The Brief

San Bernardino and Riverside counties have the most concentrated cluster of warehouses in the world, in no small part fueled by our love for fast delivery.

They’re also the reason why the area has some of the highest levels of pollution in the nation, causing serious health impacts to the largely Latino communities who live nearby, and contributing significantly to the heating of our planet.

So how did this happen? The Inland Empire has a long and often untold commercial history, from the forced displacement of Indigenous people to establish a booming citrus industry, to the U.S. military building infrastructure that would lay the foundation for the explosive growth of the logistics industry.

A theme through it all has been largely false promises of good-paying jobs at the expense of people’s and the environment’s health. But there’s also another consistent thread — the efforts of local community members who have fought, and continue to fight, for a better way.

That’s the story that a two-week pop-up art exhibit at the Riverside Art Museum, and online, aims to highlight.

“There isn't an inevitability of where we got to today — decisions were made at each step along the way,” said Cathy Gudis, professor of history at UC Riverside and a co-curator of the project with her students and two environmental justice groups in L.A. and San Bernardino: East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice and the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice.

Multi-colored panels tell stories of environmental injustice from 22 communities across the U.S., Mexico and Colombia.

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Jacob Willson

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Riverside Art Museum

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Called “Climates of Inequality, Stories of Environmental Justice,” the traveling exhibit will go across the world, highlighting 22 communities from the United States, Mexico, and Colombia which face similar challenges and are fighting for change.

The Los Angeles and Inland Empire portion is called “Witnessing The Slow Violence Of The Supply Chain.” Stories of environmental injustice and activism in Oxnard and San Fernando are also featured.

The multimedia project takes viewers on a historical journey through a series of significant locations from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach to Southeast L.A. and Commerce, then east into Mira Loma and finally all the way to San Bernardino and Riverside.

Panels from the exhibition

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courtesy of Riverside Art Museum

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 “We need to use media and we need to use history and we need to use the experiences of our people to really understand where we need to go,” said Anthony Victoria, a local journalist with NPR-affiliate KVCR and founder of the environmental justice-focused publication The Frontline Observer. He participated in the project and will speak on a panel as part of it.

The point of the exhibit is not just to highlight the history, but to clearly lay out how that history continues to impact the present, said L.A.-based artist Noè Montes, who also participated in the project.

“The land holds the truth of history,” Montes said. “Once we start talking about that and recognizing it, then we will really be making some headway to the resolution, the reparations that are necessary to achieve justice.”

The exhibit showcases voices of community organizers, artists, warehouse workers, researchers and others involved in the ongoing fight against environmental injustice in the area.

Alicia Aguayo grew up in west San Bernardino and is the communications manager for the group People's Collective for Environmental Justice, which advocates for communities impacted by warehousing.

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Tamara Fleming

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Courtesy of Alicia Aguayo

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“We're telling these stories and making sure that they're not forgotten,” said Alicia Aguayo, the communications manager for the San Bernardino-based People's Collective for Environmental Justice. But she says the exhibit isn’t just about the past — it’s about the present and the future.

“It’s also part of us working with the community and making sure that we're educating each other,” Aguayo said. “We don't believe that this has to be the norm. And we believe that it's possible to have other ways of living.”

A brief history of the supply chain

Postcard images of sprawling acres of orange, lemon and lime groves hearken back to a golden era of southern California agriculture, but the reality was not so rosy.

The citrus industry began with the forced displacement of Indigenous tribes at the start of the Spanish mission era — mission padres planted some of the first citrus trees in the Southland. The industry boomed with the arrival of white American settlers enticed to come West, the railroad, and water diversions from the Santa Ana and Colorado Rivers to help the region bloom. The landscape of southern California was forever changed.

A citrus grove in Highland at the base of the San Bernardino mountains circa 1900.

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Courtesy of LA Public Library

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Indigenous Serrano, Luiseño, Gabrielino-Tongva, Cupeño, Chemehuevi, and Cahuilla people were forced to labor in these fields. In the late 1800s, when the railroad came, Chinese workers largely replaced Indigenous workers. Then anti-Chinese racism led to Japanese immigrant workers becoming the bulk of the workforce.

Another wave of anti-immigrant sentiment came after the first World War, forcing many Japanese workers out as well. By the mid-1940s, Latino workers had become the vast majority of that workforce — as they continue to be today in the region. The cheap labor was essential to making the citrus industry bloom, but people of color benefited far less than most white folks in the region who became some of the wealthiest people in the world at the turn of the century.

