Julia Barajas
explores how college students achieve their goals, whether they’re fresh out of high school, pursuing graduate work or looking to join the labor force through alternative pathways.
Published December 10, 2025 3:36 PM
Cal State Dominguez Hills faces significant budget pressure.
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Julie Leopo
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LAist
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Topline:
Faculty, students, alumni and community partners are demanding the California State University, Dominguez Hills, administration withdraw a proposal to eliminate six academic programs.
Why it matters: In addition to fewer academic options, according to the California Faculty Association — the union that represents CSU professors, lecturers, librarians, counselors and coaches — an estimated 40 jobs will be eliminated at Cal State Dominguez Hills if this plan is approved.
What the university says: "The university’s current financial constraints limit our ability to invest in new or expanded programs that could meet those needs," university spokesperson Lilly McKibbin said via email.
She added that no final decisions have been made and that the process to end a program would give faculty a chance to "review data and hear from the campus community."
What educators say: “These programs are not expendable — they are essential,” said Stephen McFarland, a labor studies professor at the campus and a CFA executive board member. “Eliminating them would narrow students’ opportunities at a moment when they need more pathways, not fewer.”
The backstory: The CSU system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap, despite tuition increases. The gap is rooted in cuts to state funding and increased labor costs. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Should LA charge more to opponents of new housing?
David Wagner
covers housing in Southern California, a place where the lack of affordable housing contributes to homelessness.
Published December 10, 2025 4:47 PM
A construction worker walks through the Ruby Street apartments construction site in Castro Valley on Feb. 6, 2024. The construction project is funded by the No Place Like Home bond, which passed in 2018 to create affordable housing for homeless residents experiencing mental health issues.
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Camille Cohen
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CalMatters
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Topline:
In the city of Los Angeles, neighbors or homeowner groups who choose to fight approvals of new housing are required to pay a fee when filing an appeal. Right now, that fee is $178 — about 1% of the amount the city says it costs to process the appeal. But that fee soon will go up.
The details: On Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted to increase the fee to $229 but rejected a proposal by the city administrative officer that would have raised the cost for appellants to more than $22,800, or 100% of the cost. Some advocates for making housing easier to build argued the city should have adopted the higher fee.
Read on … to learn what developers will have to pay if they want to fight a project denial.
In the city of Los Angeles, neighbors or homeowner groups who choose to fight approvals of new housing are required to pay a fee when filing an appeal.
Right now, that fee is $178 — about 1% of the amount the city says it costs to process the appeal. But that fee soon will go up.
On Wednesday, the L.A. City Council voted to increase the fee to $229 but rejected a proposal by the city administrative officer that would have raised the cost for appellants to more than $22,800, or 100% of the cost.
Some advocates for making housing easier to build argued the city should have adopted the higher fee.
“Appeals of approved projects create delays that make it harder to build housing and disincentivize future housing from being proposed,” said Jacob Pierce, a policy associate with the group Abundant Housing L.A.
At a time when L.A.’s budget is strained, Pierce said, if someone thinks a project was wrongly approved, “They should put their money where their mouth is and pay the full fee."
The City Council unanimously approved another new fee structure put forward by the city’s Planning Department.
While fees will remain relatively low for housing project opponents, developers will have to pay $22,453 to appeal projects that previously had been denied.
A November report from the city administrative officer said setting fees higher to recover the full cost of processing would have aligned with the city’s financial policies. Generally, fees are set higher when applicants are asking for a service that benefits them alone.
“When a service or activity benefits the public at large, there is generally little to no recommended fee amount,” the report said.
Pierce said he hoped a City Council committee would reconsider the higher fee proposal next year. With the city falling far short of its goal to create nearly a half-million new homes by 2029, he said the city needs to discourage obstruction of new housing.
“Slowing down the construction of housing is expensive for all of us,” Pierce said.
Cato Hernández
covers important issues that affect the everyday lives of Southern Californians.
Published December 10, 2025 4:16 PM
A file photo of an ink-based printer.
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Neilson Barnard
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The L.A. City Council has voted to create a new ordinance that bans the sale of certain single-use ink cartridges from online and local retailers.
Why now? L.A. is recommending that a ban target single-use cartridges that don’t have a take-back program or can’t be refilled. That's because they’re winding up in the landfill, where, L.A. Sanitation says, they can leach harmful substances into the ground.
