The Brief

In Kimberley Kausen’s home, a passed “sell by” date on a jug of milk means different things to different family members. For her daughter, it means the jug belongs in the trash. For her husband, it means the milk is still good for a few more days.

Kausen, a chef and cooking teacher in Irvine, California, is more discerning and often uses her sense of smell before deciding what to do with the milk.

“I’ll put some thought into it, and if we’re talking about meat and poultry, I’m very cautious about that and for sure will do the smell test and the touch test,” she said.

The debate playing out in Kausen’s kitchen is repeated in homes across California and the country, where varying phrases on food packaging have long left shoppers unsure whether food is simply past its peak quality or unsafe to eat. The state is aiming to cut down on confusion — and the food waste it creates when people throw away food early — with a new food labeling law starting Wednesday.

It bans the use of “sell by” labels on food packaging, which experts say act as a guide for retailers on how long to display products on the shelves but are not an indicator of whether they are still safe to consume. Now, manufacturers selling food in California must use two standardized labels — a “Best if Used By” label for peak quality and “Use By” label for product safety.

Food manufacturers can choose to use either label or both, said Democratic Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, the author of the bill.

California became the first state in the U.S. to standardize food labels when it approved the law in 2024 that seeks to reduce food waste and the state’s climate-warming emissions. New York state lawmakers recently approved a similar law that’s awaiting Gov. Kathy Hochul’s signature.

Legislation addressing food labeling also has been proposed in Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and South Carolina, though it has not passed in those states.

Nick Lapis, director of advocacy at Californians Against Waste, which co-sponsored the bill, said food labels are the leading cause of household food waste. The “sell by” date labels have also been a problem for food banks in California because people consider those dates as meaning the food has expired, he said.

“We don’t need to build some kind of huge infrastructure and invest tons of money to solve this. We just need companies to use the same words across brands,” he said.

There are more than 50 different date labels on packaged food sold in stores, according to a 2022 report on food waste published by the University of Maryland. The information in the labels is largely unregulated and often does not relate to food safety.

“Consumers get confused and they just default to assuming that whatever date is on the package means ‘don’t eat it and throw it away’,” said Kumar Chandran, policy director at ReFED, a nonprofit focused on reducing food waste.

Chandran said California and New York’s approval of food-labeling laws has added momentum to the push for a national standard. A bipartisan bill that would establish uniform food labels is pending in Congress. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommended a decade ago that food sellers should switch to “Best if Used By” labeling.

Currently, the only product that is regulated federally with date labels is infant formula.

With no federal regulations dictating what information labels should include, the stamps have led to consumer confusion — and nearly 20% of the nation’s food waste, according to the Food and Drug Administration. In California, that’s about 6 million tons of unexpired food that’s tossed in the trash each year.

Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association, said some grocers have had to overhaul their labeling systems, but as a whole, the association has been supportive of the change.

The new labels will result in “a win-win where we can reduce food waste and consumers will find these decisions a little bit simpler,” he said, adding that shoppers will still find old labels in stores for months to come as grocers sell through the products that already have them.

This story is a collaboration between the LAist and The LA Local. Agya K. Aning and Alain Stephens are freelance reporters. LAist's Jared Bennett edited.

The danger gun violence presents to the City of Los Angeles’ unhoused community has been growing for years.

An analysis of Los Angeles Police Department data by LAist and The LA Local has found that at least 278 unhoused people have been shot and killed in the city since 2015. Additional analysis of records from the L.A. County Medical Examiner found at least two dozen additional unhoused shooting victims in 2024 and 2025 that were not included in the LAPD data.

Law enforcement officials acknowledge violent deaths among L.A.’s unhoused people have remained persistently high, even as homicides fell over the last decade across the general population.

Data from LAPD shows fatal shootings involving unhoused victims are clustered around encampments in Skid Row. The murder rate in census tracks that make up Skid Row was more than 17 times higher in 2024 than the city as a whole.

One obvious question: Would clearing encampments reduce this kind of violence?

It turns out, the answer is far from clear.

