The Brief

Outside her home in Riverside County, near the north shore of the Salton Sea, Sara Renteria is struggling to breathe. She has to speak in short sentences, and pauses often to take a breath.

When she was diagnosed with asthma as an adult about five years ago, Renteria said her doctor gave her a choice: Leave her home in the Coachella Valley or take an array of medications to treat her condition. It was the air, he told her, that worsened her asthma.

Although by now Renteria is no stranger to this desert region’s poor air quality, she has noticed this year that dust storms kicking up clouds of particles have been increasing. She points to the horizon — it’s often so hazy that she can’t clearly see the desert mountains nearby.

Some the nation's unhealthiest air

People in the Coachella Valley, especially in Renteria’s low-income, Mexican American community, breathe some of the nation’s unhealthiest concentrations of a pollutant known as PM10 — particles of dust small enough to inhale. The particles exceed federal health limits, mostly when they are stirred up on windy days, and come from a variety of sources, including unpaved roads, construction sites, fallow farm fields and the dried-up Salton Sea.

Renteria’s impression that the pollution has been severe in her community recently is backed up by the data: So far this year, 24 health warnings for windblown dust pollution have been issued in the region, each lasting several days. The latest was this week, along with odor and wildfire smoke warnings that added to the Coachella Valley’s pollution woes.

Unhealthy peak levels of PM10 around Renteria’s community have been recorded on five days so far this year, based on preliminary South Coast Air Quality Management District data. Last year, five days exceeded the health standard and 10 days in 2022; in the decade before that, violations were rare.

During the past two years, some Coachella Valley residents breathed maximum concentrations — usually recorded on high-wind days — two to three times higher than the amount deemed safe. Those are often the days when people, especially those with asthma or allergies, feel sick.

Famous for two music festivals — Coachella and Stagecoach — the region draws hundreds of thousands of people each spring, when winds often stir up dust. Festival-goers and workers breathed high levels of particle pollution for several hours on the two days before the Stagecoach festival, and on its first day, April 26.

Local leaders and residents say more dust is covering cars and driveways, and even surfaces inside their homes. A brown-gray haze lingers after high winds — so bad that it can cause car accidents. Hotels, restaurants and other businesses have expressed concerns that the dust is driving away tourists and raised their cleanup costs.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the air quality has been worse than I’ve certainly ever experienced it in my 28 yrs in the Coachella Valley,” said Tom Kirk, executive director of the Coachella Valley Association of Governments, which represents the area’s cities and tribes.

Officials say the bad air quality isn't “out of the ordinary”

But South Coast air district officials say the data doesn’t indicate there’s anything “out of the ordinary” this year.

“We think dust levels are within the typical year-to-year variation we’d expect to see,” said Scott Epstein, the agency’s planning and rules manager who oversees air quality assessment. “It’s very unsatisfying for us because we want to confirm what the community is saying. But the science says things are within the realm of what we’ve seen in the past.”

But South Coast air district officials say the data doesn’t indicate there’s anything “out of the ordinary” this year.

“We think dust levels are within the typical year-to-year variation we’d expect to see,” said Scott Epstein, the agency’s planning and rules manager who oversees air quality assessment. “It’s very unsatisfying for us because we want to confirm what the community is saying. But the science says things are within the realm of what we’ve seen in the past.”

Desert dust is usually coarse and packed into the ground. But when storm Hilary hit the area last August, the torrent of rain disturbed the dust and brought mud from mountains that turned into a fine, loose silt that raised PM10 levels.

But Epstein said much of the dust that people are now seeing isn’t actually PM10 — it’s larger particles that do not pose a major health threat because they cannot be inhaled.

What people living there are experiencing

Some local leaders and residents disagree, based on the physical symptoms they feel and the fine dust they see.

“Despite assertions to the contrary, air quality has not shown significant improvement,” state Assembly members Greg Wallis and Eduardo Garcia wrote in a letter to the air district. “The spring season, characterized by windy conditions, has exacerbated the issue by stirring up dust and clay deposits left behind in the wake of Tropical Storm Hilary.”

Air pollution, particularly from dust-blown particles, has been a problem in the Coachella Valley for decades. The region was declared a federal PM10 “serious nonattainment” area back in 1993 — making it one of the nation’s worst areas for the pollutant.

Since then, air quality and local officials have been struggling to figure out how to reduce the pollution, and residents have long pushed for more action.

A state plan, mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, outlines state and local efforts to require certain sources, including farms and construction businesses, to control dust. Local leaders already have a decades-old street-sweeping program to collect dust before it’s ground into finer particles, and other local rules have required dust control at construction sites and farm fields.

Despite these efforts, over the past 20 years, PM10 remains a “serious” health problem in the region, according to the EPA. Average annual concentrations have improved in some areas, particularly in Indio, but not enough to meet health standards, air district data shows. The town of Mecca, on the north shore of the Salton Sea, has the worst problem.

