The Brief

Manuel Valle, 84, jumped on his bike and rode through his Boyle Heights neighborhood despite the protests from his worried children. The air was smoky, for the fifth day in a row; he pushed through fits of coughing to pass out 50 N95 masks to his neighbors.

The same day, officials told residents the air was not dangerous and the smoke was clearing out. Valle didn’t agree.

“This is a state emergency,” he said. “Treat it like a state emergency.”

Fire had ignited at a facility, operated by the company Lineage, which stores food before it’s shipped off to restaurants and grocery stores. Lineage uses the toxic refrigerant anhydrous ammonia, which posed a health risk in the early hours of the fire.

Weeks earlier and miles away, the Orange County Fire Authority issued an evacuation order affecting 50,000 Garden Grove residents when fire officials realized a tank at an aerospace manufacturing facility could either explode or leak large amounts of a toxic chemical into the air.

In both cases, records show state and local regulators knew the facilities; they had inspected them, approved plans and resolved violations. How they used their authority is now a central question for neighbors in the surrounding areas seeking accountability.

A lawmaker has proposed some reforms to chemical policy. But prosecuting companies for failing to follow environmental laws is difficult, and how far cities may go to protect residents isn’t clear.

“I don’t know what the local government is waiting for — for a tragedy to occur or something more serious or what … on top of what is already going on,” said Miguel Ocegueda Castillo, who lives near the Lineage warehouse.

A young boy watches firefighters battle a blaze at a cold storage facility in the Boyle Heights neighborhood June 22.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Years of oversight, unresolved risks

Companies face layers of federal and state oversight designed to help prevent hazardous chemicals from escaping into surrounding neighborhoods. But records show that these two facilities, one in Orange County and one in Los Angeles County, had accumulated violations over years and continued operating.

In 2021 the South Coast Air Quality Management District issued GKN Aerospace multiple notices of violation, including for failing to maintain the required emissions records and operating some equipment without proper permits. The company later signed a settlement with air regulators and paid more than $900,000 — without admitting liability.

During the emergency, authorities gave residents conflicting information about whether the chemical methyl methacrylate had leaked.

“When you go home, you can feel safe. There was no contamination. … There was no leak,” Regina Chinsio-Kwong, Orange County Public Health Officer told residents during one press briefing, even though early reports characterized the incident as a leak.

Days later, Orange County health officials walked back that statement.

In Boyle Heights, the Lineage facility stores more than 12,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical is a refrigerant that if inhaled, can cause severe eye and respiratory irritation, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and, at high concentrations, death.

In the early hours of the fire June 17, the Los Angeles Fire Department told residents to shelter in place because of the risk of the chemical being released into the air. The order was lifted, and then imposed again.

Lineage said in a statement that it “proactively took steps to pump out the ammonia and transport it offsite” and that no measurable ammonia concentrations had been recorded in the community since the fire began.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told residents the air was not dangerous. But on the sixth day of the fire, an air monitor detected a hazardous spike of air pollutants.

Federal records show that the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health inspected Lineage in Boyle Heights the day the fire started. It wasn’t their first visit.

In 2020, Cal OSHA opened an investigation into the facility for violations of multiple safety standards. After Lineage lodged an administrative appeal, regulators fined the company $2,250 for violations related to process safety and respiratory protection.

Rebecca Liu Morales, a spokesperson for Lineage, said the company stores food, not hazardous materials, and said it was not responsible for the fire. She said the fire started when a contractor was working on the rooftop solar array, which provided power to the city.

“The health and safety of our employees and the communities we serve is our top priority,” she added. “Our industry is heavily regulated and inspected, with over 200 routine regulatory inspections by various agencies conducted of our North American operations alone between 2024 and 2025.”

The Los Angeles Fire Department is investigating the cause of the June 17 fire. The city department of Building and Safety is also investigating, and the workplace safety investigation remains open.