“It all goes back to that citrus industry — it's been replaced with low paying jobs in warehouses now,” said Yvonne Chamberlain Marquez, who gathered oral histories and did research for the project during her time as a UC Riverside student in Gudis’ class.

The invention of pesticides and other chemicals further helped the citrus industry boom. But citrus wouldn’t remain king forever — with World Wars I and II, the military took over the area because of its proximity and rail connections to both the ports and high desert military bases. The military’s dumping of toxic waste in the region led to some of the nation’s first Superfund sites, with contamination that still plagues the region’s water tables and landscape today.

The military’s arrival also laid the foundation for the logistics industry the region is now infamous for. For example, the city of Mira Loma, which Gudis and Pitzer College professor Brinda Sarathy call “the roots of logistics,” became a stop for goods and supplies being brought from the ports to high desert military bases, as well as Manzanar, where 10,000 Japanese Americans forced from their homes were incarcerated by the U.S. government during World War II.

A guard stands outside the entrance of Manzanar, where 10,000 Japanese Americans were incarcerated during World War II.

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Courtesy of LA Public Library

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After the wars, came baby boomers and the need for a lot more space for a rapidly growing population — suburbia replaced many citrus farms that remained. For a time, the Kaiser steel factory provided union jobs for hundreds of thousands of people in the area, who were able to get their slice of the American Dream — but for the largely Latino and Black workers it came at the expense of coping with daily racism and exploitation.

When the factory and military bases closed in the 1980s, the region’s economic struggles skyrocketed. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the logistics industry saw an opportunity.

Yvonne Chamberlain Marquez conducted research and collected oral histories from local activists and elders while she was a student at UC Riverside for the exhibit.

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Courtesy of Yvonne Chamberlain Marquez

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Marquez, who grew up in Chino during the late 1980s and early 1990s, remembers that, and the false promises of how warehouses would provide the next generation of good jobs and a thriving economy.

“In the nineties, a warehouse job was a good job at one point,” she said, “but then they just popped up and grew so fast and now there's so many people stuck in these low wage jobs with no way out.”

The changes have been especially rapid in the last two decades. Marquez herself watched her community’s landscape go from mostly rural to full of warehouses in a span of less than ten years. Today, one in six workers in the Inland Empire are employed in the logistics industry, including many of the UC Riverside students who worked on this project.

Making space 

Marquez said that as someone who grew up poor and returned to school as an adult and single mother later in life, she has often felt like her voice didn’t matter. When she got into UC Riverside, she said she was at one of her lowest points. She joined Gudis’ consumerism history class on a whim — she didn’t expect it to change her life.

But her experience as a student gathering oral histories from local elders and working closely with community activists to put together the Climates of Inequality exhibit changed her life dramatically.

Community members part of San Bernardino-based group the People's Collective for Environmental Justice.

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Courtesy of Alicia Aguayo

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“I was able to see myself in these people who were like me, talked like me, who had the same background that I did,” Marquez said. “They were … so, like, sure of themselves as the experts in what they were talking about and just like seeing them be unapologetic about it was inspiring.”

Marquez hopes the exhibit helps people realize, like she did, that their voices matter too.

An image created by San Bernardino artist Brenda Angels (@basoulcreates) depicts a vision of a thriving economy that runs on local businesses. It was part of the promotion for a local small business event put on by the People's Collective for Environmental Justice

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Courtesy of Alicia Aguayo

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“Once the community is able to see the work that the community has actually done, they're able to see themselves a little bit more and maybe be more inclined to show up to a city council meeting when they don't agree with something, or get involved in civics at some level,” she said.

For local activists like Aguayo, the exhibit illustrates the intertwined natures of art, storytelling and action. She said art is key to how the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice works to humanize the impact of the logistics industry beyond a bottom line, and provide a vision for a better future.

“Oftentimes, these regulators and elected officials look at numbers and they don't think about the stories and the people feeling the impacts and so we do think that this exhibit is crucial,” she said. “Being able to see your experience in a museum I hope feels very validating to community members who've been saying this for years — like this is not new.”

See the exhibit and associated live events

The exhibit runs through Nov. 5 at the Riverside Art Museum. The exhibit is free and open to the public. You can also view the multimedia project online at climatesofinequality.org.

You can see the live events associated with the exhibit here. All the events are free and open to the public.

