Author: Thorn West

Thorn West: Issue No. 157

State Politics

• The California Reparations Task Force released a historic report this week, which proposed a method of calculating how much the state owes to Black Californians for a variety of harms including over-policing and housing discrimination. In his response, Governor Gavin Newsom was noncommittal on support for reparations in the form of cash payments. The Task Force is due to complete work in July.

City Politics

• A coalition of activist groups is advocating for implementing a democracy vouchers program in Los Angeles. Vouchers would be issued to all Angelenos regardless of income; once pledged to a candidate for office, they could be redeemed for campaign funding. A motion to study democracy vouchers was introduced by councilmembers Nithya Raman and Marqueece Harris-Dawson this past March.

• Kevin de León’s presence at Los Angeles City Hall took another step toward normalization, as last Friday the disgraced councilmember was permitted to deliver a Cinco de Mayo presentation; many city councilmembers left the floor as he spoke. A protester was arrested following the provoked public outcry.

Labor

• The Writers Guild of America strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers is ongoing. For schedules and locations of picket lines, see here. Joining is easy! DSA-LA and several of our electeds will be at Warner Brothers on Monday. This week President Biden expressed support for a “fair deal” for writers, after both Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom called for “both sides” to come to the table. Law enforcement has also expressed anti-solidarity, warning the public against “excessive honking” in support of striking workers.

Housing Rights

• The Ellis Act, a state law which allows landlords to evict tenants without cause provided they take the units off the market, is being used to evict hundreds of tenants from Barrington Towers in West LA — one of the largest mass evictions in state history.

• A new policy paper looks at the way a municipal public bank in Los Angeles could bolster the city’s affordable housing stock.

Transportation

• A report from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) and the Alliance for Community Transit (ACT-LA) makes the case for universal fareless public transit across Los Angeles.

Environmental Justice

• After widespread pushback from residents of the San Joaquin Valley, Governor Newsom has restored $40 million in funding for floodplain restoration. An El Niño weather pattern is widely predicted for the upcoming year; this would put the area at an increased risk of flooding.

• In a 5 – 4 decision, the US Supreme Court narrowly sided with California voters, who voted in 2018 to ban the sale of meat and egg products from farms that did not meet animal welfare standards.

Thorn West: Issue No. 155

State Politics

• Governor Newsom quickly signaled his opposition to a state Senate plan that would accommodate a projected budget deficit with a tax on corporate profits. In Newsom’s proposed budget, the projected deficit is met with spending cuts, notably to climate preparedness.

City Politics

• The City Council Budget and Finance Committee held meetings all week to discuss the mayor’s proposed budget, department by department. Committee chair Bob Blumenfield broke with precedent and did not allow public comment after the first day of hearings.

• The People’s Budget LA coalition presented the results of their annual participatory budgeting survey to the mayor. Mayor Bass, the first mayor to meet with the coalition, responded by acknowledging “the sentiment in the room,” – a prevailing community desire to spend less money on policing – but claiming an obligation to balance it against opposing concerns in places like “Sherman Oaks.”

Housing Rights

• In Shelterforce, excellent first-person coverage of the work that went into the passage of Measure H, the Pasadena rent control measure that passed in 2022.

• LA Public Press checks in with the housing reclaimers occupying vacant homes in El Sereno, whom the city is stepping up pressure to evict. DSA-LA’s Housing and Homelessness Committee has a toolkit to show support.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• [Content warning: police killing] A civil suit brought against Los Angeles County and two sheriff’s deputies by the family of Anthony Vargas, who was killed by LASD in 2018, ended in a mistrial on Monday. Vargas was shot 13 times in the back. Plaintiffs challenged the police narrative of the killing.

Labor

• The WGA released strike rules to their membership ahead of a potential strike, which could start on Tuesday. The president of IATSE indicated that IATSE members are legally permitted to refuse to work struck workplaces.

• Jacobin reports on the complicated victory of unionized Amazon workers in Palmdale, who have received recognition and negotiated a tentative agreement. However, the agreement is not with Amazon itself, but with one of its many “delivery service partners” that act as middlemen with workers.

• Join DSA, along with many left-wing organized labor and immigrants’ rights organizations, at the march in downtown Los Angeles in celebration of International Workers’ Day on Monday, May 1

Environmental Justice

• On Earth Day, harsh critique for Mayor Bass’ just-announced climate change preparedness plan, which contains little more than tweaks at the margins.

