The Brief

California has nearly two million homes with rooftop solar — a major success. But that scale-up has largely left out nearly half of Californians who rent.

In Los Angeles, that number is even higher: more than 60% of people rent, according to 2021 data from the Southern California Association of Governments.

Now the California Public Utilities Commission is set to vote on Thursday on a proposal that could significantly cut current incentives for apartments, businesses and schools to put solar on their rooftops.

What does the proposal say?

The proposal changes the rules around “Virtual Net Energy Metering,” or VNEM, and “Net Energy Metering Aggregation,” or NEMA. The programs as they currently stand allow properties with multiple electric meters — such as apartments, schools, strip malls, etc. — to get paid back for the amount of excess electricity they generate on their properties and sell back to the utility grid, thus making solar more affordable for a wider array of people and businesses.

While the newly revised proposal still allows this credit for apartment residents, though at a lower compensation rate, it excludes energy use in apartment common spaces, such as shared laundry, outdoor lighting, gyms, and electric vehicle charging stations. Solar advocates and rental industry associations argue that makes apartment owners even less likely to install solar because the savings don’t pencil out.

Putting more solar panels on rooftops can help offset the need for utility-scale solar fields, but experts say both are necessary to generate the amount of electricity needed for a cleaner energy future.

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Patrick T. Fallon

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For schools, the proposal not only reduces the compensation for the excess electricity they send back to the grid we all rely on, but also requires them to pay the full retail price for the electricity they consume, even during the day when using the power from their solar panels.

The proposed changes don't apply to qualifying low-income apartments.

“We need to sprint, and we're throwing up these barriers to actually building renewable energy, while at the same time patting ourselves on the back like we're climate change heroes,” said Bernadette del Chiaro, executive director of the solar trade organization the California Solar and Storage Association.

She said a similar cut to rooftop solar incentives for single-family homes last year has already led to a steep drop off in the solar market — 80% year over year by her organization’s calculations. The L.A. Times reported that the nation’s largest solar installer, Sunrun, laid off 1,000 people since the policy change.

Investor-owned utilities including Southern California Edison argue the change is needed to avoid what they call a “cost shift” — that apartment dwellers and businesses without solar are bearing the burden of higher electricity rates and fixed costs, while those with solar disproportionately save on those costs under the current rules. They also say the complexity of accurately crediting multifamily properties is another challenge and added cost because it’s difficult to understand who is using how much solar energy and when in a multi-family or multi-business building.

Last year, California cut incentives for installing solar on single-family homes. Now the state is proposing cutting incentives for buildings such as apartments and schools.

“At SCE, we want to make sure that customers are paying a fair price for power,” said Jeff Monford, a spokesperson for the utility. “We believe that the incentives for producers of energy via solar are no longer needed to establish that industry like they were in the past. As we move forward into the clean energy future, we think it's time to reduce those subsidies and not introduce more of them, especially because the cost of power has such a disproportionate effect on customers who are not able to participate in solar generation.”

A renter’s perspective

Sean Draper rents an apartment in Simi Valley and has worked in the solar industry for the last seven years. He’s kept a close eye on solar decisions made by the state. He wants to talk to his landlord about installing solar, but worries the proposed changes to current policy make it unrealistic.

“I feel like it is going to be, as I try to engage in that conversation with ownership here, a bit of an uphill battle,” Draper said.

While he said leaving the credit for residents is a step in the right direction, the lack of inclusion for similar credits in shared spaces in apartments, such as EV chargers, doesn’t make it cost-effective for apartment owners.

“Gas where I am is up to $5, $6 dollars a gallon and we're all feeling the pinch,” he said. “I'm currently contemplating purchasing an electric vehicle and without that access to low cost energy, it’s just becoming rapidly less and less practical.”

He also has concerns for his friends with small businesses, because the credit would only apply to residential tenants in rental properties, not commercial tenants.

“I think that the only thing that makes sense is to continue to allow onsite netting of power for all tenants, commercial and residential,” Draper said. “I think the proposed rule for residential strikes a really good balance between providing benefits to residential tenants who are – many of us – living paycheck to paycheck, but also provides a small amount of relief to the utilities in terms of them being able to provide less compensation for the [power] generation.”

More than that, he said more solar is needed for a healthier planet. He worries this rule change will set California further back on its clean energy goals.

“I've got kids,” he said. “The world they live in hinges on us making the right decisions now.”