Upcoming events at the museum include: 

Sunday, Oct. 22: 2 – 4 p.m. at Riverside Art Museum Rooftop (Julia Morgan Building) “Climates of Inequality: EJ in the I.E.”

A dialogue with environmental justice organizers from the Inland Empire. Spanish/English translation available. Includes same-day museum admission at Riverside Art Museum.
RSVP: ramcheech.ticketapp.org/portal/product/130

Thursday, Nov. 2: 6 p.m. at Riverside Art Museum (Julia Morgan Building) Environmental Justice in the IE: Community-based Practices in Art and Activism

Local social practice artists, documentarians, and activists Tamara Cedré, Noé Montes, and Anthony Victoria talk about how the arts can help humanize the issues and convey the magnitude of the impacts felt today in Riverside and San Bernardino.
RSVP: ramcheech.ticketapp.org/portal/product/137

Saturday, Nov. 4: 10 a.m. – noon at Riverside Art Museum (Julia Morgan Building) Teaching “Climates of Inequality” Tour and Workshop.

Limited spaces for high school, college, or university-level teachers interested in bringing regional issues of environmental justice into classrooms. Includes same-day museum admission at Riverside Art Museum.
RSVP: ramcheech.ticketapp.org/portal/product/129

Sunday, Nov. 5: 1 p.m. at Riverside Art Museum (Julia Morgan Building) “Cultures of Environmentalism: Read Aloud & Artmaking.”

For this closing day public program, families are invited to learn about, and try their hand at, California Indian basket making while learning about the impacts of environmental change on culturally significant plants with Lorene Sisquoc (Mountain Cahuilla/Fort Sill Apache), curator at Sherman Indian Museum. Also featured are English language and bilingual (English-Spanish) readings of Carole Lindstorm and Michaela Goade's “We Are Water Protectors” (2021 Caldecott Medal Winner), and local artists' books including Timothy Musso's "Chasing the Sun." Art-making is for all ages. Read-out-loud: 3-8-year-olds.
RSVP: ramcheech.ticketapp.org/portal/product/136

The Los Angeles Police Department has completed its investigation into the killing of Keith Porter Jr., 43, and presented its findings to the District Attorney’s Office, according to a statement from the District Attorney’s Office. Federal officials have said Brian Palacios, the off-duty ICE officer who shot and killed Porter on New Year’s Eve in L.A. was acting in self-defense.

Where things stand

In an emailed statement to LAist, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office said:

“The Los Angeles Police Department has presented this case to our office, and it is currently under review. Our experienced prosecutors will conduct a thorough analysis of all the facts and evidence to determine if we are able to prove a crime occurred beyond a reasonable doubt. Given the complexity of that process, it is difficult to predict a timeline for completion, and cases like this can take several months or more to resolve.”

What federal officials say

According to statements from federal officials, Palacios was off duty the night of the shooting. Federal officials and Palacios’ attorney have said he was acting in self-defense when he shot and killed Porter.

He was not named at the time. His identity became public through court record in an unrelated custody dispute.

In a statement released to the L.A. Times shortly after the shooting, Tricia McLaughlin, at the time a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said that Palacios had “bravely responded to an active shooter situation at his apartment complex” and was “forced to defensively use his weapon and exchanged gunfire with the shooter.”

Police said a rifle was recovered at the scene. Porter’s friends have said he was shooting a rifle into the air to celebrate the new year.

Why Porter’s family is pursuing a civil claim

Jamal Tooson, the attorney representing Porter's family, said he has witness testimony contradicting federal officials’ allegation that Porter and Palacios exchanged gunfire. He’s representing Porter’s family in a tort claim against the federal government.

The claim letter sent to the federal government says that Porter was “attempting to peacefully return to his residence” when he was killed. The letter claims Palacios did not personally observe Porter firing a weapon, and that he failed to use de-escalation tactics before opening fire. “The use of deadly force was unjustified, unreasonable and without legal cause,” the letter reads.

Tooson said he expects the federal government to reject the Porter family's tort claim. At which point, the family will pursue a civil claim, Tooson said.

Palacios on administrative duty

Authorities previously have said Palacios is still employed by ICE, and court records responding to the restraining order show he has recently been placed on administrative duty. ICE officials did not respond to questions about his current status.

Despite multiple efforts to put reforms on the November ballot, Los Angeles voters will not get to decide whether to roll back the city’s controversial “mansion tax” on apartment buildings.