• It’s official: The California Air Resources Board today unanimously approved a plan to phase out diesel trucks, statewide, by 2035.

• This year’s record heavy snows are beginning to melt, leading to serious flooding concerns. CalMatters reports on the risks statewide, while LAist covers the same issue for the city.

Issue No. 154 – April 20, 2023

City Politics

• Following her State of the City speech, in which Mayor Bass simultaneously stressed her goal to “rebuild” LAPD by adding 500 more officers while also endorsing the expansion of unarmed alternatives to policing, her office released its draft budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The biggest headline was a massive expansion of homelessness and housing spending, about 20% of which is allocated to Inside Safe. The budget proposes a $19 million increased expenditure on LAPD salaries, even though the city actually spent nearly $50 million less on police than allocated in the previous budget due to failure to hire officers. The budget now heads to LA City Council for potential revisions.

• Through the LA Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department, the city is piloting a participatory budgeting program in three Los Angeles neighborhoods that allows community voting to influence how some city money is spent. Voting will take place through April 30. Learn more here; you may be eligible to participate. People’s Budget LA is conducting their annual budget survey as well.

• The City Council Government Reform Committee is holding a series of public meetings about, among other things, expanding LA City Council. The meeting was not livestreamed and only accepted public comment in person. Live-tweeted here. Video here.

Housing Rights

• Members of the Hillside Villa Tenants Association rallied outside the home of Mayor Bass all weekend, to demand that she follow through on the city’s plan to use eminent domain to acquire the Hillside Villa apartments, to protect them as affordable units from a landlord who plans to skyrocket the rent.

• KCRW reports on Los Angeles’ community land trusts, a housing model in which apartment complexes are acquired and control of them is legally transferred to their tenants.

Incarceration

• ACA-4, a proposed amendment to the California State Constitution to restore voting rights to incarcerated people is making its way through the state legislature. The motion, authored by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, passed out of the Election Committee this week. If passed out of the legislature, it will be on the ballot in 2024.

• ACLU SoCal filed a motion this week to hold the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department in contempt of a court order, after years of failing to address barbaric conditions in LA County jails. A hearing will begin in 60 days.

Transportation

Streetsblog LA breaks down “an astonishingly vacuous report” from the Los Angeles Planning Department that vastly oversells the city’s progress on implementing its mobility plan for safer streets.

Labor

• Writers represented by the WGA voted in favor of a strike authorization if their demands are not met in contract negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Pictures and Television Producers. Nearly 80% of members voted, and 97.9% voted to authorize.

• United Teachers Los Angeles reached a tentative agreement with the Los Angeles Unified School Board. It includes a 21% salary increase over three years and class size reduction, as well as the vast majority of UTLA’s Beyond Recovery program. Included in that program are DSA-LA’s Green New Deal for Public Schools demands, which, if ratified, will be implemented by the LAUSD Climate Committee, chaired by DSA-LA member Dr. Rocío Rivas. The tentative agreement will be put to a ratification vote by UTLA membership in the coming weeks.

Environmental Justice

• For the first time in 17 years, California’s Department of Water Resources will deliver 100% of the water requested by agencies that are part of the State Water Project.

Thorn West: Issue No. 153

State Politics

• After a nearly two-month absence from the US Senate due to health concerns, California senator Dianne Feinstein has asked to be replaced on the Senate Judiciary Committee, while resisting increasingly prominent calls to resign. The committee has been unable to move forward with judicial appointments in her absence, as she is the tie-breaking vote.

City Politics

• The special election in CD6 will officially head to a runoff between Imelda Padilla and Marissa Alcaraz, two of the most conservative candidates in the field, both of whom heavily benefited from independent expenditures from outside groups.

• Heather Hutt was reappointed as representative of CD10 on the Los Angeles City Council, over calls to hold a special election. The appointment passed 11–1, with only Councilmember Monica Rodriguez in opposition. Further recap (and argument against the appointment) here. Both CD10 and CD6 will hold elections again in 2024.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The council passed a revision to the municipal code that makes it a crime to possess a detached catalytic converter without being able to provide proof of ownership. Several councilmembers spoke in opposition, arguing that the law would expand police powers without curtailing theft. The motion passed 8–4, with councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez, Nithya Raman, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Hutt in opposition. Councilmember Soto-Martinez wasn’t present for the floor vote but summed up his opposition here.

