The Brief

Five hurricanes made landfall in the United States this year, causing half a trillion dollars in damages. Flooding devastated mountain towns along the East Coast. Scores of wildfires burned almost 8 million acres nationwide. As such events grow more common, and more devastating, homeowners are seeing their insurance premiums spike — or insurers ditch them all together.

An analysis released by the Senate Committee on the Budget found that the rate at which insurance contracts are being dropped rose significantly in recent years, particularly in states most exposed to climate risks. In all, 1.9 million policies were not renewed.

“Climate change is no longer just an environmental problem,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, who chairs the budget committee, said at a hearing on the matter. “It is an economic threat, and it is an affordability issue that we should not ignore.”

Premiums increase

For those with insurance, premiums rose 44% between 2011 and 2021, and another 11% last year, according to another report from the congressional Joint Economic Committee. A Democratic analyst on the Joint Economic Committee, or JEC, who requested anonymity to comment publicly, said: “The model of insurance as it stands right now isn’t working.”

The JEC report included a state-by-state breakdown of premium increases and risk ranking based on climate perils. Florida topped the list on both fronts, and saw a whopping $1,272 climb in annual premiums between 2020 and 2023. Michigan saw the smallest increase at $136. No state saw a decrease over that time.

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“This isn’t a red or blue state issue,” said the analyst. “It’s widely applicable across the nation.”

Florida also topped the list when it comes to the number of nonrenewals, according to the Senate committee report that examined state- and county-level data. The rate nearly tripled between 2018 and 2023. Nationwide, in 2023, 48 of the top 50 counties — and 82 of the top 100 counties — with the highest rates of nonrenewal were either flood-prone, faced elevated wildfire risk, or both.

Climate-exacerbated disasters can batter insurance markets because those events create massive financial liabilities for insurance providers, and the companies, called re-insurers, that underwrite them. “Ultimately, all those groups are raising their prices and it’s the homeowners who have to pay in the end,” said Philip Mulder, an economist and expert on risk and insurance at the Wisconsin School of Business. He was a co-author of the state-level dataset that helped underpin the JEC’s work.

Not everyone at the Senate hearing agreed on the role climate change plays in insurance markets.

“The insurance industry is not in the midst of a climate-driven crisis, nor is it about to fall,” Robert Hartwig, an economist and associate professor at the University of South Carolina, told lawmakers. “Climate risk is an important determinant in the cost of insurance, but there has been a tendency, however, to over-attribute the impact of climate change when describing the state of insurance markets.”

Insurers are pulling out of states

What is clear is that costly natural disasters are becoming more frequent, with the average time between billion-dollar events dropping from four months in 1980 to approximately three weeks today. As those risks grow, some insurers are pulling out of states entirely. For example, State Farm and Allstate have left California, and dozens of smaller companies have collapsed or fled Florida and Louisiana.

When that happens, homeowners must turn to government-backed insurers of last resort, which are available in just 26 states and typically cost more than private coverage. Enrollment in those state-run plans has skyrocketed, the JEC report notes, and they now cover more than $1 trillion in assets.

“It all falls on the states,” Rob Moore, director of the Water & Climate Team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said of the current regulatory setup. “The federal government has very little role to play on the insurance market.”

The JEC report outlines a number of steps Congress could take to give itself a greater role in addressing the problem. For example, it highlights the need for more data collection through initiatives like the Wildfire Insurance Coverage Study Act to better understand the problem. It also points to the proposed Shelter Act, which would provide homeowners with a tax credit covering 25% of disaster mitigation improvements that bolster their property’s resilience, reduce the risk of catastrophic damage, and, consequently, lower their premiums.

Moore agreed that adapting old homes, and future-proofing new ones, will be key to righting insurance markets. “The real long-term problem is we’re trying to ensure structures that were never built for the risks and vulnerabilities that they now face,” he said. “If you want an insurable structure 30 years from now, we have to build it today.”

Another shift the report mentions is the possibility of the federal government becoming a re-insurer that backstops climate-stressed insurance markets, something the proposed INSURE Act calls for. France, Japan, and New Zealand have such programs, and the report argues that such a move in the U.S. “could simplify a complicated insurance sector and transfer risks associated with catastrophes to the Federal government.”

