The Brief

Half of the endangered Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep tracked by scientists died during last season’s record-breaking winter, according to researchers interviewed by LAist.

Some sheep got trapped in avalanches, some died of starvation, and some were killed by mountain lions when the sheep were forced to move to lower elevations to look for food.

The population is now estimated at 360 sheep, a 40% decline from a year ago, according to Tom Stephenson, who heads the California Department of Fish and Wildlife's Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program. That estimate includes new lambs that were born in the spring.

Some herds, including two of the three living in Yosemite National Park, have been mostly or perhaps entirely wiped out.

During their summer field surveys, researchers found just one live ewe, the term for adult female bighorns, from Yosemite's Mount Gibbs herd. Last year there were 20.

They found no live ewes from Yosemite's Cathedral Range herd, which they say leaves little chance the herd can recover naturally.

"It's frustrating," Stephenson said. "I've spent a lot of my career trying to get this animal to recovery. And when you think you have it figured out, you'll get a curveball thrown at you like a winter as extreme as the one we just had."

The extent of the devastation is evident in the field notes recorded since the beginning of 2023 and posted on the recovery program's website:

• Taboose Creek herd, Feb. 1: "All collared ewes are believed to be dead from heavy snows this winter."
• Mount Williamson herd, Feb. 23: "4 bighorn have been killed by lion predation since January, and as many as 6 others may have died due to heavy snows this winter."
• Sawmill Canyon herd, April 16: "7 bighorn are known to have been killed by lions in Sawmill Canyon since January, including a ewe that was captured 4 days prior to lion predation."
• Laurel Creek herd, May 27: "All collared animals are believed to have died this past winter and spring during heavy snows."
• Big Arroyo herd, May 27: "All collared animals are believed to have died this winter, during heavy snows."

State and federal wildlife officials have managed Sierra bighorn herds since the 1970s in an effort to re-establish a healthy population. The sheep were listed as an endangered species in 1999.

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Courtesy: Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program

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CA Department of Fish & Wildlife

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Other Sierra Nevada herds fared better, including Yosemite's Mount Warren herd. In the Mount Baxter herd, which is the largest, near the eastern Sierra town of Independence, researchers observed 75 sheep over the summer.

Researchers try to keep tracking collars on about one-third of all female ewes in order to gauge a herd's health and ability to reproduce. They generally collar fewer rams. Half of the collared animals died over the winter.

The bighorn recovery team also does winter and summer surveys of the areas occupied by the 14 bighorn herds they monitor, but some sheep territory is difficult to access. Researchers say it’s possible some sheep in the hardest-hit herds survived and simply couldn't be found.

"I don't want to let go of this idea that there still might be sheep out there," said Sarah Stock, a Yosemite National Park wildlife ecologist, referring to the decimated Cathedral Range herd. "But I am also realistic at the same time."

Brief history of the Sierra Nevada bighorn

The Sierra Nevada bighorn broke off from their desert bighorn cousins to form a distinct subspecies some 600,000 years ago, according to John Wehausen, who has been studying the Sierra sheep for close to 50 years. Wehausen now heads the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Foundation.

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep often feed in meadows at the bottom of rocky slopes and snowfields. Then, they'll work their way back up the slopes to spend the night at high elevations among the boulders.

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Up until European settlers came in the 1700s and 1800s, thousands of bighorn sheep are thought to have occupied the Sierra Nevada, from the Yosemite region south to Mount Whitney and the high slopes of Sequoia National Park.

But European settlement was devastating for the sheep, mostly because imported domestic sheep passed on bacteria to the native bighorns that caused fatal respiratory diseases. The bighorns had no immunity.

That led to many decades of decline. By the mid-1990s, there were only about 100 Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep left. Conservationists ramped up efforts to save the species, and they were listed as endangered by the state and federal government in 1999.

Since then, state and federal wildlife officials have tried to carefully manage the herds. They’ve transported ewes and rams from healthy herds to augment smaller ones, and started new herds in other parts of the sheep's historic range.

Bighorn sheep once occupied a large swath of the Sierra Nevada, from the Yosemite region south to Mount Whitney and the high slopes of Sequoia National Park.

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Courtesy: Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program

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CA Department of Fish & Wildlife

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In March 2015, for example, in a celebrated event, 10 ewes and three rams were airlifted to Yosemite's Cathedral Range to start a herd there. (Stock, the Yosemite wildlife ecologist, gave a passionate TEDx Talk about the release in 2016.)