Why clearing encampments might increase danger

Encampments are the most visible manifestation of homelessness throughout Los Angeles and many other American cities.

Numerous unhoused Angelenos told LAist and The LA Local that people band together in them for a sense of safety and protection, which researchers have found as well.

But allowing encampments to remain comes at the expense of the greater public, according to Tom Wolf, a formerly unhoused recovery advocate from San Francisco.

“You can’t have that in our downtown cores, because it completely destabilizes the entire city, because it drives away business,” Wolf said. “And when you drive away business, you lose money, and then pretty soon you can't afford all those services you need for the homeless that you’re trying to help.”

Furor over encampments has become so intense that Gov. Gavin Newsom threatened last year to pull state funding from counties that fail to show “demonstrable results” in clearing them. His announcement came on the heels of the 2024 Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson, which legalized arresting people for camping outside, even when shelter isn’t available.

Advocates for the unhoused argue this approach is shortsighted.

“What criminalization does is it moves people into the shadows, it isolates people, and therefore they become more susceptible to violence,” said Donald Whitehead Jr., the executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The current status of clearing encampments in L.A.

One of L.A.’s primary programs for getting unsheltered people off the streets is Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe. The program aims to reduce encampments by offering hotel rooms to those living in them until more permanent housing becomes available. People living in encampments get a notice of three to four weeks before the location is cleared out, according to an email from the Mayor’s Office.

Since its launch in December 2022, Inside Safe has served nearly 6,000 people. Of those, almost 3,100 people remain in housing or interim housing, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Nearly 2,900 others have returned to the streets — about 48% of all program participants. As of mid-April, it has cost Angelenos more than $391 million.

The Mayor’s Office said it collaborates with local leaders to identify which encampments to clear. Gisselle Espinoza, an LAPD commander and coordinator on homeless outreach, echoed this statement. She said police officers accompany outreach and cleanup workers in a supportive role, but only if requested.

“We work with the council district for that area,” Espinoza said, “and we let them know what the issues are, and together we come up with a plan to see how we can better approach that situation and go into those areas and offer services.”

City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents District 1, which includes MacArthur Park, told LAist and The LA Local that this isn’t always the case.

“We saw videos online of encampments being swept by LAPD that we had not participated in,” Hernandez said, “and we're just really shocked to see because the next day we were going to do an operation to house people there.”

Does clearing encampments make people safer?

Where unhoused people choose to live involves considerations similar to those of anyone else, said Jeremy Rosenprinz, a member of the volunteer-led L.A. outreach group Ktown For All. Those include proximity to family, friends, and work. Encampments also provide a centralized location to receive aid and services from outreach workers.

“When the police come in, they sever all of those bonds,” he said.

Through his work with Ktown For All, Rosenprinz became friends with an unhoused man named Vernon Henry. He lived in an encampment just a block away from Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Koreatown, where Ktown For All meets. In 2023, Henry was shot and killed by a stranger who was harassing a neighbor, Rosenprinz said.

Henry, 32, left behind a wife.

“Right after this community had gone through this horrible tragedy, the city's solution was to clear the entire encampment. They didn't house anybody,” Rosenprinz said. “And all these people were scattered, and some of them I never saw again.”

Rosenprinz said that cleanup was done through CARE/CARE+. The program, run by the city’s Sanitation and Environment Department, is intended to clear encampments and connect unhoused residents to services. A 2026 study from UCLA’s Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy found it “mainly [serves] to displace those people rather than to offer them services.”

L.A. Sanitation and Environment did not return requests for comment.

Wolf, the recovery advocate, said letting encampments remain standing comes with its own dangers, particularly over time.

“The longer that an encampment exists in the same place, the worse it gets,” he said. “More trash, more violence, more drugs, more sexual assaults, the more overdose deaths.”

Jeff Wenninger is a former LAPD lieutenant and the founder and CEO of Law Enforcement Consultants, which provides expert witness testimonies and security consulting. He said that his experience in law enforcement makes him doubtful that encampments increase safety.

