The Brief

In Bloomington, a small community of some 24,000 people in unincorporated San Bernardino County, people ride horses next to big rig trucks rushing to warehouses. Solar panels adorn the roofs of homes next to truck yards — the panels sometimes paid for by warehouse developers.

Like so much of Southern California, Bloomington is a place of contrasts.

Over the last 15 years or so, this once-rural town that’s bordered by the cities of Fontana, Rialto and Jurupa Valley has been surrounded by warehouses being built to support our online shopping habits and the supply chain corridor from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. That pipeline is one of the largest sources of the Southland’s health-harming and planet-heating pollution.

A partially demolished home in Bloomington, where a 213-acre warehouse project is being developed.

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And now, 117 homes and small ranches in Bloomington are being demolished to make way for yet another warehouse — the largest one yet in the community. The project will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space built by Orange County company Howard Industrial Partners. The project is expected to bring more than 1,000 additional big rig truck trips per day.

After years of debate, San Bernardino County supervisors unanimously approved the project in 2022. Today, everyone in the development’s way — the non-numbered streets of Bloomington — have been bought out and homes have already been demolished.

The project was able to happen because back in 2017, the county designated the non-numbered streets of Bloomington as a potential area for re-zoning and development to boost tax revenue to fund more services for the community.

Construction progress has now stalled due to a lawsuit against the project brought by environmental justice groups. (County Supervisor Joe Baca, who represents Bloomington, declined an interview with LAist due to the ongoing litigation).

But those who want to stay in Bloomington worry the warehouse will mean the end of their small town and rural lifestyle. Others say the project is necessary to get badly needed infrastructure improvements.

The site of the future warehouse project, which will bring more than 2 million square feet of warehouse space to Bloomington.

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A changing community

I meet Margaret Razo and her husband Rafael at a park that will be right across the street from the new warehouse project and next door to another warehouse being developed in Jurupa Valley.

The 54-year-old grew up in Bloomington and has watched the community transform.

“Bloomington was so pretty, so beautiful,” Razo said. “And, just driving over here now, it's awful. All the houses are torn down. Childhood homes of our friends. I almost want to cry thinking about how much Bloomington has changed.”

Rafael and Margaret Razo live in a house near the new warehouse development in Bloomington. They regularly receive calls from developers asking if they want to sell.

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When she was a kid, the road in front of her family’s house was dirt. Her little brother and sister played Little League at the park we’re sitting at. The park has changed too … but for the better, thanks to recent donations the county received to improve the park, with a new skate park, children’s play structure and well-kept grass. She loves seeing people ride horses around town.

The warehouse project will be across the street from a park and baseball field. Another warehouse being developed in neighboring Jurupa Valley is also being developed just west of the field.

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“We just never left Bloomington because we loved it,” Razo said. “And it's the first time in my whole entire life that I've ever thought maybe it's time to leave. Because I feel like we're being pushed out by industry.”

Though they’re not within the bounds of this project — they live in the numbered streets of Bloomington — they’re close to it, and Razo said calls from warehouse developers offering to buy the home she and her husband live in are constant.

“It just takes one person to sell,” said Rafael.

But Razo said she can’t blame others for selling.

“My cousin is a teacher at Colton High School and she said she was talking to someone and the guy told her, ‘You know, if they're offering me a million dollars for my house, and I'm going to be able to send my kids to college now, how can I say no to that?’” Razo said.

“At first I was mad at the people who were accepting the money and leaving Bloomington because I'm like, ‘Oh, they don't really love Bloomington,’” Razo continued. “How can you blame them? These big old companies are coming in and just throwing money at people and it's such a poor community. And it just keeps chipping away and chipping away more at Bloomington.”

For some people, the buyouts, which have all been at or above fair market value, were welcome. I spoke to one Bloomington resident who lives with his grandmother across from the construction site — he declined to share his name, but said they want to move to Yucaipa due to rising crime in Bloomington and his grandmother’s desire to be in a more rural area. He said they were excited to be in conversation with the developer for a generous buyout, but those discussions have now halted due to the lawsuit.