For now, though, none of those initiatives have progressed in Congress and all of them are sponsored by Democrats. With Republicans taking control of the House, Senate, and presidency, it remains unclear whether the bills have much of a future.

“That’s a question everyone’s thinking about,” the committee analyst said, noting that taking a dollars-and-cents approach could make the issue resonate across the political spectrum. “Wildfires are raging and we’re seeing more and more flooding. This issue isn’t going away.”

For more than 15 years, botanist Naomi Fraga of the California Botanic Garden has been trying to collect seeds from the rare Death Valley sage, for safekeeping in a vault of native California seeds. Each time, she's come home empty handed. But this year, with the desert in the midst of a big bloom, she's trying again.

"It's a little bit of a gamble," she says. "But, you know, the plant's having a really good year. I feel hopeful."

The plant has silvery-green pointy leaves, fuzzy buds and striking deep purple flowers. But it is challenging to study and to sample. Fraga says she often has to hike or scramble up mountainsides, or drive on backroads to find it. Very little is known about the plant's pollinator. And in exceptionally dry years, the Death Valley sage doesn't flower at all – meaning no seeds either.

The sage's habitat is mostly protected, within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. But climate change doesn't respect park boundaries – and could push these plants that are already living on the brink into even more existential peril.

Naomi Fraga examines the flowers of the Death Valley Sage.

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"You can imagine that if conditions were to get more difficult with a changing climate, it's going to be harder and harder to collect seed," Fraga says.

In late March, Fraga headed into the foothills of the Nopah Range, near an abandoned mine, to check on one of the largest populations she knows of. And for the first time since 2009, she found the seeds. Soon, she says, she'll return with a team to attempt the first big harvest of Death Valley sage seeds.

A bee pollinates a Death Valley Sage in the Nopah Range near Death Valley.

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The first day of fall semester for a university freshman is often stressful. Not for Vanessa Menera, an 18-year-old who’s the first in her family to attend college.

Last year, she arrived 15 minutes early to her first fall class with an internship and campus job already in tow, plus a mental map of Cal State University Dominguez Hills, a sprawling, nearly 350-acre institution in the Los Angeles area’s South Bay.

The already confident student possessed even more motivation to make the most of her time on campus because of a program she took last summer: The First-Year Experience Summer Program.

“Everything was so easy to me, and I'm really grateful, because I know it was because of that First Year Experience that I was able to do that,” said Menera.

The summer program is one of several strategies Cal State Dominguez Hills seeks to expand as it combats a half-decade enrollment slide that’s unraveling its finances. But it’s not the only approach to fiscal right-sizing. Nor is Cal State Dominguez Hills alone in combatting large drops in its student population.

That’s because the money that the country’s largest public four-year university system needs to properly educate its students isn’t there. Now, California State University is embarking on a detailed, sweeping plan to enroll more students as part of an all-out push to bring much-needed cash to the workhorse system of 22 campuses that educates 471,000 students.

Ten campuses, including Dominguez Hills, saw double-digit enrollment declines in fall of 2025 compared to fall 2020, when the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The loss of enrollment is a major driver of the financial struggles many of the system’s campuses face. The Cal State’s chancellor’s office says the system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap in the current academic year. There’s a bright spot, though: Cal State officials say the system overall is on pace this year to beat state enrollment targets for the first time in four years.

People walk past the exterior of the Innovation & Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Still, a key state lawmaker admonished the system’s under-enrolled campuses for missing its enrollment targets.

“I'm concerned that these campuses may be overfunded,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a December legislative hearing about Cal State’s finances. He is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education and a key player in deciding how much state money universities receive. His worry? Other campuses with rising enrollments need the money to educate their ever-growing student body by hiring more professors, tutors and other staff to support students.

The state funds campuses based on how many Californians they enroll; by educating fewer students than what the state pays per student, the campuses are technically collecting more revenue than their enrollment levels would permit. That’s because the state pays schools for the number of California students they’re supposed to enroll, not how many they actually enroll.