“The vast majority of the crime that occurs there is the result of disputes,” he said. “So, the fewer people that you have congregated in a community, so to speak, the less likelihood you have of disagreements and the arguments that then escalate to these violent crimes.”

Still, Wenninger sees breaking up encampments as an ineffective means of addressing homelessness. “Because you haven't resolved it. You're just dispersing people,” he said. “You're not addressing the root cause of the homelessness, the reason these encampments exist.”

What does make a difference?

Comparing the unhoused populations of New York City and Los Angeles underscores one thing that appears to make a big difference: getting people sheltered, even if it’s not permanent housing.

While New York’s total unhoused population is roughly equal to the total across L.A. County, shooting deaths of unhoused people are far lower in New York. That’s because New York’s right-to-shelter law means that the number of New Yorkers who are “unsheltered” — living in tents or cars instead of shelters — is much smaller than in L.A. Over the past decade, New York City’s unsheltered population has stayed between about 2,400 and 4,500. L.A.’s is estimated at about 27,000, in the most recent homeless count. With fewer people at risk on the streets, seven unhoused people were shot to death in homicides in New York City between July 2023 and July 2024. In the city of L.A. alone, that number was 30.

Additional reporting by LAist watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning.

Celebrations in Los Angeles began long before the final whistle blew on Tuesday night, when Mexico defeated Ecuador 2-0 to advance from the World Cup knockout stage for the first time in 40 years.

It's Mexico's fourth straight win this tournament. The team hasn't let a single goal in so far. With each victory, a feeling of hopeful glee is growing in Los Angeles, where it's hard to walk a block without spotting a green Mexico jersey.

The crowd at Sycamore Grove Park erupted when Mexico defeated Ecuador 2-0, advancing the team to the World Cup's round of 16.

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Mexico fans at the city's watch parties are confident that something special is happening this World Cup.

" I think Mexico's going to take it all the way. I have a feeling," said Saul Castro at Sycamore Grove Park, where hundreds gathered Tuesday in a tangle of lawn chairs and picnic blankets to cheer on the team.

Fans in Los Angeles cheer on Mexico in the World Cup

Hundreds gathered at Sycamore Grove Park and LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes to watch Mexico defeat Ecuador on Tuesday night.

Fans celebrated in Los Angeles on Tuesday night after Mexico defeated Ecuador 2-0 in a World Cup match.

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Maireli Beltran and Saul Castro came to Sycamore Grove Park in Highland Park to watch Mexico beat Ecuador at a free city watch party.

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A crowd in Highland Park was all smiles as Mexico defeated Ecuador 2-0 in the World Cup Round of 32.

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A crowd celebrated in Highland Park after Mexico knocked Ecuador out of the World Cup Tuesday evening.

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Hundreds gathered at a city watch party in Highland Park to watch Mexico defeat Ecuador.

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Hundreds gathered in Highland Park to watch Mexico play Ecuador in the World Cup. The crowd whooped and hollered when Mexico won 2-0.

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Hundreds gathered in Highland Park to watch the Mexico-Ecuador match on Tuesday evening.

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Hundreds of people gathered at Casa Mexico to watch Mexico defeat Ecuador 2-0 in the World Cup.

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Francis Ramirez has a shop on Olvera Street, but business has been slow. So she set up outside Casa Mexico to sell headbands and other paraphernalia to fans.

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Vendors kept their eyes on the match while selling bacon-wrapped hotdogs. Kids wrapped in Mexican flags whooped and hollered at the outdoor screen.

Nearby at a watch party at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Eduardo Reyes was reveling in the crowd. He'd gathered his boyfriend, co-workers and family members to watch the match together.

" We haven't gotten to this point [as] the Mexican team," he said. "I'm pretty excited. We feel the energy, the positivity, and I'm just loving it."

Eduardo Reyes brought his boyfriend, co-workers and family members to Casa Mexico to watch the match. He said he loved seeing people come together in L.A. despite a divisive political climate.

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The line at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, remade as Casa México for the tournament, snaked down the street, and some couldn't fit into the watch party. People on the street were listening to the game on the radio.