Luck, rather than strong protections, has saved residents from catastrophe in both Orange and Los Angeles counties, said Jane Williams, executive director of California Communities Against Toxics.

Industrial infrastructure has grown near residential communities, Williams said. But state and local oversight of hazardous substances has not kept up.

“I don’t think anybody really thought: Wait, we have these warehouses, a warehouse here, a warehouse there, and what happens if there’s an earthquake and we lose containment at four anhydrous ammonia tanks in one square mile at the same time?” Williams said.

Filling in regulatory gaps 

Federal and California laws are designed to protect communities from accidental releases, when a spill or an explosion or a leak releases hazardous chemicals into air, soil or waterways.

The federal Clean Air Act’s Risk Management Program requires companies handling dangerous chemicals in significant amounts to develop preventive and emergency plans for just these situations — and file those plans with regulators. California goes even further: Its risk management program sets stricter thresholds and more demanding requirements than federal law — meaning California law holds facilities to a higher standard, and state regulators have more tools and more authority to act than their federal counterparts.

But critics say even California’s stronger standards have significant gaps that state officials have allowed to persist.

Reactive chemicals, such as the methyl methacrylate stored at GKN, often fall outside of both the federal and state accidental release programs. In Garden Grove, regulators required no risk management plan.

Anhydrous ammonia is a different story. It’s a listed chemical, one of the core hazards state and federal programs aim to regulate. Federal and state environmental protection officials confirmed Lineage in Boyle Heights is part of both programs.

Local agencies called Certified Unified Program Agencies are the layer of oversight closest to the ground. In California, they’re responsible for knowing what hazardous chemicals companies store where, and in what quantities. Local agencies must inspect those facilities regularly and keep emergency plans on file, so that a fire department showing up to a warehouse blaze should already know what’s inside.

Neither local agency has fully disclosed its oversight of these facilities. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Fire Department did not answer questions about its oversight of Lineage Logistics, despite repeated requests by CalMatters.

In Garden Grove, records obtained by CalMatters reveal that the Orange County Healthcare Agency has inspected GKN more than a dozen times over the last decade and issued violations related to hazardous waste regulations that were later corrected. The facility had emergency plans that were approved in May, weeks before the incident, records show.

State Sen. Tom Umberg, a Democrat whose district includes Garden Grove, introduced Senate Bill 883 in the weeks after the GKN episode. It would require the state Office of Emergency Services to maintain a statewide inventory of facilities storing reactive chemicals, add methyl methacrylate to the state’s risk management program, require CalEnviroScreen tool to track facilities that pose an explosion risk and update current environmental review law to ensure that storage sites that have a risk of explosion aren’t exempt from review.

“We must learn from this incident, address the gaps it exposed, and take steps to ensure it never happens again,” Umberg said, in a statement announcing the legislation.

The bill is moving through Assembly policy committees.

The GKN emergency prompted a federal response. The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched the facility on June 10 — but experts say determining whether anyone committed a crime is often difficult after an industrial accident.

An aerial view of downtown Los Angeles with smoke from the smoldering storage facility in Boyle Heights on June 22.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Legal remedies are a challenge

Residents want accountability, but the legal bar to hold companies for environmental crimes is high.

Criminal prosecution requires more than proving a rule was broken. Prosecutors need evidence of deliberate deceptions — falsifying reports, hiding violations, deceiving regulators.

The federal government goes after “those that are lying, cheating and stealing,” said Ethan Ware, an attorney who represents companies investigated for environmental crimes. “There’s more to it than just the environmental violation. There’s some effort to deceive, or to hide, or to get enriched by lying on documents.”

That bar gets even higher when no specific rule is broken — when prosecutors argue a company has a general duty to keep people safe. “What the government is saying is you have complied with all of these hundreds and thousands of regulatory requirements, but we still think you pose a risk to the community,” Ware said. “That’s a hard sell to a jury, to a judge, to anybody.”