By that measure, San Francisco State last year collected close to $50 million more in state dollars than its enrollment levels indicate it should receive — the campus enrolled about 5,300 fewer Californians than state goals stipulated in 2024. Cal State Dominguez Hills was taking about $7 million more. Conversely, Cal Poly Pomona was down about $20 million, because they enrolled 2,500 more students than the state’s target.

California is also eyeing multi-billion-dollar budget deficits, putting even more pressure on lawmakers and school systems to use money wisely.

The Legislature last year required Cal State to submit a report by March 1 detailing how campuses with enrollment struggles plan to attract new students and meet their state targets. Campuses sent their turnaround plans to the system’s chancellor’s office by December.

CalMatters conducted a dozen interviews and issued six records requests for this story.

Spotlight on Cal State Dominguez

Cal State Dominguez Hills’ enrollment is down 20% compared to 2020 and its finances have suffered. As a result, campus officials laid off 38 non-faculty staff and managers in 2025.

The school projects it will lose an additional $8 million this year, cutting deeper into its reserves, which have dwindled from $46 million in 2022 to a projected $10 million this summer.

The campus’ graduation rates fall below the systemwide average. And the campus historically has posted lower retention rates, meaning more students quit after one or two years compared to other campuses in the system. Dominguez Hill’s retention rate has grown in the last year, however.

The school enrolls the highest share of undergraduate students in the system who receive the federal Pell grant for low-income students — 69% compared to a Cal State average of 51%. Systemwide, those Pell students graduate at lower levels than students who don’t receive the grant.

Dominguez Hills’ turnaround plan includes a campus goal of enrolling about 800 more students to hit its enrollment target by 2027-28. More students plus planned systemwide tuition hikes and a new student-approved campus fee are projected to generate $25 million in additional money.

To reach its enrollment goals, the campus will lean on approaches that have demonstrated success, including the First Year Experience summer program, which Dominguez Hills started in 2022. Through the program, about a quarter of the freshman class enrolls in up to two free college courses during the summer before fall term. These are all general education courses required for graduation, with an emphasis on teaching students how to study well. The program also engenders a sense of community among students and campus staff.

Other strategies include attracting new students and keeping more of its current students. Another is to re-enroll students who’ve previously dropped out. It’s an approach that’s top of mind for campuses across the state: California is home to about 3.5 million adults with some college credit but no degree. Even a miniscule bump in the students who return to school could eradicate a campus’ enrollment woes.
Another budget-stabilizing effort may mean additional job losses. Campus professors are now meeting regularly to find ways to combine courses and run fewer sections of the same course. This helps the school average more students per course, but it’ll likely mean fewer lecturers — instructors who lack the full-time benefits and job safety of tenured professors.

Systemwide, 63 degree programs were discontinued by the Board of Trustees in 2024.

A student walks up the stairs in the Innovation and Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Dominguez Hills in February reversed course on terminating six majors, including art history and philosophy. Student advocacy spurred the restoration. The school also determined that cutting individual programs made less sense than reviewing all majors to find other ways to integrate academic programs, said Kim Costino, the school’s interim provost, in an interview.

“Everyone is hopeful that we are going to be able to create a more economically efficient curriculum that serves students better,” said Terry McGlynn during an interview. He is a biology professor at Dominguez Hills who is chair of the academic senate, a faculty group that shapes campus academics.

But “there's clearly going to be some pain involved,” he added.

Summer session to keep students longer

The school cited in its report to the system that expanding the The First Year Experience program is one way to increase enrollment.

The campus spends $635,000 annually to run it. Almost 84% of students in the program advanced to their second year of college in fall 2024 — well above the 66% for students who didn’t sign up for the First Year Experience, according to data the campus shared. For a school desperate to undo its enrollment slide, keeping the students it has — and their tuition dollars — is a key strategy.

Any incoming freshman can enroll in the First Year Experience.

One reason Menera knew the campus so well when fall classes began? An extra-credit assignment for her environmental studies course over the summer required her to identify every vending machine on campus.

Student Vanessa Menera, 18, in the Innovation and Instruction Building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters The First Year Experience also features activities that reinforce what students learn, such as a field trip to a museum for an English course led by a guest author whose book the professor assigned to students. For her environmental studies class, Menera said that she carried a trash bag for more than a week to visualize how much waste people accumulate.