What schools say 

With already extremely tight margins, school districts across the state have raised alarm bells about the effects of the proposed decision. They’re particularly concerned about the changes that would require them to pay the full retail price for electricity, even when using their own energy generated onsite.

Solar panels on the top of Playa Vista Elementary School.

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“These unfair practices help utility companies and hurt students,” L.A. Unified School District wrote in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. “Rising energy costs will make it harder for Los Angeles Unified [to] reach its climate goals, and these costs will come out of our classroom, hurting our ability to reduce emissions, electrify our schools, and invest [in] safe and healthy learning environments for our children.”

Schools are being mandated by state law to electrify school buses and add solar panels, among other things. Solar installation costs come out of their facilities budgets, but the state doesn’t have an ongoing funding source for school bonds that power those budgets — that’s why we see school bond measures on our ballots every few years.

Solar panels in a parking lot outside South East High School, an L.A. Unified School District campus in South Gate. (Photo courtesy of LAUSD)

At the same time, to receive financial benefits under the new proposal, schools would need to install battery storage for each meter — batteries are still expensive and new technology that would require modernizing meters on their campuses. But the state only provides funding for modernization every 25 years, said Nancy Chaires Espinoza, executive director of advocacy group the School Energy Coalition.

“California’s over 10,000 schools are critical to the state’s ability to meet its clean energy goals,” Espinoza wrote in an email to LAist. “We are excited to be a part of this transition. We simply ask that new mandates be feasible for us to implement and adequately financed to avoid further depleting our resources for educating students.”

The Japanese American National Museum announced today it will reopen in January after a two-year, $25 million overhaul of the country’s largest museum dedicated to the Japanese American experience.

The museum in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is reshaping its galleries and expanding its signature exhibition to include more perspectives and connections between Japanese American history and current debates over race, immigration and democracy.

The new exhibition at JANM features A.I.-assisted avatars of Japanese American survivors of incarceration.

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“We want to tell the story in a way that is more expansive and that other immigrants, communities can see their own story reflected,” said Ann Burroughs, the museum’s president and CEO.

That effort to tie history to the present comes as JANM itself has faced political pressure, with the museum losing federal funding amid Trump administration cuts.

From the outside, visitors returning to the museum, which has been closed since January 2024, will recognize its modern, minimalist exterior. Once they step through the doors, though, the experience will be vastly different.

The biggest change will be the installation of a 9,200-square-foot permanent exhibition occupying nearly all of the museum’s first floor — more than twice the space of the exhibition it replaces.

"Common Ground," which opened in 1999, covered Japanese American history from migration to the U.S. in the 1800s to the passage of a federal law — the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 — that formally apologized for the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and provided $20,000 in reparations to surviving detainees.

The new exhibition, called "In the Future We Call Now: Realities of Racism, Forging Democracy," will include more recent history, such as Japanese American support for reparations for Black Americans and vocal opposition to the Islamophobia that swelled after 9/11. It will also cover the Japanese American response to ICE detention and incarceration of migrant children, drawing parallels to World War II camps.

Galleries have been reconfigured to include more recent history and more objects from the past, including kimonos owned by women from Japan, who immigrated to the U.S. in larger numbers starting in the turn of the 20th century.

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It will also bring lesser-known perspectives to familiar history through telling the story of incarceration from “women and mothers” and those incarcerated at Tule Lake, the camp in Northern California where Japanese Americans labeled as disloyal by the U.S. government were isolated during World War II.

“JANM hadn’t told that story before,” Burroughs said. “You can’t draw those parallels of what’s happening now if you don’t talk about the camps and if you don’t talk about Tule Lake.”

The new exhibition will also lean more heavily into audiovisual storytelling, using technology and archival media to make the history feel more immediate.

The interactive “StoryFiles” incorporate AI so visitors can pose questions to digital avatars of incarceration survivors like the actor George Takei.

Burroughs stressed that the museum is not using generative AI, but drawing upon hours and hours of interviews in which subjects answered hundreds of questions.

The new exhibition will also draw deeply from JANM’s extensive collection of Japanese American home movies, including footage dating to the 1930s, and give visitors a window into everyday life before World War II.

Some of JANM’s best-known objects will be included in the new exhibition, like barracks from the Heart Mountain incarceration camp in Wyoming and a model of Manzanar in California’s remote Owens Valley, the first of the camps to be built.