• The Intercept continues coverage of the nuisance lawsuit filed against a journalist by City Attorney Hydee Feldstein-Soto, verifying that the LAPPL’s claims that photos of  “undercover officers” were included in a public records request was actually an attempt to expand the term to include any officer who might one day conduct work out of uniform. “They’re openly calling for a secret police force.”

Anti-Gentrification

• Knock LA speaks with business owners in Inglewood whom the city plans to displace – in order to make way for a people mover connecting SoFi Stadium to the K LIne – about the uncertainty and potential disaster they face.

Labor

• A new contract between LAUSD and education workers represented by SEIU 99 was approved this week with 99% membership approval. The contract agreement was reached after a strike in March that closed schools for three days.

• A motion introduced by councilmembers Curren Price and Soto-Martinez would immediately raise the hourly minimum wage for many tourism industry workers to $25, and to $30 by 2028.

Environmental Justice

• The Biden administration will intervene in the apportionment of Colorado River water allocations among Southwest states, and this week introduced three differing plans for apportioning water rights, featuring high-leverage distinctions for Southern California. A final decision is expected in August.

• The blog Heated measures the climate costs of the LAPD and LASD helicopter fleets.

Thorn West: Issue No. 138

City Politics

• This Tuesday was the first City Council meeting for DSA-LA’s endorsed candidates (and members) Hugo Soto-Martinez and Eunisses Hernandez! Both of them recapped their first day’s motions, (Soto-Martinez here and Hernandez here), while this write-up in Bolts comprehensively recaps the political situation they’re entering. The council now enters winter recess and will next meet on January 10, 2023.

• Tuesday’s council meeting was disrupted by Kevin de León’s second attempt to rejoin council proceedings; he has remained absent from meetings for months amid widespread calls for his resignation. His return was signaled by the organized bloc of De León supporters who also attended, several of whom were recorded chanting “all lives matter” at Black Lives Matter activists, as covered in L.A. Taco. Several councilmembers honored their commitments to vacate chambers while De León was present, though he came and went confusingly, and was able to register a vote at one point while not in the room.

• An LA Times opinion piece decries the city council’s increasingly violent hostility towards activists. Friday, Kevin de León body-slammed an activist, an action caught on videotape. City Council President Paul Krekorian and Councilmember Monica Rodriguez quickly defended their colleague’s violence, blaming the activist he assaulted for provoking him.

Housing

• Karen Bass fulfilled her campaign promise to declare a state of emergency over homelessness on the first day of her mayorship. The declaration, which can be read here, was passed unanimously by council on Tuesday. How Bass might exercise those powers is still largely hypothetical at this time. Writing in The New Yorker suggests some possibilities.

• On Tuesday, Councilmember Soto-Martinez introduced an amendment reversing last week’s council action that triggered the end of COVID-era eviction protections on January 31. The ultimate goal would have been to delay the end of eviction protections until a package of renter protections, championed by Councilmember Nithya Raman (who explains in detail here), could be locked in place. However, though Councilmembers Heather Hutt and Katy Young-Yaroslavsky joined in with the renters coalition, the amendment failed 6–5, two votes shy of the threshold for action. These tenant protections may still be put in place before January 31, and Soto-Martinez has promised to try. More coverage in the LA Times.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• [Content warning: graphic police violence.] The District Attorney’s office will not file charges against any of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputies responsible for the killing of Frederick Holder. Coverage from Cerise Castle in Knock LA.

Environmental Justice

• Los Angeles and San Diego voted on Tuesday to ban the distribution of expanded polystyrene, the foamy plastic that’s used in disposable coffee cups and takeout food containers.

• The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California has declared the whole region, comprising 26 member agencies, to be in a drought emergency. Last April, the agency declared a drought emergency for only six of its member agencies, including the Los Angeles DWP, triggering the current mandatory outdoor watering restrictions.

Thorn West: Issue No. 133

State Politics

• On Thursday, Governor Newsom took the surprising step of blanket denying all of the state’s Homeless Housing, Assistance, and Prevention grants, which are set aside for municipalities, on the grounds that no city had developed an ambitious enough plan to reduce houselessness. Newsom called for a mid-November meeting of local leaders to discuss “new strategies” before further grant money would be disbursed.