Razo said if they left, she doesn’t know where they’d go. After all, Bloomington is home. She raised her own children here, her siblings still live here, and her parents are buried here.

“If they start chipping away at my neighborhood, I don't know,” Razo said. “We're gonna be the little 'Up' house [referring to the movie “Up”]. I don't want to leave, but I feel like they're pushing me out. There's going to be nothing left of the character of Bloomington, the place that we grew up in, it's just going to be all gone.”

A rural lifestyle coming to an end

I run into Felipe Ortiz and his daughter Fatima while he’s picking her up from Bloomington High School, which is across the street from the future warehouse project. He, his wife and three kids rent a house in the path of the warehouse. One day they were startled by a bulldozer destroying palm trees Ortiz had planted and fencing on the property. Their landlord didn’t tell them that he’d sold the house to the developer.

Felipe Ortiz shows a photo of his children, who grew up riding horses.

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Felipe Ortiz and daughter Fatima outside Bloomington High School. Ortiz and his family are currently looking for somewhere else to live after their landlord sold the house they rent to a warehouse developer.

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Like many people in the area, they own horses, goats and other livestock and thought Bloomington was a place where they could maintain their rural lifestyle and connection to their Mexican roots. Now, they don’t know what they’ll do.

“It’s hard that we can't find anywhere to go because we don't have the money to buy a house,” Ortiz said in Spanish. “I have to protect my family and my animals.”

15-year-old Fatima said the whole experience has been so stressful she’s had trouble focusing in school.

“I be seeing machines going through, passing by my house, and I be getting scared,” she said. “And then sometimes I get the feeling of not wanting to come to school. Even if I do, I be thinking about the house instead of thinking about my subjects at school.”

Across the street from where I talk with the Ortiz’s, I meet 15-year-old Jose Sanchez and 17-year-old Francisco Plascencia riding their horses, something they do every day. They grew up riding, and even in their short lives they’ve seen other warehouse projects already change the community — more big rig trucks driving the roads, and less open space to ride their horses.

“I grew up here in Bloomington so seeing everything go away … it kind of hurts me,” said Sanchez.

For now, he said, they’ll have to appreciate riding their horses around town as much as they can.

“Just enjoy what we have right now,” Sanchez said. “Until the time comes, if they do end up buying our property, it is what it is.”

Jose Sanchez, left, and Francisco Plascenscia grew up riding horses in Bloomington and have seen the community become more industrial over the years.

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A necessary project? 

Others in the community say the project is desperately needed.

Like many unincorporated areas, Bloomington has a lack of basic infrastructure, such as sidewalks, sewage lines and flood control. That’s led to persistent flooding issues and dangerous traffic conditions. Many community members also worry about public safety with little law enforcement dedicated to the area.

“The residents of Bloomington need better streets, better schools, good paying jobs and law and order,” said Irma Hansel, who's lived in Bloomington for more than 40 years, at the 2022 supervisor’s meeting when the project was approved. “We believe that the Bloomington project is a way to help to achieve prosperity and a better future for the residents of Bloomington.”

“Personally, my family and I would love to go one winter without our house flooding or having a river that builds up in my backyard, [taking] my 68-year-old mom along with it when she tried to redirect the water without success,” said resident Raquel Diaz at that same meeting.

To address the flooding issues, traffic conditions, and public safety concerns, the developer has promised to spend:

• $39 million for 2.2 miles of street improvements like sidewalks and traffic signals (some of those street improvements will also support an increase in truck traffic expected from the project).
• $30 million to build a 13-acre drainage basin and 2 miles of storm drains 
• More than $1 million in tax revenue per year will go to a fund for Bloomington to spend on public safety, code enforcement and parks. $6.4 million in one-time funding will go to a Bloomington-specific infrastructure fund. 
• $45 million for a brand new elementary school because the old one is right next to the project
• 198 apartment units will be built in another part of Bloomington to make up for the homes destroyed and comply with California's housing law. 

