The Brief

If you feel like there’s been more coyotes around your neighborhood, acting more aggressively, you may be right.

Coyotes have wrapped up their infamous mating season — and now it’s time to cue the cute factor: Coyote pup season is in full swing. And that means some behavioral changes.

What you should know about the season

Coyotes have three biological seasons, said Niamh Quinn, a human-wildlife interactions advisor with the University of California’s Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

There’s breeding season, pup season, and then what she calls the dispersal season, where the young coyotes go off on their own. But during pup season, the coyotes are focused on raising and caring for the babies.

“They're starting to den down, and it’s been shown in certain areas that coyotes can be very aggressive around the den itself at that time,” Quinn said.

In California, coyotes breed primarily between January and March, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Their litters, which can be about five to six pups each, are born between March and May. Some packs may start earlier in the year, she said. For example, her team saw dens being dug out as early as December in Orange County.

But what most coyotes are doing now is beginning to raise those babies. That typically lasts until September.

During this time, the adult coyotes have more mouths to feed.

Understanding coyote behavior

Coyotes are cooperative breeders, meaning that the pack gets involved to help raise the young. That creates a lot of activity around the dens.

“The thing about a coyote den is that you could be stood right on top of one and not even know it's there,” Quinn said. “Like they're quite small openings.”

All a coyote needs is to be able to go in, turn around and come back out. They’re often found in the open spaces around us, like nature reserves, nurseries, railway lines and on Southern California Edison’s easement land.

But they can show up around parks and even under homes. So while you may not see ones for months, they are almost always nearby in L.A. County. While these animals aren’t strictly nocturnal, they’re most active between dusk and dawn.

Coyote behavior does change in L.A. County’s pup season, Quinn said, but not always. Members of the pack leave the den, but data is mixed on whether it’s a true increase in activity compared to other seasons.

“I would say that probably in L.A., you get a lot of encounters during the pup rearing season,” Quinn said. “Then you probably get like a small peak as well during dispersal when the juveniles are starting to move on.”

While many Southern Californians get rightfully concerned about seeing coyotes — they can and do attack animals and people — others feel we need to learn to co-exist.

Tujunga resident Jason Holmes grew up in the country, which he says gave him a perspective on nature that he’s trying to pass on to his very young daughter.

“We grew up around coyotes, mountain lions … I just think it's really important that people get out in nature. We have a lot of fear where fear doesn’t have to necessarily be,” Holmes said. “[But] now that I have a child, yeah, they’re more of my concern.”

Meanwhile Jerome Agee says the different seasons of their life cycle reminds him of how close L.A. is to the wild. He sees coyotes as just like any other animal.

“We're in their neighborhood. This is their home,” Agee said. “So we got to learn how to get along. Cause you know, they got the right to survive just like we.”

A coyote in Elysian Park.

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Samanta Helou Hernandez

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LAist

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Ways to stay safe

There are steps you can take to keep you, your small children and your animals safe.

Coyote encounters can just be a sighting, or an animal or human attack. But it’s less common for coyotes to bite humans — usually they go after small animals, like cats and dogs.

“If you don't want your cat eaten by a coyote, you don’t let your cat outside,” Quinn said.

Dogs are a little different because they can be attacked on leashes too. It’s a smart idea to minimize the length of your leash, and of course, don’t take your dog off the leash in public.

If you do encounter a coyote, one option is to scare them off with a loud noise. Some well-used dog walking areas have home-made shakers on hand, like this one in East Pasadena.

A home-made shaker to warn away coyotes

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Ashley Alvarado/LAist

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You can learn more in our guide to living safely with our coyote neighbors.

See where coyotes are near you

If you’re curious where coyotes have been reported near you, check out locations below, updated with the University of California’s Coyote Cacher data as of April 24.

A few caveats to keep in mind: Reports don’t represent the total amount of coyote sightings this year. The service relies on people submitting individual reports, which can only be done in English.

People can always elect to report coyotes to other places, like a county service, or not report them at all. So an empty spot on the map does not necessarily mean there are no coyotes near you.

Nithya Raman turned the tide in the L.A. mayoral race by winning over large swathes of the city that voted for Karen Bass in 2022, according to an LAist analysis of election data.

Bass was a favorite in many areas that voted for Rick Caruso when she faced him in 2022. She held onto a majority of voters across South L.A., but lost much of her previous support.

The switchup came after Bass — a veteran in progressive politics — took a relatively-conservative approach on issues like policing and high-density housing developments compared to Raman, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America.