Gisel Cruz was selling water and beer to people as they waited to get in. She was also rooting for Mexico, where she has family.

" This is crazy," she said, grinning and observing the crowd. "I like it so much."

Some rallying for Mexico on Tuesday were longtime soccer fans, taught to love the game by family members. Veronica Castro- Aceituno smiled remembering her uncles gathering together to watch soccer when she was a child growing up in Guatemala.

" They used to play in the barrio," she said. "They will always stop and watch every game, from small ones to big ones."

Veronica Castro-Aceituno poses with her daughter while watching the Mexico-Ecuador match. She grew up watching soccer, and especially loves rooting for the goalkeepers including Guillermo "Memo" Ochoa.

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Others cheered for the team to honor their roots. Yesenia Rosales came from Palmdale to watch the match in Los Angeles, her hometown. Her parents left Mexico for the U.S., where they raised her.

" My dad's from Sinaloa, my mom's from Michoacán," she said. "I don't forget where I came from, where my parents came from, how hard they struggled."

Mexico plays its next match Sunday afternoon against England. Los Angeles will undoubtedly be in the streets to cheer the team on, hoping it can continue its spectacular run to the quarterfinals.

$3.3 million.

That’s how much May Sung estimates it’ll cost to rebuild her Pacific Palisades home.

With her two-bedroom house atop a hillside abutting the Pacific Ocean, she had what she considered a quaint dwelling since 2005.

She doesn’t know if she’ll rebuild it on the empty lot there now.

“Because of all the expenses with building on the hillsides, on the coast, I don’t know if I’m going to rebuild or not,” she said. “I may have to sell.”

More than a year after wildfires tore through Los Angeles, state lawmakers are weighing a new proposal that would give the powerful California Coastal Commission more oversight over homes destroyed by future natural disasters. New buyers would need approval from the commission to rebuild, a reversal from current state law that allows homes ruined by fires or other catastrophes to sidestep the controlling state agency.

Buyers today can rebuild homes without commission review as long as they are largely the same as before the disaster and are no more than 10% larger than the original home.

Gov. Gavin Newsom last year broadened these exemptions to include rebuilds that aren’t similar to their original design when he suspended the commission’s authority over rebuilding efforts in L.A. to speed up what so far has been a grueling slog for the city.

In Malibu and the Pacific Palisades, where many homes hug the Pacific Coast, dozens of parcels of land have been purchased by developers from owners who can’t afford to pay what could be millions of dollars to remake their houses from scratch.

More than 40% of homes sold in the Palisades last summer were bought by investors, according to real estate company Redfin, which defined investors as buyers with “LLC,” “Inc,” “Corp” or “Homes” in their names.

Some residents have questioned what expanses of investor-owned lots could mean for the character of fire-torn communities, said Sen. Ben Allen, who authored Senate Bill 1229 and represents the Palisades area.

The legislation is one of few bills this session that would broaden the authority of the commission rather than weaken it, bucking a trend of longstanding disdain among top state and federal leaders about how the agency has controlled development along California’s invaluable coastline.

The potential law would not apply to homes destroyed by last year’s fires.

Senate Democrats overwhelmingly supported the bill when it passed the chamber last month. San Francisco Sen. Scott Wiener was the sole Democrat to join Republicans in voting against it in a 29-9 vote.

“It could set a troubling precedent that we’re more focused on only empowering the original owner to build,” Wiener said. “I thought it was a very, very dangerous precedent and that’s why I felt the need to vote ‘no.’”

A long road ahead

Rebuilding after disaster has never been easy in California.

Fewer than 40% of homes destroyed in the state’s most destructive fires from 2017 to 2020 have been rebuilt, according to a 2025 Los Angeles Times investigation. Low insurance payouts, rising construction costs and permitting requirements are some of the reasons.

For many in L.A., the decision not to rebuild comes down to affordability and practicality, between skyrocketing mortgage rates and a lack of stamina to endure what could be a monthslong, byzantine permitting process.