The project is also expected to generate more than 3,200 permanent local jobs and some 5,450 union construction jobs, as well as $500 million in tax revenue for the county over 30 years.

A FedEx truck drives past a trucking terminal in Bloomington. The new "Bloomington Business Park" isn't the first warehouse development to come to Bloomington, but it's the largest.

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A spokesperson for the developer said in a statement to LAist that the property will be landscaped with mature trees and drought-tolerant plants and that electric charging infrastructure will be installed to power electric forklifts and other heavy duty electric equipment onsite.

“If you're going to get infrastructure improvements, it's going to come out of one of two sets of hands — it's either going to come out of the business and development community," said Gary Grossich, a 45-year Bloomington resident, "or it's going to come from the residents. The residents don’t have that kind of money."

Meaning, taxes. Unincorporated areas often lack basic infrastructure because they have less tax revenue, and the revenue that does exist is stretched across an entire county.

Truck yards like this one are common in Bloomington.

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“So unfortunately — you can maybe call it a trade-off — for these types of infrastructure improvements that the community needs, we have to rely on the development community to bring in these types of projects because that's the only thing that's going to pencil out for that type of a huge, tens of millions of dollars of investment in a community,” Grossich said.

Grossich owns a pizza restaurant in neighboring Colton and has lived in Bloomington for 45 years. His home is near the development.

Grossich said he’s been against past warehouse projects in the community, but he thinks this one is the gold standard and will bring more benefit than harm.

Bloomington resident Gary Grossich stands outside his restaurant in Colton. He believes the warehouse project will bring more benefit than harm to Bloomington.

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A dream of becoming a city that can keep warehouses out

Grossich serves on the Bloomington Municipal Advisory Committee, or MAC, a non-voting group of community members that liaison between the community and county supervisors.

Gary Grossich owns a pizza shop in Colton, where he grew up, and moved to Bloomington 45 years ago after purchasing his dream home with his wife.

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He says that’s part of the problem — because Bloomington is unincorporated it has too little political representation. He worries that if Fontana and Rialto continue to build warehouses on Bloomington’s borders — multiple projects are planned, with land already leveled to make way for them — those cities will be able to annex Bloomington and turn all of it into warehousing space.

“The idea is that we want people that live in Bloomington to make these decisions, not people from outside,” Grossich said. “For Bloomington to ever get to the point where we can make our own decisions, it is going to be necessary to find funding. It was never the intention of the MAC to make Bloomington into any type of a warehouse central or anything like that. As a matter of fact, we wanted to preclude that from happening.”

Ultimately, he sees this project as a necessary step for Bloomington to generate enough revenue to become its own city, so it can ideally elect people from the community who will keep further warehouse development out.

He envisions a city that has some warehouses, but also has a thriving downtown corridor full of local businesses, restaurants and homes.

“Each individual project, you gotta weigh the pros and cons,” Grossich said. “All projects have impacts, no matter what it is. You can build a church, it's gonna have impacts. The question really is, can you mitigate the impacts to beyond a significant level.”

The foundation of a home demolished where the future warehouse project is planned.

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A dangerous precedent?  

Joaquin Castillejos, an organizer with the Center for Community Action and Environmental Justice, worries that relying on warehouse development for necessary infrastructure improvements in unincorporated areas sets a dangerous precedent, and that there are not enough protections in place now to prevent future warehouse expansion into the numbered streets of Bloomington.

He said it’s up to the county to find the needed funding for building safe infrastructure without approving a project that brings more heavy truck traffic and pollution near residential areas, schools and a park.

People walk along a residential street. The green fencing on the right is where part of the warehouse development will be. The developer purchased a palm tree nursery.

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“The county has a responsibility to the residents of Bloomington to keep up with the infrastructure, to fix our streets and to make sure that it's a livable area,” he said.