At that time, in 2016, the Sierra Nevada bighorn population numbered over 600 animals — healthy enough for Stephenson to think the animal might be downlisted from endangered to threatened within the next five years.

Now, that seems like a distant goal.

In a recent talk for the Yosemite Forum lecture series, Wehausen noted that after 37 years of trying to re-establish a healthy bighorn sheep population in the Yosemite area, "we are exactly where we started," he said. "It seems like it's a juncture and we should ask some hard questions about what we're doing here."

Why did the bighorn have such a tough winter?

The naturalist John Muir wrote in 1894 that bighorn sheep "ranks highest among the animal mountaineers of the Sierra."

Wheeler Ridge, where one of the bighorn herds lives, during the heavy 2022-2023 winter.

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The padding on their hooves grips surfaces like a rock climbing shoe. Their ultra-powerful legs can propel them up near-vertical slopes at high speed. Their keen eyesight helps them spot food and predators across the vast expanses of the Sierra.

Their bodies are equipped to spend winters in freezing conditions at elevations above 11,000 feet. The species has survived at least three ice ages (Wehausen says new evidence shows they've survived six).

So why was this winter so tough on them?

First off, the amount of snow was exceptional, at least in recent history. "Last winter was the largest in 23 years," said Karl Rittger, a research scientist at the University of Colorado's Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research.

A total of 11 atmospheric rivers hit California, dumping two to four times the average precipitation in the central and southern Sierra Nevada mountains, according to the institute's data.

Researchers had documented heavy losses of bighorn in the winter of 2016-2017 and, to a lesser extent, 2018-2019. But deaths this year were the highest since species recovery efforts began.

Stephenson said the Sierra Nevada had likely experienced storms of similar intensity at some point in history, and the bighorn species persisted. But because the population is now so small, it's difficult to sustain major losses.

"This is a good example of how much effort needs to go into recovering an endangered species once a population declines," he said.

A smaller population also means less genetic diversity that might help sheep weather future storms, said Dani Berger, a Ph.D student at Utah State University who studies the way Sierra Nevada bighorns handle snow.

"This is a game of small numbers and in small numbers you're vulnerable to things like unexpected changes in the environment," she said.

Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep rely on their excellent eyesight to spot approaching predators and sources of fodder.

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Migration routes disrupted

Another potential reason the Sierra bighorns fared so poorly this year is because they lack generational knowledge of migration routes that might've helped them find food and escape avalanche-prone areas. Some of the herds that experienced the biggest losses this year were relatively new to their area — within the last 10 years — either because they moved there on their own or because researchers transported them there.

"Those historic migration patterns would have given them many more opportunities to move to lower elevations where they would be much less impacted by these severe winters," Stephenson said.

Still, Berger noted, in many parts of the Sierra, the winter was so snowy, including at lower elevations, that the sheep had no good options.

"If you stay up high, you might die in an avalanche and might not have food. Or you can come down to lower elevations and risk being eaten by a mountain lion," Berger said. "It's hard to say which is the bigger threat, but it seems this winter, snow was definitely the bigger threat."

Mountain lions threaten recovery

In late August, the Los Angeles Times reported on the Sierra Nevada Bighorn Sheep Recovery Program’s failed effort several years ago to relocate two male mountain lions to a desert mountain range to prevent them from preying on the bighorn sheep.

One of the lions had killed more than 10 Sierra bighorns, Stephenson said, "so we really couldn't just let it remain within the recovery area and continue to eat bighorn sheep."

Mating season for bighorn sheep takes place in the fall. Rams compete to mate with the females, including by slamming their heads together.

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The hope, Stephenson said, was that moving the lions to a mountain range in the Mojave National Preserve — with a large stretch of desert between them and the Sierra Nevada — would prevent the lions from trying to return.

But they did try. One starved to death in the desert while the other was so emaciated that it had to be euthanized. Mountain lion advocates, referenced in the L.A. Times piece, said the effort caused the animals unnecessary suffering.

After the L.A. Times and several other media outlets published articles, Stephenson said he got threats from angered readers and calls for his resignation.

Stephenson said he felt the story failed to explain the dire straits faced by Sierra bighorn and his program's longer-term efforts to manage the directly competing interests of the sheep and lions.

When the Sierra bighorns were listed as endangered, mountain lions were recognized as a major threat to their recovery. In the early years of the recovery program, mountain lions known to target bighorn sheep were regularly euthanized — sometimes several of them each year, he said.