What’s next? The City Attorney’s Office is drafting the ordinance. It will go before the council’s energy and environment committee before reaching a full vote.
Read on ... to see how the ban could work.
Los Angeles could become the first city in the U.S. to ban ink cartridges that can be used only once.
The L.A. City Council unanimously voted Wednesday to approve the creation of an ordinance that prohibits their sale. The move comes after more than a year of debate over the terms.
Why the potential ban
This builds upon the city’s effort to reach zero waste, including phasing out single-use plastics. You’re likely familiar with some of those efforts — such as only getting plastic foodware by request and banning single-use carryout bags at stores. Multiple plastic bans have been suggested, like for single-use vapes and bag clips, but now it’s ink’s turn.
The cartridges are tough to dispose of because of the plastic, metal and chemicals inside, according to the city. They’re also classified as regulated waste in the state because they can leach toxic substances into the environment, such as volatile organic compounds and heavy metals.
That poses a problem. L.A.’s curbside recycling program can’t recycle the cartridges, and while its hazardous waste program can take them, a significant portion end up in landfills.
Major printer manufacturers and some ink retailers have take-back programs for used cartridges so they can get refilled. However, L.A. Sanitation says there are certain single-use cartridges that don’t have recovery programs. These are usually cartridges that work with a printer but aren’t name brand.
How outlawing them could work
LASAN has spent months figuring out what a ban would cover — and it hasn’t been without pushback. The city’s energy and environment committee pressed the department back in September on how effective a ban would be.
Ultimately, the committee moved it forward with a promise that LASAN would come back with more details, including environmental groups’ stance, concrete data to back up the need and a public education plan.
The department’s current recommendation is that the ordinance should prohibit retail and online establishments from selling any single-use ink cartridge, whether sold separately or with a printer, to people in the city. Retailers that don’t follow the rules would get fined.
So what does single-use mean here? The ban would affect a printer cartridge that:
is not collected or recovered through a take-back program
cannot be remanufactured, refilled or reused
infringes upon intellectual property rights or violates any applicable local, state or federal law
Any cartridges that meet one of these points would fall under the ban, though you still could get them outside L.A.
The proposed ordinance will go to the committee first while LASAN works on a public education plan.
If it ends up getting approved by the full council, the ban likely would go into full effect 12 months later.
Sophie Kinsella, who wrote the massively popular "Shopaholic" book series, has died. The writer, whose real name was Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was 55 years old. Last year, she announced she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2022.
'Shopaholic' series: Kinsella's novels were a sensation; they sold tens of millions of copies and were translated into dozens of languages. The first two books in the Shopaholic series were adapted into the 2009 movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, starring Isla Fisher.
Read on ... for a 2019 interview with Kinsella.
Sophie Kinsella, who wrote the massively popular Shopaholic book series, has died. The writer, whose real name was Madeleine Sophie Wickham, was 55 years old. Last year, she announced she had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in 2022.
Her death was announced on Instagram on Wednesday: "Despite her illness, which she bore with unimaginable courage, Sophie counted herself truly blessed — to have such wonderful family and friends and to have had the extraordinary success of her writing career. She took nothing for granted and was forever grateful for the love she received."
Kinsella's novels were a sensation; they sold tens of millions of copies and were translated into dozens of languages. The first two books in the Shopaholic series were adapted into the 2009 movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, starring Isla Fisher.
In an NPR interview from 2019, she said her novels focused on young women and their travails, even though she was herself a mother with five children.
"I just think there's something exciting about the time of life where you're on the lookout for opportunities in all directions. You're looking at your career. You're looking at finding someone to love. Everything is ahead of you," she said. "And for me, the — kind of the wide, open horizon is so exciting. There is something exhilarating about meeting a stranger in a coffee shop and thinking, 'Where's this going to go?'"
Makenna Sievertson
covers the daily drumbeat of Southern California — events, processes and nuances making it a unique place to call home.
Published December 10, 2025 2:29 PM
The Alphabet Streets neighborhood of Pacific Palisades. Pepperdine's Disaster Relief Clinic assists survivors with an array of legal issues as they recover and rebuild from January's fires.