The school also awards a $150 scholarship to students who complete a summer-experience course. But for students who work over the summer or help care for family members, that amount alone may not be enough to persuade them to attend the program, said Costino. She ran the summer program until December.

The summer courses are long. Most meet twice weekly for four hours, so a student in two courses is in class for about 16 hours a week. Menera worked anyway that summer, maintaining the job she had during high school at TJ Maxx in Anaheim, some 20 miles from campus. She continues to work now, logging 17 hours a week at a campus convenience store on top of a full academic load. The summer program mentally prepared her for long school and work days, she said.

Costino thinks the program’s growth won’t be in students enrolling the summer before freshman year, but instead in students who earned a D or F in a course their first year and need to make up the class the following summer. While students can presently retake classes, they have to pay for them. Providing free make-up courses that either replace or average out a previous low grade helps the school retain more students who are on academic probation or just lost academic confidence after a bad first year, Costino said.

Re-enrolling students who dropped out

Cal State Dominguez Hills is seeking to expand its efforts to re-enroll students who’ve dropped out. Since 2021 the school has re-enrolled nearly 1,100 such students for fall term through its “Once a Toro, Always a Toro” program, named after the campus mascot.

While these students represent a tiny portion of the campus’ annual enrollment, they lead to instant revenue for the school from tuition and fees. It’s a few extra million dollars for the school, and it costs about $300,000 to $600,000 annually to maintain the re-enrollment program.

Once these students return to Dominguez Hills, most graduate. Data the campus shared with CalMatters show that earlier cohorts of the re-enrolled students have graduation rates of around 50% three years after they return. The numbers grow to about 70% after six years.

The school is now targeting any student who dropped out in the last 15 years or so, said Sabrina Sanders, the program director of Once a Toro.

She maintains a list of 10,000 formerly enrolled students. Annually, about 1,000 apply, around three-quarters are admitted, and roughly 300 to 400 enroll. Some who were admitted don’t enroll for several reasons, including prior low GPAs that make them ineligible for financial aid.

One of the students who returned is Wynette Davis. The 27-year-old is four classes away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology after dropping out two years ago.

Davis transferred to the university from community college in 2022. She was on track to earn her bachelor’s in 2024 and even walked the stage during the spring graduation ceremony, needing just a few more classes that summer to finish her degree. But tragedy struck: Her daughter’s father died in spring 2024, and the shock derailed her academics. That spring and summer, she failed four classes. Davis left as a result.

She tried to re-enroll a year later, but learned she owed the university tuition money and couldn’t qualify for financial aid because her failing grades dropped her below the campus’ threshold for aid eligibility. Davis was ready to give up on earning a bachelor’s until an email from Once a Toro entered her inbox.

A staffer with the program helped Davis receive a waiver for her past-due account balance as long as she promised to pass her classes for the year, Davis said. The staffer also worked with the school financial aid office to reinstate her eligibility for financial aid for her spring classes after her grades improved.

Last fall Davis retook the classes she previously failed, passing them all this time. She’s in two classes this spring and will need two more next fall to earn her bachelor’s degree.

“If it wasn't for the Once a Toro, Always a Toro program, I probably would not have been back in school right now,” Davis said.

Another setback is the changing nature of academic requirements. Students who were gone for a decade may have pursued majors that don’t exist or were heavily altered, so the courses they took toward their majors might not satisfy new requirements. Sanders and the school’s advising teams collaborate with academic department deans to convert the re-enrolling students’ old coursework into the updated expectations for existing majors. Or re-enrolled students pursue an interdisciplinary major that combines old coursework with new.

“There's a sense of shame that comes with dropping out of college and having someone there to kind of put those thoughts and put that inner dialogue to rest” was key, said Stephanie Esquivel, a returning student who re-enrolled in 2022 after leaving the campus her freshman year in 2007.

She credited Sanders with helping her transfer her community college units to her university major. To Esquivel, a team like Once a Toro shows that the campus desires returning students and invests in the social infrastructure to help them, she said.

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

David West raised four kids in Los Angeles working as a Hollywood cinematographer — no mean feat in such a pricey city. But a few years ago, his life took a hard turn.