A federal criminal investigation into an industrial accident is unusual — and the Garden Grove investigation may not lead to charges. The broader federal enforcement landscape has also changed.

A 2026 report by the Environmental Integrity Project found that the number of civil lawsuits filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in cases referred by the EPA dropped to just 16 in President Donald Trump’s first year in office — 76% less than in the first year of the Biden administration. Only 12% of facilities with air pollution violations received any kind of enforcement action from EPA or state agencies in the last year.

That federal shift matters for Lineage, which has faced at least three civil enforcement actions in recent years, but none that resulted in criminal charges.

Last year, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the company $37,500 for three violations at a Riverside facility, two related to its handling of hazardous materials and emergency plans.

Also last year, the company paid $3,420 to settle alleged violations at a Vernon facility, including that the company didn’t correct a critical safety system deficiency it identified during a 2021 audit.

In 2023, the EPA fined Lineage more than $172,000 for alleged violations of the federal Risk Management Program at an Iowa facility. The EPA said in a news release that the company “failed to correctly document the worst-case scenario in its risk analysis, failed to comply with accidental release prevention requirements, and failed to document emergency response coordination with local authorities.”

In 2024, a Lineage warehouse in Washington burned for 60 days. Hundreds of neighbors to the warehouse reported health problems, and some residents filed civil claims. But the company has not faced criminal charges.

The limits of local power  

Weeks after an evacuation sent tens of thousands of people from their homes in Garden Grove, GKN Aerospace came to a City Council meeting. The company had not spoken publicly since the evacuation.

Resident Rodrigo Garay held up a thin red cross blanket.

“This is what I used for the whole week to sleep on,” he said/ “And I’m sure that you slept on really nice beds with your $260,000-a-year salary.”

He and other residents wanted to know why the city wasn’t doing more to ban GKN and other facilities like it from their city.

Miles away in Boyle Heights, Lineage neighbors are also raising concerns about their schools, homes and playgrounds being so close to warehouses and other industrial facilities.

“We shouldn’t wait until after this disaster for Boyle Heights residents to know what was in the facility in their backyard,” said local City Council member Ysabel Jurado.

The frustration in both cities points to a hard truth. The people with the most immediate stake, both residents and city officials, may have the least power after a facility is already operating.

Water is sprayed on a tank that overheated at GKN Aerospace in Garden Grove on May 22.

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Ethan Swope

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AP

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City officials can update their general plans and rezone property to keep facilities they consider a threat to public health and safety away from their residents.

But the Constitution limits how far that authority extends to facilities that are already there. Businesses have a general right to not be over-regulated out of existence, said David Waite, an attorney who specializes in local land use law.

“Where it gets tricky is we have existing uses — such as the GKN facility — that were duly permitted and duly authorized under the existing zoning on that property,” Waite said. “That rezoning effort cannot just simply bar that existing use without running afoul of constitutional takings arguments.”

Cities can try revoking a facility’s permit by proving it is a public nuisance. But that requires showing an ongoing threat, not a one-time event, Waite said.

Garden Grove and Boyle Heights are largely communities of color. Garden Grove ranks among the top 20% of the state’s most environmentally burdened communities, according to CalEnviroScreen; Boyle Heights is in the top 10%.

In Garden Grove, the city’s response has been cautious.

Garden Grove spokesperson Johnathan Garcia said the city is “exploring with its attorneys and engaging in the deliberative process regarding its options in consideration of its authority under the constitution, federal and state laws.”

“What is the point of bemoaning that you don’t have more local control if you don’t use the authority you do have in times like this?” Mai Nguyen Do, a research and policy manager for the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, asked the council.

In Los Angeles, Jurado is calling for an investigation into what went wrong at the Lineage facility and introduced a package of motions, including calls for a public report on the cause of the fire and the facility’s compliance history, increased public transportation service in the area to reduce the amount of time residents are outdoors and funding for neighborhood councils to distribute air purifiers and other protective equipment.

