The Brief

Homelessness among families with children has been growing.

In California, more than 74,000 children under age 4 experienced homelessness between 2022 and 2023, up from the year before, according to a report by SchoolHouse Connection. The study found a similar dynamic across the United States.

Resources for unhoused families have become increasingly scarce, too, amid rising economic stress. Last year, the vast majority of families in California with young children struggled to meet a basic need such as housing or utilities, according to a survey by the Stanford Center on Early Childhood — one of the highest levels in years.

We spoke to five families with young children in Southern California who spoke of how they ended up struggling to stay housed, whether because of a job loss that depleted hard-earned savings, an eviction after a spike in rent, or escape from a home of domestic abuse.

They shared varied experiences of navigating housing stability in L.A., but all expressed a similar sentiment — the emotional weight of protecting their children and the visceral longing to preserve their kids’ childhoods.

(LAist is using first names only because of concerns around safety and potential ramifications.)

“I may not be rich, but I feel like seeing my daughter paint and draw, that makes me rich,” Erika says.

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Erika left a bad situation to prevent a worse one

'It's a struggle to be a mom in Los Angeles at this day and age, period.'

The repurposed motel room where Erika stays with her two children is bare in furnishings, but she’s laid down shaggy rugs and decorated the bunk beds with bright comforters. Her 8-year-old daughter’s bunk is covered in Hello Kitty decor.

“Here, in this room, it doesn't feel like I’m homeless,” she said.

It’s not Erika's first time in this shelter near Koreatown. The first was with her children’s father about two years ago after they were evicted. Their one-bedroom apartment in Crenshaw went from $1,200 to $1,800.

They had a baby boy while at the shelter, and moved out to Section 8 housing. But about a year ago, Erika took her children and left, breaking a cycle of domestic strife at the cost of becoming homeless again.

“I’m not going to have DCFS (the Department of Child and Family Services) come and take my kids from both of us because we’re fighting and we’re toxic,” she said. “I don't know where I would be right now if I didn't have this place. I would probably be in the street with my kids, or I probably wouldn't even have custody of my kids.”

Erika isn’t new to the foster care system. She herself entered foster care when she was 12 years old because of her mother’s drug addiction.

“I just knew that I didn't want to give the lifestyle that I was given to my children,” she said.

She shares custody of her children, and pines for the days when she’s with them. She’ll buy coloring supplies for her daughter from Ross across the street. Her 2-year-old son is busy climbing the beds and running around.

“I may not be rich, but I feel like seeing my daughter paint and draw, that makes me rich,” she said. “Even little things like reading my kid a book at night. As funny as this sounds, like no one read me a book.”

She said she’s working on going to school and getting her real estate license. She hopes to secure low-income housing. Research shows economic hardship — tied to the high cost of housing — is a primary driver of homelessness.

“Los Angeles is not a fairy tale, you know?” she said. “I know it's temporary. I know one day I'll get my house. I know one day, I'm gonna be cooking with my daughter watching ‘Cocomelon.’ One day, but I know I’m trying. I’m trying.”

After leaving a domestic violence situation, Jessica found housing help through several nonprofits and is now renting a house on her own.

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Jessica juggles three part-time jobs

'I have done everything possible … sometimes it’s just not enough.'

When Jessica fled her abusive husband, pregnant and with her two young boys, she told them they were on an adventure. They sought shelter in hotels.

“I would try to make it as fun as I could,” Jessica says. “I kept them entertained — a lot of jumping on the bed, a lot of just having fun or playing with their toys or being outside, like parks — just try to only be there when it was time to eat, shower and go to bed.”

But it wasn’t ideal for parenting. She couldn’t store groceries, the weekly rates were expensive, and transient visitors made it a less-than-ideal environment for her two kids.

“[It was] a never-ending rollercoaster,” she recalled.

After about six months, she got in touch with House of Ruth, a nonprofit that supports survivors of domestic violence, that helped her find housing and help with a portion of her rent. Domestic violence is one of the leading causes of homelessness among women.

But that help was time-limited, and she faced eviction after falling a month and a half behind on her payments.

“I was literally losing it. I didn't know if we were gonna be in the middle of the streets. I don't have family. I don't. It's just me and my kids,” she said, echoing a sentiment LAist heard from other families.

