Topline:
As predicted, Tropical Storm Hilary brought heavy rains to Southern California, particularly in the mountain and desert areas, which saw quite a bit of flooding and debris flows.
The forecast: Intermittent rain and thunderstorms are expected through Monday, but things should clear up my Tuesday.
Heaviest rainfall: Lewis Ranch in Los Angeles County saw 7.04 inches.
The storm formerly known as Hurricane Hilary has broken down and moved on to Nevada, leaving behind flooded roads, downed trees, stranded cars and soaked residents.
As predicted, Southern California's first tropical storm to make landfall in 84 years hit the mountains, foothills and deserts the hardest.
ATTN Drivers, please stay off the roads, if able. This video was taken by our #Caltrans8 Cajon Crew team wearing a head camera of SR-2 and Sheep Creek. Flash floods, high winds and the rain are making it a big challenge for all. Please be patient while we work. pic.twitter.com/BFga3z6JMG
— Caltrans District 8 (@Caltrans8) August 21, 2023
"It was uncharted territory as much for us forecasters as it was the public who found what we were saying pretty hard to believe," said Miguel Miller, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. "We found it hard to believe ourselves, but we couldn't discount it. Couldn't deny it."
The center of Hilary passed over Los Angeles around 8 p.m. Sunday, though the heaviest rain fell between 2 and 6 p.m., dropping more than 1 inch per hour in some spots.
There have been no reports of any significant injuries or damage as of 8 a.m. Monday, though assessments are ongoing.
"We urge you to please be cautious of hazardous road conditions," L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley said at a Monday morning news conference.
Still, the storm was felt across the region:
Across L.A. County, it was the San Gabriel mountains and the Antelope Valley that saw some of the heaviest bands of precipitation.
💧TRAVEL ADVISORY💧@CaltransDist7 strongly advises motorists to postpone travel during #Hillary storm. EB Route 118 near #Llano CLOSED at Route 18 due to flooding. Traffic diverted to SR-18. Check https://t.co/cxZ0jW7S5n for updates. #AntelopeValley #Lancaster pic.twitter.com/T9pW0Dkx59
— Caltrans District 7 (@CaltransDist7) August 21, 2023
Rainfall totals as of early Monday:
Given how unusual it is for our region to see rain during this time of year, it's unsurprising that many daily rainfall records fell.
Flood watches are still in effect for Los Angeles and surrounding counties as the storm wraps up. They'll likely be lifted by Tuesday.
“We’ve made it this far. Let’s make it to the final home stretch here,” said Ariel Cohen, meteorologist in charge with the National Weather Service.
Screenshots from PSPD drone footage of the flooding and storm damage on Indian Canyon. pic.twitter.com/jFPuLAZ4o4
— City of Palm Springs (@CityofPS) August 21, 2023
Palm Springs received a record setting 3.18 inches of rain, their largest amount in 93 years. Roads were washed out and streets flooded.
Homes in nearby Cathedral City were inundated with mud and water.
Aerials show the aftermath of Tropical Storm Hilary in Cathedral City. This is off Date Palm Dr, you can see multiple vehicles stuck in mud
— KESQ News Channel 3 (@KESQ) August 21, 2023
STORM UPDATES: https://t.co/EVe9VxxaL5 pic.twitter.com/JSr5gvxKK3
The 911 system across the Coachella Valley went down overnight, and as of 7 a.m., there was no estimated time for restoration.
Riverside County provided the following alternative numbers for residents to call if help is needed:
Mias Canyon Bridge completely washed out in Banning with the San Gorgonio River still gushing. #Hilary #CAwx pic.twitter.com/IolFdgQggt
— Colin McCarthy (@US_Stormwatch) August 21, 2023
Oak Glen and Forest Falls in San Bernardino County also experienced significant debris flows.
Morning light revealing the scale of several mud slides in the San Bernardino mountain ranges including the one I documented in Forest Falls and a major slide that destroyed several cabs in Seven Oaks. Full video below #CAwx #Hilary https://t.co/oEMR448S6c pic.twitter.com/1zre7HxsSr
— Aaron Rigsby (@AaronRigsbyOSC) August 21, 2023
The city of L.A. is providing shelters to unhoused people at the following locations:
If you need to report a flooded road or a downed tree, you can call the following non-emergency numbers:
If you're in L.A. County and need sand bags, you can find them at local fire houses.