“When a major industrial fire happens here, it’s not viewed as an isolated incident. Residents see it as part of a larger pattern,” Jurado said. “That’s why I have said from the beginning that this is not just a fire response issue. It’s a public health issue, it’s an accountability issue, and it’s an environmental justice issue.”

This story was produced in collaboration with Boyle Heights Beat, a founding community newsroom of The LA Local, a nonprofit covering Los Angeles communities.

Laura Anaya-Morga, Isaac Ceja, Claudia Koerner, Alejandra Molina, Isaiah Murtaugh, Jessica Perez, Steve Saldivar and Nathan Solis contributed to this story.

Alejandro Lazo contributed to this story.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

A $790,000 fence recently installed around Long Beach’s main library is drawing renewed criticism from a group of residents who advise the city on homelessness policy.

In a letter sent last week, the Homeless Services Advisory Committee said the money could have been better spent sheltering people rather than driving their encampments away from the Billie Jean King Main Library at the heart of downtown.

“This amount of $800,000, if dedicated to services for homeless individuals, would shelter a minimum of 10 people for a year,” the committee wrote in a letter to the City Council and Mayor Rex Richardson.

Committee members have said they were caught off guard when the fence went up in March, and they’ve asked to be consulted on any similar projects in the future.

Volunteers on the committee are appointed by the mayor and council to advise them on homelessness, but, in this case, they’ve found themselves at odds.

City officials say the fence was a necessary step to restore the library’s ability to hold events on its outdoor terrace, which was often crowded with tents and people’s belongings. And despite its cost to install, it’s started to save the city money, according to city spokesperson Kat Schuster.

Before, the city had to power-wash around the library daily, but that’s no longer necessary, Schuster wrote in an email. She said that’s saved an estimated $70,000 this fiscal year.

A worker powerwashing the ground outside the Billie Jean King Main Library in downtown Long Beach as unhoused people who were camped in the area look on Friday, July 7, 2023.

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Brandon Richardson

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Long Beach Post

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There’s also been a drastic decline in encampments and a drop in the number of police and fire calls at the library, according to Schuster. Fewer people are also being kicked out of the library for rowdy or disruptive behavior, she added.

From April through July this year, only 28 people have been temporarily banned from the library compared to 67 during those same months last year.

In 2022, the library even had to shut down temporarily because of safety concerns among staff. It reopened with increased security, but remained a drain on public safety resources.

“The decision to fence the Billie Jean King Main Library terrace restored the space to its intended purpose as a safe, welcoming area for children, families and library programming,” Mayor Richardson said in a statement.

Personal items are left on the outside of the fence at the Billie Jean King Main Library in Long Beach on Monday, Aug. 10, 2026.

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Thomas R. Cordova

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Long Beach Post

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Advisory committee members, however, worried the city could turn to this tactic more frequently.

“As the City of Long Beach prepares to host high-profile events related to the L.A. 2028 Olympics, pressure will increase on city officials to address encampments of unsheltered individuals,” they wrote in their letter.

Meanwhile, homelessness continues to rise in Long Beach — up 3.7% this year — and the city is under pressure to cut its expenses to close a $58 million budget gap.

“These reductions are likely to have severe consequences for people experiencing homelessness, as more than 2,000 individuals are already living on the streets and in vehicles, and our city currently has an average five-month placement wait time for those who request shelter,” the advisory committee wrote.

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

Every eight years, state housing regulators give cities and counties across California an especially dreaded homework assignment: Make a plan for a bunch of new homes.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration assigns localities goals to hit at four different affordability levels. Collectively, the numbers represent the housing department’s best estimate of the number of new homes needed to match any expected population growth and to chip away at the state’s decades-in-the-making shortage of affordable places to live.

With these targets meted out to each region on a rolling basis, a massive chunk of the state, including all of Southern California, passed its halfway mark this summer.

So in the spirit of a midterm exam, how are cities and counties doing?

Bad news, California. If this were graded, the state would abound in Ds and Fs.