She was able to get rental help from a homeless prevention program through another nonprofit — a program designed to help families stay in their homes. That’s since ended, and now, she rents a house from a church in an L.A. suburb at a discount.

When LAist visited in January, Jessica had just moved into the two-bedroom. Her three young children — 7 and under — share the master bedroom. Her favorite part of her new house is a kitchen bar counter.

“The kids are really enjoying just sitting there and watching me cook and it feels like a hibachi restaurant,” she said.

When her kids are in school, she juggles three part-time jobs — at the church nearby, cleaning houses, and as a substitute teacher. She’s also in school full-time working toward a degree in healthcare administration. She wakes up at 2:30 in the morning and works on her schoolwork until her kids wake up around 6.

“They'll never see a time where like I'm crying or something like that. They always see me joking around with them, laughing with them, doing something with them,” she said.

“The most important thing is keeping a roof over my kids’ heads,” she added. “When you see families, um, mothers and fathers with children and they're on the street or they're in shelters, it's not by the lack of effort, it's by the lack of resources and rent.”

Caseworkers have helped Marie get connected to temporary shelter. Soon, she says, she will be moving into permanent housing and wants to get into this line of work to help others.

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Marie got clean for her daughter

'If I could have anything portrayed from any of this situation with me and my family, it would be that we love each other.'

Marie glanced at her phone, which has a timer of the days, hours, minutes she’s been sober.

“ I've been clean for 11 months, 12 days, 11 hours and 20 minutes,” she said.

Marie held her 4-month-old daughter, who blinked contentedly in the beam of the afternoon sun.

Last July, Marie was living in a “tiny home” in North Hollywood with her partner when she found out she was pregnant. She stopped using meth immediately.

“I was a drug addict for 25 years and stopped completely because of my daughter,” she said.

Marie became homeless about three years ago after being in and out of jail. She’d been arrested for identity fraud and larceny. With no family nearby, she began living in her truck. “It was not easy. Living homeless is not for the weak at all,” she said. Marie also lives with bipolar disorder.

She and her partner were able to move into a tiny home, which she said, at the time, was “awesome” — until she was pregnant.

“I was like, OK, listen, I’m about to pass out. There’s not enough ventilation there.” At seven months pregnant, she moved into a family shelter in the San Fernando Valley, a 100-unit former motel. “Moving here was a luxury and a breath of fresh air.” Her water broke in their room about a month before her due date. Her baby spent 10 days in the neonatal intensive care unit. “She’s been doing great ever since.”

Pregnancy while homeless is common. A study from UC San Francisco in 2023 found that 1 in four unhoused women between 18 and 44 years old in California was pregnant. They’re also less likely to access prenatal resources.

Marie soaked in her daughter’s recent developments. Just days ago, the newborn haze cleared from her eyes and she looked up at her mom. “ And then she got this big old grin on her face. And it, I swear to God, it was the single most rewarding feeling in my life because she looked at me like she was falling in love with me for the first time,” she said.

In a few weeks, Marie said, they’ll be moving out of the shelter to a two-bedroom apartment in Van Nuys, where she’ll have permanent supportive housing, a program that helps pay for housing people living with mental illness. There, she’ll pay 30% of the rent. She said she plans to drive Uber part-time, so she can take her daughter around. She said she also wants to work in the field of homeless services after her experience and because of the people who helped her.

As for what she’s looking forward to in her new home for her baby? “Everything ... I’m excited to watch her grow.”

After losing his job, Wayne and his family lost their apartment in L.A. and had to sleep in and out of their car.

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Wayne moved his family away to find a home

'We're willing to give California up for that because the most important thing is to be housed and fed.'

When Wayne lost his job two years ago in A/V tech support, he had $30,000 saved up — enough to stay afloat for at least a little while. But months went by, and the job market was brutal. Soon, they ran out of money and lost their one-bedroom apartment in L.A.

He and his partner stayed in and out of motels and in their car with their 4-year-old son at the time. “The first time we slept in the car it was really, really hot, and [the son] ended up with heat rashes all over his back,” he said.

Thousands of Angelenos use cars as shelter. Although it’s difficult to get an exact number, a recent Homeless Count found that more than 23,000 people live in a vehicle on any given night.