Before the fire, Sung’s property was valued at $2.5 million. She said she received $700,000 in Mercury insurance payments after the home was destroyed on Jan. 7, 2025. Although her land isn’t up for sale, nearby lots go for around $1 million. She’s considering selling it to a developer.

“There’s already so much burden for these properties,” Sung said of rebuilds. “People can’t afford to build because of all these requirements,” such as the higher fire safety and fire codes common in wildfire-prone areas, she said.

A muddy reputation on housing

Critics, including Newsom, accuse the commission of not permitting enough affordable housing or doing so too slowly for years, as lawmakers have gutted numerous housing laws to make it easier to build more apartments quickly.

In the Palisades, where affordable housing was already scant, affordability critiques carried a sharper edge. Just a few hundred units in a town of roughly 28,000 were deemed affordable and local mandates post-fire to build more have become their own flashpoint, separate from the coastal commission.

The 12 voting-member commission is governed by the California Coastal Act, a 50-year-old statute created in the wake of the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill to protect the coast and its natural habitats.

It is one of California’s most scrutinized state agencies, as federal and local officials have questioned how it has used its authority over nearly 900 miles of coastline to block certain projects, such as rejecting billionaire Elon Musk’s request to increase the number of Space X rocket launches off the Santa Barbara coast.

Newsom and other top Democrats appointed three pro-development officials to the commission last year to help get more housing approved along the coast.

Wealthy Los Angeles real estate developer Jaime Lee was appointed by Newsom last October to replace Effie Turnbull Sanders, an attorney lauded by environmentalists for championing environmental justice issues at the agency.

Last May, Democratic Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas selected Chris Lopez, a Monterey County supervisor, and Chula Vista Councilmember Jose Preciado to the commission, both of whom are seen as pro-development.

Newsom and President Donald Trump have found common cause in attacking the commission. The governor has publicly chided the agency and issued a sharply worded mandate when suspending its authority over rebuilding efforts in the Palisades.

“The scope of destruction of these fires has created a need for immediate shelter and temporary housing that will require unlocking every available strategy to house displaced individuals,” he wrote.

Both Democrats and Republicans in the state Legislature have pushed to curb the commission’s authority, including an attempt to exempt the entire city of Santa Monica from the commission’s purview.

Last week, Newsom’s office briefly considered a proposal that would have exempted mixed-use and multi-family housing projects along Santa Monica’s coast from the Coastal Act.

The proposal would have assumed all those projects complied with the act unless the commission could prove otherwise within just 30 days, according to a copy of the plan obtained by CalMatters.

Trump has also repeatedly scolded the commission for blocking projects it views as environmentally dangerous. Longstanding tensions between the president and the commission have accelerated in the president’s pursuit to extract more oil from the coast. Those tensions accelerated last week when the federal government announced it was investigating the agency.

‘People are already stuck’

Allen, the bill’s author, said the governor’s orders created an opening that investors can misuse to circumvent coastal rules and build projects harmful to the environment.

“We just want to make sure that we’re not rolling back these important protections too far,” Allen, who is running for insurance commissioner, said about his legislation, and that it would not apply to homes destroyed by last year’s fires, but to future natural disasters.

The bill aims to filter out investors by only allowing the owner of a property before disaster struck to skirt the coastal commission approval.

Environmentalists who support the bill have said the governor’s actions put key issues the commission works to protect — natural habitats and public access to the beach — in jeopardy by allowing developers to take advantage of fewer rules.

"An outside developer who buys, say, a burned lot for the low market value, they get the same fast-tracking as a displaced family," said Jennifer Savage, associate policy director at Surfrider Foundation. “And that’s not what the law was designed for.”

The commission, which had briefly contested Newsom’s orders, supports the bill for similar reasons.

“It closes a loophole that could be misconstrued as allowing larger replacement structures to be located in hazardous or environmentally sensitive areas when rebuilding after disaster,” spokesperson Joshua Smith said in an emailed statement.

Neither the coastal commission nor Allen could provide examples of investor-owned projects that have misused the law.

“We don’t have any record or knowledge of this having happened, although since most disaster rebuilds are handled by local governments, we don’t know for certain the extent to which this has been going on,” Smith said.