The L.A. City Council voted 14-0 to shelve a proposed ballot measure on Wednesday, the final day to send proposals to the city’s voters in the upcoming general election.

The decision comes almost a week after a separate, statewide measure seeking to kill the tax — and other “mansion taxes” across California — was pulled from the November ballot.

Advocates for reform said the council is failing to confront declines in new housing development, which they blame on Measure ULA.

“The City Council unfortunately is still not living in reality with respect to what ULA has done to our apartment and commercial building market,” said Mott Smith, a USC adjunct professor of real estate and a board member of the Council of Infill Builders. “They're kind of living in denial.”

Supporters of the tax said keeping new exemptions for apartment developers off the ballot was the right decision.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House L.A. coalition, said L.A. voters approved the tax in 2022 because they wanted to raise money for affordable housing and tenant aid programs.

“Voters should feel confident that what they passed is working,” Donlin said. “Of course there are big real estate interests who would prefer not to pay a real estate transfer tax. They're going to continue to try to convince the public that they should get a tax break.”

The measure that didn’t make it to the ballot

The City Council’s sidelined ballot measure would have asked L.A. voters to cancel the tax on new apartment buildings within the first 10 years of their construction.

Reform proponents with Mend It, Don’t End It — a coalition of business leaders, affordable housing developers and labor groups — said in a letter to the council ahead of Wednesday’s meeting, “If adopted by voters, these amendments would help build more housing and ensure Measure ULA is delivering on its promise to increase affordability and reduce homelessness.”

Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky, who proposed putting the 10-year exemption on the ballot, along with Councilmember Tim McOsker, chided her colleagues for letting the measure die.

“If we think the fight is over, we’re kidding ourselves,” Yaroslavsky said. “The pressure behind ULA reform is not going to go away, because the valid concerns from people who build housing are not going away. We will keep finding ourselves back here if we don’t show courage, get ahead of it and make a reform we and housing builders can live with.”

A recent analysis from the L.A. Housing Department concluded the 10-year exemption would have made only minimal changes to the city’s housing landscape. City housing officials estimated the exemption would have reduced Measure ULA revenue by about 5% while boosting new apartment development by about 5%, or around 330 units per year.

Why a ‘mansion tax’ applies to apartments

The council’s decision to keep changes off the ballot comes after years of heated debate about Measure ULA’s impact on the L.A. real estate market.

It’s known as the “mansion tax” because it applies to sales of single-family homes priced at $5.3 million or more. The tax rate starts at 4% and rises to 5.5% on properties selling for $10.6 million or more.

However, critics say the “mansion tax” moniker was always misleading, because it also applies to sales of industrial and commercial properties, including apartment buildings.

Supporters of the tax have long said they oppose sending the policy back to voters. They endorsed the decision of an earlier city council committee, which voted against putting changes on the ballot.

However, L.A. voters will see a separate, narrowly tailored “mansion tax” measure on the November ballot. The council voted 13-1 to ask voters to cancel the tax on Pacific Palisades homeowners who sell their properties within five years of the Palisades Fire.

Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, said exempting fire victims is the right thing to do.

“They’re not selling because they want to,” she said. “They’re selling because they have already lost everything and there’s nothing left. Putting this tax on these folks who are trying to recover and reckoning with the fact that some of them just aren’t coming home is unspeakably cruel.”

The fight is over for now, but maybe not for long

Since taking effect in April 2023, the tax has raised more than $1.2 billion for affordable housing construction and programs aimed at helping struggling tenants stay housed. Some of that money has been held up due to strict limits on how funding can be spent, as well as the L.A. City Attorney’s ongoing opposition to tenant aid funding plans.

Economists have published studies concluding the tax has driven down new housing development relative to other parts of L.A. County. A recent RAND study also found the tax has cut into revenue raised by other local property taxes and development fees, reducing funding for schools, parks and other government services by about $452 million.

Meanwhile, Measure ULA supporters dispute conclusions about the tax slowing down housing growth. They say hundreds of affordable apartments have already opened or begun construction, thousands more are set to be built or preserved, and tenants have received tens of millions of dollars in rent relief and income support.

Previous efforts to lower or eliminate the tax on new apartment buildings have all stalled. The most dramatic development came last week, when last-minute negotiations in the California legislature convinced an anti-tax group to pull a statewide November ballot measure that would have asked voters to kill Measure ULA and “mansion taxes” in other parts of the state.