Stephenson said the program has since shifted toward relocating mountain lions to areas where they have abundant deer and other prey. They've learned that it's much easier to relocate female lions than males "because [males] have such a strong homing instinct and they want to return," he said.

"We're obviously trying to run this recovery program as responsibly as possible and we aren't trying to eliminate lions from the eastern Sierra," Stephenson said. He added that the local mountain lion population "is still incredibly healthy."

Historically, grizzly bears and wolves that once lived in the Sierra Nevada might have kept the mountain lion population in check.

"We know that wolves preyed on mountain lions," Stock said. "So our predator-prey system is kind of out of whack. And that could be part of the issue that we're seeing play out right now."

Wehausen sees a glimmer of hope in a new pack of gray wolves that made an appearance this summer in Sequoia National Forest.

What climate change might mean for Sierra bighorn

The upside of all that winter precipitation was plentiful summer forage for the surviving sheep and their new lambs. LAist joined researchers on a recent hike to look for bighorn on the backside of Wheeler Ridge, northwest of Bishop. A group of around 10 sheep — ewes, rams and yearlings — nibbled grass at the bottom of a snowfield.

Two of the rams occasionally butted heads, a sign that mating season is starting.

Tom Stephenson has headed up the Sierra bighorn recovery program since 2008.

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Some of the sheep wore tracking collars with a colored tag to make them easier to spot among the tan and beige boulders that provide near perfect camouflage. Almost all had bulging bellies.

"They're really fat," Stephenson said, peering through binoculars. "They look superb."

Whether that translates to healthier herd numbers next year might depend on whether the sheep face another harsh winter.

As the climate changes, the Sierra Nevada is expected to experience less snow, on average, but also more intense storms. If temperatures are warmer, more water makes its way into the atmosphere through a process called evapotranspiration, Rittger, the snow expert, explained.

"There's more water in the atmosphere for it to sort of drop onto the Sierra Nevada so you can get these big, extreme storms and we just happened to get a bunch of those last year," Rittger said.

More intense storms could be especially hard on herds that live in the typically snowiest parts of the Sierra Nevada and where it's harder to find paths down and out of the snow. This includes the northern herds around Yosemite.

Wehausen told LAist that during his decades of work trying to recover bighorn sheep, he's "been surprised at lots of things that slapped us in the face," including last season’s devastating winter.

He has come to think that saving the species will require much longer-term thinking — figuring out how best to help them withstand the still-uncertain future climate.

"They're really a magnificent animal living in a magnificent mountain range," Wehausen said. "I think it's worth the effort to get them to the next glacial period."

California voters considering Proposition 45 will decide the fate of a sweeping infrastructure measure that opponents warn could render the state’s brand-new data center laws virtually toothless.

That would make it far easier for developers to force unwanted facilities into local communities, potentially undermining a growing wave of bans, moratoriums, and anti-data-center resolutions at the city and county level.

Data center backers insist the ballot measure will do nothing for them — even as some data center beneficiaries are spending big backing Prop. 45.

Supporters have framed Prop. 45 as a tool to accelerate critical infrastructure projects, like housing and schools, and the measure does not directly name data centers among the sorts of projects it considers critical. But some legal scholars and environmental advocates say that the proposition’s technical language creates a loophole. By expediting environmental reviews under the California Environmental Quality Act for broad categories of projects — including broadband internet facilities and any additional infrastructure required to get them up and running — the measure could quietly allow data centers to bypass recent state safeguards and local scrutiny.

Julia Stein, a legal scholar and deputy director at UCLA School of Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, warns that the measure acts as a “blunt force instrument when it comes to streamlining” because of how wide its secondary umbrella extends.

“What Prop. 45 does is designate an entire class of projects that would be subject to streamlining, and then it also says that projects ancillary to those projects — so something that you might need to do in the course of the development of the project that’s exempted itself — would fall within that same streamlining bubble,” Stein said.

Telecommunications projects are explicitly streamlined under the proposition, “and there’s an argument that the development of data centers might be necessary for projects like that,” Stein added.

Other projects, like high-speed rail, are explicitly excluded from streamlining under the proposition — but data centers are not on that list, either. Stein and three other environmental law scholars told CalMatters that this opens the door for legal challenges.

“The fact that they excluded some projects but have not expressly excluded data centers, a court would probably actually interpret that not as an unintentional oversight, but rather as intent to include data centers in the initiative,” said Matt McKerley, an attorney with Shute, Mihaly and Weinberger.

