The Brief

Clara Solis would hate to lose the hedge outside her window. It’s on the sunny, south side of her house in Highland Park and it provides shade on hot days.

It also offers some protection against pollution from the 110 Freeway just two blocks away. Her neighbors have similarly placed plants.

“They don’t have a lot of green space, just a few shrubs right by their windows usually to kind of protect them from the sound and noise and from pollution,” she said.

But if new statewide fire safety regulations go into effect, Solis — and the many other Los Angeles County residents who live in fire hazard zones — will have to remove most plants from the areas closest to their homes.

“I am concerned that if they pass this, people are just going to go left and right cutting down trees,” Solis, a member of the Historic Highland Park Neighborhood Council, said.

Specifically, the state Board of Forestry and Fire Protection is considering new rules during the final months of 2025 that would require homeowners in designated “very high” fire hazard zones throughout the state to clear the first 5 feet of space around their homes of any flammable materials, an area the agency refers to as “zone zero.”

Those flammable materials include landscaping such as bushes, hedges and flowers (with an exception for potted plants, which can be moved). The list also includes firewood, fallen leaves and attached fences that are made of combustible materials like wood. Well-maintained trees would be allowed in zone zero but only if the branches are pruned so that the lowest are at least 5 feet above the roof.

The intention is to create an “ember-resistant zone” around the home, providing fewer opportunities for a fire to spread to the building and improving safety for firefighters who may need to get close to the home in an emergency.

The acreage covered by zones deemed to be “high” or “very high” fire hazard have grown significantly throughout the state since Cal Fire updated its maps in March, which it does based on modeling using various types of data.

According to CalMatters, those zones combined make up about 3,626 square miles — an area almost twice the size of Delaware — and are home to approximately 3.7 million people.

In the city of L.A., the “very high” fire hazard zones have grown by 7% — representing an increase of as many as 30,000 homes — while in unincorporated L.A. County, that number has tripled.

And the same rules will apply to all very high fire hazard zones in California, including densely populated neighborhoods of Los Angeles, where for some residents, 5 feet is just about all that separates one house from the other or from the street.

Diana Nicole, an ecological horticulturalist and vice president of the Los Angeles Audubon Society, lives in a very high hazard zone in Studio City, an area where the new regulations will be in effect.

Five feet is the entire distance between Nicole’s house and the street. And the back side of her house is sloped and prone to mudslides. With zone zero, she would have to replace crucial landscaping with a retaining wall; she was quoted $80,000 for one a decade ago — a cost she cannot afford.

“That’s untenable,” she said.

These rules come at a time when L.A. is getting serious about its shade shortage as the threat of extreme heat grows. Shade is especially lacking in L.A.’s poorer neighborhoods. In July, a coalition of universities, local agencies and nonprofits announced ShadeLA, a new initiative to expand L.A.’s shade options, including planting and maintaining trees countywide.

Shaded areas, such as under trees, can feel 35 to 70 degrees cooler than in the sun.

And L.A. is going to need it. By 2050, about one in three days in L.A. is expected to be over 95 degrees.

Not everyone believes in zone zero

California passed a law to regulate these ember-resistant zones in 2020, but implementation stalled until February of this year, when Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to enact rules by the end of 2025.

After months of holding workshops in Sacramento, the Board of Forestry held its first public meetings in Southern California last month. Hundreds of people attended the Pasadena town hall–style meeting Sept. 18, and over the course of nearly seven hours, about 75 L.A. County residents spoke. Most were critical of zone zero, including some who had lost their homes in the Eaton and Palisades fires.

But even the critics were not entirely opposed to the rules. Most seemed to agree that replacing wood fences with an ember-resistant material is a good idea. Removing firewood and dead leaves, also good. But the statewide, one-size-fits-all rules on vegetation rankled most of them.

The science behind getting rid of plants in zone zero, however, is not exactly settled.

A recent study led by Francisco Escobedo of the Forest Service suggested that the type and moisture level of vegetation in zone zero matters — that well-hydrated vegetation might not pose a threat — and that it varies among regions within California.