The county said in a statement to LAist that it's made "significant investments" in Bloomington in recent years, including street improvements, an affordable housing project, a sewer installation on Valley Boulevard, a new park and additional dedicated sheriff's deputies to the area, among other things.

"There are challenges throughout the County, as with any government agency, to meet all the needs with funding not being unlimited," the statement to LAist read. "However the County has done well toward investing in Bloomington."

Castillejos said this new warehouse project is different from others for its scale and because the county rezoned a residential area to industrial to make way for the warehouse project. Unincorporated areas in the Inland Empire such as Bloomington have been some of the few places left in a state with rising housing costs where people, like Castillejos’ family, can still afford to buy their own homes.

Castillejos grew up in Bloomington after his family moved there from an apartment in south L.A. to achieve their dream of buying a house in the early 2000s. He lives in Pomona now, but his parents still live in Bloomington, two blocks from another large warehouse project that was built in neighboring Fontana.

Warehouses dominate the Inland Empire

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“There's nothing that they can say to justify creating an industrial zone in the middle of a residential area, but that's exactly what they did,” he said. “This project will just be the beginning of more types of developments like this, where they target residential areas in other unincorporated areas in the county.”

Though homes have already been demolished, Castillejos hopes the current lawsuit against the project at least sends a message to future warehouse developers.

“I'm hoping that this lawsuit shows all other developers that if you want to do a project like this,” he said, “there's going to be consequences.”

The 99 Cents Only chain may be gone, but a new art exhibit at its former store at the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue is keeping its legacy alive in the most eccentric way possible.

From shopping carts suspended upside down to video art at the checkout counters to paintings and graffiti in every nook and cranny, this is not the same 99 Cents Only store where you used to buy your cleaning supplies.

The curators behind 99CENT, which is on display through the end of this weekend, have filled the space with artwork and L.A. artifacts for a free exhibition. So I had to check it out:

99CENT's art

Many of the involved artists used practically every square inch of parts of the store.

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The artists on display at 99CENT work across mediums.

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Art and graffiti were both on full display at 99CENT.

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Many of the works of art look like regular street signs ... until you look a little closer.

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Presumably, this fruit wasn't bought at the 99 Cents Only store, which closed last year.

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Many different art styles were on display at 99CENT.

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The exhibit makes creative use of space, including hanging things from the ceiling.

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Despite this sign, the inside of the store was covered in graffiti, though some staff members could be seen cleaning up graffiti on the outside.

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Many of the items on display were carefully crafted. The $9.99 sticker may not be accurate pricing.

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What you can see

As soon as you walk in, you’re treated to a complete reimagining of the 99 Cents Only store. This former site of the modern big-box discount chain has been infused with a healthy dose of the West Coast art styles that sprung up from places like the Mission District, Haight-Ashbury and Venice.

One of many sections of the repurposed store that showcases objects, graffiti and artworks.

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Artists whose work was on display used all kinds of mediums. In this case, mirrors and wheelchairs.

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All the original shelving is there, but nearly every nook and cranny has been filled with art.

Inside the old freezer

Even the store's freezers were fair game to show off art at 99CENT.

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The inside of the store's freezer, which was repurposed as a gallery space.

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But look close and you’ll see cheeky nods to the 99 Cents Only store of yore. Much of the old shelving and signage is still there, even if slightly rearranged. On some shelves, hygiene supplies sit side by side with artworks and found objects.

99CENT displays

Some parts of 99CENT even loosely resemble the former store.

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Though this is an artists' flea market, these works of art presumably would cost more than 99 cents to buy.

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Many books on display this week, like this one, probably never went for sale at the original 99 Cents Only stores.

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These curated vintage shirts presumably were also not for sale at the original 99 Cents Only store.

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Some old shopping carts have been converted into suspended sculptures. In between songs, the loudspeakers play what I’m pretty sure are authentic 99 Cents Only in-store announcements in English and Spanish.

One major auditory difference — and I can confirm this as a former 99 Cents store shopper — the music on the store’s PA system is much more lo-fi and homespun than the radio pop the old store used to have on.