His son, A., has autism and struggles to sleep. “He hates it,” Wayne said, who wanted to use the first initial of his son's name. “The only way he'll sleep in the car is if he's literally on, usually my lap.” LAist interviewed Wayne last fall and chronicled his story.

But during the days, he would take A. to the park or the library, playing with him and his car toys.

“The most important thing is trying to make sure he basically is comfortable as much as possible, that he's [having] fun, that he's not really understanding what's going on — which I think we're doing a good job [at] so far,” Wayne said.

After months of searching, Wayne got a job out of state late last year — and left California, where he was born and raised. They moved into a home in the dead of winter. His son ran into every room, exploring.

“He was kind of standing there for a bit, just kind of blank stare, and then I told him, ‘It's our home,’ and he smiled,” Wayne said. He said after months of living in their car, his son was still getting used to having a home.

“We left to go to the store earlier today, and he didn't wanna leave. He said ‘bye-bye’ to the house and started crying. He didn't wanna leave,” Wayne said. “He just wants to be inside. I think he just wants to take in — the stability of being inside."

Diana came to the U.S. two years ago with her three children for economic opportunity. “We went hungry a lot—way too much,” she said.

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Diana hopes her children don’t grow to resent her

'We came here to better ourselves, to do good things here, what we couldn’t do back home.'

Diana and her three children came to the U.S. from Venezuela two years ago, settling in L.A.. The economic collapse there has led to nearly 7.9 million Venezuelans leaving the country, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

She said her family went hungry far too often. “ Es duro como mamá que los hijos le piden comida a uno y porque es horrible cuando un hijo le pide comida a uno y uno no tenga," she said through tears, hurt that she couldn't give her children food when they asked for it.

Desperate, she left with her kids, two of them teenagers — traveling through the notorious Darién Gap, a 70-mile stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama where hundreds of thousands of migrants have crossed in recent years — and where the number of deaths is largely known to be undercounted.

Children under 5 have been the fastest-growing group of migrants crossing the treacherous terrain. Diana and her children traveled for months.

"Pasado mucha necesidad de, este, la cual el, en la selva, la selva del Darién," she said, talking about the hardships faced crossing the Darién jungle. She said there were many rapes, deaths and murders.

When they got to Mexico, they lived on the streets.

" Andando en la calle, durmiendo en la calle, pidiendo limosna," she said. You go hungry, you live on the street, you just keep going.

After staying in motels in L.A., Diana found a temporary family shelter where her family shares one room, including with their 1-year-old dog Dulce.

She and her husband make minimum wage, cleaning at a factory that makes burritos, and are trying to figure out how to afford rent on their own. They’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, living on $16 an hour for a family of five when the median rent in the Los Angeles Metro area is over $2,000.

She says she's grateful they're in a better spot, not out on the street — but as a mother, she wants to give her children the best.

"Yo me imagínese que mi hijo me diga: 'Mamá, ¿y entonces para qué me sacaste de allá? ¿A tenernos aquí, porque en estas cuatro paredes?'" — "I can just imagine my son telling me, 'Mom, why did you take me out of there? Just to have us here, inside these four walls?'"

But she said here, her kids aren’t starving. They have food and are going to school. Her oldest is enrolled in a summer program that has field trips across the city.

Still, recent news about immigration and mass deportations has her on edge.

"No hay comida en mi país no hay y no me gustaría volver," she said. There's no food left in her home country. And that's what causes her anguish and anxiety: Getting caught by immigration, she and her family getting deported. "A veces me pone, me llena de angustia, de ansiedad, de eso, de saber de eso que me lleno."

She said she prays for protection over her and her children.

"Es en los manos de Dios," she said.

It’s in God’s hands.

When Bengara opened in Los Angeles' Arts District earlier this year, its owner and head chef had something special lined up in their kitchen arsenal.

It was genshiyaki, a rare traditional Japanese grilling method that dates back 1,500 years.

Chef and co-owner Tyler Burges had only encountered it once while traveling in Japan at a robatayaki spot in Fukuoka, a port city on the island of Kyushu.

Robatayaki, a style of slow, ember-cooked grilling rooted in Japan's rural coastal kitchens, usually centers on an open charcoal hearth. But the restaurant Burges visited had something even more noteworthy: a genshiyaki pit, a gentler, ambient method of cooking that uses radiant heat instead of direct flame.