Max Moritz, a wildfire specialist with the University of California Cooperative Extension at UCSB, saw some evidence of this as he toured the Altadena burn area with colleagues in April. He said what they saw on the ground didn’t quite line up with the proposed zone zero rules on vegetation.

“We were seeing lots of homes that burned with green vegetation around them," he said. "And many times, if that green vegetation was scorched, it was scorched from the home itself burning.”

The Board of Forestry plays down the importance of the Forest Service study, citing the limitation of its methods, and points to other research that supports zone zero.

The price of compliance

Once enacted, the owners of existing homes will have three years to comply with the new rules. The costs could be high. An estimate to implement ember-resistant renovations — similar to the current zone zero proposal — for a home in Auburn, near Sacramento, was about $13,000. For most people in L.A., rules enforcement will fall to local fire departments, and it’s unclear how that will work.

Wendy Sotelo, co-founder of Corazón Tlalli, an environmental nonprofit, and a member of the North Hollywood Northeast Neighborhood Council, said some residents will attempt to take matters into their own hands to avoid the hassle.

“Unfortunately, that is what’s happening around my neighborhood, and it causes trees to be pruned incorrectly,” she said. “And they eventually die. Or they become a liability to their property.”

Sotelo wants to educate gardeners on how to make sure their plants and trees thrive.

“I feel that there are other ways to take care of this instead of being so reactive,” she said.

Residents may send written comments to the Board of Forestry at publiccomments@bof.ca.gov.

The largest single piece of federal housing legislation to come out of Congress in at least a generation is about to become law.

It will happen in the middle of the night, without much fanfare and it might be a while before many Californians notice its effects.

That’s because though the bill is politically monumental, it doesn’t do one big thing. Instead, it does a lot of little things. Individually, none of the bill’s 56 regulatory tweaks, pilot programs and low-cost loans and grants are likely to move the needle on the nation's housing affordability woes, nor on California’s specifically.

Supporters hope that collectively, they just might.

Even the law’s path to enactment had an under-the-radar quality to it. The White House abruptly cancelled a planned signing ceremony late last month with President Trump vowing not to lend his signature to the housing bill until Congress first passed a national voter ID proposal. That bill has stalled out in the Senate. On Friday, Trump vowed again not to sign the bill in protest. Even so, because Trump does not appear likely to veto the housing package, it will automatically become law on Saturday just after midnight, as per terms specified in the U.S. Constitution.

For all that, supporters say this is still a big deal: A major, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at boosting housing construction from a hyperpartisan legislative body that doesn’t typically touch the topic.

“We don't often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” said Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, at a press conference on Thursday. “I think the last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you were not even alive … it is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

That’s thanks in part to a growing caucus of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement that helped push the bill into law. Many hail from California, a state that has had more experience than most contending with wildly unaffordable housing. But the cause of making housing more affordable, and attributing high housing costs to a lack of sufficient supply, has become a national and bipartisan concern. Case in point: The bill originated as a joint proposal by U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a Democrat and one of the body's most liberal members.

While the constituent parts of the bill are relatively narrow and none are specifically focused on California, experts highlight a handful of new provisions that could leave a notable imprint on the state.

Build now (or else)

For high-cost cities that don’t build much housing (see: an awful lot of urban California), the federal bill includes a novel carrot and stick.

This portion of the bill would change the Community Development Block Grant, one of the largest sources of federal funding for affordable housing and local economic development. Pricey cities — defined through a variety of data benchmarks like median prices and vacancy rates — with a track record of under-building that continue to see below-average housing construction will have their grant funds cut by 10%. The savings will go to their municipal counterparts that build at a faster clip.

That’s likely to have “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have traditionally lagged behind” in adding housing supply, said David Garcia, the deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The City of LA received $48.4 million in its last award from the block grant program in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. San Francisco received $18.9 million.

