The Brief

Under the blistering Sacramento sun outside the Capitol last week, advocates for Black, Latino and Asian communities spoke about the importance of diversifying California’s voters.

That’s why they’re part of a coalition of dozens of organizations backing a bill to automatically register people to vote at the Department of Motor Vehicles. “We must ensure that every eligible citizen … can exercise our rights to vote with as few barriers as possible,” said Sydney Fang, policy director at the advocacy group AAPI-Force.

The bill aims to capture the state’s 4.7 million residents who are unregistered but eligible to vote — and who are predominantly Black, Latino, Asian or younger.

“That is 4.7 million Californians whose voices are not being heard,” Sen. Monique Limón, the bill’s author, said at the small rally at the Capitol.

“It is unacceptable that working-class communities of color continue to be systematically left out of access to political power,” the Santa Barbara Democrat added in a statement after the rally. “We must take the necessary steps to ensure that California’s diverse population becomes a diverse electorate that truly represents the power of our state.”

In the 2022 general election, close to 27 million people were eligible to vote in California. About 22 million were registered, and about half voted.

The proposal is the latest effort to try to expand California’s “motor voter law,” which directed the DMV beginning in 2018 to register people to vote when they apply for a license or ID or change their address — if they indicate they’re eligible and unless they opt out. The bill proposes registering everyone who is eligible without prompting, and informing them later with a postcard.

But the bill, revived from last year, has drawn concern from groups that support expanding voter access, including the League of Women Voters of California, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Cal Action political committee and NALEO, a nonprofit group focused on Latino civic engagement.

They say registering to vote should be voluntary — and they don’t see the bill as an effective way to increase voter diversity.

“This is a solution looking for a problem,” said Rosalind Gold, chief public policy officer for NALEO Educational Fund. “Right now, California should not be spending its scarce resources on something that is not going to have any kind of negligible impact on strengthening our democracy, and in fact, could have some harmful consequences.”

The proposal is scheduled to be heard in the Assembly’s elections committee on June 26.

The bill would take effect for the 2026 election for governor and other statewide offices — or when the Secretary of State certifies a system to make sure the DMV can sort out who isn’t eligible to register, including those who are undocumented but get special licenses.

The Secretary of State, despite commenting on previous election-related legislation, declined comment on the bill to CalMatters.

Eric McGhee, senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California, said lawmakers should consider whether their goals are to get people’s names into the system and worry later about turning them into regular voters, or whether they want to focus on registering those who are most ready to vote.

“It doesn’t do anything, by itself, to turn them into voters and make sure that they vote,” he said. “It just removes registration as a hurdle.”

How past registration changes fared

Twenty-five states have a form of “automatic” voter registration at state agencies. California is one of 14 states with a system that prompts you to choose, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, while another 11 have the kind of system Limón is proposing.

Since California’s “motor voter” law rolled out, registration among the state’s eligible voters has gone up from 75% to 83% in January 2024. Researchers attribute more than half of that increase to the new system.

But making voting easier doesn’t necessarily lead to higher voter turnout, according to Charles Stewart, director of the MIT Election Data and Science Lab.

And California’s current system didn’t boost registration among all the underrepresented groups the current bill aims to help, according to a March analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California. While new registrations increased among Asian voters and those under 35, it didn’t for Latino and Black Californians.

The system has been effective at allowing existing voters to update their addresses rather than adding new voters, according to the report — though that wasn’t the goal of easier registration.

“While all groups have seen gains, registration policy changes have not always improved equity in the way that might have been expected,” the report concluded. “Given that Latino and Black residents and young people participate in elections at lower rates, gains in registration needed to be larger than those of older or white Californians in order to correct these past imbalances.”

California’s likely voters are older, include more white residents and are more likely to own homes and have a college degree than the state’s overall population, according to an analysis last August by the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.

But Neal Ubriani, policy and research director for the Institute for Responsive Government, argues that automatically registering people will increase political participation, building on California mailing ballots to all registered voters. Limon’s office confirmed the bill was based on research from the institute, which has pushed for what it calls the “SAVR” bill (Secure Automatic Voter Registration) in 11 other states.