Dial 911 if it's an emergency.
As Hurricane Hilary approaches, it's important to have a safety plan in place. Advice from L.A. County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone:
A detailed list of emergency kit items can be found at ready.la county.gov; there will be real-time emergency updates on the county’s emergency website, found on the county’s landing page: LA county.gov/emergency.
The last time we were directly hit by a tropical storm was in 1939, when one made landfall in Long Beach, according to the National Weather Service in Oxnard.
While the track of this storm was unusual, the hurricane itself was not.
“So far this season has played out as expected,” said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center.
Tropical cyclones regularly form off the coast of Southwest Mexico between May and November. While they usually track west out into the Pacific, they can head north toward Baja.
Sometimes they do indirectly affect Southern California. In September 2022, Hurricane Kay dropped more than 5 inches of rain on the area, causing flooding and damaging homes.
Topline:
Deportations of children dramatically rose under the Trump administration — 61% of detained children in California were deported, compared to 8% under the Biden administration. The number of children who are in ICE detention nationally is 10 times higher during the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term compared to the last year of Biden’s term.
More children detained in communities rather than at the border: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained more than 650 children in California under President Donald Trump’s second term, an EdSource analysis of federal data has found. Most arrests happened in California communities, rather than at the border, and involved minors who resided and attended school in the state. The number of children detained in the state’s interior rose 90% during the first year of Trump’s second term compared to the prior year under the Biden administration, our analysis shows. More than 100 of the children detained under Trump were age 5 or under.
A portrait of those detained: Some children have been detained while accompanying parents to routine ICE check-ins. The practices reflect an escalation in enforcement activity that state education officials say has kept some students from attending school. The children detained so far include a 17-year-old honors student from Los Angeles County who was detained in June 2025 and deported to Guatemala; a 9-year-old boy from Torrance who, along with his father, was detained at an immigration hearing that same month and deported to Honduras; and a 6-year-old deaf student who, in March, was detained without his hearing aids and deported to Colombia along with his mother and younger brother.
Why it matters: Children may not be detained at the same rates that adults are, but medical experts warn that any time spent in detention is too long for their well-being. “We have endless amounts of research and expert testimony on how harmful detention is to children,” said Michelle Brané, who was the immigration detention ombudsman under the Biden administration and now leads the nonprofit Together and Free, which supports asylum-seeking families. “You see kids with extreme depression. You see kids really regressing, kids going back to wetting the bed after they’ve been trained for years.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained more than 650 children in California under President Donald Trump’s second term, an EdSource analysis of federal data has found. Most arrests happened in California communities, rather than at the border, and involved minors who resided and attended school in the state.
The number of children detained in the state’s interior rose 90% during the first year of Trump’s second term compared to the prior year under the Biden administration, our analysis shows. More than 100 of the children detained under Trump were age 5 or under.
The rise in child detainments in the state’s interior began soon after Trump took office in January 2025. Trump won office on a promise to carry out mass deportations, vowing to deport “illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and drug dealers from our streets and [send] them back where they belong.”
Starting immediately and escalating over the summer of 2025, ICE agents have conducted large-scale operations in neighborhoods with large immigrant populations. Some children have been detained while accompanying parents to routine ICE check-ins. The practices reflect an escalation in enforcement activity that state education officials say has kept some students from attending school.
The children detained so far include a 17-year-old honors student from Los Angeles County who was detained in June 2025 and deported to Guatemala; a 9-year-old boy from Torrance who, along with his father, was detained at an immigration hearing that same month and deported to Honduras; and a 6-year-old deaf student who, in March, was detained without his hearing aids and deported to Colombia along with his mother and younger brother.
Medical professionals and advocates contend that no period of time in detention is safe for children. In 2016, a Department of Homeland Security Advisory Committee recommended discontinuing the use of family detention — the practice of detaining children with their parents as they await the outcome of their case — writing “detention is never in the best interest of children.”