Inside the "tent"

In the background, behind the hanging shopping cart, you can see the entrance to an improvised structure in aisle 11.

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Inside the improvised structure in Aisle 11.

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Since this is a self-described “artist flea market of sorts,” many of the artists have also scrawled their phone numbers and Venmo usernames near their works, and walking through different stations at the store really does feel like walking through different stations of a carefully curated swap meet or flea market.

Many works of art coexisted with produce and groceries, like this work held down by two Grey Poupon bottles.

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Even for works that aren’t on sale, most paintings and sculptures I saw identify the artist, though it’s admittedly a little more haphazard than most galleries I’ve been to.

About the curators

Representatives for the gallery The Hole, which curated this exhibit, said that the works in the store pull from its “West Coast network of artists and outsiders.”

These paintings share wall space with this sculpture made of repurposed blue jean fabric.

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One artist in particular takes the spotlight: The walls are covered by paintings by the San Francisco-based street artist Barry McGee and works from his personal collection — people who parked in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s garages in the early 2000s may remember his now-lost murals. All told, the curators say over 100 artists were represented.

With so many artists on display, very little space in the former store goes unused.

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How to visit

You can see “99CENT” for yourself at the former 99 Cents Only store at 6121 Wilshire Blvd., a stone’s throw away from LACMA.

The exhibition is free and open to the public from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. through Sunday.

In her State of the City address this month, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass boasted that her administration had fast-tracked the construction of more than 30,000 affordable housing units.

A Crosstown analysis of the data indicates the pace of actual building may be considerably slower. Bass’s Executive Directive 1 was supposed to slash red tape and accelerate approval times for housing projects that consist entirely of affordable, or below market rate, units. She said builders already had broken ground on 6,000 of them.

Of the 32,838 units plan-approved under ED1 through the end of last year and listed on the case summary dashboard, 4,993 have been issued building permits for new construction, a Crosstown analysis found.

Just 26% of affordable units entitled during ED1’s first year, 2023, have been granted building permits, all of which have been approved for two years or more.

“Mayor Bass was correct in her statement that 6,000 units are currently under construction,” the mayor’s press office said in a statement to Crosstown. The mayor’s office did not provide a clear explanation as to how that total was calculated.

The slower-than-advertised pace of affordable units is just one part of a broader stagnation afflicting the city’s home-building sector. Last year, a total of 7,892 apartment units were permitted, according to data from the Department of Building and Safety. That includes everything from affordable units to luxury apartments. It represents a 1% increase from the year prior but a 34% decrease from 2019.

Los Angeles faces an acute housing shortage, a problem that has exacerbated a longstanding homelessness crisis and has contributed to rising unaffordability that burdens many of the city’s residents. According to the Southern California Association of Governments, the city of Los Angeles must produce 456,643 housing units during the decade, a pace it now appears certain to miss by a wide margin.

Despite the chronic need for more housing, builders say they are up against an array of obstacles in Los Angeles. Production costs are more than double the average costs in Texas, according to a RAND study. The controversial Measure ULA, informally known as the ”mansion tax,” has also been blamed for construction slowdowns. The levy, which went into effect in April 2023, adds a 4% tax on residential and commercial properties sold for $5.3 million or more, and a 5.5% tax on properties sold for over $10.6 million, including apartment blocks. The revenues are intended to be put toward affordable housing. But the extra tax makes building an apartment project and then selling it particularly burdensome.

Ari Kahan, principal of California Landmark Group, said his development firm has significantly scaled back their Los Angeles projects.

“We still explore unique opportunities, but we cannot afford the risk of both ULA and the inevitable other shoe dropping on another related issue in the city of L.A.,” Kahan said.

The city’s housing crisis has been at the forefront of Bass’s first term agenda. ED 1, which went into effect in 2023, was intended to fast-track construction by reducing approval times for affordable housing projects and shelters to 60 days. The directive prompted a flurry of new proposals. But moving those proposals from the drawing board to actual construction has been slow.