Further, opponents argue that the proposition’s language, which includes a clause that it would supersede other related laws, would override measures like the recently-passed Senate Bill 887, which made it harder to fast-track environmental review for data centers.

Industry representatives say these objections to Prop. 45 are misplaced. The Data Center Coalition, an industry group supporting Prop. 45, insists their facilities fall outside the initiative’s scope, which focuses largely on housing development.

The Los Angeles City Council approved the transfer of $5 million Wednesday to support residents and businesses affected by the Lineage warehouse fire, part of a $10.5 million recovery package proposed by Councilmember Ysabel Jurado.

Households and businesses will soon be able to apply to receive assistance through a program established by the city’s Community Investment Department (CID). A timeline on when the applications will open or when grants will be provided was not immediately available.

A significant portion of the initial funding will go toward improving sanitation services near Lineage, including paying for workers’ overtime salaries to enhance pressure washing, bulky item pickup and to respond to illegal dumping.

Jurado addressed the council at Wednesday’s meeting, describing how the June fire had impacted residents’ health, livelihoods and peace of mind.

“The emergency is still ongoing, and it won’t end until the city can fulfill the long-term commitment we made with them to set a new bar for the level of care that the Eastside deserves. The funding that we can advance today is a milestone in turning that commitment, the promise that Boyle Heights can once again believe in its own future, into action,” Jurado said.

Months after the fire, residents reported dealing with exorbitant utility bills caused by running air purifiers and air conditioners over the summer. Some residents told Boyle Heights Beat that they lost work due to the fire and that support from Lineage, the city and county in the immediate aftermath was not enough. 

Here’s how the initial $5 million breaks down: 

• $2.5 million in direct financial assistance will go to more than 100 qualifying Boyle Heights businesses and Lineage workers in ZIP codes 90033, 90032, and 90063.
  
  • Qualified businesses with fewer than 6 employees will be eligible to receive $2,500 per month for six months.
  • Qualified businesses with 6 or more employees will be eligible to receive $5,000 per month for six months.
  • LA City residents employed by Lineage and experiencing economic hardship because of the fire will be eligible to receive $2,000 per month for six months. 
• $1.8 million in direct financial awards will go toward qualifying Boyle Heights households that were affected by the fire.
• $664,460 will go toward funding supplies and overtime salaries for pressure washing, bulky item pickup, and illegal dumping responses in Boyle Heights through the end of the current fiscal year on June 30, 2027.

The initial $5 million from the city’s unappropriated balance will go to L.A. Sanitation and CID. The additional proposed $5.5 million will come from Measure A funding to further support residents, according to Jurado’s office.  

What we still don’t know: 

It is still unclear when the application will open, how soon grants will be provided and how many residents and businesses will be chosen to receive financial relief. It is also unclear how soon L.A. Sanitation will begin additional cleanup near Lineage. Boyle Heights Beat has reached out to the CID with those questions and will update this story when we find out more. 

The post LA approves initial $5 million to help Boyle Heights residents, businesses recover from the Lineage fire appeared first on LA Local.

Aurora Morales was walking through an alley near MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025, when she spotted something hidden behind a small group of people.

“There’s a guy,” Morales called out to her teammate, Angel Borjas. “He’s behind his wheelchair. He’s really hard to see.”

The man was squatted down and bent over at the waist, his forehead nearly touching the ground. For the Homeless Health Care L.A. overdose response team out that day, it was a familiar pose and a common sign of opioid use — known as "riding" or the "fentanyl fold."

The man bent over in front of them was behind buildings off Alvarado Street. It’s known as "Fentanyl Alley" and is half a block from MacArthur Park, where the team patrols every day. Fentanyl has devastated the area.

At the scene, team members gave the man an oxygen mask to breathe into. They explained to me how oxygen counteracts an often-deadly effect of fentanyl called respiratory depression — when the person's brain stops telling their body to breathe.

When the man regained his composure, he introduced himself as Sal. He told me he was feeling much better. He had recently returned to the park after his friends were concerned about his health and called LAFD paramedics, who took him to a hospital.

He seemed unfazed by his latest close call. “I’m just getting started, man!” Sal told me.

Aid workers handed Sal a package of naloxone, an overdose-reversing drug also known by the brand name Narcan. One of the aid workers, Joseph Cathey, told him the team would be back around to check on him.