Ubriani is also a member of California’s Motor Voter Task Force, though it has not discussed the bill or automatic voter registration.

“If somebody’s not registered to vote, they’re kind of invisible to grassroots groups, to campaigns, to election officials,” he said. “They can’t reach out to them … They can’t teach them about the issues that are on the ballot. They can’t give them the kind of outreach that might get them excited about maybe a local candidate, or a state Senate race, or even president.”

But the ACLU says people should have the right to decide whether to register, or not.

While the organization is committed to reducing barriers to voting, specifically for underrepresented groups, “we’re also concerned about other issues like privacy, and First Amendment rights, and associational rights — and so we have to consider all of those together,” said Brittany Stonesifer, an attorney with the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy & Civic Engagement Program.

Stonesifer also said it’s important for people to actively engage in the voting process — “to make meaningful choices that represent their decisions on the ballot.”

Voters cast their ballots on Super Tuesday at City Hall in San Francisco on March 5, 2024.

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Juliana Yamada

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The groups who oppose the bill also say automatic registration could make it more difficult for voters if they want to change their political party, especially to vote in presidential primaries, or if they want voting materials in a language different from what they use at the DMV.

Ubriani took issue with the idea that the system deprives people of a choice.

“This process is just turning voting as much as possible into a one-step process to say, we know you’re eligible, we’ve made voter registration as easy as possible for you, if you want to participate, that’s up to you,” he said.

Will ineligible voters get registered?

Both supporters and opponents of the bill say that it’s extremely rare for ineligible people to get on the voter list.

Still, state government’s track record on technology is spotty at best: When California’s current system started at DMV offices in 2018, about 23,000 people were registered with errors — including 1,600 people who hadn’t intended to register, including some non-citizens. Others had incorrect information added to their registrations, such as party preferences. The registrations were canceled by the Secretary of State, the Associated Press reported.

It’s a crime to register to vote, or to vote, when you’re not eligible, such as not having citizenship. Proponents of the bill say that shifting the burden of erroneous registrations to the state would protect people who might accidentally register under the current system and thus unintentionally break the law.

But opponents say there isn’t enough evidence of that problem. And, according to Stonesifer, the bill could put noncitizens at risk of being deported, losing their legal status or being denied citizenship.

Under current law, if someone registers and they’re not eligible, there are some legal protections in place.

But if someone gets a ballot in the mail because they were registered automatically and sends it back, that person will have voted illegally, she said.

Carol Jasmine Varro votes with her son, Lance Robin Chavez, by her side at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center in National City on March 5, 2024.

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And while the motor voter system had a bumpy roll-out, it now works effectively, the ACLU says.

The DMV is already overhauling its software system, a project that is scheduled to finish in 2027. That, along with the lack of clear roadmap on how the DMV would sort out those who are eligible, could set the agency up for failure if the state adopted automatic registration, Stonesifer said.

“It creates a much more complicated system than we currently have and puts the responsibility in the hands of the DMV, which doesn’t have the best track record for getting that right,” she said.

Limón, however, said the current bill learns from the 2018 rollout at the DMV. “We know where the technology and where the challenges were,” she said.

How much would automatic registration cost?

It’s unclear how much the bill will cost the state or counties, but Limón acknowledges that with the projected state budget deficit, any bill with additional cost is going to have an uphill battle.

The bill’s opponents say there are more effective ways to increase political participation among underrepresented communities, such as permanent funding into voter outreach.

Gold said a worthwhile investment to engage more Latino voters would be to fund community-based organizations as “trusted messengers” who can explain how to vote, what the issues are and why they matter.

NALEO supports expanding the current program to allow people to register to vote when they apply for benefit programs such as Covered California or CalWORKS, which might better target people from underrepresented communities. Seven states have passed laws since 2019 to allow registration at Medicaid offices, but they’re on hold as officials await guidance from the Biden administration, which has expressed concerns about confidentiality, NPR reports.

Limón said that while some have suggested waiting before making more changes to voter registration, others — including labor organizer Dolores Huerta, who spoke at last week’s rally — have been trying to expand voter rights for decades and say the time to act is now.