Loving the unusually subtle, delicate flavor and texture it produced, he and head chef Phil Mireles decided to bring genshiyaki back to the U.S. and build their Arts District restaurant around it. The genshiyaki pit is a rare enough technique that Burges had to work with fabricator Phil Roxworthy for six months just to get the grill built to spec.

It's Burges' and Mireles' first L.A. project. The pair are also behind Smoke Door, their acclaimed Lake Tahoe restaurant, and Bengara brings a more casual, day-to-day take on the same fire-driven cooking.

All roads lead to the Arts District

Chef/owner Tyler Burges (left) and head chef Phil Mireles at Bengara.

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Courtesy Bengara

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Burges and Mireles both got their start at San Francisco's Saison and Angler under chef Joshua Skenes — who's now just down the street in L.A. at LYNX with fellow alum Brandyn Tepper.

Burges traces Bengara's DNA back to two mentors: Ron Siegel, who introduced him to Japanese ingredients and technique in his mid-20s, and Skenes, who taught him to cook with live fire. It was Skenes, Burges said, who showed him that fire didn't have to mean char and bravado.

"The one thing I loved about wood-fire cooking is you get this subtle, sweet barbecue flavor when you cook correctly over embers, and you don't cook directly over the fire," Burges said. "Most places, when you think about grilling something, you think of char, bold flavors, masculine flavors. But Chef Josh — it's like a master art, getting really delicate, subtle flavor using that grill method."

The uni kiritampo, Bengara's take on a traditional Akita-prefecture rice skewer, finished with scallion.

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Courtesy Bengara

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What sets the food apart

Take their luscious miso cod. On a normal grill, the marinade's sugars would blacken before the fish cooked through. On the genshiyaki pit, the cod sits at a distance from the embers, cooking gently until the very end, when it's given one last pass directly over the coals — what Burges describes as a final "kiss" of heat before it hits the plate.

To fuel genshiyaki's slower, ambient style, ordinary charcoal or wood is replaced with binchotan, an ultra-dense, pure-carbon hardwood charcoal traditionally made in Japan, which burns hotter and cleaner.

The signature dish

A perfect example of how this cooking style comes together is the uni kiritampo, the Akita prefecture rice skewer, reimagined with uni and cooked via genshiyaki — born of an offhand kitchen conversation with one of the restaurant's Japanese chefs about regional dishes cooked over fire.

Once they realized genshiyaki was the dish's original, historic cooking method, the rest fell into place.

"It's like the most delicious thing," Burges said. "I don't know why it never made it over to the United States earlier."

Bengara's Arts District dining room pairs industrial bones with warm, low lighting and long communal tables.

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The chewy exterior, with just a hint of smoke, gives way to a creamy inside, like a caramelized custard, that’s topped with a decadent amount of uni, providing a semi-sweet finish — one memorable bite.

Tasting menu option

Bengara recently added a daily eight-course tasting menu ($98) that doubles as a greatest-hits tour of the kitchen — Toyosu carpaccio with chili coffee oil, pork belly "tacos" wrapped in mochi crepes, miso cod, Mary's half chicken, and handmade citrus soba, with optional wagyu and uni add-ons.

The price includes a beverage pairing, with a full non-alcoholic option alongside the boozy version. Walk-ins are welcome, and reservations can be booked via OpenTable.

Topline:

Why it matters: Museum officials said you will “likely experience high demand and long wait times in the queue" and thanked people for their patience.

LAist saw estimated wait times up to 6 hours, and it took a little more than 4.5 hours for this reporter to get through. On the bright side, there were still plenty of tickets left, including for the first day. Do not refresh the page or you may lose your spot.

The details: All tickets are timed entry. Tickets are $25 for adults and $21 for those 65 and older. Children, members, active-duty military, personal aides or attendants and EBT cardholders have free entry. Museum neighbors in the LM37 program will also be free, with that pass opening in August.

But how do I buy: Each person is limited to nine tickets, and you’ll have 20 minutes to check out once they’re added to your cart, according to the museum. You can find the link here.

What's next: The grand opening is Sept. 22.

Go deeper: How to secure Lucas Museum of Narrative Art tickets ahead of the fall opening

Inglewood officials are working on a full rewrite of the city map for the first time in nearly 40 years, laying out how they want the city to grow and change for the next two decades.