That Sacramento deal did not include cuts to L.A.’s “mansion tax,” as many in the real estate industry were hoping to see. Instead, state lawmakers agreed to put a separate measure on the November ballot, Proposition 43, which will ask Californians to make it harder to pass new special taxes by increasing the voter approval threshold to two-thirds, up from a simple majority.

Close to 58% of L.A. voters approved Measure ULA in November 2022, when it first appeared on the ballot. Though efforts to eliminate or scale back the tax via the November ballot are now officially dead, Mott Smith said future ballot fights remain likely.

“Already, everybody is gearing up for the 2028 election,” Smith said. “We're going to be living with another two years of pain in the real estate market, and Los Angeles will continue to lag behind the rest of the country and the rest of the state in terms of housing production.”

For many Los Angeles college students, public transit is often the cheapest and sometimes the only way to get to campus as gas and other costs rise. But using buses and trains can come with a price beyond the fare.

Metro offers free passes for students at participating K-12 schools and community colleges, while some universities offer discounted transit passes for their students. However, college students who rely on transit have to leave for class hours early to avoid being late, weigh safety concerns, stretch already tight budgets and miss out on college life, students told CalMatters.

Late buses, early alarms

For some students, using transit means getting ready and leaving long before class starts. Makeda Webb wakes up at 6 a.m. in her apartment in Willowbrook, more than five hours before her first class at Cal State Dominguez Hills, less than 5 miles away in Carson.

On most mornings, the psychology major competes with her brother and grandfather, who has dementia, for their one shared bathroom. Even though her earliest class starts at 11:30 a.m., Webb leaves home by 8:30 a.m. because her commute usually takes 40 minutes and unreliable buses have made her late before. Some professors have even threatened to drop her from their classes if she kept arriving late, so she doesn't take any risks.

"The bus is constantly late or breaking down," Webb said. "You have to wait another hour for the next bus. … (It) makes me late for school, so I have to leave extremely early to make sure I'm on time."

She doesn't have a car, so despite delays, taking the bus is cheaper for her than paying for gas and other driving costs. Her university offers Metro U-Pass, which allows participating university students to take unlimited bus and train rides for the semester for a flat fee. For spring 2026, the pass cost $67.50.

Her commute gets worse at the end of the day. When Webb takes the bus in the evening after class and extracurriculars, frequent stops and unruly passengers stretch the trip to close to an hour.

"Even though I only live (half an hour) away by bus, it takes double that to get there because the bus driver has to stop the bus or … something stupid is going on, like chaos, which makes it take forever," Webb said.

Webb walks home at night after getting off the bus at a stop near her home. “It’s not always enjoyable, especially with the type of people that get on the bus. We have a lot of drug addicts, we have a lot of people who do crazy types of stuff on the bus,” she said.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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For women, the train comes with risks 

Victoria Imo, a graduate student studying social work at the University of Southern California, has a car but often takes the Metro A Line, transferring to the E Line to get to campus. She uses her U-Pass to avoid the high cost of gas and parking.

Imo's U-Pass is covered by USC's mandatory transportation fee, which costs $146 for the spring semester. That is cheaper than filling her tank multiple times, which she said can cost up to $60 each time, or buying a parking permit, which can cost up to $585 per semester before added fees.

But saving money means she has to take extra precautions. Because of safety concerns on the train, Imo thinks carefully about where she sits, often near other women, and avoids using her iPad or laptop, opting to read instead. She wears a mask and sometimes headphones without music to avoid unwanted interactions.

In the past, Imo carried pepper spray and a Taser – the latter of which she previously set off to deter an unruly man who was "yelling behind me while I was walking up the stairs," she said. She activated the Taser so it crackled really loudly while she walked to her car.

Metro contracts with the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles Sheriff's Department for law enforcement across its systems. The agency also has transit ambassadors to complement officers, report issues and connect passengers with resources. Still, Imo said she has not reported any safety concerns because she's so used to them.

"I haven't gone out of my way to give any feedback, because at this point, I feel like this is just what the train system is," Imo said. "It seems like everyone's used to it."

Imo walks down the stairs at the Sierra Madre Metro Station in Pasadena to catch a train to campus.

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Martin Romero

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CalMatters

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Gina Medrano, a psychology student at Santa Monica College, described similar concerns. She has her own car, but gas prices have pushed her to use her GoPass to take the train from the Atlantic Station in East Los Angeles to her school.

