The Brief

Orange County officials are moving forward with a series of projects to stabilize a stretch of coastal railway through San Clemente despite environmental critics saying the “haphazard” measures will only have short term benefits.

The coastal rail is part of the Los Angeles-San Diego-San Luis Obispo, or LOSSAN, rail corridor. Train service has had multiple disruptions since 2021 because of erosion and landslides.

The emergency measures approved by the Orange County Transportation Authority board include the addition of more than 500,000 cubic yards of sand, as well as the repairing and additions of rock along the coastal railway. The California Coastal Commission’s permit approvals also include installing a 1,400-foot catchment wall to hold debris from landslides and restoring a pedestrian trail at Mariposa Point.

But Mandy Sackett, senior California policy coordinator for Surfrider Foundation, said the “haphazard” short term rock walls won’t hold back the ocean and will instead destroy beach access for the public.

Environmental groups say that while the catchment wall will help address the issues that have led to railroad closures, the continued addition of rocks is exacerbating coastal erosion and limiting public access to the beach.

“If everything was natural, as coastal erosion happened, the beach would just move inland. But what the rocks do is that they put an arbitrary line in the sand and they fix the coastline right there,” said Suzie Whitelaw, president of Save Our Beaches San Clemente.

Storm waves crashing against the rocks, she said, then accelerate erosion.

“ It becomes a vicious cycle,” she said.

Sackett added that the current walls prevent the public from walking from city beaches to San Clemente State Beach and San Onofre State Beach.

The sand option

Whitelaw said sand is the the best solution for creating a long lasting buffer, adding  ”the wide sandy beaches protected the tracks for 130 years until they got too narrow.”

The beaches along the rail got so narrow that there was no dry beach left, but sand replenishment efforts by the San Clemente City Council, she said, has now resulted in some dry sand in North Beach.

Researchers at UC Irvine have previously told LAist that sand is the natural defense against strong waves.

The stabilization measures include sand, but it’s not coming soon.

The California Coastal Commission granted emergency permits to OCTA, but now the transportation authority needs to obtain permits from the Army Corps of Engineers for the sand, with the project expected to start next year.

The commission also pushed back on a request to install a 1,200-foot rock wall near San Clemente State Beach, a decision applauded by environmental groups like the Surfrider Foundation.

“This is a $300-million public works project that the OCTA is trying to push through the emergency permit process, which kind of circumvents environmental review, any public input, and it's really frustrating,” Sackett said.

Joel Zlotnik, a spokesperson for OCTA, told LAist the work will result in the temporary closure of the rail line, but the agency is still working out a timeline. He added that OCTA obtained the money for the projects from the federal and state governments.

OCTA has spent about $40 million since 2021 to address emergency closures of the railroad, he said.

What is the long term outlook for the coastal rail corridor?

OCTA is currently spearheading the Orange County coastal rail resiliency study” to explore long term protection strategies for the coastal rail corridor. The report was supposed to come out later this year, but Zlotnik told LAist that it will likely be released in 2026 because the stabilization measures will take precedence.

“We want to make sure we have sufficient time to get enough meaningful feedback,” he said.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, groups of three and four people headed out from the El Toro Public Library in Lake Forest for the last day of Orange County’s biennial count of unhoused people. The survey helps officials decide what services are needed and keep track of changing demographics and trends.

The last point in time count in Orange County saw a spike of around 28% in the number of unhoused people, with around 7,300 people experiencing homelessness. Results for the point in time count usually come out in May.

What volunteers observed

Rocio Palafox and Cameron Pastrano from Orange County’s Office of Care Coordination together with volunteer Mike Kimball went out to survey Irvine Thursday morning. All the unhoused people they encountered were living in their cars parked at places like Irvine’s Metrolink station and long term parking lots.

They were just waking up as they answered the anonymous survey.

Rocio Palafox and Cameron Pastrano navigate to a canvassing area during Orange County's biennial count of unhoused people.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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One of the people surveyed — who asked that LAist not identify her as she is in the process of applying for jobs — was 59 years old and said she has been sleeping in her car for over a year.

“ Lost my job and lost my place to live because of it,” she said. “ Rent is crazy, can't afford it. You need more than one job.”

Another person, 61, also said she’s living in her car because she has trouble finding work. She also asked that LAist not use her name as she is hoping to land a job soon.

“ I got laid off from two jobs at the same time right before Christmas, which was really hard,” she said.

Becks Heyhoe-Khalil, executive director of United to End Homelessness, tallied people experiencing homelessness in Costa Mesa, where all the people she encountered were sleeping on the streets.

“ Over and over again, what we heard was financial, loss of a job and the challenge to be able to continue paying rent and it sort of began this spiraling effect,” she said.

When wages are stagnant and do not increase with the rising cost of living, Heyhoe-Khalil said, it’s “ a really dangerous recipe for people to fall through the cracks and end up experiencing homelessness.”

Challenges with the count

Heyhoe-Khalil said she’s been part of the counts for many years. This year, for the first time, she noticed “ there was a little bit more hesitancy around responding and participating in the survey itself.”