Had the service workers not been there, Morales said, he would have overdosed.

 "Now he's up, he's breathing, he's talking." Morales said. "We got to prolong his life just one more day."

They saved a man’s life that morning — and they said it was a slow day.

MacArthur Park, once a destination for the most affluent Angelenos, has become a symbol of the opioid overdose epidemic that has torn across the U.S. in recent years.

The area is also recovering from a 2023 spike in violent crime — though still second only to Skid Row as the most violent place in L.A., according to an LAist analysis of LAPD crime data. Daily dangers at the park have left many afraid to go.

In an attempt to save lives, local officials have contracted a wide range of services to serve MacArthur Park, including free medical programs and gang violence reduction teams. Community organizations have also rallied to the area to regularly bring food, clothing and other necessities for people in need.

The high level of assistance creates tension between people who view the help as compassionate and others who see it as enabling drug use and criminal activity. Those in favor of more enforcement argue that local government leaders should focus on cracking down on crime, not making it easier for people to use drugs around the park.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli points toward MacArthur Park while speaking at a press conference after a drug enforcement operation there on May 6, 2026. “In my opinion, [needle exchange programs] make it worse,” Essayli told reporters. “You got these black Jeeps that drive around doing harm reduction, which means they're handing out clean needles, making it easier to sell drugs.”

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Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services administrator, was also at the press conference, and criticized local government leaders for “farming homelessness” by making it easy to do drugs near the park. “This is a fundamental disagreement that I think we have in America,” Oz said. “Giving people who are addicted what they need [to use drugs] doesn't free them.”

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As Mayor Karen Bass debated challengers Nithya Raman and Spencer Pratt the same night as the May 6 raid, she said she would end the city’s needle exchange program, which has provided clean needles across the city since it was implemented to prevent the spread of AIDS/HIV in 1996. Bass reaffirmed that she did not support the program during a separate mayoral forum on Oct. 15. Nithya Raman, who advanced to the general election against Bass, has said she would not end the program.

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Raul Claros, founder of the non-profit CD1 Coalition, ran against Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez in the June primary election and stayed in an RV near MacArthur Park to bring attention to health and safety concerns there. I interviewed Claros in his RV on May 29, when he told me people need to have access to harm reduction programs, but not in public spaces like the park. “ I'm all about saving anybody and second, third chances, right?” Claros said. “ But not at the risk and harm of everybody else.”

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“There's a trend for people wanting punishment,” said Immanuel Camacho, a member of Homeless Health Care L.A.’s overdose response team. “But for us it's the opposite of that, it's kindness, it's being part of the community and showing care and affection.”

More services are available to unhoused people at the park than anywhere else in the city except Skid Row — and still, people told me it’s not enough. Service providers from multiple organizations said they have limited resources and face bureaucratic hurdles that can make it a challenge to connect people with the things they need most, like long-term medical care or housing.

As drug enforcement operations near the park transitioned in June from targeting dealers and distributors to people who were there to use drugs, several service providers told me people with substance use disorders were driven deeper into the shadows, where they are less likely to get the help they need and risk overdosing without anyone there to save them.

Overdose response and street medicine

The Homeless Health Care L.A. team prepares to head into MacArthur Park on Nov. 3, 2025.

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The Homeless Health Care L.A. team is in MacArthur Park every day, carrying naloxone and small oxygen tanks to prevent overdoses, first aid supplies and a biohazard box for used needles they pick up from the ground.

The team says they have prevented hundreds of people from dying of overdoses, either by their own intervention or through community members they trained how to recognize and respond to an overdose. They also report picking up more than 43,000 units of hazardous waste like used needles and other drug paraphernalia within just 15 months.

Walking into the park, the team is recognized almost immediately.

“There’s our people, Wawa,” one man said to his dog. He called the team over to check out his new skateboard. Several people approached to chat or thank them for their work.

Morales told me it took a while to build that kind of trust. Some people still refuse services, she said, but many who stay in the park appreciate having someone there to look after them.

Camacho said he believes their work benefits the community beyond the people they help directly. By reversing overdoses, they are also reducing the strain on local first responders and the healthcare system.

Still, they can’t stop every overdose in the park, and some people need more help than their team can provide — that’s when paramedics or physicians need to get involved.

Paramedics from the Los Angeles Fire Department's nearby Station 11 respond to more emergency calls than they did during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In recent years, about one-fifth of EMS calls near the park have been for suspected drug overdoses.

LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency near MacArthur Park on Aug. 9, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics respond to a medical emergency in MacArthur Park on May 29, 2026.

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LAFD paramedics check on a man outside the metro station across the street from MacArthur Park on Sept. 2, 2026.

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Capt. Erik Scott, a spokesperson for LAFD, told me that the department added a new unit in the area to bring field-based medical care to MacArthur Park.

In September 2025, Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 started treating patients around the park where they are, often without a trip to the hospital, and connecting frequent EMS users with preventive or primary care.

Members of the LAFD's Advanced Provider Response Unit 13 drive near MacArthur Park on Aug. 23, 2026.

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Scott said the specialized team also aims to reduce the number of emergency calls for fire companies and rescue ambulances, which could improve response times in the area — only Fire Station 9 in Skid Row had more emergency calls last year than Station 11.

Scott provided statistics from the department that showed a 10% decrease in 911 calls for medical emergencies near the park in 2025 compared to the previous year. Calls about overdoses proved to be more persistent, decreasing about 2%.

Mayor Karen Bass spoke with LAFD firefighters in MacArthur Park on Feb. 28, 2026. Bass told the firefighters she used to be a nurse and suggested she ride along one day on emergency calls. “Make sure you dress comfortably,” one of the firefighters replied, “because we’re going to be busy.”

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Along with paramedics, there are also doctors, nurses and social workers in the park every week.

“We go to the people on the streets — under the bridges, places like MacArthur Park — to provide the same level of care on the street that you'd expect in a brick-and-mortar clinic,” Brett Feldman told me.

Feldman is the director of USC’s street medicine program, which he founded in 2018. The program has received funding from the City of L.A. since 2022.

“Of all the places I've done street medicine, MacArthur Park was the most challenging to cover,” Feldman said.

He pointed to a USC study released in 2025 that found most of the people who receive treatment in MacArthur Park don’t live nearby.

“Only about 20% of people live in and around the park,” he told me, “so the rest are coming from different places around the city.”

It’s hard for healthcare workers to stay in touch with patients who have no fixed address, Feldman said. He said his team has tried to maintain contact by keeping a consistent schedule so people know how to find them. They’ve also hired a new full-time team this year to be able to serve the park Monday through Friday.

Contrary to a popular belief, Feldman said people who are unhoused or struggling with substance use do usually want treatment.

The USC study found that many people there desire treatment for mental health and substance use disorders, he said, but had never been offered those treatments.

“Even though our perception was there were so many services coming [to the park], we still weren't coming anywhere close to meeting the need,” Feldman said.

Some healthcare providers and local government officials are hopeful that new facilities and services could also help fill some of that need with supportive housing, recuperative care and addiction treatment.

Notably, the long-shuttered St. Vincent Hospital has reopened as a Behavioral Health Campus with beds to house more than 200 people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders — there are another 600 beds planned for the site. That effort has raised millions of dollars from healthcare organizations and the state government.

L.A. Care Health Plan, a provider for public healthcare coverage like Medi-Cal and Medicare Plus, is also partnering with the city and county to roll out the MacArthur Park Care Collaborative. Along with expanding street medicine services in the area, the collaborative is expected to build a drop-in center near the park for people who are unhoused or suffering from substance use.

The collaborative will provide “low-barrier medical care, mental health services, overdose prevention, and pathways to longer-term care,” L.A. County Supervisor Hilda Solis told me in a statement.

Solis represents both Skid Row and MacArthur Park on the Board of Supervisors and serves on the L.A. Care board of governors.

“The focus is on meeting people where they are and reducing the barriers that keep individuals experiencing homelessness and substance use disorders from accessing care,” she said.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who represents the area on L.A.’s City Council, told me she has also been working to open a healthcare hub in the area since she took office, collaborating with the county and service providers. She got $3 million of the city’s opioid settlement funds approved to go toward a brick-and-mortar facility in 2024.

“We are not trying to saturate this neighborhood with services in the way that people oftentimes compare it to Skid Row,” Hernandez said, “but we are offering the spaces for people to be, because right now there's nowhere else for them to be except in our park and on our sidewalks.”

Medicine second to housing

Without housing, healthcare can be a “losing battle,” said Dr. Absalon Galat, medical director of L.A. County’s mobile clinic and street medicine program, which has been serving the park with comprehensive healthcare for two years.

“Housing is really the core, in terms of stabilizing somebody,” Galat said.