Those numbers aren’t enough to make or break the budget of either city.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which taken across the country could still have a good impact! Little nudges add up.”

More dramatic than the number of dollars involved may be the precedent the policy sets. Even in California, where the state government has aggressively incentivized cities to plan for more housing development and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never punished municipalities for failing to actually grow — an outcome that may not always be under a city government’s control.

Such an idea would have been “inconceivable in previous congresses,” said Garcia.

Despite that, the provision hasn’t engendered much public pushback from local government groups yet. In an online summary, Michael Wallace, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities, applauded the overall housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing partnership with local governments over preemptions.” He singled out other provisions of the bill that provide expanded flexibility for Community Development Block Grant spending, new incentive programs for adding supply, and new supports for local urban planning.

Chassis change

Manufactured housing units are often colloquially referred to as “mobile homes,” but they don’t tend to move around much. Built on assembly lines and shipped to where they’re needed, these naturally affordable houses — the likes of which lawmakers across California and the United States claim we need in droves — are often placed upon permanent foundations where a fewer than one-in-ten ever move again.

Even so, the federal building code applied to manufactured housing includes a costly, vestigial reference to its mobile origins: a permanent chassis.

A giant steel frame with removable axles and wheels, the chassis ostensibly exists to make it easier to pick up and move a manufactured house by truck. In practice, it serves as a 10- to 12-inch thick floor beneath the floor. Because it cannot be removed upon delivery, it just serves as “dead space and wasted money,” said Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s trade group. Aside from adding thousands of dollars in added costs per unit, it also makes it harder for manufactured units to be stacked into double story homes or multifamily apartment buildings.

The federal housing bill removes the permanent chassis requirement, something that manufacturers and some housing policy experts have been pushing for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” said Rep. Scott Peters, a San Diego Democrat, at the Thursday press conference.

Maxcy said he doesn’t expect the end of the chassis requirement to trigger an overnight building boom in the manufactured home industry. But especially in California where, due to the high price of land, new single-family homes are more likely to be built stacked on small lots, the regulatory change “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

Recovering after disaster

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal dollars have come and gone, Congress has provided communities with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant - Disaster Recovery program. Over the last three decades, the program has spent more than $100 billion on the long-term work of recovery, like home construction, infrastructure repair, and rental and relocation assistance. That money tends to be reserved for low income people and communities “who are not going to bounce back without the funds,” said Marion McFadden, who used to run the program under the Biden administration and now works at the disaster preparation and recovery consulting company IEM.

Unfortunately for California, the program only kind of exists. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been stood up and funded on an ad hoc basis, one appropriation bill at a time. That’s presents a challenge for communities planning in the middle of post-disaster planning. It also means the rules that govern the program — when the money goes out, to whom, under what conditions and for what purposes — are redrafted with each political administration. That’s had the effect of slowing things down considerably. No program funding has gone to Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fire storms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress has yet to appropriate any.

The new housing bill would officially write the program into law for at least three years.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” said McFadden.

What the housing bill doesn’t do: Actually provide any fresh funding. Disaster prone communities will need to wait for Congress to take that up later.

A 'bottleneck' removed

For the last two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have been turning to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to help repair and upgrade their aging stock of increasingly dilapidated public housing. The program works by switching up funding sources in a way that gives locals more flexibility to borrow money and attract private investment dollars.

Until July 11 at midnight, the federal government was only authorized to permit 455,000 of these conversions. The new bill raises the cap by another 100,000.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years and that bottleneck just got removed,” said Russell with the San Diego Housing Federation.

Not all affordable housing advocates are cheering the development. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expansion of the program on the grounds that the change in funding source could weaken existing tenant protections. It's unclear whether and to what extent that might be true. A study from last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to more evictions.

Wall Street out of suburbia

If you’ve heard only one thing about this housing bill, it’s that it bans “large institutional investors” from buying up more single family homes.

