The Brief

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.

What you need to know about affected areas:

Avoid the area if at all possible. But if you need to venture in, here’s what you need to know:

Road Closures:

• Eastbound Sunset Boulevard is closed between Larrabee Street and Sherbourne Drive.
• Eastbound Holloway Drive is closed between Sunset Boulevard and Westmount Drive.
• Eastbound Santa Monica Boulevard is closed between San Vicente Boulevard and Hancock Drive.

The following bus routes have been delayed or detoured.

• 2 Line (Sunset)
• 4 Line (Santa Monica)
• 10/48 (Melrose)
• 14/37 (Beverly)
• 16 Line (3rd Street)
• 20 Line (Wilshire)
• 28 Line (Olympic)
• 30 Line (Pico)
• 35 Line (Washington)
• 134 Line (PCH)
• 217 Line (Fairfax)
• 602 Line (Sunset)
• 617 Line (Robertson)

LAist will continue to update this story as we learn more.

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.

Heat wave review

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.”

Cooldown in sight

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.

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.  

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 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.

A tarp covers a portion of a person’s tent on a bridge overlooking the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP Photo

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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.

The surprise settlement

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.

The impact

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.”

Children play at the Safe Landing for Families, county land with 10 state trailers that now house families with children. Residents at this site receive wraparound services and assistance connecting them with longer-term affordable housing.

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Damian Dovarganes

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AP Photo

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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.

NEW YORK (AP) — LeBron James may be ready to shed some light on his future plans.

The NBA’s career scoring king — and free agent — is scheduled to speak publicly Thursday afternoon, meaning it’s possible that James will be revealing where he plans to play this coming season or at least give some updates on where he is in the decision-making process.

James will be recording an episode of his “Mind the Game” podcast alongside guest co-host Tyrese Haliburton of the Indiana Pacers in New York on the opening day of Fanatics Fest, a four-day event featuring dozens of athletes, celebrities and sports legends. Single-day general admission tickets are sold out, organizers said.

That appearance has been planned for months; it was announced publicly in May.

James is the NBA’s oldest active player at 41 and the only player in league history to have a career spanning 23 seasons; this coming season will be his 24th. Speculation has been rampant for more than two months about his future, officially starting in May when the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the NBA playoffs.

At that time, James said he didn’t know what he would be doing.

And the only developments that he’s revealed since came on June 30, when he said he would play this coming season and that he was leaving the Lakers after an eight-season run highlighted by the 2020 NBA title.

For more than two weeks, the NBA has been waiting to hear what comes next.

James’ resume is beyond compare in NBA history. He’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA selection, a four-time Most Valuable Player, a four-time NBA Finals MVP, a three-time All-Star Game MVP, and was a member of the NBA’s 75th anniversary team.

He’s also coming off a season where he averaged 20.9 points, 6.1 rebounds, and 7.2 assists per game. For his career, he’s averaged 26.8 points, 7.5 rebounds, and 7.4 assists in more than 1,600 games.

The podcast is the first of two known speaking engagements for James in New York on Thursday.

He’s also planning to appear at the Game Plan Summit, an invitation-only event presented by CNBC and Boardroom. James is slated to have a conversation with Boardroom co-founder Rich Kleiman — Kevin Durant’s longtime business partner — about “how he’s built an empire beyond basketball, what’s ahead for him in business, and why the next generation of athletes is poised to wield more influence than ever before.”

James started his career in Cleveland in 2003 and spent seven seasons with the Cavaliers before heading to Miami for four seasons — where he won his first two titles. He then returned to Cleveland for four more seasons, leaving in 2018 to start an eight-season run with the Lakers.

Cleveland and Miami are believed to be on James’ radar again as he weighs this decision, as are several other teams including Philadelphia, Minnesota and Golden State.

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Reynolds reported from Miami.