As a division of the county Department of Health Services, Galat said his program serves as a “one-stop shop.” They can help people who need substance use treatment or general healthcare, while connecting people to housing resources.

Dr. Lorenzo Gonzalez also works in the department as a physician and has led the mobile clinic that serves MacArthur Park every Thursday. He agrees that healthcare takes a back seat to housing needs for the people he treats in MacArthur Park.

The L.A. County Department of Health Services’ mobile clinic brings comprehensive medical care to the park every Thursday.

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Gonzalez said he hears from patients who lost their homes in recent years, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think medicine comes second to housing needs and more immediate needs of shelter, safety,” Gonzalez said.  “ We provide comprehensive medical care, and we also have folks here like a social worker and a community health worker that can help you with your social needs.”

Gonzalez said he also acts as a liaison between housed residents near MacArthur Park and his patients by attending local government and community meetings.

“We walk a line, right? We want to be there to support the MacArthur Park folks that live, rent and are taking their children to the park,” he said. “And we want to make sure that our [unhoused] patients have a voice and are seen in these spaces where they're normally not at.”

Jennifer Haid has worked in the park since 2021, connecting people to housing and other services through her nonprofit HumanKind LA.

Haid, who has an office across the street, said she sees the park as a place for community that everyone can share in.

Jennifer Haid of HumanKind LA meets with a client at her office near MacArthur Park on Aug. 5, 2026.

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“The park can serve many things,” she said. “It can serve as a place for wound care and food. It can serve as a place for healing and peace for people just as much as it can serve as a place for sports and whatever else.”

Haid told me that service providers in the area like herself have spent a long time building trust and gathering the required paperwork to get people housed. She said recent drug enforcement raids have made her job “infinitely more difficult,” making the park an unwelcoming, unsafe place for her clients and leading most of them to stay out of the area.

Haid said many of her clients have already been met with a lifetime of broken promises and believe the system isn’t on their side. It’s tragic, she said, when people who have put in the work to receive housing are now missing the opportunities they applied for.

“Finally, something has come to fruition,” Haid said, “and they can't be here to get it.”

A man pushes a cart past an alleyway half a block from MacArthur Park on Feb. 11, 2026. People often go to the alleys near the park to use drugs out of sight, but service providers say this can increase the risk they overdose with no one around to help.

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Preventing gang violence

Many of the people bringing services to MacArthur Park grew up in the area or know what it's like from their own experiences to deal with drug use, organized crime or homelessness.

Several service workers from different organizations told me their personal experience gives them a sense of compassion and understanding toward the people they are trying to help.

Tina Padilla-Zamora said her father was a gang member. She told me she didn’t see any other way of living life when she was growing up in Northeast L.A. For a while, she followed in his footsteps.

“Being in a gang was what you're supposed to do,” she said. After experiencing life in prison, she said, she decided to take another path.

Padilla-Zamora became a case manager for local violence intervention organizations before she started Community Warriors 4 Peace, a non-profit organization now contracted by the city as part of the Gang Reduction and Youth Development program.

Tina Padilla-Zamora and her son, center, stand with members of Community Warriors 4 Peace in MacArthur Park, on Oct. 31, 2025. Padilla-Zamora started the organization to help reduce gang violence in L.A.

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She told me personal experience like hers gives gang violence intervention workers the tools they need to lower tensions between neighboring gangs.

They know where the “invisible boundaries” are that divide the territories of different gangs around the park, she said, and they know how to pick up on signs other people might miss — subtle warnings that violence might erupt. They provide safe passage for children to local schools and help gang members to find their own paths away from organized crime.

Two other organizations, Homies Unidos and Healing Urban Barrios, are also contracted by the city to work in the park as peace ambassadors and reduce community violence.

Padilla-Zamora said that while she understands that law enforcement has their own job to do, the city can’t arrest its way out of the problems in MacArthur Park.

Eventually, she said, those people who are arrested will come home, where they will need other resources and opportunities to avoid returning to gangs. Those resources — like quality jobs and housing — have been in short supply around MacArthur Park for decades.

Supporting community

Although homelessness and substance use issues are among the most apparent problems facing MacArthur Park, some people — housed and unhoused alike — lack even simple things like food or community. To fill those needs, local non-profit and faith-based organizations are in the park nearly every day, providing mobile food banks, free meals and religious services.

Chris Turner works for L.A. Dream Center, which is one of the organizations that brings food to the park through a mobile food bank.