“The biggest driver of changes in PM10 is the wind,” said William Porter, an atmospheric physicist at UC Riverside who studies the air pollutant. “We get these big winds that blow very strong from the east. Whenever we have those conditions we see big increases in blow dust.” He added that the pollution also can worsen with “changes in the surface properties of the land.”

The desert, of course, is dusty, with little rainfall and not much vegetation to hold soil in place. But there are human sources, too, that officials are struggling to control. The region is a transportation corridor, with exhaust spewed by trucks, trains and cars driving from Los Angeles. Dust on roadways is ground up into finer pieces that can be picked up and distributed throughout the air. Particles also flies off farm fields and construction sites.

And the receding playa of the Salton Sea generates small particles that are picked up by winds. Created by Colorado River flooding, the shallow, salty lake now is made up mostly of contaminated runoff from Imperial Valley farms that have been draining its water supply.

At risk: Elderly, children and those with lung disease

PM10 — particles that are 10 microns or smaller, a fraction of the diameter of a human hair — is considered a health threat because the particles are small enough to be inhaled. They are larger than another pollutant, PM2.5 or fine particles of soot, which can travel farther into the respiratory system and enter the bloodstream, triggering heart attacks. PM10 is more likely to be trapped in the upper respiratory system — the nose and throat.

Geoffrey Leung, Riverside County’s public health officer, said when PM10 is inhaled, it can worsen symptoms for people with asthma and lung diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Symptoms can range from moderate to severe, from coughing, wheezing and eye irritation to asthma attacks. 

People with lung and heart diseases, the elderly, pregnant people and children are most vulnerable, Leung said. Leung advises people with those conditions to stay indoors and limit physical activity on days with poor air quality.

In the Riverside County portion of the Coachella Valley, about 41,422 adults and 10,675 children have been diagnosed with asthma, according to county data. That’s about 12% of the population, compared with the national average of about 7%.

The Salton Sea is part of the reason that pollutant levels are so dangerous in the region. Porter’s unpublished research indicates that particles blown from the direction of the Salton Sea is linked to a larger increase in hospitalizations for respiratory or cardiovascular problems compared to when wind blows from other directions. The explanation could be the content of its dust, since it picks up metals, pesticides and other hazardous substances.

Many residents living near the Salton Sea know to stay indoors to avoid the dust if winds are blowing from that direction. On two days earlier this week, odor advisories were issued when noxious sulfur fumes, which can cause headaches and nausea, blew in from the inland lake.

“When it’s coming from the sea, we definitely don’t go outside. When it’s coming from L.A. it’s less worrisome,” said Conchita Pozar, who lives just about a mile from the shore of the Salton Sea.

Asthma attacks, allergies and headaches

On a recent evening at her home in North Shore — a tiny desert community of about 2,600 people, 97% of them Hispanic, next to the Salton Sea — Renteria recalled a scary asthma attack she had just a few weeks earlier. On the drive home from visiting her siblings, she started hyperventilating, seemingly out of the blue.

“I felt like there was a rock on my chest,” Renteria said, mimicking the short, quick breaths she felt that day. “And like needle pricks all over my skin.”

She spent a night in the hospital before her breathing stabilized.

Renteria, a farmworker, has to carry her inhaler with her at all times, especially when she’s active and working in date fields part of the year. At home, she has a nebulizer, which is a machine with a mask that delivers medicine to her airways, and vials of medications.

Pozar, recruited by UC Riverside researchers, is one of a handful of “promotoras” or community workers who interview their neighbors about their symptoms. Many report bloody noses, allergies and eye irritation. Some children don’t have an asthma diagnosis but struggle with similar symptoms and are instructed to use inhalers.

Pozar’s teenage daughter suffers from allergies that give her eye irritation so severe that she often keeps her home from school. On windy days with poor air quality, Pozar keeps her daughters home and they wear masks when they go outside.

“Her allergies are so bad that we sometimes can’t turn on the lights or go outside because it irritates her eyes,” Pozar said. “A specialist told me that it was because of the dust that surrounds her.”

Many people have already moved out — North Shore’s population has dropped almost 13% in just one year. But moving isn’t an option for Pozar. She’s lived in the Coachella Valley half of her life after immigrating from Michoacan, Mexico. She wants to stay connected to her indigenous Purepecha friends, neighbors and family members who live there, and she and her husband have made their livelihoods here.

“We’ve adapted, and with housing prices so high, I don’t think we’d be able to find a home that we’d be comfortable in somewhere else,” she said.“The government should make an effort to resolve the problems here.”

Alianza Coachella Valley, a nonprofit that focuses on improving the health of the valley’s vulnerable communities, has trained Renteria and other community members to use air monitors in their homes to provide localized data and help protect themselves from the pollution, said Silvia Paz, the organization’s executive director.

The group has educated residents about air quality, especially in the eastern Coachella Valley where the towns of Mecca, Thermal and North Shore are separated by miles of open desert and farm fields.

“These communities are mostly rural and they’re lacking in infrastructure,” said Silvia Paz, the organization’s executive director. “We have less parks, we have less trees, we have less roads. We can experience the difference in exposure because we have less elements to keep dust down or protect us from the dust blowing.”