Building struggles

ED1 and programs that encouraged affordable housing, such as bonus diversity programs and the Transit Oriented Communities Incentive Program — which incentivizes low-income housing near bus and train stations — have been big enticements for new development. However, Kahan said Measure ULA has made it difficult for developers to turn a profit on those projects, and he predicts that most of them will never be built.

The measure has generated over $1 billion through January 2026. Critics assail the nickname “mansion tax” because the levy equally applies to multifamily apartment buildings and commercial properties, not just expensive single-family homes. Fifty-nine percent of transactions are single-family residences, 25% are commercial properties and 13% are multi-family residences, according to the ULA Revenue Dashboard.

Joe Donlin, director of United to House LA, the coalition of housing, labor and renters groups behind the measure, defended the tax and said it’s important to let the policy “breathe and take effect” to understand its full impact. He called the measure an economic engine for the city, adding that $400 million in ULA revenue went out to affordable housing developers last fall.

“We’re talking about hundreds of new homes being built, thousands of new construction jobs, investment in neighborhoods that haven’t seen investment like this in a long time,” Donlin said.

Donlin said Los Angeles’ housing struggles are likely due to stubbornly high interest rates, insurance costs and construction material costs around the time Measure ULA went into effect.

Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president of LA Family Housing, said she has been able to sidestep Measure ULA because she manages the properties she builds instead of selling them. For her, one of the biggest affordable housing hurdles is a lack of federal assistance to help low-income tenants pay rent.

“[Los Angeles’s] largest housing gap is for our extremely and very low-income households. In order to make housing affordable to that target income group, it would require a larger allocation of rental subsidies,” Klasky-Gamer said.

President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget proposal aimed to cut over $26 billion from federal rental assistance programs, but the House Appropriations Committee rejected the cuts and increased funding for housing assistance programs. Tenant-based vouchers received $2.4 billion more than they did in the 2025 fiscal year, and the project-based rental assistance program received an extra $1.65 billion.

Westchester grows, downtown dwindles

In a rocky year for issued apartment permits, some Los Angeles neighborhoods showed marked increases, while others saw steep declines.

Westchester had 787 apartment units permitted last year, the most of any neighborhood. North Hollywood had the second most at 502, and Mid-City had the third most with 449.

Downtown saw a substantial dip in permits issued. Last year, 207 units were approved, nearly half as many as the year before and an 87% decrease from 2022.

The regression comes as downtown contends with a massive homelessness population. Downtown had the most non-emergency calls for homeless encampments, 8,417, of any neighborhood in 2025, according to MyLA311 service data.

How we did it: We examined all ED1-related projects on the city’s case summary dashboard and compared those with the Department of Building and Safety’s permits issued for new apartments. In addition, we compiled the number of apartment new units permitted for construction in the city over the past decade. In a previous article, Crosstown used a slightly different methodology to determine the number of permitted apartments in the city. The slight changes in methodology account for the difference in numbers in that article.

Have questions about our data? Write to us at askus@xtown.la

This story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Feb. 24, 2026.

East Los Angeles is home to nearly 119,000 residents, but the community has no mayor or city hall.

So who makes decisions? Who fixes potholes? Who gets called to report illegal dumping?

East L.A. is not a city, and it’s not part of the city of L.A. Instead, it’s an unincorporated part of L.A. County, and even though it’s the most populous unincorporated area in California, community organizers say many residents are unaware of the problems that raises.

According to the L.A. County Planning Department, there are approximately 120 to 125 unincorporated areas in the county, which altogether represent two-thirds of its total area and one-tenth of its population.

“For the 1 million people living in these areas, the Board of Supervisors is their ‘city council’ and the supervisor representing the area is their ‘mayor,’” the department website says.

So what does it mean to live in an unincorporated community?

Let’s break it down:

What is an unincorporated community?

An unincorporated area is land within a county that has not been designated to be a city, meaning that it relies on county services, including for law enforcement, public works and local government.