Less than a third of cities and counties are on track to permit enough “above moderate” units, the category that typically refers to market-rate housing, according to data submitted by locals to the state housing department.

The progress report for more affordable types of housing is even bleaker. Only 32 jurisdictions — less than 6% — are on track to hit their “very low” targets. That refers to housing within financial reach of anyone earning less than half the typical local income.

After years of nudging, political trolling and litigating, most cities and counties now have state-approved plans in place. But as the production numbers show, it’s one thing to plan and another to build. Almost nowhere in the state is actually seeing the new construction necessary “to meet the housing needs of all Californians,” as housing regulators have described these targets.

Only five jurisdictions in the entire state are permitting at a pace to hit all four income targets. Four are the lightly populated unincorporated bits of small, mostly rural counties: Plumas, Napa, Yolo and Mono. The fifth is Placerville, a town of roughly 11,000 people in the Sierra foothills east of Sacramento.

To be “on track,” a city or county needs to issue permits at a clip that, if sustained, would allow it to hit its state targets by the end of its planning cycle. State housing regulators told the city of Irvine in Orange County, for example, to plan for 8,671 market-rate units by 2030. Now halfway there, the city has issued more than 6,000, making it one of the minority of cities to be on pace to reach its target for above-moderate housing.

But for more affordable digs, Irvine, like most California cities, is far behind. The city has permitted just 9% of the very low-income housing needed to reach its target by the end of the decade. For the next most affordable category, which refers to units priced for those earning up to 80% of the regional median, it’s at a mere 3%.

What’s the housing hold up?

For anyone who has been monitoring the pace of new residential development in California over the last half century, the disconnect between housing planned and housing permitted won’t come as a surprise. The state’s total planning target adds up to nearly 2.5 million units over eight years, a reduction of the even more ambitious 3.5 million target Newsom set for his administration during his 2017 election. That 2.5 million figure works out to 312,500 new homes per year. Even during the state’s boomingest boom years in the early 1960s and mid-1980s, construction figures never reached such lofty heights.

This decade, despite a blizzard of state legislation and policy changes aimed at boosting the construction of new homes, the number of new homes built annually is still just north of 100,000.

Critics of the state’s planning process have long stressed that California’s targets are unrealistic and that local governments can only do so much.

“Cities cannot require developers to develop and cities don't build housing,” said Jason Rhine, a lobbyist with the League of California Cities. You can lead a developer to a rezoned plot of land, in other words, but you can’t make them build.

Pro-development advocates counter that the uninspiring production numbers suggest that cities still aren’t doing enough to welcome more housing.

“Cities can argue that they don't directly control production, but they do control fees, zoning and permitting,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action. The housing needs allocation process “is only as good as we have the political will to actually hold cities accountable.”

Foote directed some of the blame at state housing regulators for failing to compel cities to adopt more development-friendly policies.

In a written statement, housing department spokesperson Jennifer Hanson said regulators are “actively monitoring and enforcing” the commitments each jurisdiction has made in its housing plans. She also pointed to a couple of recent laws exempting many urban housing developments from environmental litigation and requiring local governments to allow for taller buildings near major public transportation stops. Both have already been used to “advance approved projects representing thousands of proposed homes,” she said.

There are many reasons that developers may or may not choose to build in a particular location. Some are in the power of local and state governments, like zoning and building codes, permitting timelines and fees. But many are not, said Hanson.

“Whether a project moves forward depends on interest rates, construction and land costs, access to capital, insurance and expected rents or sale prices,” she said.

Affordable housing construction faces an additional hurdle: a lack of public money. With very few exceptions, building homes that are affordable to those making below average incomes in California requires public subsidies, philanthropic capital or other lenders and investors willing to take a loss. Taxpayer support provided by the state has been in short supply after a voter-approved bond from 2018 that provided funding for California’s signature affordable development subsidy ran dry. That explains why the affordable production numbers are so much lower.