Many people declined to take part in the survey, she said, worried about entering some of their information into the system.

Even in Irvine, Palafox and Pastrano encountered a handful of people who declined to answer the survey, but they still entered the data as observational.

Doug Becht, director of Orange County’s Office of Care Coordination, which leads homelessness efforts, said in south Orange County cities, most unhoused people live in their cars, which can make it challenging to engage with them.

 ”Vehicles move quite often, so that care can sometimes be choppy,” he said.

South O.C. also has the least amount of shelter beds, he said, so finding supportive housing can be a challenge. And those cities have long resisted plans to build temporary shelters.

Instead, the county has tried to engage South O.C. cities to develop other forms of support, Becht said. In San Juan Capistrano, the city hall is now only located on the bottom floor, the rest has been converted to supportive housing.

Why the point in time count matters

The point in time count — required to take place during the last 10 days of January — helps the federal government allocate funds toward addressing homelessness. State and county officials use those funds to assess what programs and services are needed on the ground.

Becht said the count also helps the county engage with people experiencing homelessness. Once they have a person on the radar, it will allow outreach teams to go back out and try to get them off the streets and into temporary housing.

 The biggest takeaway from the last count in 2024, he said, “was that we have a bottleneck in our shelters.”

“We just don't have places to put them. And the longer they are in the shelter, that means the longer I have to wait to help people on the street move into the shelter,” he added.

L.A. County is considering plans to remove potentially thousands of unhoused people from areas around sports venues ahead of the Olympic Games in 2028.

County officials issued a strategy report last week advising local governments on how to clear people from encampments near major events and move them into temporary housing. However, the same report notes that there are concerns there won't be enough beds and there's no new funding for such an effort.

Sarah Mahin, L.A. County's director of Homelessness Services and Housing, submitted the report at the direction of the Board of Supervisors. It’s one of the first indications of how homelessness in the region might be approached ahead of and during the Olympic Games.

Shayla Myers with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles said the plan is aimed at eliminating visible signs of homelessness for the Olympics, rather than addressing the root causes of the housing crisis.

" You're not actually getting people off the streets. You're simply attempting to make specific locations clear," she said of the county's approach. "It is about taking resources to clear encampments in the most visible locations when you have cameras and tourists all putting their focus on Los Angeles."

L.A. County's Homeless Services and Housing Department did not immediately return requests for comment.

Efforts to remove unhoused people will focus on the security perimeters of Olympic venues, according to the county's report.

"The County will use any established security perimeters…to identify and coordinate with host jurisdictions to prioritize encampments that may be affected," Mahin wrote.

LA28, the private nonprofit planning the Olympics, also told the county that those security perimeters would be its focus, according to the report.

“In the event that LA28 is advised that relocating unhoused individuals may be necessary for their own safety, we will ensure that the appropriate local government stakeholders have sufficient time to plan for the necessary services and housing support,” LA28 wrote in a statement to LAist. 

A spokesperson for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass said her office was in touch with the report's authors to "discuss next steps in continuing efforts to address this humanitarian crisis."

As part of the regional strategy, the county has developed a tool to estimate costs for cities looking at removing encampments around venues. That tool allows local jurisdictions to enter the expected number of people, the percentage of individuals who will go into shelters, and how many people will need long-term housing support.

Myers with the Legal Aid Foundation said she appreciated the county's focus on moving people into shelters, but that the plan would open up unhoused people to possible criminalization.

"The first round is to offer shelter, and the second round is often to bring in cops or to put up fences or to invest in citations," she said.

The report includes the latest "point in time" count of people living outside in the council districts of Los Angeles hosting Olympic events, as well as other host cities like Long Beach and Pasadena. In total, that number is more than 5,300 people.

"However, the number of unsheltered individuals in the areas immediately surrounding event venues should be reassessed closer to event dates to ensure an accurate estimate," the report states.

County supervisors Hilda Solis and Janice Hahn introduced a motion asking for the report in 2024, referencing concerns about public perception of local government's approach to homelessness ahead of many major events coming to Los Angeles.

"Efforts to address homelessness in advance of international sporting events in other jurisdictions have had uneven results, leading to accusations that governments are busing unhoused individuals to the outskirts of host cities without addressing the underlying lack of shelter capacity," the motion states.

The county's guidance points out that additional resources for plans to clear encampments at this point don't exist.

Representatives for Long Beach, for example, told the county that it could be challenging to secure motel rooms for interim housing at typical rates around the Olympics. The city also expressed concern about unsheltered people and at-risk tenants being displaced. 

Clearing encampments without enough housing resources could lead to displacing more unhoused people and those at risk of homelessness, Mahin wrote.

About 4,000 California Department of Public Health employees have been told they must use a federal verification system to prove they’re U.S. citizens.

Leaders of the agency said in a memo obtained by CalMatters that the verification is necessary to receive federal funding, but employees and unions are resisting the directive.