Why it matters: Faculty, students and volunteers at Pepperdine University were on the ground within days of the Eaton and Palisades fires offering free legal assistance and relaunching its Disaster Relief Clinic, which provided pro bono services after the Thomas and Woolsey fires in 2017-18.
Why now: “We provide really good legal help for people that have been damaged by the fire[s],” David A. DeJute, the clinic’s director, told LAist. “It makes me feel like I'm providing something of value and worth back to the community.”
The backstory: Since then, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law's Disaster Relief Clinic has assisted more than 300 fire survivors with hundreds of hours of free legal services, according to the university.
Read on ... to learn more about the Disaster Relief Clinic.
Faculty, students and volunteers at Pepperdine University were on the ground within days of the Eaton and Palisades fires offering free legal assistance and relaunching the Disaster Relief Clinic, which provided pro bono services after the Thomas and Woolsey fires in 2017 and 2018.
Since then, Pepperdine Caruso School of Law's Disaster Relief Clinic has assisted more than 300 fire survivors, according to the university. The clinic has helped recover at least $750,000 in FEMA assistance and millions more from insurance claims.
“We provide really good legal help for people that have been damaged by the fire[s],” David A. DeJute, the clinic’s director, told LAist. “It makes me feel like I'm providing something of value and worth back to the community.”
About the clinic
The clinic is designed to help fire survivors with a wide variety of legal issues they may face as they go through the recovery and rebuilding process, including having to find rental housing, working with remediation companies to clean up ash and navigating insurance policy limits.
Pepperdine University faculty, students and volunteers were on the ground within days of January's fires, offering free legal assistance to survivors.
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Courtesy Pepperdine University
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DeJute, who’s also an adjunct professor with Pepperdine’s law school, said the weeks after the fires were a “little like triage” as the clinic focused on helping people prioritize their next steps.
“When you have someone in your family die, you experience trauma and shock and remorse, and nobody is surprised that it affects your mood and your ability to process information,” he said. “Same thing happens when you've lost your home.”
DeJute said some of the most common legal issues that come up at the clinic have to do with FEMA applications, landlords and price gouging.
If a survivor needs more help than the clinic can handle, like with litigation, it will refer them to other lawyers who’ve agreed to take clients pro bono, according to Pepperdine.
The clinic also has trained around 600 lawyers to bring free legal services to their own communities after a disaster, according to the university. DeJute said that includes a student who stepped in to help after the deadly flash flooding in Texas this summer.
A survivor’s story
Pergrin Jung’s family home was “completely destroyed” in the Palisades Fire in what he described to LAist as “the worst days of our lives.”
Jung, like many other survivors, wasn’t sure how to start picking up the pieces.
“Not only were we in a state of shock,” he said. “But also, none of us really knew what the next steps would be.”
Jung reached out for help with an insurance claim for his homeowner’s policy and said the clinic was a “staple” every step of the way. He said students and staff helped explain the legal system, gave feedback on letters he sent to the insurance company and guided his strategy throughout the process.
“Having this resource made all the difference to us,” Jung said. “They were invaluable.”
The clinic is run by Pepperdine faculty, staff and law students who get hands-on experience operating as attorneys under DeJute’s supervision.
The students are tasked with communicating with clients, diving into details of their legal needs, pushing back against price gouging and managing issues with mortgage companies, to name a few.
Taylor Wedlock, a third-year law student, said the clinic was an opportunity to do her part for the community, especially after her father, an L.A. fire captain, spent about a week fighting the Palisades Fire.
“We weren't just doing FEMA appeals or applications,” she told LAist. “We're going to … help to get this survivor his instruments back so he can so he can start his, you know, his musical career again.”
Wedlock said the clinic helps students apply what they learn in law school textbooks and lectures while exploring the more personal aspect of being a lawyer.
Wedlock recalled the relief in her client’s voice when she got approved for FEMA rental assistance after more than six months of denials, for example. She said she considers that one of her major wins of the semester.
“It may seem impossible to come back from such devastation, but there are options,” Wedlock said. “There are a lot of people who are willing to help.”
How to get involved
People seeking disaster-related legal assistance from the clinic can fill out the request form here. (Please note: A staff attorney or law student will respond to each request, but filling out the form doesn’t create an attorney-client relationship, according to Pepperdine.)