Turner spoke to me as dozens of people lined up behind a white box truck for their turn to receive groceries. He said his organization works with the L.A. Regional Food Bank to serve low-income communities across L.A., and they come to MacArthur Park once a week.

“I've been on the other side of the line of the people that I feed every day,” Turner told me. He said he grew up going to food banks, and sees this work as a chance to make a difference when 1 in 4 L.A. County households face food insecurity.

Others work to carve out space in the park for family-friendly activities that celebrate the neighborhood’s rich culture.

Allegra Padilla is the executive director of Music, Arts & Community · Los Angeles, which hosts a wide range of concerts every year — everything from cumbia and big band to punk rock.

Padilla told me that these events provide a space to reconnect with tradition, experience something new and connect with people through music and food.

“Not only might someone see themselves reflected on stage,” she said, “but they might also be able to connect to a valuable resource while they're on the lawn or get to make some art with their grandmother.”

Padilla said she sees different groups working to uplift MacArthur Park in the midst of the fentanyl crisis, and hopes that there will be longer-term commitments and opportunities for people in the area.

“This was not something that was happening before, you know, five years ago,” Padilla told me. “So how can we all rise to the occasion and figure it out?”

On a tour of Orange County’s voting headquarters on Wednesday, Registrar Bob Page demonstrated the careful, multi-step process through which voters’ ballots are validated and counted.

As the federal government raises the specter of unsubstantiated voter fraud, Page’s message was clear: “ I want voters to know that we're doing everything we can to make sure they can vote safely and securely."

More than 380,000 Orange County ballots have been returned as of Oct. 27, Page said. That’s about 80,000 more ballots than was received around the same time in 2022, the last mid-term elections.

Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page addresses the media and other members of the public in attendance as part of a tour of the voting operations on Wednesday, less than one week before Election Day.

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The journey of a ballot in Orange County

Collecting, and counting, all those ballots takes time. Page explained that two-person teams are dispatched to collect dropped-off ballots every day during election season.

The ballot drop-off boxes in Orange County are made of steel, weigh more than 1,000 pounds and are bolted to the concrete, Page said.

The ballot retrieval duos are required to follow a strict process to ensure the chain of custody remains secure, including taking photos showing they’ve picked up the ballots, properly locked the retrieval door and that the internal fire suppression canister is intact.

The locations of the two-person teams are GPS-tracked by separate teams, which also review the photo evidence before giving the ballot retrieval duos the green light to go to their next stops.

An overhead camera shows the process that occurs after the signatures on a ballot have been verified and the ballot is then ready to be counted.

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Signature verification

Once a ballot reaches the Registrar of Voters’ office, the next step is ensuring the signature on the envelope matches the voter's signatures in their registration file.

“If we do challenge [a signature], we’re required under state law to send a first-class letter notice to that voter,” Page said, adding that state statute affords voters until the day before Thanksgiving this year to correct errant signatures.

Page said three election workers must agree that enough of a discrepancy exists before the decision to challenge a signature is made.

Around 1.9% of the nearly 718,000 vote-by-mail ballots returned in the June primary election in Orange County were rejected, largely due to signature mismatch or because they weren’t received in time, according to the California Secretary of State.

Verified ballots are then separated from their envelopes and sorted before they’re prepared to be scanned and, finally, counted. The equipment used to tally votes isn’t connected to the internet, and access to the room the equipment is housed in is limited, according to Page.

Threats from the federal government

On Wednesday evening, a federal judge denied an emergency request from the Department of Justice to segregate 20,000 ballots across California that the federal government said were sent to “likely” noncitizens.

More than 1,750 of those people identified were in Orange County, according to a letter Bill Essayli, top federal prosecutor for the Central District of California, delivered to the county registrar’s office Monday.

The Department of Justice said it will appeal the ruling from U.S. District Court Judge David Carter, who, in his decision, said the federal government’s attempted move could “wreak havoc and disrupt the election that is already underway.”

California Attorney Gen. Rob Bonta called the ruling an “important victory,” but warned “the fight is not over.”

On Wednesday, before the ruling came down, Bonta released resources about election integrity in the state, including guidance for local election officials if law enforcement attempts to “access election sites where ballots are cast, processed, or counted.”

Page said he’s fielded more questions from the public this year about the potential for law enforcement to interfere in the election. He said he will have open lines of communication with partners with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and  Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center should the threat arise.

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.