She carries pepper spray, avoids wearing headphones and switches train cars if anyone makes her feel uncomfortable. After witnessing a near-fatal incident, Medrano said boarding a Metro train makes her feel uneasy.

"This lady started hitting a man on the train," she said. "After she kicked the door of the train while it was running … she jumped out of the train … and it was right in front of me. I had to call my mom to come pick me up, because I just couldn't handle what I'd just seen."

Medrano said the incident was one of several disturbing things she's seen on the train. She regularly sees things that make her question her safety and wonder why there isn't more enforcement.

"It's kind of normal to see needles and unsightly things on the train," she said. "There's not really a lot of enforcement or safety. I don't really feel safe on it."

For some, police presence sets off alarms

Zak Nirenberg, an electrical construction and maintenance major at Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, said their biggest safety concern is not other Metro riders, but Los Angeles Police Department officers.

"They're intimidating," Nirenberg said. "Most of the time they're on the (train), they're looking for someone to harass or actively harassing someone."

Zak Nirenberg rides the Metro train from Grand/LATTC Station in Los Angeles to Pico Station in downtown Los Angeles on April 30, 2026. They said their biggest safety concern is not other Metro riders but Los Angeles Police Department officers.

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Martin Romero

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Norma Eisenman, a spokesperson for the LAPD, declined to comment on Nirenberg and others' concerns about officers' presence during fare inspections. The department directed CalMatters to file public records requests for documents about LAPD protocols.

Metro says safety is improving

Metro says it's making progress on safety, pointing to recent declines in violent crime and nonviolent offenses. The agency attributed those declines to increased visible uniformed personnel, fare enforcement and partnerships with behavioral health organizations on its transit system.

In a February Metro media release, Maya Pogoda, a spokesperson for the agency, wrote that violent crime fell 6.7% in 2025 from the year before. She added that crimes involving trespassing, narcotics and weapons decreased 33%.

Metro also announced the Department of Public Safety Dashboard, which publishes safety and security data submitted by law enforcement agencies and shows a more complicated history. According to the dashboard, after Metro resumed bus fare collection following a pandemic pause, trespassing reports, which include fare evasion, rose nearly 1,200%, from 126 in 2022 to 1,635 in 2023. In 2024, the number more than doubled to about 4,500.

Arrests also rose sharply, with LAPD and sheriff's department arrests increasing by 81% in 2023 to about 5,000, then nearly doubling to about 10,000 in 2024. Since 2020, the top two crime types reported on Metro have been trespassing and battery.

Pogoda wrote that the agency is trying to address safety through a mix of law enforcement and public services aimed at addressing homelessness, addiction and untreated mental illness. These efforts will all be coordinated through Metro’s new Department of Public Safety.

Los Angeles Police Department officers conduct fare inspections on a Metro train at Grand/LATTC Station in Los Angeles on April 30, 2026. According to Metro, officers conducted more than 116,000 train boardings and about 500,000 TAP card inspections in 2025 alone.

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Student passes help, but gaps remain

Even Metro programs meant to make public transit more affordable for students don’t remove every cost barrier. For some, the upfront cost of even a discounted pass can still be out of reach.

Stephanie Verdugo, a sociology major at Cal State LA, lives in on-campus housing and relies on Metro buses to run errands and, previously, to get to work. She said her university sells a U-Pass to students for about $100 a semester, but even as a frequent transit rider, Verdugo said she couldn't afford the upfront cost.

"I always had a very tight budget … so I could never actually buy (the U-Pass)," she said. "I would just have to pay the regular way."

Still, even while paying Metro's regular $1.75 fare for bus or train rides, Verdugo said using public transit has saved her money. That is partly because the agency's fare-capping system limits how much regular fare riders can spend to no more than $5 each day and $18 each week before rides are free.

"I don't pay a lot of money considering how much I travel on the bus," Verdugo said. "As a person who was traveling every single day for a month straight, I only spent like a maximum of $80, which, to me, is really good."

For Nirenberg, the Los Angeles Trade-Technical College student, the GoPass saves them a lot of money on gas and parking.

"(It's) not just for school, but for life in general. I don't pay for parking anywhere," they said. "I don't have to worry about finding parking. It's fantastic."