City Politics

• Large numbers of protesters continue to disrupt Los Angeles City Council meetings, demanding the resignation of Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León. The council this week has responded by aggressively removing protesters from meetings, and has discussed the possibility of preventing members of the public who have been removed from attending subsequent meetings.

• The special election to fill former council president Nury Martinez’s seat in District 6 has been set for April 23.

• In-person voting for the California midterm election began on Saturday and will continue through Election Day. Same day voter registration is possible at all voting centers — find the one nearest you, here. DSA-LA voter guide here.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors agreed Tuesday to pay $47.6 million to settle several lawsuits alleging misconduct by sheriff’s deputies. This includes a payment of $8 million to the family of Andrés Guardado.

• An LAPD captain was revealed to have tipped off executives at CBS about sexual assault charges made against former CBS president Les Moonves, mere hours after the charges were first filed in 2018, and to have gone on to leak more information as the investigation proceeded.

Housing Rights

• Curbed published an interview with state Assemblymember Matt Haney, who has formed the California Legislature’s first renter caucus. They’ve started with three members, including DSA member Alex Lee and Los Angeles’ Isaac Bryant.

Transportation

• Streetsblog LA takes a granular look at the ways incoming councilmember Eunisses Hernandez can use the power of her office to transform her district to the benefit of pedestrians, cyclists, and public transportation users.

Environmental Justice

• The California Air Resources Board met Thursday and agreed to move forward with plans to mandate a transition to zero-emission trucks, shuttle buses, and certain other buses beginning in 2024. A final decision on this Advanced Clean Fleet regulation will occur in the spring of 2023.

• According to a new study, Los Angeles County’s “hundred-year” flood risk is far greater than what the federal government currently estimates. Grist explains how and why Black communities face a disproportionate risk if floods like the ones that have devastated other American cities happen here.

Thorn West: Issue No. 132

State Politics

• In response to gas prices, Governor Gavin Newsom has called for a new “windfall profit” tax on oil companies, and has even vowed to convene a special legislative session in early December to focus on the new tax. CalMatters offers a preliminary cost-benefit analysis.

City Politics

• Los Angeles City Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo have continued to ignore widespread calls for them to resign. This week, the council voted to censure them, after which Council President Paul Krekorian said the council had exhausted its options and it was up to the people to “step forward with a recall.” A recall petition against De León was filed later in the week.

• The physical space of council chambers remains significant, as large groups of protesters continue to disrupt meetings, demanding that De León and Cedillo resign and preventing a return to “business as usual.” The city’s responses have ranged from expressing qualified empathy to instituting hybrid public comment, threatening the use of less lethal ammunition, and, today, blocking protesters from entering the meeting because it was “at capacity.”

• Councilmember Nithya Raman introduced a motion to adopt recommendations made by the Los Angeles City Ethics Commission to strengthen the city’s municipal lobbying ordinance. The recommendations were submitted in April but never agendized by former Council President Nury Martinez.

• Ballot return is low so far, implying that the vote count will once again take some time after the November 8 election. The DSA-LA voter guide is here. Knock-LA has also released a voter guide, here. The LA Times endorsed Hugo Soto-Martinez in CD13 (echoing DSA-LA), after endorsing Kate Pynoos in the primary.

Housing Rights

• In Councilmember De León’s district, the housing reclaimers who had won the right to stay in vacant homes owned by Caltrans have received eviction notices at the end of their original two-year lease.

• Councilmember Mike Bonin’s motion to make it easier for nonprofits and religious organizations to offer temporary shelter to people experiencing houselessness was approved to be drafted as legislation, 10–2. This is another motion that was left waiting to be agendized under Nury Martinez.

Environmental Justice

• L.A. Taco reports on the poor labor conditions at the cleanup of the toxic Exide battery plant in Vernon (the industrial-use-only city that Kevin de León protected from disincorporation when he represented the city in the state Senate).

Local Media

• Mike Davis, the Marxist historian whose writing is essential to a humane understanding of Los Angeles, has died. As many of his remembrances note, although his vision was sometimes bleak, he always urged hope. In honor of his work, his publishers have made his collection of essays City of Quartz free to download.