Caveats apply in the final version of the law. The bill defines “large” as any of a number of business structures with control over more than 350 single family homes. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, so current investors with portfolios brimming with houses need not divest. Exemptions exist for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other major investors do not play a significant role in the housing market, the effect is likely to be muted.

The measure “takes a hyper-salient issue for lots of people across the country and does a pretty modest intervention to address it,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy advisor to President Biden.

Even so, the provision has plenty of bipartisan appeal. Earlier this year, Trump called for an even stricter crackdown on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom followed suit the same week.

The anti-investor language was considerably watered down from earlier this year, when a related provision threatened to undermine “build-to-rent” projects: Well-financed subdevelopments of single-family homes reserved for renters. That prompted a revolt by many developers and YIMBY activists who had otherwise enthusiastically supported the bill, who argued that such communities are one of the fastest growing sources of the U.S. housing stock and provide some of the few opportunities for renters to live in suburban-style, family-sized housing.

After the build-to-rent provision was left on the cutting room floor of Congress, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat who is now running for Congress, introduced a bill that picked it back up again. SB 880 would have banned the bundled sale of multiple single-family homes, striking at the heart of the build-to-rent business model. That bill died in the Assembly Judiciary committee in late June.

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.

On a recent weekday afternoon, cars were already parked bumper to bumper along the residential streets near Pico Boulevard. On Pico Boulevard itself, parking spots were filling up as drivers hurtled down the busy corridor. 

The corridor is lined with small businesses, from neighborhood markets and nail salons to repair shops, sign makers and restaurants. 

Business owners say they recognize Pico Boulevard has a speeding problem and can be dangerous for pedestrians.

The Los Angeles Department of Transportation wants to make the corridor safer for pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers. But that will come at the expense of 228 parking spots, which are already hard to come by in the neighborhood.

LADOT will overhaul 3.5 miles of Pico Boulevard between Crenshaw Boulevard and Figueroa Street to reduce speeding and unsafe turns and lane changes. The agency said the project is intended to improve safety by adding a center turn lane for left turns and emergency vehicles, protected bike lanes and new TOUCAN traffic signals at Manhattan Place and New Hampshire Avenue. LADOT will also repair sidewalks and curb ramps.

To make room, the city will remove parking on the north side of the street and reduce travel lanes from two to one in each direction. Construction is set to begin by the end of the year. 

An artist’s rendering of protected bicycle lanes on Pico Boulevard and Manhattan Place.

(

Courtesy LADOT

)

City officials say the changes are needed after years of serious crashes. Between 2014 and 2023, 75 crashes on this stretch of Pico resulted in severe injury or death. Nearly three-quarters involved people walking or riding bicycles, and all 11 people killed were pedestrians, according to LADOT.  

Jose Gonzalez, owner of Jagarhaus, a gallery and event space that has been in the neighborhood for six years, supports most of the city’s proposed improvements. But removing a full side of curb parking from a narrow commercial street does not make sense to him.

“I think it’s essential to have bike transportation,” Gonzalez said. “But I don’t think it goes over the priority of the small business community.”

“We’re killing the Main Street,” he said about the impact on the small business community. “We’re benefiting the big guys that have the parking lots and all the infrastructure.”

Gonzalez said he learned about the plan in May from another business owner, despite owning two properties on Pico and living nearby.

He is not the only business owner raising concerns.

Outreach on Pico Boulevard

Joey Bang, who has run Sign Art on Pico for two decades, said parking is already difficult for both businesses and residents nearby. 

“There already isn’t enough parking,” Bang said. “Even residents of this neighborhood park here in front because there isn’t enough parking. If they get rid of the parking out front, business will go down so much.”

Bang said he had not received any communication from LADOT before a visit last month from LADOT representatives who told him about the project. 

Bang said he’d be on board if Pico were a wider street. He’s also concerned about how construction will affect his business.

“Small businesses are already struggling,” he said. “If this goes through, Pico as we know it will come to an end.”

Vehicles travel along Pico Boulevard between Crenshaw Boulevard and Figueroa Street, where Los Angeles plans to add protected bike lanes and other safety improvements while removing parking from the north side of the corridor.