Affordable developers and other housing advocates are hoping voters will back an $11.25 billion state bond in November to replenish the coffers.

Meanwhile, “moderate” income housing is especially tough to build, facing the financial worst of both worlds. It often doesn’t qualify for affordable subsidy programs that prioritize projects serving people further down the income ladder. But rents affordable to those earning median incomes are often too low for unsubsidized developers hoping to turn a profit.

An escape valve

The state may force local governments to lay the groundwork for new development — identifying potential sites, rezoning to allow for denser housing, changing local laws that make construction more economically feasible. But historically, local governments haven’t faced any consequences if nothing actually gets built.

That changed in 2017, when state lawmakers passed a landmark housing bill aimed at boosting new housing production where it was most needed. In jurisdictions that are halfway through their planning process but have yet to permit at least half their housing targets for above-moderate, low- and very low-income housing (housing affordable to a "moderate" income level isn't included), the law requires local governments to fast track most apartment and condo projects. In exchange, developers have to set aside a certain number of affordable units and pay their workers more.

Of the 212 Southern California cities and counties that crossed the halfway point this year, all but four failed to hit those numbers and are now subject to the streamlining law.

But if history is any guide, that alone isn’t likely to trigger a building boom.

Private developers have insisted that the affordability requirements and higher wage standards written into the law make projects infeasible everywhere but in the highest rent neighborhoods. Since 2018, the law has been used to green light 27,961 units, according to the state’s housing department. That’s a significant sum, but it's far from enough to close the gap.

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

In response to a budget deficit, the city of Anaheim considered taxing rideshare trips to and from Disneyland and local sports venues. But the idea failed when City Council members declined to vote on a proposal that could have put the issue on the November ballot.

The rideshare tax plan was proposed by Anaheim’s Department of Public Works and the City Manager’s Office. According to a staff report, rideshare services — such as Uber and Lyft — have led to more traffic, especially near special event venues.

And that’s led to greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, and wear and tear on public infrastructure.

The staff proposal would have levied a 10% tax on rideshares to and from Disneyland and other major venues in Anaheim. It was designed to help alleviate congestion and raise about $4 million in revenue in a cash-strapped city that faced a $45 million deficit this fiscal year.

But many of those rideshare trips are taken by tourists, whom the city relies on for more than 65% of its tax revenue.

“They are an incredible economic generator,” said city spokesperson Mike Lyster. And that’s going to grow, he said, as planned expansion of Disney theme parks and the sports venues takes place.

Symbols for Uber and Lyft adorn Farhan Badel’s vehicle in Apple Valley, Minn.

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Jenn Ackerman for NPR

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When Anaheim elected officials debated the proposal two weeks ago, some raised concerns that increasing costs for tourists to the city would sour their visits. The plan would have included rideshares to and from Anaheim’s Platinum Triangle, the area in and around Angels Stadium and the Honda Center.

“Residents will use it as well,” Lyster said. “Maybe somebody's meeting somebody else at the theme park or a baseball game, and one person may rideshare and then ride home with somebody else. So [elected officials] didn't want residents to be impacted either.”

Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken at the July 28 City Council meeting.

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Screenshot from Anaheim web site

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The city report said every year, about 1.5 million rideshare trips are taken to or from non-residential areas within the Anaheim Resort — where Disneyland is located — and 240,000 rideshare trips to or from non-residential areas within the Platinum Triangle.

But the rideshare plan isn’t dead. At least one city official indicated the matter could come back to the council for consideration.

“Maybe over the next year, 18 months, we can look into it when we’re not backs against the wall to get something on the ballot in November,” said Anaheim Mayor Ashleigh Aitken at the July 28 council meeting when she and the council declined to vote on the issue.

The rideshare plan would have covered only a small portion of the city’s current deficit, but it was part of an ongoing plan to raise revenue.