The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told its employees Friday to stop work, shut down their computers and stay off agency systems while it looked into “a potential security issue affecting our systems,” its chief executive confirmed to LAist.

That shutdown order was still in place Monday evening, according to a LAHSA official not authorized to speak on the record.

Gita O'Neill, the agency’s interim CEO, told LAist on Friday evening that the agency did not “yet have enough information to say definitively whether any sensitive or confidential personal information was accessed.”

She has not answered questions about whether or not services for unhoused people are disrupted.

Gita O’Neill, interim CEO of LAHSA, speaks ahead of the annual homeless count on Jan. 20, 2026.

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Jordan Rynning

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LAist

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LAHSA holds highly sensitive information collected from people experiencing homelessness in the region. The agency oversees the Homeless Management Information System, or HMIS, which includes unhoused people’s names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and disabilities, as well as self-reported mental health and substance abuse history, income sources and domestic violence history.

In a statement Monday, LAHSA said it had taken its internal computer systems offline “as a precaution” and “engaged outside cybersecurity specialists to investigate the nature and scope of the incident.” The statement, sent on O'Neill's behalf by outside public relations strategist Trevor Daley, continued to call it “a potential cybersecurity incident.”

The agency is “taking steps to maintain essential operations,” the statement added, saying LAHSA “remains open” while the investigation continues. It said the agency is working with its technical and legal teams.

What staff were told

Friday’s email to "Team LAHSA" carried the subject line "URGENT: Log Off and Shut Down for the Week." LAist obtained a copy, and O'Neill confirmed by text message that she had sent it.

“As a precaution while we look into a potential security issue affecting our systems, we're asking all staff to stop work and take their machines offline for the remainder of today and through the weekend,” the email said.

It told employees to “Log off and shut down your LAHSA computer” and not to log back in or connect to LAHSA systems, including email, “until you receive an all-clear from us.”

The email also told staff to report anything “unusual” before shutting down, such as “files renaming on their own, unexpected pop-ups or messages.”

What LAHSA leadership has said

In a texted response to LAist on Friday evening, O'Neill said she asked staff to take their computers offline “out of an abundance of caution” while the agency’s IT team assessed the situation.

“Our IT team is actively reviewing the situation now and working to understand exactly what occurred and whether any information was affected,” she wrote. “Protecting people’s personal and confidential information is a top priority in that review.”

Leaders of three LAHSA-funded service providers told LAist on Monday afternoon that they had not received any communications from LAHSA about the potential cybersecurity issue. All three use the HMIS system that holds unhoused people’s personal details.

Previous attacks against another LA housing agency

Another L.A. housing agency was previously hit by cyberattacks. The Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles — a separate agency known as HACLA — has said hackers got inside its network in 2022 and may have accessed people’s names, Social Security numbers, financial accounts numbers and medical information.

Two years later, HACLA was breached again, according to an official notice, with hackers potentially accessing names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and phone numbers.

LAist reporter Aaron Schrank contributed reporting to this story.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced Monday that she is running to be the county’s first elected chief executive. Horvath is the only candidate so far to enter the race, which is set for 2028.

The new executive post will take the place of the county’s appointed CEO and implement key priorities of the county Board of Supervisors. The executive will oversee the county budget, which is currently roughly $50 billion, and labor relations with more than 100,000 employees.

Horvath was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2022 and was re-elected in June to another four-year term. She represents the county’s 3rd District, which covers the San Fernando Valley and parts of the Westside and Central Los Angeles. She is a former mayor of West Hollywood.

The supervisor made her announcement Monday via social media and her campaign website. She called the race a “once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

The backstory

Voters created the position in 2024 when they approved Measure G, which was proposed by Supervisors Horvath and Janice Hahn.

Among other changes, the measure allowed the Board of Supervisors to expand from five to nine members by 2030 and established an independent Ethics Commission, which held its first meeting last month.

The pushback

On Monday, Supervisor Kathryn Barger issued a statement saying she believed it was “premature” to campaign for the new county executive position when it remained unclear whether “the office itself is constitutional.”

Barger pointed to questions raised by former federal judge Stephen Larson about whether California’s Constitution allows an elected county executive to veto board decisions, control county contracts and take on powers state law currently gives the Board of Supervisors.

“Moving forward with an office that would fundamentally change how Los Angeles County is governed, without first resolving these questions, is putting the cart before the horse,” Barger said in her statement. “We need clarity.”

The primary election is scheduled for March 7, 2028.