Along part of Manchester Boulevard, city planners are setting up an option for developers to rebuild rows of small storefronts with a mix of homes and commercial space. On La Brea Avenue, south of Centinela Avenue, they envision the possibility of dense housing and business blocks as high as six stories.

Jerome Johnson, an Inglewood local, said he’s lived through three decades of change in the city. He recalled watching a “raggedy market” at the corner of La Brea and Centinela make way for the two-story shopping center that’s there today. He said the potential developments around the intersection could be a catch-22.

“There’s a shortage of housing,” Johnson said. “But you don’t want it to turn into New York City.”

It’s all part of the ongoing process for Inglewood’s new general plan, the foundational guide that governs things like what kind of buildings can be built where in the city and how they need to look. A draft land-use plan will go before the Inglewood City Council on Tuesday, then go into the environmental impact review process.

“This is really a historic milestone for the city,” Bernard McCrumby, Inglewood development services director, told The LA Local. 

McCrumby said planners are aiming to open up room for new housing and to revitalize some of the city’s flagging business corridors, without changing the city’s existing residential blocks or sacrificing the grocery stores, barbershops and local restaurants that make neighborhoods tick.

“The stadiums and arenas are here, they’re not going anywhere,” McCrumby said. “Now we can plan around those.”

The last time the city did a full update of its general plan was 1987, when horses were still racing at Hollywood Park and the “Showtime” Lakers were winning championships at the Forum. Edward Vincent Jr., the city’s first Black mayor, had only been in office for four years. 

The city has made intermittent updates to its planning guidelines since then — notably remapping a band of Inglewood along the Metro K line before it opened — but city documents indicate planners spent the past couple years working on a comprehensive rewrite. 

The new update to the general plan could set the city’s direction until 2050.

Planners hope to change some of the city’s commercial corridors into mixed-use zones that allow for housing and businesses alongside each other or even stacked on top of each other.

Those zones could go in place along Century Boulevard and Arbor Vitae Street as well as Manchester, Centinela and La Brea.

The rest of the update, McCrumby said, is aimed at lining the city’s zoning regulations up with state law and the city’s current reality on the ground.

City staff held several community meetings over the last year as they put together the draft and still aren’t done gathering feedback. 

The next year will see at least one more community meeting and a 45-day public review period, according to city documents. McCrumby said that, with the anchor of the land-use map in place, planners will continue to work on the rest of the general plan, targeting final City Council approval of the plan and accompanying environmental impact report next spring.

You can get all the details on the general plan at nextlevelinglewood.com and attend the City Council meeting at 2 p.m. on Tuesday to give a public comment.

We also want to know what you think of the proposed changes. Email isaiah@thelalocal.org with your questions or thoughts.

Students within the Los Angeles Unified School District showed improvements on state reading, math and science standardized tests for a third consecutive year, district authorities announced Tuesday.

Superintendent Andrés Chait revealed the preliminary results at the annual opening-of-schools address at East L.A.’s Garfield High School— his first as the district’s leader since the board appointed him to the job in June.

“ These are not just numbers on a page,” Chait said to an audience that included about 1,000 principals, administrators and district supporters. “They are the result of your passion, your persistence, your belief in what students can achieve. These are collective accomplishments.

"They reflect the dedication, skill, and commitment of our entire community,” he said.

Jai Gant-Leau, principal of Eagle Tree Continuation High School, said the “back-to-basics” focus of Chait’s speech was a welcome departure from the tone of recent opening addresses.

“We will continue to rise for the outcomes and expectations for the success of our students. That's the message I got,” Gant-Leau said. “Very different than the others where it was a lot of… bells and whistles.”

Why it matters

Student achievement, as measured by test scores, plummeted during the pandemic. Los Angeles Unified’s growth in 2025 outpaced the state, as test scores exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

This year the percentage of students in all grades who met or exceeded the standard are 39.7% for math, 48.3% for English and 32.1% for science. It’s unclear how this compares to students statewide because those results have yet to be released.

Challenges ahead

Chait also acknowledged the challenges posed by declining enrollment, community fears of immigration enforcement actions and proposed budget cuts.

 “The decisions will be hard, but we cannot lose sight of what defines us,” Chait said. “We are the system that lifts students to opportunity, turns potential into achievement, creates spaces of belonging, healing, growth.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.