That deficit is expected to be a moot point next calendar year, when about $120 million in debt from the 1990s is paid off and the city can use those funds for other purposes, Lyster said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

PJ Roden had been on a month-to-month lease at her storefront, Sip Snack, on York Boulevard for seven years when her landlord called in April to say someone was coming to measure the building.

“I asked him, are you selling?” Roden told The LA Local.

He admitted he was, for around $4 million, though the building ultimately sold for $5.1 million in cash within a few weeks.

“Mom-and-pop landlords in L.A. give you a one-year lease and then never give you another one,” she said. “They want you month-to-month because that way, if they sell the building, they can raise the rent by a lot, or kick you out.”

Roden had begged her landlord for a lease before the sale closed.

“He wouldn’t,” she said. “He just told me not to worry, that my rent would probably just be raised.”

A few weeks later, a law firm representing the new owners sent a letter giving tenants on the block 60 days to vacate.

Dr. Donald Abraham, who is listed in property records as the owner of the building that housed Sip Snack, did not respond to requests for comment. Specialized Realty, the management company that took over the property, also declined to comment.

Roden and her fellow business owners faced a stark realization. While residential renters in California enjoy state eviction protections, a 39-year-old legal loophole allows acquisition firms to buy neighborhood property, triple rents overnight and issue 60-day notices to vacate.

PJ Roden, owner of Sip Snack on York Boulevard, at work.

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Courtesy of PJ Roden

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‘We don’t get to negotiate.’

That legal gap dates back to the Costa-Knee-Seymour Commercial Property Investment Act of 1987, which prevents California cities from capping commercial rent increases. The state also does not have a just-cause eviction standard for commercial tenants, meaning landlords can raise rents or end leases with few restrictions.

“Nobody will talk to us. There’s no communication. We don’t get to negotiate — we’re just being kicked out,” Roden said. “That’s devastating for a small business. I put my life savings into Sip Snack, close to $100,000, building out the space, the equipment, the liquor license to sell wine, and now I have to start all over again.”

Roden said it could take her up to a year to regain her wine license if the city grants one. She made many of these investments five years ago and is still paying them off.

She wasn’t alone. Two Sons, a shop Roden had encouraged her friend Annika to expand into the building two years earlier, was evicted too. As was Junior’s, a 99-cent party-supply store run by Sylvia Flores. And so was Crazy Scissors, a hair salon whose owner had operated there for 25 years.

“He has no place to go,” Roden said. “It’s not easy to move a hair salon. He’s going to have to close and work out of somebody else’s.”

Judith Goldstein, co-owner of Luca Essentials, an eco-friendly commercial drugstore in Highland Park, also got pushed out of her space.

Both Roden and Goldstein have since relocated — Sip Snack a block down York Boulevard, Luca Essentials across the street from its old address — landing on their feet only because a nearby space happened to open at the right moment. 

But Goldstein said she’s fearful the Costa-Knee loophole could get her again if this new space is sold to a new landlord. “There’s no cap,”  Goldstein said. “They can literally say tomorrow your rent is $30,000 — it sounds crazy, but they can do that.”

“Legally, we have no standing,” Roden said, “and that’s why we’re trying to change the law at a legislative level.”

A new state law offers some protections, but only for certain small businesses and only in limited situations.

‘It’s a farce.’

Senate Bill 1103, the Commercial Tenant Protection Act, went into effect in January 2025 and requires landlords to give “qualified” microbusinesses 90 days’ notice before a rent increase of more than 10%. It also requires 60 days’ notice before terminating a lease.

But Goldstein said, “It’s a farce.”

Los Angeles County has more than 236,000 microbusinesses with nine or fewer employees, according to 2021 Census data. Those are the types of businesses SB 1103 was designed to protect, but the law only generally applies to businesses that have five or fewer employees, restaurants with no more than 10 and small nonprofits up to 20. More importantly, it sets no ceiling on how large an increase can be.

Bell Gardens locksmith Ernesto Torres, who has leased his storefront for 13 years, has called the law “lukewarm” for that reason.