“You’ve got to begin this work, and you’ve got to do it so that eventually we get to a place where everybody that is eligible has that opportunity,” Limón said.

Landlords in Los Angeles County will soon be allowed to raise rents by more than 10% from their baseline before the January 2025 fires.

A vote by the county’s Board of Supervisors that could have extended a ban on post-fire price gouging for another month failed on Tuesday. Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis voted in favor, but Supervisors Kathryn Barger, Janice Hahn and Holly Mitchell abstained.

As a result, the long-standing countywide prohibition on rent gouging will expire May 29. The milestone comes more than 16 months after the L.A. County fires destroyed thousands of homes and plunged families into a hectic rental market.

Arguments for and against keeping post-fire rent limits

In her motion to keep the rules in place through June 27, Horvath argued the ban should be preserved because about two-thirds of fire survivors are still in temporary housing.

Horvath wrote that many families “have run out of financial displacement coverage from their insurance companies, which reinforces the need to continue price gouging restrictions, to protect these homeowners from drastic price increases.”

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Horvath said she was "deeply disappointed" that most of her colleagues abstained from the vote.

"We continue hearing from residents who are struggling to recover financially and stay housed as they rebuild," she said.

Landlord groups have been pushing county leaders for months to end the rent gouging ban. During public comment in Tuesday’s meeting, Jesus Rojas with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles said the rules have long outlived the post-fire emergency.

“They are wrongfully being used to harm thousands of rental housing providers throughout the entire county,” Rojas said. “This must stop, and it must stop now.”

How the rules have worked so far 

In March, the county ended post-fire price gouging restrictions on hotels, because survey data found that few displaced families were still staying in temporary motel rooms. Horvath argued the rent-gouging ban should be continued until the Department of Consumer and Business Affairs could deliver further data on resident displacement and the rental market.

The rules have banned landlords from raising rents by more than 10% from advertised pre-fire levels. They also prohibited rents exceeding 200% of fair market value, as established by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, on previously unlisted properties.

Tenant advocates found thousands of likely violations

Following the 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires, prosecutors filed a handful of misdemeanor charges against landlords and real estate agents accused of violating the price gouging rules.

In the days after the fires, LAist spoke with one agent who encouraged her client to raise the rent on a Bel Air home nearly 86% from a previous 2024 listing.

The agent, Fiora Aston with Compass, said at the time, “I've never seen anything like this. People are desperate. There’s so many families without a house.”

The listing was later taken down. But tenant advocates with a group called The Rent Brigade started compiling data on other listings that appeared to violate price-gouging laws. By January 2026, the group reported finding 18,360 listings featuring likely violations.

Homelessness has decreased in Orange County, according to data released this week from the county’s point in time count conducted in January.

The numbers are down 13.5% compared to 2024, when the last point in time count took place, according to Doug Becht, director of Orange County’s Office of Care Coordination. The office leads the county's efforts to address homelessness. In total, 6,321 people were counted as living outdoors, in vehicles or in shelters across the county.

During the last count in 2024, there was a spike of around 28% in the number of unhoused people, with around 7,300 people experiencing homelessness at the time.

The latest data was shared on Monday during a press briefing.

What the results show

 Becht said there was a 37% decrease in veterans experiencing homelessness as well as a 20% decrease in young people aged between 18 and 24 experiencing homelessness.

The latest point in time results also show that family homelessness has decreased.

In contrast, older adults in the county are experiencing higher rates of housing challenges. The number of seniors experiencing homelessness increased 1.5% compared to the last count, Becht said.

Southern cities in the county saw the largest decrease in homelessness while the central region 15.5% reduction. Laguna Hills, Laguna Niguel, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo all saw drops in people experiencing homelessness. In north Orange County, homelessness decreased by about 7.5%.

Becht said the survey also revealed that the number of people experiencing chronic homelessness — defined as an extended period or several episodes of homelessness — is rising within the county’s shelter system but decreasing on the streets.

He attributed that “to the ongoing housing shortage” that is causing people to stay in shelters longer. Around 3,200 of the county’s total unhoused population live in shelters, according to the data.

And when people stay in shelters longer, there’s not enough beds available for those who are on the streets, he said.