Instead of being governed by a city council and a mayor, major decisions for East L.A. residents fall under the authority of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors.

East L.A. residents have called for representation that’s more closely tied to their community and financial transparency, saying they want to know how their tax dollars are spent locally.

Who represents East LA?

East L.A., located in Supervisorial District 1, has been represented by County Supervisor Hilda Solis since 2014. Her term is set to end this year.

Solis also makes decisions for the nearly 2 million other residents who live in District 1, which covers more than 20 cities, stretching from Silver Lake to Pomona, as well as various neighborhoods of the city of Los Angeles, including Boyle Heights and downtown.

On a state level, East L.A. is represented by Assemblymember Jessica Caloza and state Sen. María Elena Durazo. Rep. Jimmy Gomez represents East L.A. in Congress.

Who provides key services for East LA residents?

Independent cities often provide residents with their own municipal services such as law enforcement, firefighting, animal control, trash collection, road maintenance, library services and parks.

Here’s a list of services available to East L.A. residents:

• First District Field Office – East Los Angeles
  
  • Services: Here’s how you can get in touch with Solis’ office if you have questions or concerns.
  • Location: 4801 E. Third St., Los Angeles
  • Contact: (323) 881-4601
• East LA Sheriff’s Station 
  
  • Services: In addition to serving East L.A., the station also serves the cities of Commerce, Cudahy and Maywood, as well as unincorporated Belvedere Gardens, City Terrace, Eastmont, Saybrook Park and Union Pacific.
  • Location: 5019 E. Third St., East Los Angeles
  • Contact: (323) 264-4151. For emergencies, call 911. 
  • Website: lasd.org/east-los-angeles
• LA County Fire Department
  
  • Services: The L.A. County Fire Department serves all of the unincorporated area within Los Angeles County, as well as 60 incorporated cities, 59 of which are in Los Angeles County and one in Orange County. 
  • Contact: (323) 881-2411. For emergencies, call 911.
  • Website: fire.lacounty.gov
• Public Works
  
  • Services: L.A. County Public Works responds to calls about graffiti, potholes, illegal dumping, homeless encampments, transportation services and building and safety permits, among other things.
  • Contact: Reports can be submitted online. Urgent requests can be made by calling the 24-hour line at (800) 675-4357.
  • Website: pw.lacounty.gov
• 211 LA County
  
  • Services: 211 L.A. County provides health and social service resources, including housing support, mental health care, financial assistance and recovery resources. During disasters, like wildfires and other crises, the line provides real-time information and can help people find shelter, food, financial help and emotional support.
  • Contact: Dial 211. Those unable to reach 2-1-1 service can call (800) 339-6993. TTY/TDD# (phone for hearing impaired): (800) 660-4026
  • Website: 211la.org

For a full list, check out this guide to unincorporated areas services for District 1.

Why isn’t East LA its own city?

Over the decades, multiple efforts to incorporate East LA into a city have failed. A recent fiscal analysis concluded that cityhood remains financially unviable for the region. Residents have continued their calls for more financial transparency and better representation. A new effort on the horizon may allow citizens to directly advise the county on issues unique to East LA.

How can residents make their voices heard?

The report that deemed cityhood unfeasible for unincorporated East LA last year recommended the formation of a Municipal Advisory Council (MAC) — a formal, citizen-led body that would provide residents with a structure for public input and give stakeholders a direct line of communication to county leadership.

At the first of six community forums on Saturday, Feb. 21, some residents deemed the MAC a stepping stone towards proper incorporation down the line. Others asked for better economic investment and access to a localized, itemized budget every year for residents to understand how their tax dollars are spent on improving social services and local businesses.

“Every problem we have, can be solved if we have a local government,” resident Francisco Cardenas. “We have nobody to complain to.”

Here’s everything you need to know about the MAC and the upcoming community forums where residents are invited to weigh in. The next meeting will take place Thursday at East L.A. Library, located at 4837 E. Third St. Register here.