“If a 30% rent increase happens and the tenant can’t pay, the eviction notice arrives. There’s nothing a tenant can do,” Torres said.

Public Counsel attorney Ritu Mahajan told The LA Local that her organization has represented commercial tenants whose rent rose as much as 200% in a single year.

Judith Goldstein (center right), co-owner of Luca Essentials, with her team outside the shop’s new location on York Boulevard.

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Courtesy of Judith Goldstein

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‘This should be illegal.’

Goldstein’s fight has been slower and less about a single notice than about a landlord she said let her building fall apart with no legal obligation to fix it. Pegasus Management Company manages her building.

“Our toilet burst into our bathroom,” she said. “They refused to clean it. They refused to pay to fix it. Right now I have about 20 leaks in our ceiling every time it rains, and they refuse to do anything.”

Pegasus Management Company declined to comment.

Goldstein said problems began after the vacant unit next door was leased to a cannabis business that gutted the space and later abandoned the build-out. She said the management company rarely addressed the resulting rodent and insect issues and charged her thousands of dollars when it did.

“Every lawyer I spoke to said the same thing,” Goldstein noted. “You’re completely right, this should be illegal. But there is zero protection for you.”

Her rent was capped by lease terms at 2% annual increases, but she said the landlord’s real leverage was simply refusing to offer her a new lease once the old one lapsed.

Goldstein said Pegasus is part of a much larger pattern of consolidation.

“They’re an acquisition firm,” she said. “They find old owners, buy them out; it’s happening everywhere.” 

Both Goldstein and Rodan said the number of women-owned businesses displaced along the same corridors isn’t incidental.

Women own about 20% of all businesses in the Los Angeles region, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation, but LAEDC’s own research found those businesses disproportionately lack the “financial health, resources, and workforce” to weather a shock such as a sudden rent increase that a larger firm could absorb.

“A lot of the businesses on York being kicked out are women-owned,” Roden observed. “Small retail tends to be run by women. Most of my neighbors on this block are women.”

Goldstein went further, tying it to how women are treated when they push back.

“It’s easier to be predatory to a woman in every way, because there’s such a stigma against standing up for yourself,” she said. “We’re so used to having our world taken from us that we just say, ‘OK, I’ll figure it out.”

‘Harassment and coercive leasing tactics’

Los Angeles City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, who previously worked as a tenant rights attorney, has argued that tax rules can create an incentive for landlords to keep commercial spaces vacant. Owners of multiple properties may be able to claim an empty unit as a loss rather than lower the rent to keep a small-business tenant.

“That’s the perverse incentive of having a vacancy,” Jurado told the Los Angeles Times.

That analysis is now moving toward policy. On April 22, 2026, Jurado, along with Councilmembers Eunisses Hernandez and Heather Hutt, introduced a motion to explore a first-of-its-kind Commercial Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance for Los Angeles, modeled on the city’s existing residential Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance.

“Small businesses are part of what makes our neighborhoods feel like home,” Jurado’s office said in an official press release. “We are seeing local businesses, many of them family-run and immigrant-owned, pushed out not because they’re failing, but because of harassment, sudden rent increases and coercive leasing tactics that exploit a lack of protections. Small businesses should not be forced out simply because they lack the power to fight back.”

If approved, the motion directs city departments to study a Commercial Tenant Anti-Harassment Ordinance that would include enforcement mechanisms, accountability measures and a private right of action for affected businesses, closing at least part of the gap that left Roden and Goldstein with no recourse. 

The ordinance, known as TAHO, remains in committee. The City Council is on summer break. 

In the meantime, Roden worries her neighborhood is losing the mom-and-pop shops that made it.

“Sip Snack was open to serve the families in the neighborhood,” she lamented. “[Community members] could walk to my store, buy milk, buy eggs, buy a popsicle for their kid, and go across the street to the park. There was a whole vision behind it: people staying out of their cars, being part of their own neighborhood.”