Over 50% of the people surveyed said they were experiencing homelessness because of financial reasons like losing a job and the lack of affordable housing options.

Why the count matters

The point in time count — a census mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to take place during the last 10 days of January — secures federal funding toward addressing homelessness. State and county officials use those funds to assess what programs and services are needed on the ground.

Point in time counts are widely viewed as undercounts by experts and don’t capture the full scope of homelessness — volunteers helping with the count can easily miss people, for example.

Becht said the count helps county staff engage with people experiencing homelessness. Once they have a person on the radar, it allows outreach teams to go back out and try to get them off the streets and into temporary housing.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

Californians would have to take a four-hour course with live-fire training to buy a gun if a bill advancing through the Legislature gets signed into law.

Senate Bill 948, by Berkeley Democratic Sen. Jesse Arreguín, also would require gun owners moving to California to obtain a firearm safety certificate and register their firearms within 180 days of their arrival. Beginning in 2028, obtaining that certificate would require completing the training.

It’s the latest effort by California Democrats to add more restrictions on firearm ownership in a state that already has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. However, it’s hardly certain the bill will become law. A similar measure died in the Legislature last year.

This year’s proposal advanced from the Senate Appropriations Committee Thursday on a party-line vote with Republicans opposed. Committee members offered no comment on the measure and did not take any public testimony, which is typical for that committee.

But in March, when an earlier version of the bill would have required eight hours of training, Arreguín told the Senate Public Safety Committee the proposed training requirements would reduce gun violence and prevent accidental shootings.

“Firearm safety is essential in preventing firearm-related incidents, especially those involving children,” he said. “By strengthening training requirements and closing gaps in current law, SB 948 will ensure responsible gun ownership to keep Californians and communities safe.”

Rebecca Marcus, a lobbyist for the Brady Campaign, told the committee there were more than 69,000 shootings resulting in death or requiring urgent medical care in California from 2016 to 2021. Around one in three of those shootings were accidental, she said. Many involved children.

Gun rights advocates said the bill would be challenged in court if it becomes law.

Adam Wilson of Gun Owners of California called the proposed requirements “an insurmountable barrier to exercising a constitutional right.”

Clay Kimberling, a lobbyist for the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, said that’s especially true for the estimated 115,000 gun owners who move to California each year.

“Whether they move into the state on a new job, a new military assignment, or family obligations such as helping a sick or elderly family member, lawful firearm owners would now have to search out an instructor, pay for the class … and take eight hours out of their day … for simply wanting to continue to practice their constitutional right to keep and bear arms in a new state,” Kimberling said.

That original version of the bill also would have required new California arrivals to register firearms and take the course within 60 days.

Will the bill make it to Newsom?

Under current law, Californians are required to pass a written test and pay $25 to obtain a five-year firearm safety certificate to purchase a gun, but no formal training course is required.

Licensed hunters are required to take a mandatory hunting-safety course and aren’t required to get a certificate when buying rifles or shotguns. Also exempt are those who’ve obtained a concealed weapons permit, which is issued after 16 hours of mandatory training that includes live-fire at a gun range.

Those exemptions would still apply.

For everyone else, the proposed four hours of training would include coursework on state and federal gun laws, secure firearm storage, safe handling, the dangers of guns, use-of-force laws, how to sell firearms legally and conflict resolution. The live-fire portion of the course would need to last at least an hour.

Second Amendment groups say paying a Department of Justice-certified firearms instructor would add at least $400 to the cost of buying a firearm. Applicants also would have to pay for ammunition, gun rentals and range fees. Fees and firearms taxes already can add more than $100 to the cost of a firearm in California.

The training requirements would take effect July 1, 2028.

Until then, beginning on Jan. 1, gun owners moving to the state would be required to pass the current written test and register their firearms with the Department of Justice within 180 days.

Violating the proposed law would be a misdemeanor.

The bill now moves to the full Senate. It will then have to advance through the Assembly by this summer if Gov. Gavin Newsom is to sign it. He hasn’t taken a position on the legislation.