"Everything went south. Divorce. My brother died," he said. "My dog died."

On top of that, a string of clients who'd hired him for decades also passed away.

Before long, he'd burned through cash and damaged his credit. He moved to Fresno, and now, at 72, West is in a situation he never imagined at this stage of life but one that more and more older people are facing: renting a room in the home of a complete stranger.

"I tried to move, like, an apartment's worth of stuff into a room," he said with a laugh at how impossible it seemed. "You know, how do you do that? I still haven't figured it out."

West looked into a housing subsidy, but his income is just over the limit, so he's grateful for the cost savings of a house share. His roommate, also an older man, covers Wi-Fi, utilities and cable. West volunteers his photography skills at the church where the man is involved and shares his Costco membership.

"It's that give-and-take thing," he said. "It's trying to help each other out as much as possible."

Roommates are skewing older

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

"They're not the biggest group of roommates, but they're by far the fastest growing," said the site's communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

"Maybe 10 years ago they'd have looked at a one-bed or a studio and thought, 'Well, I'll rent that,'" Hutchinson said. Now "they're looking at prices and going, 'There's no way I could afford that.'"

Baby boomers have been aging as housing costs across the U.S. have spiked. In 2023, more than a third of households headed by adults 65 and over struggled to pay housing costs, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the share is even bigger for women living alone.

"Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age," said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. "It's climbed up the income scale. So more and more, you know, middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before."

Older adults are also more likely to face major life events that can lead to financial strain. Caezilia Loibl, chair of the Consumer Sciences Program at Ohio State University, has researched the financial toll of chronic disease and the loss of a spouse at an older age.

"The shock is enormous," she said, "and we see it very clearly in our data how the debt burden goes up and financial vulnerability goes up." People were more likely to fall behind in debt payments, for example, see their credit score drop, file for bankruptcy and face foreclosure.

The upside of learning to live with less

Saving money may be the top reason that more older people are house-sharing. But some see other benefits.

"Oh, I think it's wonderful. Maybe more of the way people used to live," said Darla Desautel, who's 74 and has rented with roommates for years, though she's currently house-sitting in Minnesota.

She loves the flexibility of not being tied down and being able to move where she wants, and she thinks not living alone is healthier. She got along especially well with one roommate who also was an older woman.

"We had a lot in common, and that's pretty special when that works out," she said.

To be sure, there can be annoyances. One place was kept too cold in winter and too hot in summer. There can be smelly cat litter boxes or a roommate who talks on speakerphone in a common area. "Noise is huge. A lot of people think they're quiet when they're really not," she said.

If she could afford it, Desautel said, she would rent solo, though "with a short-term lease." But that would eat up more than half her income. In addition to receiving Social Security, she still works occasionally as a leadership consultant and coach, and she is a licensed secondhand dealer selling "other people's junk."

Desautel is proud that she has learned to whittle down possessions and live with less. "Right now I can move across country with 10 boxes shipped USPS and take a plane," she said.

For now, that's her plan, driving this time, to continue her house-sitting gig in Arizona for the summer. And when that ends, she'll find her next roommate.

In Los Angeles, the soundtrack is familiar. Car horns, the whine of leaf blowers.

But in the middle of Chinatown, another sound cuts through the din: the rhythmic hum of washers and dryers from a trailer parked outside the Alpine Recreation Center.

Chinatown hasn’t had a laundromat for as long as anyone around can remember. This mobile setup – run by the nonprofit The Laundry Truck LA – has become the neighborhood’s de facto laundromat, offering the service for free to locals, twice a week.

For 70-year-old Sam Ma, it’s been a relief.

Ma, a retired construction worker, picked up freshly-laundered items — two pairs of pants, a hat, and some socks, bundled in a white garbage bag for the bus ride home.

He usually washes his clothes by hand. But about two weeks ago, he was hit by a car. Bruises and cuts cover his hands, making it difficult to scrub heavier items.

“The things I can wash, I wash,” he said in Mandarin. “But these are too thick. It’s too hard.”

Rebel Fox of The Laundry Truck L.A. hands a garbage bag filled with newly-laundered sheets to a local.