The museum is also emphasizing everyday culture, with displays ranging from kimonos brought by Japanese immigrant women at the turn of the 20th century to rice cookers, and the worldwide reach of Hello Kitty.

The Hirasaki National Resource Center has been relocated to the second floor and will showcase work from artists like Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi.

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The larger new exhibition was created without growing the museum's footprint through reconfiguring the building. For example, the museum’s Aratani Central Hall will take on a new role as the museum’s main entrance, with visitors entering through its sweeping curved glass wall and moving directly into the exhibition galleries. But Burroughs said the redesign will not come at the expense of the hall’s longtime function as a community space available to local nonprofits.

Upstairs, visitors will find reconfigured spaces including a new reading room filled with works and furnishings by Ruth Asawa and Isamu Noguchi. Behind the scenes, JANM has upgraded decades-old building systems such as its HVAC and elevators.

The museum overhaul was funded as part of a much larger $135 million fundraising campaign, Burroughs said. The rest of the campaign supports JANM’s operations and long-term financial stability, including about $56 million in endowment and board-designated reserves.

"You know, life is never secure in the nonprofit world or in the museum world," Burroughs said. "We have to do a lot more to build up our endowments. We just will keep going."

Public health officials are urging people to be wary of flea-borne typhus after a recent outbreak of the illness.

The outbreak in late July was centered in the Pico-Union neighborhood of Los Angeles. The L.A. County Department of Public Health said five people were hospitalized; all recovered.

The outbreak comes as typhus cases continue to tick up in L.A. County.

Cases have been increasing fairly steadily for more than a decade, but they nearly doubled over the last three years. The Public Health Department logged a record 220 cases in 2025, and officials say this year is on track to exceed that.

Public health officials say the increase is likely because human-animal interactions are also increasing. That could be due to human population expansions into areas with more animals, available food sources for wildlife in populated areas or more people owning pets.

The bacteria that causes typhus is transmitted from animals to humans through fleas.

Typhus can’t be passed from one human to another, and public health experts say the illness is completely treatable, especially if it’s caught early.

Outbreaks and how to prevent them

Most of the time, typhus cases are spread out across L.A. County. But sometimes, there’s a localized spread over a short period of time that turns into an outbreak.

Public health officials respond to a few of them in L.A. County each year.

Generally, outbreaks are triggered by high concentrations of host animals.

“Wherever these animals may be present or wherever they may be congregating, in those areas we can see an increase in the number of human infections,” said Dr. Aiman Halai with the L.A. County Department of Public Health.

The most common hosts for typhus are rats, opossums and free-roaming cats. When people or pets come in contact with host animals, they can pick up the infected fleas and bring them into homes, spreading them to other people and animals in the process.

Halai says a variety of factors can attract animals and lead to an outbreak, including overflowing dumpsters, overgrown vegetation or a well-meaning neighbor feeding local critters.

You can help prevent outbreaks by securing trash in bins, making sure food isn’t left outside, and ensuring pets are on up-to-date flea control medication. Cutting back overgrown vegetation and blocking off crawl spaces can eliminate places where animals can shelter in and around homes.

Halai also says it’s important not to feed wildlife.

Should you be worried?

Although public health experts are wary of the typhus uptick in L.A. County, the 220 cases recorded in 2025 in L.A. County are not overly concerning.

"That’s a very  low rate at the population level,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of infectious diseases at USC’s Keck School of Medicine.

Typhus is an acute infection caused by bacteria known as Rickettsia typhi. Variations of the bacteria also cause other illnesses transmitted by fleas, ticks, lice and mites, including tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.

Doctors can test for typhus fairly easily, and it is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms are similar to the flu, and can include fever, headaches, muscle aches and nausea. It can also cause rashes in some cases.

Most infections are mild, but they can cause hospitalization and, in rare cases, can be fatal.

Klausner said the concern is that testing for typhus is not always routine.

“The most important thing is that when patients come in to their doctor — and they have fever, they may have a rash, they may have headache, may have muscle or joint aches — that the doctor's thinking about potentially flea-borne infectious diseases because the treatment can be different,” Klausner said.

The best treatment for typhus is the antibiotic doxycycline. If a patient with typhus gets another type of antibiotic like penicillin or amoxicillin, the treatment may not be as successful.

According to Klausner, when presented with flu-like symptoms, it’s also a good idea for patients to tell their doctors if they’ve been around animals, spent time in an encampment or even just gone on a hike.

Topline:

Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.

What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.

Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.

What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”

What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.