Thorn West: Issue No. 131

State Politics

• Governor Newsom’s office announced Monday that, despite concerns over a winter surge, California’s COVID-19 state of emergency will end February 28, 2023. The governor will seek to codify some elements into law. This may trigger an end to eviction protections in San Francisco and Oakland. (Los Angeles didn’t wait.)

City Politics

• Last week, a leaked recording of three councilmembers engaged in racist gerrymandering revealed to Angelenos a widespread malignancy in city government. Over the weekend, Knock LA analyzed another recording leaked at the same time, which doesn’t feature any councilmembers. In this recording, made just this September, LA County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera and a former Mitch O’Farrell staffer discuss Hugo Soto-Martinez, the CD13 race, and the importance of “buying” endorsements from local Democratic clubs. A surprising response from the current president of the Stonewall Democratic Club illuminated how influence was used to sway that club’s endorsement toward O’Farrell over internal objections.

• On Tuesday, though Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León had still ignored the calls to resign coming from every corner of Los Angeles, City Council held a meeting. It was held via Zoom to avoid being shut down by the many activists who have been demanding that meetings halt until the resignations are in (though the stated reason was COVID-19 precautions). Only 10 members attended. This included the council’s progressive wing, despite pressure on them to refuse to attend, and their own expressed doubts — now quashed — about continuing city business without resignations. At the doors of City Hall, a protester was assaulted by an LAPD officer.

• At Tuesday’s meeting, in reaction to the corruption revealed on the recording, two motions to draft 2024 ballot measures — which would, respectively, implement independent redistricting and expand the size of City Council — were approved.

• Additionally, the council voted on a new president to replace Nury Martinez, who resigned last week. San Fernando Valley councilmember (and landlord) Paul Krekorian was chosen unanimously — suggesting that much council business is still coordinated out of the public view.

• Councilmember Mike Bonin later wrote a lengthy thread explaining how the coalition led by Nury Martinez has stymied progressive legislation in Los Angeles for years.

• Wednesday, Kevin de León announced that he will refuse to resign from the CD14 seat. Recall petitions are already being discussed, including at a forum held this week by DSA-LA on the way forward: recording here. Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, alongside other Black-led and -allied organizations, have been holding a protest at De León’s Eagle Rock residence for the entire week, demanding De León’s immediate resignation.

Housing Rights

• The resignation of Nury Martinez and, eventually, of Kevin De León might impact the city’s recent settling of the LA Alliance lawsuit, which those two councilmembers spearheaded, and which has the potential to reshape the city’s homelessness policy. Details here.

• At Tuesday’s meeting, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson joined with Councilmembers Bonin and Nithya Raman in voting against another new 41.18 zone. Due to the few number of members in attendance, this protest vote actually caused the measure to fall one vote below the threshold for action. However, Harris-Dawson then changed his vote, and the motion carried.

• The City of Santa Monica’s flouting of state housing laws has brought the city significant consequences. The city’s failure to submit a compliant Housing Element triggered a penalty that removed local control over development approval. Developers noticed, and by the time the city regained compliance this week, plans for an estimated 4,000 units of housing had been automatically approved. More on the Chauceresque “builder’s remedy” in Slate, which picked up the story nationally.

Labor

• Workers at Amazon’s air freight fulfillment center in San Bernardino, the company’s third-largest in the US, walked off the job last Friday over what they say are insufficient wages and unsafe working conditions. This is the second worker strike at the air hub since August.

Environmental Justice

• Last year, an LA Times investigation found that California has chronically underestimated heat fatalities even as heat waves become more frequent and more deadly. The California Legislature recently agreed to the creation of a system that will collect real-time data from emergency departments.

• In a study published on Thursday, researchers estimated that over 4 tons of benzene per year are being leaked into the atmosphere from pipes that deliver the gas to buildings around California — the equivalent to the benzene emissions from nearly 60,000 vehicles. And those emissions are unaccounted for by the state.

Thorn West: Issue No. 127

City Politics

• With the election in six weeks, debates have picked up again. Candidates for mayor and sheriff met this week. @UnrigLA maintains a calendar of upcoming events, including a debate in the CD13 race in which DSA-LA–endorsed candidate Hugo Soto-Martinez is running.

Health Care

• In response to the overdose death of a student, the lifesaving overdose-reversal medication naloxone (Narcan) will be made available at all LAUSD K–12 schools.