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Nearby, Laundry Truck employee Rebel Fox checked him out with a clipboard after handing him his load.

“We help a lot of seniors out here,” Fox said. “And we offer folding services, too. It really helps people who don’t have the dexterity in their hands.”

The Laundry Truck started out in 2019 providing laundry services to people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles and has expanded to high-need communities, like Eaton Fire survivors.

In February, the nonprofit started operating in Chinatown under a year-long contract with Council District 1, showing up every Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.

A sink or bathtub

Chinatown advocates say the lack of a laundromat is especially hard on low-income tenants living in older, neglected buildings.

“These landlords aren’t doing much to keep it updated,” said Sissy Trinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance.

Maintaining laundry rooms may require major plumbing upgrades and hookups that many landlords avoid.

Newly-constructed residential buildings are typically being constructed with in-unit laundry.

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Advocates say in buildings that do have shared coin-operated machines, they may be broken or in constant use. Many residents decide to launder clothes by hand — in sinks or bathtubs.

“In one building, the sinks were so small, people had to cut their sheets in half just to wash them,” Trinh said. “They’d wash one half, then the other.”

A reversal of access

Those who could benefit from a laundromat include seniors on fixed incomes, and workers living paycheck to paycheck, including garment workers and home health aides.

“You’re talking about low-income, financially-stressed households,” Paul Ong said.

Ong, who studies urban inequality at UCLA, says Chinatown reflects a broader pattern: as neighborhoods change, basic services can disappear.

Each pile of dirty clothes is labeled with customers' names.

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The neighborhood’s last full-service grocery store closed in 2019 after the property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, new market-rate housing has gone up, catering to higher-income residents with amenities like parking and in-unit laundry.

“The irony is that historically, laundry was bread and butter for the Chinese community,” Ong said.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants built livelihoods around laundry work — one of the few industries open to them at the time.

Nowadays, laundry options have become hard to come by.

Seeking a lasting fix

Residents without access to machines have to leave the neighborhood entirely to find a laundromat in Lincoln Heights or Echo Park, which has seen its own laundromats disappear.

Laundry can be spotted drying on balconies across Chinatown.

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“The long-term, permanent solution is that a laundry service opens up,” in the neighborhood, said Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Chinatown.

Hernandez says constituents have asked for a laundromat from the time she was knocking on doors as a City Council candidate.

Hernandez, who is up for re-election this year, says the neighborhood could benefit from a community-run laundromat offering affordable services.

“If private industry is not making that investment in Chinatown then perhaps it’s up to the city – and the people of that neighborhood – to build something for them,” she said.

In the meantime, Hernandez has directed about $250,000 from her district — using TFAR payments from developers building larger projects — to cover a year of mobile laundry services.

The contract with the Laundry Truck runs through next February.

After that?

“We’ll keep filling the gap until we get to a permanent solution,” Hernandez said.

Could that solution be combined with housing?

Some community advisors to a new affordable housing project being developed on the northwestern edge of Chinatown have been pushing for a self-service laundry that would be open to other neighborhood residents, says Eugene Moy who sits on the advisory board of New High Village.

But any fix will take time. That project, Moy said, could be two years out from even breaking ground.

Taking a load off 

Back at the truck, the machines continue to spin. By mid-afternoon, nearly 18 loads of laundry are done.

The trailer for the LA Laundry Truck is set up outside the Alpine Recreation Center, across from Castelar Elementary School.

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Two months in, there are kinks to work out. How to get more residents to take advantage of the unit's capacity? Its machines can churn out 40 loads per shift.

There is also the question of whether some seniors are physically able to transport their laundry even a few blocks.

But the service is starting to get regulars. One woman on her second visit stood by the trailer, cradling just-washed clothes in her arms while clutching her daughter's teddy bear, now a sparkling white.

"If it keeps going, I'll keep coming," said the woman who gave her last name as Mo. "It's very convenient."

Her apartment building doesn’t have a laundry room. Sometimes she asks a friend next door if she can use theirs. With three children, the cost adds up quickly.

Thinking aloud, she calculated how much she saved that day.

About $8, she estimated — money she said could now spend on her kids.