(

Hanna Kang

/

The LA Local

)

LADOT began outreach in May 2025 and spent about a year gathering feedback from businesses and residents, according to spokesperson Colin Sweeney. The agency said it went door to door, mailed notices to 1,842 nearby addresses, distributed door hangers, met with the Byzantine Latino Quarter Business Improvement District, emailed stakeholders, conducted surveys and shared information online. Outreach materials were available in English, Spanish, Korean and K’iche.

LADOT said it reached more than 2,500 people, with 75% of survey respondents favoring a design that includes protected bike lanes.

Construction will be completed in phases over about a year. Sweeney said the city will notify residents and businesses before work begins, and LADOT will provide traffic control and detour assistance during construction.

The project is one of the major street redesigns moving forward as L.A. implements Measure HLA. 

Lorenzo Martinez, owner of Olympic Tools, learned about the project in June when someone brought him a flyer. Martinez has a few parking spaces behind his business, but said trucks still need to stop in front for deliveries.

“If trucks cannot park in the front, that will affect me,” Martinez said. “I like how it is now. I don’t really see a lot of bikes out here. I want it to stay as it is.”

Sweeney said LADOT is still making adjustments to the project, including adding loading zones, creating more parking on the south side of Pico and nearby streets, relocating some bus stops and identifying additional ADA-accessible parking. Peak-hour parking restrictions will also be removed.

How businesses interact with the neighborhood

Fashion designer Galadriel Mattei owns a brick-and-mortar clothing store on the same long block between Union Avenue and Bonnie Brae Street.

She said the lack of alleys and limited places to cross the street already make it difficult for customers to reach her business, particularly older adults and people with disabilities who need to park nearby.

She also worries customers will end up parking deeper in the neighborhood, adding pressure to already crowded residential streets. 

“With neighborhoods like this that are so densely populated, it is really always a fine line with how the businesses interact with the people who live here,” Mattei said.

A cyclist herself, Mattei said she doesn’t oppose bike lanes or other safety improvements. She agrees that drivers often speed along Pico and that the street can be dangerous for pedestrians. But her concern is that the city’s design doesn’t account for how the block actually functions.

During the school year, parking on the north side of Pico is restricted for several hours each day for student drop-offs at a nearby school, she said, forcing drivers onto her side of the street. 

Daniel Serrano, a Pico Union resident who mostly walks and takes public transit, said he supports the changes as a pedestrian.

He said reducing lanes could slow drivers and that protected bike lanes would add more space between cars and people walking. But he also said businesses deserve clearer answers about how the project will affect them. 

“This could be a good opportunity to do a financial analysis. That will also help businesses understand how this project is affecting them and that they feel included in the decision-making,” he said. 

Community members can find information on the project website or by emailing visionzero@lacity.org.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has signed a bill that will vastly reshape the role of the state superintendent of public instruction, an elected position that currently oversees the California Department of Education.

Instead of leading the department, the new position will act as more of a public advocate — “a nonpartisan voice for the public interest in the governance of the state’s educational systems,” the bill states. The Department of Education will be instead headed by a new education commissioner appointed by the incoming governor.

The details of the superintendent role will still need to be hashed out, according to the legislation, but plans for the position include "ensuring independent evaluation of existing educational laws and programs.”

In February, LAist reported on how the state has spent billions of dollars on a new grade for 4-year-olds called transitional kindergarten with no plan to evaluate its implementation, despite research showing how crucial the quality of learning is in the early years — and the possibility of leading to negative effects later on.

State Assemblymember David Alvarez, who co-authored the bill, told LAist earlier this year, he wanted to see more accountability of statewide investments.

“What was very shocking to me was that very often, there were no evaluations or no assessments that were required with many of the programs that we’re funding,” he said.  ”For TK, as you've covered well, you know, it's nonexistent.”