‘I've never been to a college party’ — when transit derails social life

Beyond getting to class, transit can also shape how much of college life students get to experience. Julian Levy, a political science student at Occidental College, lives in on-campus housing and relies on public transit to visit his family and get around Los Angeles. Without a car, Levy said, participating in college life off campus means planning around transit schedules, deciding whether a trip is worth the time and often leaving early to get back on time.

"I remember just feeling so frustrated … just because I didn't have a car," Levy said. "I had to leave early from (a friend's birthday party) because of the time I would have to spend on the much slower public transit system."

One trip to an Occidental soccer game at Chapman University in Orange made Levy reconsider taking transit to away games. He had taken Metro and Metrolink to get there without any issues, but after the game, one of the few trains back was canceled. A second train eventually came, but only after Levy waited about two and a half hours on the platform. He ended up getting back to campus after midnight.

"I remember thinking after that, 'Do I really want to rely on public transit?'" Levy said. "I've always been able to get where I've needed to go, but I've definitely reconsidered whether something is worth the risk of getting stranded somewhere."

For many students CalMatters spoke to, public transit can be unpredictable, crowded and unsafe. Still, it remains the most affordable, and sometimes the only, way for students to reach campus and make attending college possible at all.

"I'm a low-income student, I've never been to a college party. … I don't have the money, I don't have the time," said Webb, the Cal State Dominguez Hills student. "I have not gotten the full (college experience), but I'm still thankful, though. At least there's an option."

Martin Romero is a contributor with the College Journalism Network, a collaboration between CalMatters and student journalists from across California. CalMatters higher education coverage is supported by a grant from the College Futures Foundation.

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

After months of pushing back on the Trump administration’s attempt to stop youth gender-affirming care nationally, California is establishing its own safety net for vulnerable patients and families.

California approved $26 million in one-time funding aimed at protecting access to health care for transgender youth in the state’s budget package for its 2026-27 fiscal year. It also includes $30 million earmarked for providers of reproductive and transition-related care.

This was welcome news to many LGBTQ+ advocates, families with trans youth, and health care providers. Over the last year, many California families with trans youth have either seen their providers stop youth gender-affirming care or announce plans to do so.

About the funding

The one-time fund will be distributed to health care providers across the state through targeted grants. The money will give providers “meaningful resources” to continue and expand their gender-affirming care offerings, according to TransFamily Support Services, one of the organizations that lobbied for the bill.

Advocacy organizations say the fund will expand the network of trans youth health care providers and insulate the provider network from federal funding cuts.

Meanwhile, the $30 million fund for uncompensated care will help providers deal with funding gaps due to cuts to Medi-Cal and other federal programs.

Newsom’s approval followed months of back-and-forth as California looked to balance its finances after years of shortfalls. Newsom’s initial version of the budget did not include the gender-affirming care fund. The legislature then added it back, and it stayed in the final version.

The budget also includes other provisions aimed at helping California’s struggling health care industry, like delaying cuts to Medi-Cal. Newsom has also approved similar funds to protect reproductive health care and abortion access this year.

The response

Trans advocacy organizations celebrated the news this week.

“This historic investment will help keep care accessible, support the providers doing this lifesaving work, and remind trans young people that California will not abandon them,” Kathy Moehlig, TransFamily Support Services’ director, said in a statement.

Many advocates highlighted the importance of this fund during a critical moment for trans health care.

“We must continue to work together to ensure the well-being, health, and autonomy of all people in our state,” Bamby Salcedo, president and CEO of the L.A.- based TransLatin@ Coalition, said in a statement.

The current threats

As the Trump administration continues to restrict trans youth health care nationally, hospitals and health care providers are seeing the federal government try a new tactic to obtain records of trans youth patients: criminal subpoenas.

“It's a worrying tactic that indicates that there might be future efforts to try to criminalize trans healthcare,” said attorney Megan Noor of Transgender Law Center.

In California, Stanford Children’s Hospital received one such subpoena, which led patient families to sue the federal government. Attorney General Rob Bonta was one of 19 attorneys general who filed an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit on the grounds of states' rights, which Noor said can be part of a “symbiotic relationship” between states fighting against federal policy and the people affected by drastic policy shifts coming from Washington, D.C.

A round of administrative subpoenas issued by the Department of Justice last year was largely blocked.

Meanwhile, Rady Children’s Health, the parent company of Children’s Hospital of Orange County and Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, will continue offering gender-affirming care to youth under 19 at least until January while a state lawsuit filed by Bonta plays out.