In the memo, a department human resources deputy director asked employees to comply with a series of deadlines that culminate on April 10. A separate document distributed by the department said that failing to complete the verification may result in the state losing a contract with the Centers for Disease Control for the national death index, which collects death certificate data from authorities nationwide.

The department is also making the move to address incomplete employment eligibility records identified in a recent audit, according to the Service Employees Union International Local 1000, which represents roughly 3,000 department employees.

As at other U.S. employers, all new California health department employees complete a federal I-9 form to prove their citizenship. The department is now asking them to enroll in E-Verify, a program administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration. That system compares information provided by an employee on the I-9 to records in federal databases, including at Social Security and the Department of Homeland Security. In some cases it also prompts employers to compare each applicant’s identification document photo with the one they provided during the E-Verify process. The memo said employees will specifically use E-Verify+, which combines filling out an I-9 with verification. Employees hired before November can opt out of using that specific version of E-Verify.

SEIU Local 1000 President Anica Walls told CalMatters in an email that forcing all employees to use E-Verify “raised serious concerns for our members about privacy, data security, and the unnecessary re-verification of workers who are already legally employed.”

The union sent a petition to executives in charge of the state agency last month to express concern about the verification and underline that employees submitted documents to prove their citizenship when they were hired. Walls told CalMatters the health agency is currently the only California state department the union is aware of that has asked their employees to recertify their citizenship status. The union represents about 100,000 state employees at 140 state agencies, boards, commissions and departments.

“When federal systems and funding conditions are used to justify expanded data collection from workers, it raises red flags — especially when those workers have already met employment eligibility requirements,” she wrote. “Our members are concerned about their personal data being sent to federal systems with known accuracy and security issues. And this is coming at a time when both U.S. citizens and immigrant workers are understandably concerned about how employment data could be accessed or used by federal agencies.”

The E-Verify+ requirement is creating fear and uncertainty among employees and may affect employee recruitment and retention in the future, said Jacqueline Tkac, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists-UAW Local 1115, a union that represents roughly 800 health department employees. Amid reports of ICE activity at workplaces and people being taken off the street, the timing could not be worse.

“E-verify+ is not a neutral administrative tool. It’s deeply integrated with DHS databases, including systems used by ICE, and relies on biometrics and cross-agency data sharing,” she said in a statement shared with CalMatters. “Introducing this at a time when immigrant communities and public health scientists are being openly targeted by the current federal administration is extremely chilling.”

The California Department of Public Health did not respond to multiple requests to answer questions. State information officer Nicole Skow told CalMatters that the California Department of Human Resources does not monitor how state agencies verify employment eligibility and that use of E-Verify is determined at a department level.

Since it became available in the 1990s, E-Verify has been, by default, a voluntary program for employers, but it has become mandatory for more and more of them over time. The federal government has required E-Verify for certain contracts since 2009 and more than 20 states now require E-Verify for their own contracts or to issue business licenses. Earlier this month, Florida lawmakers passed a bill that requires employers of all sizes to use the federal program.

Critics of E-Verify say the program needs reforms to address instances in which it makes mistakes, including cases where people commit identity fraud to get jobs they shouldn’t have and false positives leading people to lose jobs that they were lawfully allowed to have. Based on Bureau of Labor Statistics data and the E-Verify error rate, if Congress passed an E-Verify mandate today, the citizenship status of more than 120,000 people would get inaccurately labeled, allowing ineligible immigrants to work and labeling some U.S. citizens ineligible to work, which could lead to loss of wages or jobs, said Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Democrat from Maryland, during a hearing last month where members of Congress debated a bill that would require E-Verify use for all federal contracts.

The health department’s push to prove citizenship comes at a time when the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is ramping up I-9 audits that may precede raids. It also comes on the heels of ICE agents shooting and killing two people in Minnesota, the deaths of multiple people in ICE detention facilities, and multiple news reports that the Department of Homeland Security wants to bring similar tactics to California and New York.

It’s possible the department wants to prepare for or forestall an audit from ICE. I-9 audits increased in Minnesota in recent weeks, Minneapolis-based immigration attorney Matthew Webster told CalMatters. Webster said some appear indiscriminate, with audit notices “basically just being dropped off door to door,” and some seeming to be retaliatory, like a hospital where staff protested ICE’s treatment of a patient shortly before the hospital was audited, and a St. Paul toy store that gave away whistles that protesters use to alert their neighbors to ICE activity, also shortly before it was audited. Webster expects such audits to become more commonplace as tens of billions of dollars continue to pour into the law enforcement agency from the federal budget.

A set of “Frequently Asked Questions” drafted by the California Department of Public Health and distributed to employees describes E-Verify+ as intended to “reduce errors, streamline onboarding, and improve the overall employee experience.”

But one employee, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation, told CalMatters that in light of recent events, they’re concerned about the department providing employee photos to the Department of Homeland Security under E-Verify. They also said the health department should have made it clearer that employees could opt out of the “plus” version of E-Verify and should extend this option to people hired since November, who must always use E-Verify+, according to the questions document.

“Nowhere in the memo does it tell us we can opt out,” they said. “That information only came after employees raised concerns to the director.”

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