“The kids that are in detention in these facilities, they’re losing their childhoods every single day that they’re in there,” said Wendy Cervantes, who oversees research and advocacy of immigrant families at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Law and Social Policy.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement to EdSource that this data is “being cherry-picked” to “peddle a false narrative.” ICE, the spokesperson said, is “not targeting children.”
“ICE does not separate families,” the unidentified DHS spokesperson said. “Parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
EdSource analyzed federal detainment data obtained by the Deportation Data Project at UC Berkeley and UCLA, capturing federal detainments between October 2022 and March 2026. The analysis found:
The Trump administration is going after “the worst of the worst,” including pedophiles and rapists, a DHS spokesperson said.
“Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.,” the DHS spokesperson said. “Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally.”
According to EdSource’s analysis of ICE’s data, none of the 666 detained children in California under Trump had any felonies or previous convictions listed. Twelve minors were listed as having pending criminal charges, including three girls between ages 6 and 9. The nature of those pending charges is not disclosed. The ICE data does not include information about any connected family members or their cases.
During his second term, Trump reopened family detention facilities, including the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley and the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center in Texas. In California, 250 detained children were ultimately sent to these family facilities.
A 12-year-old from Los Angeles, identified by the initials G.S., gave a declaration in federal court describing their experience living inside the South Texas Family Residential Center during a 64-day detainment with their parents and younger sister.
The child said ICE agents detained the family during a routine ICE check-in in Los Angeles. The family lost their apartment and belongings, according to the May 22 declaration. The status of the child and their family is unclear.
“It makes me feel hopeless to be here for so long, because now it’ll take me and my whole family a long time to get back to normal because of how much money and education we have lost,” the child said in their declaration. “If I could change one thing here, it would be to shut down the whole facility.”
One major difference between the Trump and Biden presidencies has been the number of children who arrived at the border. Of the 5,676 children detained in California between October 2022 and when Trump started his second term, 94% were apprehended at the border.
Biden prioritized placing some of the unaccompanied minors who arrived at the border with sponsors, Cervantes said, and ended the practice of family detention that resumed under Trump. Cervantes said the Biden administration largely followed the Flores Settlement Agreement.
The 1997 agreement provided rights for immigrant children in U.S. custody and prohibited most detentions from lasting more than 20 days. The declaration from the detained Los Angeles minor is one of several included from children and parents in a lawsuit claiming their rights under the Flores agreement have been violated.
Attorneys representing the Trump administration in this case argued in court in June 2025 that conditions at detention centers for children have “drastically improved” since the original agreement. Referencing the high number of immigrants at the border, the administration said the Flores Settlement Agreement “hamstrung the government in addressing this catastrophic illegal migration.”
During the first year of Trump’s second term, adults were detained in California’s interior at more than four times the rate they were held during the last year of Biden’s administration, while the rate of child detainments rose by 90%.
California has passed laws and issued guidance with the aim of shielding schools from federal immigration enforcement. For instance, under California law, school officials cannot allow immigration officials on campus without a judicial warrant.
In some California communities, parents, teachers and neighbors have formed rapid-response networks to report sightings of ICE agents for students and their families to avoid while commuting to and from school.
The sites of some immigration enforcement operations, such as job sites, may be more likely to target adults than children. However, Cervantes notes that some teens working at restaurants or as lifeguards at pools have been apprehended in ICE raids while they’re on the job. She also disputes the Trump administration’s claim that children have not been targets of immigration enforcement.
Children may not be detained at the same rates that adults are, but medical experts warn that any time spent in detention is too long for their well-being.
Shortly after Trump began his second term, medical professionals wrote an open letter to the president and then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem warning that “detention itself poses a threat to child health.”
“We have endless amounts of research and expert testimony on how harmful detention is to children,” said Michelle Brané, who was the immigration detention ombudsman under the Biden administration and now leads the nonprofit Together and Free, which supports asylum-seeking families. “You see kids with extreme depression. You see kids really regressing, kids going back to wetting the bed after they’ve been trained for years.”
EdSource Reporter Zaidee Stavely and Data Journalist Daniel J. Willis contributed to this story.
The Deportation Data Project collects U.S. government immigration enforcement datasets obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. EdSource analyzed this data with a focus on how immigration enforcement is affecting children in California.