In 2017, Alianza deployed air monitors throughout the eastern Coachella Valley that tracked real-time data. This provided evidence that the region should be included in a state program to reduce pollution in communities with the poorest air quality, Paz said.

The program, mandated by a 2017 law, holds meetings with community members and has recently set aside $4.6 million to pave public and private roads in the eastern Coachella Valley, as well as $2.8 million to provide household air filters in communities statewide.

Sweeping streets: Local efforts to fix the problem

The South Coast air district monitors 24-hour average PM10 levels at three stations in Indo, Mecca and Palm Springs, and tracks when levels exceed the federal health standard, which is 150 micrograms of particles per cubic meter of air, as well as a state standard of 50.

Emily Nelson, an environmental consultant for Coachella Valley Association of Governments, was part of a district working group that studied PM10 in the 1990s to develop ways to solve the problem.

In 2003, the agency approved its plan to reach PM10 standards. Under the plan, cities implemented ordinances that directed certain industries, such as construction and agricultural businesses, to reduce dust. That includes such practices as spraying soil stabilizers and nonpotable water on construction sites and implementing certain methods when mowing golf courses.

“There were a lot of implemented appropriate meaningful strategies that in the end saved many of these industries money and made them better neighbors,” Nelson said.

In 2010, the state Air Resources Board and South Coast district asked the U.S. EPA to redesignate the area as in attainment with the health standard based on 2005-2007 data. The request was denied “and we started exceeding it again,” Nelson said.

The Coachella Valley Association of Government spends more than $760,000 a year on street sweeping as part of the state’s plan for cleaning up PM10, according to a 2022 contract effective through 2025. Street sweepers clean 896 miles of roads at least on a biweekly basis.

Kirk, executive director of the association, said street sweepers have recently picked up more dust than they have in the past.

He said the cities need more funding from the South Coast air district and that agency officials should spend time in the Coachella Valley to see the problem themselves.

“We rely on the district’s expertise to not just understand the air quality problem but solve it,” Kirk said. “The air district isn’t in the problem-solving mode because they don’t see there’s a problem.”

In response to community concerns, South Coast air district officials say they are trying to get a better picture of the pollution by deploying a temporary monitor in Indio that can measure total suspended particulates and one in Whitewater Wash. The agency is also analyzing satellite data in collaboration with Colorado State University researchers.

Even if the recent pollution concentrations are mostly larger particles, not smaller, inhalable ones, Nelson said she worries about how it affects the region’s welfare. More research is needed to see how they affect visibility, crops and other industries, like tourism.

“The wind will stop and the valley still looks like we’re in a soup of dust,” Nelson said. “Everything is coated with this very fine dust. I mean the car washes have been doing the best business ever.”

What you can do to protect yourself

Our colleagues at NPR recently had these tips for protecting yourself:

• Check the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov or PurpleAir.com.
  
  • If the AQI is above 100, avoid outdoor exercise.
  • If it’s above 150, wear a tight-fitting N95 mask when you’re outside.
  • Run your air conditioner with a high-efficiency filter installed — the EPA recommends MERV 13 or above — or use a portable HEPA air purifier. (The EPA provides instructions for making your own HEPA air cleaner with a box fan, here.)Check the Air Quality Index at AirNow.gov or PurpleAir.com to see what the current AQI (air quality index) is near you.

Get more tips on how to cope with poor air quality due to wildfires and other factors:

• How to protect yourself

John Osborn D’Agostino, CalMatters’ data and interactives editor, contributed to the reporting on this article.

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.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Locals can now dial into Inglewood City Council meetings by phone and Zoom to comment on issues affecting them.

Until July, the city only allowed people to give public comments in person or in writing. Now, a new state law, Senate Bill 707, requires eligible city councils and other governing bodies to allow remote comments. 

The new state law went into effect July 1 and requires cities to “reasonably assist” with translation services at meetings and to translate agendas into languages most commonly used by locals. If Zoom or two-way phone service is disrupted at a meeting, the law requires the governing body to go into recess for at least an hour to try to fix the issue. 

The Inglewood City Council rolled out its new dial-in system for the first time at its July 21 meeting and saw a handful of people call into the meeting over Zoom.

Mayor James Butts said the city didn’t allow remote comments before the state law for two reasons: “One, we didn’t have the capacity and two, it never occurred to us.”

City Clerk Aisha Thompson said in an email that the city currently plans to keep the log-in details the same for each meeting. 

Here is the Zoom and telephone log-in information for the upcoming meeting on Aug. 11:

• Online: https://inglewood.zoom.us/j/83282399789 
• Telephone: (669) 900-6833 
• Meeting ID: 832 8239 9789 
• Passcode: 90301

You can double check the Zoom link and meeting code each week. Go to the online City Council Agenda Center ahead of each meeting and check the first page of the meeting agenda for details. 

Agendas are typically posted online the  Friday ahead of the city’s weekly Tuesday meetings.