day. Lummis was an extraordinary figure — you only had to ask him — but he truly was, an L.A. Times editor, city librarian, pal of Teddy Roosevelt’s, lover, poet, Native American ethnographer, cultural preservationist and founder of L.A.’s first real museum, the Southwest Museum.
Lummis built his house, El Alisal, with rocks dragged out of the arroyo, and opened it for business, the business of entertaining L.A.’s visiting luminaries. In the hundreds of pages of his guest book are signatures, drawings and verses by his guests: John Muir, Dorothea Lange, Douglas Fairbanks, Ida Tarbell, Carl Sandburg, Clarence Darrow, Will Rogers, and the divine Sarah Bernhardt. The slight slope of the concrete floor made it easy to hose the place down after the parties; Lummis called them his “noises.”
The Playboy Mansion, in Holmby Hills, is another 1920s mock-Tudor sprawl whose living adornments, Playboy Playmates, and its testosterone toys, like a game room and the legendary “grotto,” enhanced the reputation of the place and of its lord and master, Hugh Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine. A pass to “the Mansion” was an entrée to the Playboy lifestyle, with its hubba-hubba mix of famous men and ornamental women, a place where the word “swinging” was used unironically. I visited the place twice, to interview Hefner, and the second time — which was, as I remember, a few years before Hefner died in 2017 — it struck me as run down, rather grimy and neglected. The city has extended something called a “permanent protection covenant” to the place, which is privately owned and used for business promotions and TV productions.
The closest any house might have come to the world’s conception of Los Angeles in the 1960s converged at a Spanish-style house on North Crescent Heights, home of Dennis Hopper and his wife, Brooke Hayward, an actress and daughter of a rich and troubled family. If you created a Venn diagram overlapping everything that was young and hip and edgy — Hollywood, music, writing, fashion, art — they all converged there, in a bubble-world of boho chic, radical chic, druggy dreams, beauty, daring, and creativity. We shall not see its like again.
The swingingest place of its day — that day being the 1920s — might have been the house at 649 West Adams Blvd., an address that silent movie fans knew because a couple of their favorites lived there.
The house was built around 1905 for businessman Randolph Miner and his wife, a dignified socialite. It was yet another of those mock-Tudor houses that had such a vogue for much too long. Miner’s wife, Zulita, a socialite and arts patron, was a great-great-granddaughter of Jose Dario Arguello, a soldier who led the pobladores to settle Los Angeles in 1781 and was briefly an interim governor of Spanish California.
A collage in a 1915 edition of the Los Angeles Times shows Theda Bara, who was then starring in “Carmen.”
(Los Angeles Times archive / newspapers.com)
The couple sought broader social horizons in Europe and around 1917, rented the place to Hollywood’s top vamp, actress Theda Bara. Staid neighbors were there-goes-the-neighborhood shocked. Loose, lurid reports claimed that Bara furnished the house with props befitting her roles, skulls, crystal balls and the like, but a Times story shows her demurely dressed and posing like a house-proud young matron in her new home.
Bara didn’t stay long, and the next resident turned out to be even more notorious, and not by design.
The comedian Fatty Arbuckle is seen on a vintage postcard from Patt Morrison’s collection.
The comedian Fatty Arbuckle was earning $5,000 a week and spending like it was his last paycheck, which, pretty soon, it was. His West Adams parties were legendary for their mayhem and Prohibition booze. In September 1921, he threw a party in San Francisco, and an actress named Virginia Rappe died in the hotel suite. Arbuckle was tried three times for manslaughter, and finally acquitted with an apology from the jury, but his reputation was as dead as Rappe. Thereafter, director Raoul Walsh rented the house for a year or so, followed by Arbuckle’s onetime producer, Joe Schenck, and his wife, the actress Norma Talmadge.
Finally, perhaps exasperated, Estelle Doheny, an ardent Catholic and second wife of oil tycoon Edward Doheny, bought the house to extend their estate. In time, it became a residence for young seminarians and is now part of Mount St. Mary’s campus, on this Boulevard of Broken Dreams and Leases.
Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison
Los Angeles is a complex place. In this weekly feature, Patt Morrison is explaining how it works, its history and its culture.