A previous version of the legislation would have added a fiscal trigger for independent evaluations, automatically requiring independent evaluations of any new education initiative that costs at least $500 million a year or $1 billion in one-time spending.

That language was not included in the final bill. Instead, the legislation directs the new education commissioner to report to the legislature by October 2027 recommendations about refining the role of the new state superintendent, including “ensuring independent evaluation.”

Proponents of the bill said restructuring the role of the elected state superintendent and creating a new education commissioner would lead to more accountability of the state’s education system.

"By modernizing governance and strengthening California’s capacity for independent evaluation as part of a more coherent education governance system, California is building a stronger foundation for better policy, better implementation and better outcomes for students," said Lupita Cortez Alcalá, executive director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE), which recommended the changes in a report.

Critics, including those running for the state superintendent office in November, say the overhaul was unwarranted and undermined the democratic process.

“Democracy gives people a voice in decisions that shape their communities. Removing voters' ability to elect a superintendent accountable to the public who is running the Department of Education undermines this principle,” the California Teachers Association said.

Parents, students and arborists gathered at John Muir High School in Pasadena this week to fight plans to cut down almost 200 trees across the Pasadena Unified School District.

Already, 78 towering trees — some over 100 years old — have been lost, officials said.

The school district approved the tree-cutting plan in mid-June amid concerns about contamination of soil from the Eaton Fire. Testing has found evidence of toxic metals, such as lead, in the soil in some areas.

But the dramatic decision to take out many fully-grown trees providing much-needed shade in order to remediate the soil has caused much confusion and disappointment — and legal action attempting to stop it.

“This entire country has a long history of removing native life. I think it's unfortunate that PUSD is continuing that and … not listening to all the people who support the trees and who want the trees here,” said one high school student who was among the protesters. (LAist is not identifying her because she is underage.) “I have no idea why they're still continuing to go through with it."

The trees being cut down are protected under the Pasadena Tree Ordinance, which aims to preserve the city’s historic canopy by preventing ecological loss. Pasadena representatives attempted to halt the removal, saying the district is violating this law. In order to remove the trees, they need a permit, according to Lisa Derderian, the senior communications coordinator for the city of Pasadena. And the school district doesn’t have that, she said.

The City of Pasadena posted a notice on John Muir High School's front doors to halt the removal of the campuses protected trees.

(

Sammy Marvin

)

A notice was taped to the doors of the high school on Thursday, alerting PUSD to halt their operations. City officials also showed up on campus, but were asked to leave the property by district representatives.

“The last thing we need to do is be losing more trees. We should be retaining and preserving every single one we can,” said protester Jessica Richards, a committee member of the Urban Forestry Advisory Committee.

Richards pointed out that there are alternate methods the school district could explore to replace or cleanse the soil from the fires before chopping the trees down.

The district’s decision to continue with their operations could result in harsh consequences, critics say.

“Fines for what they're doing right now can result in thousands of dollars for continuing operations, plus additional legal implications," Derderian said. "We've made several attempts this morning alone at bringing cooperation via PUSD leadership."

The city is now in contact with their attorneys for next steps. The school district continues to stand its ground, though.

On the district website, it states that: “Contractors working in the 11 fire-related contaminated soil projects have committed to full compliance with all applicable environmental laws and regulations.” The district also says trees will be replaced.

Amid the clash between the city and the school district, protesters did what they could to protect the trees. At John Muir, several people climbed the towering branches of trees targeted for removal and roped themselves to trunks. Some silently sat at the base in protest.

Paloma Muniz-Ochoa, 17, strapped herself to a towering tree on the front lawn of John Muir High School in an attempt to protect her city's beloved canopy.

(

Sammy Marvin

)

Paloma Muniz-Ochoa, 17, was among them. While she was strapped up high in the branches, her mother, Kristen Ochoa, was down below with the other protesters. Like others, she said she understood the importance of preserving an important part of their community.

“I’m not leaving when my daughter’s up in that tree,” Ochoa said. “We’ll be here” to keep protesting.