The participants in the project are academics and attorneys, including co-founders Graeme Blair, a professor of political science at UCLA; David Hausman, a professor of law at UC Berkeley and attorney Amber Quereshi.
This dataset from the U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement contains anonymized individual level data. It contains data about arrests, detention stays and detention rates in individual facilities, largely from Oct. 1, 2022, during Biden’s term until March 11, 2026 during Trump’s second term.
A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security said that neither they nor ICE have verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the Deportation Data Project and its results.
Hausman noted that it has posted the original data obtained directly from ICE.
“These are ICE’s own records of who is arrested, detained, and deported,” Hausman wrote in a statement to EdSource. “We have posted the data and code underlying the analysis. We welcome any specific feedback.”
This ICE data from the Deportation Data Project does not include the city or state of residence for those individuals who were arrested or detained. This makes it difficult to determine with precision how many Californians are being affected directly by enforcement operations. Additionally, many of the over 700,000 arrests nationally in the data set have blanks where there should be information about the state or area where an apprehension took place.
EdSource’s analysis relied primarily on a set of more than 1 million detention stays nationally. Every recorded individual stay in the ICE detention system has a list of codes corresponding to detention facilities. Our data analysis counts those who were first detained in a California detention facility as being detained in California.
California is a border state. A hallmark of the Trump administration’s immigration policy has been a shift from the border to deporting immigrants who are living in the interior of the country. So it was important to determine whether someone had been detained as a part of border enforcement. We used the same methodology as the Deportation Data Project to distinguish between an arrest at the border or one that occurred in the interior. We counted an arrest as happening at the border if it involved U.S. Customs and Border Protection, including Border Patrol or the Coast Guard.
Determining the age of those Californians who were detained was more straightforward. We have the birth year of those who were detained, as well as the date that an individual was booked into a facility. If the difference between those years was less than 18, this analysis counts them as a child. Because we do not know the exact birth dates of each individual, 666 children may be an undercount.
None of the data connects family members to one another.
EdSource is an independent nonprofit organization that provides analysis on key education issues facing California and the nation. LAist republishes articles from EdSource with permission.
Topline:
A 100-year-old pipline ruptured in West Hollywood early Thursday, causing flooding and a massive sinkhole.
Why it matters: The force of the flooding sent cars slamming into each other, and triggered widespread road closures and the Metro bus system detours and delays.
Read on ... to learn more about what areas are affected (and to see some dramatic video).
A water main break near Palm Avenue and Harratt Street sent waters flooding through West Hollywood early Thursday, causing a massive sink hole.
Roads have been closed off and residents warned to stay out of the area, with dramatic footage posted online of water rushing down streets and cars slamming into each other:
Because of the highly pressurized water system, emergency crews said Thursday they must work slowly and carefully to avoid causing more damage. Several roads were closed and Metro system buses detoured — see details below.
A leak from an over 100-year-old trunk line caused the rupture, authorities said. The line has been shut down, as well as two large valves to the east and west. Anselmo Collins, chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, assured residents that drinking water is not affected and remains safe to drink.
“We are also coordinating on the ground with law enforcement and will be working with traffic control as we make progress and assess and begin repairs,” wrote LADWP in a statement.
Residents were are encouraged to take pictures of any damage from the flooding in case a claim needs to be filed later.
Avoid the area if at all possible. But if you need to venture in, here’s what you need to know:
The following bus routes have been delayed or detoured.
LAist will continue to update this story as we learn more.
Topline:
An extreme heat warning is in place for much of Southern California through Thursday evening, but a cooldown is expected Friday.
The details: The extreme heat warning will remain in effect until 8 p.m. Thursday. Forecasters say potentially dangerous temperatures are possible for much of the region, with inland valleys expected to reach up to 105 degrees in places. Inland Orange County will likely get up into the 90s.
What’s next: A respite from the heat is on the way Friday. Weekend highs will be in the mid 80s in downtown L.A., up to 90 in the valleys and in the 70s along the coast. Morning clouds and fog will also be possible in coastal areas.
Read on ... for details on this week's heat and this weekend's cooldown.