Transportation

• Governor Newsom has signed AB 2097, blockbuster legislation that restricts the off-street parking requirements municipalities can impose on new developments that are near transit corridors. Advocates anticipate the bill enabling denser housing and lower rent, while removing some of the incentives from owning a car. Newsom’s signing statement here.

• After years of delays, Metro surprisingly announced that the official opening of the K Line will be October 7. The light rail line will initially service seven stations throughout several Los Angeles communities, including Leimert Park and Baldwin Hills, as well as the city of Inglewood. In recognition of the accomplishment, Metro will suspend all fares across the transit system October 7-9.

• Los Angeles City Council is in the process of approving a new vendor contract for bus shelters, for the first time in 20 years. Next City looks at how Los Angeles, which is failing to provide shade for bus riders compared with other cities, can improve.

Housing Rights

• The previously unhoused tenants of the LA Grand Hotel, which is “demobilizing” as a Project Roomkey site, have released a statement and a list of demands, which include an end to evictions until all tenants have been provided with and accepted permanent housing.

• L.A. Taco reports on United to House LA, or ULA, the November city ballot measure that would institute a “mansion tax” on all property sales over $5 million and use the money to fund a variety of potentially transformative housing programs intended to combat houselessness. More here.

Labor

• Proposition 22, which exempts rideshare apps from some labor laws, has yet to go into effect. In the meantime, a study conducted in partnership with Rideshare Workers United shows that under Prop 22’s payment plan drivers would make a median wage of $6.20 an hour.

Police Violence and Community Resistance

• Attorney General Rob Bonta has taken over the investigation opened by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department into two prominent critics of the department.

Environmental Justice

• Governor Newsom signed 40 climate-related measures into law on Friday. The legislation includes a mandate that the state achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 as well as a 3,200-foot setback requirement between new oil wells and homes, schools, and other locations. Other provisions include expedited solar permitting, record-keeping requirements for EV charging station reliability, and a ban on enhanced oil recovery using carbon sequestration.

Thorn West: Issue No. 125

State Politics

• With the legislative session closed, here is everything that passed and awaits the governor’s signature or veto.

• President Biden endorsed AB 2183, the California bill that would enable union organizing among farm workers. The bill passed through the Legislature last week, but Governor Newsom already vetoed an earlier version of this same bill and has yet to sign this one. Biden’s surprise endorsement is speculated to be political gamesmanship aimed at Newsom, a potential 2024 primary challenger.

• Newsom did sign AB 257, which would establish a Fast Food Council to regulate wages at large chain restaurants. The restaurant industry is fighting back, and announced intentions to put a referendum on ballots overturning the law, which now may not be able to go into effect until the referendum is resolved. Via Who Gets the Bird, more labor analysis on the impact of this measure.

Health Care

• The newly developed COVID vaccine that is more effective against the prevalent BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of the omicron strain is now available in Los Angeles County to all adults. Book an appointment here, or through most major pharmacy chains. Vaccines remain free of cost.

Housing Rights

• After several delays, LAHSA has released a census report on the county’s unhoused population, for the first time since COVID began. The numbers reveal a 4.1% increase in the total population in LA County, and a 1.7% increase in the city of Los Angeles, with continued overrepresentation of Black and Latine people among the unhoused. This represents a smaller increase than in previous years, largely attributed to a slower rate of people falling into homelessness. County representatives suggest that this is likely due to COVID-related assistance programs and eviction protections.

• The Housing Committee of the Los Angeles City Council will discuss ending COVID-related eviction protections at its next meeting, following the Housing Department’s fulfillment of a request for a report, which recommends that most citywide eviction protections sunset on December 31, 2022.

• Knock LA continues its in-depth reporting on the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Campus, where many tiny homes developed for unhoused veterans remain empty. A fire destroyed several of these homes this week, though no one has been reported injured.

Environmental Justice

• The record-breaking heat wave that has gripped California since last week may finally end, with a dramatic near-miss hurricane. The heat also caused record-breaking power-usage that prompted an emergency request urging Californians to conserve power “if health allows,” or rolling blackouts would be ordered. This warning effectively curbed consumer usage, averting the need for drastic action.

• Curbed uses the heat wave as a prompt to talk about lack of shade on LAUSD campuses. LA Taco reports on industrial pollution at Jordan High School in Watts, where students report being advised not to drink the water.