Last year, a bill with eight-hour training requirements died in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

As her family prepared to evacuate their West Altadena home, Claire McLaughlin picked up her favorite snow globe, a music box featuring a mother hummingbird and two babies. She considered packing it, then put it back.

“I left it because I thought, ‘My house isn’t going to burn. I’ll come home later,’” Claire told The LA Local.

Claire never saw her favorite snow globe again.

West Altadena did not receive its evacuation order until after 3 a.m., hours after other parts of Altadena and Pasadena were told to leave. Despite that, Claire urged her family to evacuate after a friend in Pasadena called to warn her to do the same.

“I felt like I was being dramatic,” Claire said, “because we got no notification.”

Eventually, Claire, her mother, father and two older siblings saw flames surrounding their neighborhood from their driveway. Without any official word, they knew it was time to go. Their house burned down a few hours later.

Of the 19 people who died in the Eaton Fire, 18 were in West Altadena, and two of them were Claire’s neighbors: Anthony Mitchell and his son, who needed help evacuating. “I wish people knew that,” Claire said. “No one came to help the west side of Altadena.”

The students who lost their homes

Claire McLaughlin and her siblings outside their old house. Claire is the youngest, on the bottom left.

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More than 1,000 students in the Pasadena Unified School District lost their homes, and more than 10,000 were ordered to evacuate during the Eaton Fire. Claire was one of those students. At Pasadena High School, however, she said she didn’t know any friends who lost homes. 

“Even though it happened to thousands of people, I felt alone because I was the only kid I knew,” she said.

The fire coincided with major milestones for Claire: prom, graduation and the start of college. “Before the fire, it felt like I was still a kid, growing up,” Claire said. “But then it just sped it up, and it was like, ‘Oh, I’m an adult. I need to do this.’”

At graduation, Claire was so happy that, for a moment, she forgot about the fire. “I realized I wasn’t thinking about it,” Claire said. “It felt strange. I felt like I should be thinking about it.” Looking back, she wishes her school had focused more on the fire during the ceremony.

Now, Claire is in her first year at Pasadena City College.  She is living with her family at her mother’s former boss’s home in Pasadena while their house is rebuilt. Claire found a job at a bowling alley after the restaurant where she worked, Fox’s, burned down. She is excited for the end of the year, when she hopes her family can move back.

Rebuilding what was lost

One of the signs in an empty lot in West Altadena near Claire McLaughlin’s home.

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It has been more than a year since the Eaton Fire, but the emotions still linger for Claire. The news coverage has, in Claire’s words, “slowed down.”

“No one really talks about it anymore. Everyone’s moved on. But it just felt like I was stuck. I just keep thinking about it. I should be moving on, but I still feel sad.”

Claire still thinks about her neighbors, her street, her home and her musical snow globe, which she has tried and failed to find on eBay.

She misses her kitchen, her room and the sycamore tree in her front yard, which survived the fire but was later cut down for construction. Claire loved that tree. It’s where she would sit while her boyfriend washed her parents’ car. Her mother and brother would lie under the tree, usually after mountain biking in the San Gabriel Mountains behind their home, with their bikes strewn across the lawn. Claire would join them in the shade.

The tree is gone, but Claire’s house is starting to look as it once did. The last time Claire visited the site, the layout felt familiar. She could see the outline of her room in the same place and size as before.

Feeling lucky

The McLaughlins after buying their home in West Altadena several years before the fire.

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Nearly all her neighbors are hoping to return. But Claire is worried about investment firms buying lots from families who have lived there for generations and cannot afford to come back. She has attended protests with her mother to raise awareness about West Altadena.

“When I think of the situation with West Altadena, I feel really disappointed and angry,” Claire said. “But when I think of my house, I feel hopeful. Because now I’m going home soon.”

Above all else, Claire is grateful to be able to return. As she said, “You don’t find this sense of community everywhere.”

Right before the fire, on New Year’s Day, while the Rose Bowl was on, Claire’s neighbor was outside with his kid.

“I was messing with him,” Claire said. “The little kid was trying to chase me down the street, and I was running with him, and I thought to myself, ‘I’m so lucky to grow up here.’”

For Claire, nothing can change that feeling.

“I love that place with all my heart,” she said. “I still do.”