Potentially dangerous heat is still in store for Southern California Thursday, but there is some respite on the horizon.
An extreme heat warning from the National Weather Service remains in place for much of the region through 8 p.m. Thursday.
Inland valleys across L.A., Riverside and San Bernardino counties are expected to see highs of up to 104 degrees in some places. Temperatures in inland Orange County will likely get up into the 90s. Coastal areas and beaches will hover in the 80s.
The high temperatures are expected to pose a high risk of heat-related illnesses, especially for people over 65, young children and other sensitive populations. People who work outdoors or do not have air conditioning are also particularly at risk.
Southern Californians are no strangers to hot weather in the summer, but heat waves are getting hotter, longer and more frequent as the climate changes.
So you should know the words forecasters use to describe these weather events — and the risks they pose.
NWS forecasters said Thursday that temperatures during this week’s heat wave peaked on Wednesday relatively close to what they expected: Woodland Hills hit 107 degrees, Burbank hit 97, and downtown Los Angeles hit 94.
High humidity also played into the heat this week, as expected, driven by tropical moisture flowing into the region from the south.
Forecasters said some coastal areas saw up to 70% humidity around midday Wednesday. Humidity in the valleys was generally between 30% and 40%.
“That's pretty muggy,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford. “It’s definitely not Miami humidity, but it’s definitely more than we’re used to.”
Thankfully, more comfortable summer weather is on the way.
Temperatures will start to trend downward Thursday along the coast, while a more noticeable cooling trend will settle in across the region Friday.
The weather this weekend will still be warm, especially inland. But forecasters say temperatures will return to normal levels for this time of year by Saturday and could even dip lower than normal.
Weekend highs will be in the mid 80s in downtown L.A., up to 90 in the valleys and in the 70s along the coast.
Increased offshore winds are also expected to boost the marine layer and bring morning clouds and fog to many coastal areas Friday morning.
Topline:
What to do about homelessness remains one of the most hotly contested issues in L.A., but a 2006 federal court case fundamentally changed the conversation: Jones v. City of Los Angeles denounced the idea that someone could be a criminal just because they were unsheltered.
Why it matters: Even as the U.S. Supreme Court has walked back the protections that Jones created, L.A. leaders by and large haven’t returned to the practices of the Bratton era. As cities around the state reevaluate how encampments are policed, an examination of the original case can illuminate the fraught policymaking surrounding the crisis — and what’s at stake today.
The case: Edward Jones, married couple Patricia and George Vinson, Thomas Cash, Stanley Barger and Robert Lee Purrie had all been previously cited or jailed for sleeping on the streets of LA’s Skid Row. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild argued that they simply had no alternatives, and so, LA’s anti-camping restriction should not be enforced between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
Read on... for more on the case.
This story first appeared on The LA Local.
It didn’t matter if they had no money or nowhere else to go at night: Unhoused people who slept on the streets of Los Angeles in the early 2000s could be ticketed or arrested for violating a city ordinance that barred sitting or lying on a sidewalk.
“You arrest them, prosecute them. Put them in jail,” LAPD Chief William Bratton told the L.A. Times in a 2005 interview. “And if they do it again, you arrest them, prosecute them, and put them in jail.”
“It’s that simple,” he added.
Yet L.A’.s temporary shelter beds were (and continue to be) vastly outnumbered by its unhoused population. Unhoused people who were arrested for sleeping on the street lacked money to pay fines and the resources to navigate the court system. They’d get out of jail and end up again sleeping on the street.
What to do about homelessness remains one of the most hotly contested issues in LA, but a 2006 federal court case fundamentally changed the conversation: Jones v. City of Los Angeles denounced the idea that someone could be a criminal just because they were unsheltered. Even as the U.S. Supreme Court has walked back the protections that Jones created, L.A. leaders by and large haven’t returned to the practices of the Bratton era. As cities around the state reevaluate how encampments are policed, an examination of the original case can illuminate the fraught policymaking surrounding the crisis — and what’s at stake today.
Edward Jones, married couple Patricia and George Vinson, Thomas Cash, Stanley Barger and Robert Lee Purrie had all been previously cited or jailed for sleeping on the streets of L.A.’s Skid Row. A lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Lawyers Guild argued that they simply had no alternatives, and so, L.A.’s anti-camping restriction should not be enforced between 9 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.