California YIMBY, a pro-housing group, said legislation focused on rebuilding should address why so many fire survivors are opting to sell their land in the first place.

“I’m not sure the emphasis on the Coastal Act makes a ton of sense,” spokesperson Matthew Lewis said, saying the problem lies with insurance, construction and permitting costs that make it too expensive for most people to rebuild.

The group, which has endorsed Allen for commissioner, doesn’t have an official stance on the bill. Lewis said he doesn’t know enough about the issues Allen is trying to address to say if the legislation could make it harder for owners to rebuild.

Sung worries such changes would intimidate developers worried about falling under the commission’s authority, making it harder for her and her neighbors to sell.

“If anything, it just makes the landowner stuck. Because you can’t afford to sell, and you can’t afford to build. And so you’re stuck with this property that has absolutely no use to anybody.”

CalMatters reporter Yue Stella Yu contributed reporting.

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

SANTA CLARA — The U.S. men's national team's ambitions of a deep run at the FIFA World Cup hang on something they have not accomplished since 2021: Beating a team from Europe.

In Wednesday's must-win round of 32 match at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, the Americans hope to finally climb that hill with a win over Bosnia and Herzegovina. A victory would mark the first World Cup knockout win for the U.S. since 2002.

Compared to powerhouses like France or Spain, Bosnia is a relative minnow of European soccer. Ranked No. 64 by FIFA ahead of the World Cup, the Bosnians fought their way into the tournament on an upset playoff win over Italy in March — then, they muscled into the knockout round after a 1-1 draw with Canada and a 3-1 win over Qatar.

The Americans are the favorites. But no knockout game is a sure thing, as Germany proved Monday when it fell to Paraguay on penalty kicks.

"For us, it's the final of the World Cup," said U.S. coach Mauricio Pochettino on Tuesday. "If we don't think in this way, we are going to struggle."

The U.S. expects to field a fully healthy starting 11 for the first time in this World Cup, thanks to the return of star winger Christian Pulisic, who left the opening game against Paraguay at halftime after a calf injury was exacerbated when he was kicked by a defender. The U.S. went on to win that game 4-1 and their next one against Australia 2-0, with Pulisic sitting out.

U.S. fans have had many reasons to believe at this World Cup. The U.S. won its group and has moved on to the Round of 32.

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Pulisic returned as a sub in the Americans' third group stage match against Turkey. "I felt great in the game against Turkey, so I'm feeling good this week," he told reporters on Tuesday. "I'm definitely ready to go for tomorrow."

Playing for Bosnia is the American-born winger Esmir Bajraktarević, a 21-year-old native of Appleton, Wis., born to Bosnian parents who came to the U.S. in 2001 after fleeing conflict in their home country during the 1990s.

In Bosnia, Bajraktarević's parents and their families lived near Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995 in one of the only events in history formally deemed a genocide by the International Court of Justice. Multiple members of their families were killed.

Bajraktarević grew up speaking Bosnian at home, he has said, and stayed close with relatives who remained in Bosnia. Although he came up through MLS academies and U.S. Soccer youth national teams, Bajraktarević formally switched his national team to Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2024.

Bajraktarević scored the game-clinching penalty that sent Bosnia to the World Cup in its March upset of Italy, which was then ranked No. 13 in the world. After his kick found the net, Bajraktarević tore off his jersey and held up the back of it, with his family name across the top, to the fans and cameras.

"He can feel the jersey he's wearing. It means very much to him," said Bosnian coach Sergej Barbarez on Tuesday. "He knows where he belongs. He knows which team he plays for. He knows where his parents come from."

It is Bosnia's second World Cup appearance after being eliminated in the group stage in 2014.

Watch parties in L.A.

Here are some city sponsored watch locations:

Time: 5 p.m.

Locations:
Ken Malloy Harbor Regional Park
25820 Vermont Ave., Harbor City

Sheldon-Arleta Park
12455 Wicks St., Sun Valley

Taper Auditorium (Central Library)
630 W. Fifth St., Los Angeles

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