The case ultimately made it to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In their 2006 ruling, the Ninth Circuit found that the Eighth Amendment — which protects against excessive fines as well as the better-known “cruel and unusual punishments” — prohibited the city from punishing what was “an unavoidable consequence of being human and homeless without shelter.”
In writing the court’s majority opinion, Judge Kim Anita McLane Wardlaw noted the hardships experienced by each named appellant. Two couples slept outside to avoid being separated at a shelter; others suffered from disabilities that impeded them from promptly moving to an available shelter. Another man who was arrested learned that police had destroyed his tent and tossed his belongings in the street. They were gone by the time he returned.
Depriving people of their possessions after an arrest is “particularly injurious” to unhoused people who “have so few resources” to begin with, Wardlaw said.
Such police actions, Judge Wardlaw wrote, not only restricted their “personal liberty,” but also “caused them to suffer shame and stigma.”
“[The ruling] forcefully articulates in really important ways why unhoused folks should not be punished for sleeping outside when they have no place else to go,” said Shayla Myers, an expert in the criminalization of poverty and homelessness and the director of impact litigation and policy at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles.
In a surprising development, however, the city of Los Angeles settled the case. As a result, Jones was nullified, and attorneys and the courts could no longer reference it in similar cases.
But in 2018, the Ninth Circuit essentially restored Jones’s precedent in Martin v. City of Boise, ruling that penalizing unhoused people sleeping outside when they had no access to shelter violated their Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
“[The ruling] effectively just reupped Jones, adopted it, cited to the reasoning [and affirmed its] principle,” Myers told The LA Local.
Meanwhile, the Jones settlement bolstered protections for unhoused people in L.A. and beyond, Myers told The LA Local.
“It was very purposeful, and it was clearly drafted by people who are deeply invested in unhoused folks,” she said.
The settlement required L.A. to increase the number of available housing units above a baseline before it could enforce its anti-camping ordinance. But because the city “consistently lost” units instead of gaining them, Myers said, the settlement remained in force for over a decade.
In 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to those advocating for the decriminalization of homelessness.
In the case of Grants Pass, Oregon v. Johnson, the conservative supermajority overturned the earlier ruling in Boise. In a 6–3 vote, the higher court ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment did not bar cities from enforcing public-camping ordinances against unhoused people even when no shelter beds were available.
The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision is based on a narrow textual interpretation of the Constitution that considers only the type and severity of punishment — in this case, fines and short jail sentences for repeat offenders — not the argument that it’s unreasonable to criminalize a basic human function when someone has no alternative. According to Justice Neil Gorsuch, who delivered the majority opinion, such punishments are neither cruel nor unusual, since city and state governments “have long employed similar punishments for similar offenses.”
Writing for the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor excoriated the majority opinion, which she said “leaves the most vulnerable in our society with an impossible choice: Either stay awake or be arrested.”
L.A., however, has not passed a citywide anti-camping ban in the wake of Grants Pass. Although the city is conducting controversial encampment sweeps, Myers believes “there has been less willingness” by residents, organizers and city officials “to accept criminalization of homelessness.”
“Jones did not happen in a vacuum,” she noted.
For example, the Grants Pass decision prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom to order encampments that pose a public safety risk be cleared. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors responded by affirming that people who are arrested in them will not be held in county jails.
“Arresting people for sitting, sleeping, or lying on the sidewalk or in public spaces does not end their homelessness, and will only make their homelessness harder to resolve with a criminal record and fines they can’t afford to pay,” the supervisors’ 2024 motion said. “Our homelessness and housing crisis is regional, and will only be solved with a coordinated, unified response, and resources for housing and services.”
Today, Myers and other litigators are working to protect other constitutional rights of unhoused people in LA from a variety of ordinances.
“If you let jurisdictions violate people’s rights, they will continue to rely on ordinances that erase the visible signs of homelessness,” she said. “Because it’s easier to throw someone in jail than it is to build an apartment.”
Published as part of a national effort by local newsrooms to reflect on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. You can see coverage from other newsrooms by clicking here.
