The Brief

It’s been nearly two years since UCLA signed a formal agreement for Southern California tribal members to use a portion of the university’s botanical garden to practice their traditional planting, harvesting, and gathering of crops.

It’s now bearing fruit in the form of deer grass (called huutah by the Tongva) and blue elderberry (or huukat, its Tongva name).

Victoria Sork (left), director of the UCLA Botanical Garden and Chantal Ochoa-Clark, the garden's manager of outreach and education

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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“Members of our community, from the very beginning, selected the plants that were most important and… our community needed to have access to… also we were there to help plant the plants,” said Desiree Martinez, a Gabrielino Tongva archeologist.

Martinez helped create the small plot at the UCLA Mathias Botanical Garden and Herbarium.

And the portion of the garden planted by Native Americans is small. It’s roughly the size of two pickleball courts if they were asymmetrical and on a steep slope.

It’s easy to miss the native plants unless you look for the knee-high sign that says “Tongva Basket Weaving Garden.”

Native American tradition holds that the Creator established a relationship between people and plants, animals, and the natural elements with the responsibility of people to take care of those things.

“Because of colonization, that connection and that promise or instruction that was made by the Creator, has been severed,” Martinez said.

Native Americans plan to harvest the deer grass in the botanical garden when it's mature, to make baskets.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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“This partnership — groundbreaking in many ways — acknowledges the First People of this area, while also creating a path for the practice, sharing and teaching of culture, customs and stewardship,” said Assemblymember James Ramos in an email. He’s the former chair of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians.

The garden's original caretakers

The Mathias Botanical Garden and Herbarium is a 7.5-acre parcel that’s an undeveloped part of the natural canyon between busy Hilgard Avenue on the east and a dense cluster of UCLA medical buildings on its west edge. It’s hard to appreciate the garden’s magnitude from the outside because the topography descends with the canyon.

It was created when UCLA moved to Westwood in 1929, but there was no visible effort to recognize the original caretakers of the land.

The garden was closed until last spring for a renovation of the stream that flows continuously through the garden. Its re-opening now provides the general public, groups of school children, and in particular Native American students and staff, the opportunity to see an example of a public institution going beyond land acknowledgements and actually giving back a portion of land for Native Americans to use.

“I don't think until recently we really had an appreciation that we were on unceded territory of Native people, and we were not in a place where we are showing our respect,” said Victoria Sork, director of the botanical garden and a professor in UCLA’s Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Her interaction with area tribal members led her to understand Indigenous thinking about the symbiotic and caretaker relationship between humans and nature. She was one of the signers of the memorandum of understanding.

Native Americans have special access to these plants. And Sork said it’s very important that no one from the public touch, pick, or take them.

The deer grass will be used to create baskets

In a few years the deer grass will be mature enough to be harvested and used for basket weaving. A Tongva group will organize the basket weaving. And the plan is to make sure Native Americans on campus take part.

“Our goal of the garden is to make everyone feel welcome, but we particularly want to make sure the Native people understand that … this is part of their history and future,” Sork said.

Here’s how you can visit

Take the Sunset Boulevard exit from the 405 Freeway and turn south on Hilgard Avenue. Then turn west on Westholme Avenue into the UCLA campus and look for Parking Structure 2.

After you pay, walk south along Charles Young Drive to the entrance to the botanical garden. There’s no entrance fee. There are picnic benches and lots of shade and many of the paths are paved.

The garden closes at 5 p.m. until next month, when it will close at 4 p.m. Here are the garden’s hours.

Another stretch of scorching summer heat has been baking Southern California this week.

For renters wondering how to stay safe, free cooling kits and heat-safety information will be provided this weekend at a workshop hosted by Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, or SAJE.

The workshop — a collaboration between SAJE, the ARCH Collaborative and Cal State L.A. — will be from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Saturday at 152 W. 32nd St. in Historic South-Central and is free to the public.

What’s provided? 

The 25 kits include a wall thermometer, a cooling neck band and towel, and emergency water tablets, among other products.

Attendees will learn how to use the products and best practices for beating the heat from a group led by Cal State L.A. environmental health science professor Evelyn Alvarez. You’ll also learn how to make your own kit to keep at home as a low-cost cooling strategy.

Why now? 

The National Weather Service issued an extreme heat warning for much of the region that remains in effect through 8 p.m. Thursday. Forecasters also expect humid conditions into next week.

Prolonged heat can increase the risk of dehydration, heat exhaustion and heat stroke.

An estimated one-fifth of Californians lack air conditioning, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Renters in the inner city, particularly those experiencing AC insecurity and those who are not able to access cooling centers, may face increased risks of heat-related illnesses like heat exhaustion and heat stroke that can be life-threatening,” Alvarez said.

Last year, L.A. County passed an ordinance that requires landlords with homes in unincorporated areas to keep temperatures at or below 82 degrees. But enforcement won’t begin until 2027 or 2032, depending on how many units the landlord owns.

“A lot of folks don’t have the right to a cool house, so we’re really excited to offer this emergency service to folks,” said Alejandro Campillo, an assistant director at SAJE and another leader of the workshop.

Will there be more workshops? 

Yes — if you can’t make this one, another is scheduled for July 27, when another 25 free cooling kits will be distributed.

To attend, sign up for the July 18 or July 27 workshop here.

In Venice Beach, some are outraged after they say a FIFA Fan Zone misled the public and disrupted their neighborhood.

The fan celebration by the beach took place at a city park and cost anywhere between $15 and $125 a ticket, but organizers had also advertised a block party and free area to go along with it. The license agreement for the event between organizers and the L.A.'s Recreation and Parks Department described an LED screen and two beer gardens that would be available to the public, free of charge.

Instead, no screens were outside the ticketed fan zone, which took place on July 10 and 11. Some were surprised when they showed up to the block party on Windward Avenue and found just a few tents and no way to watch the game besides ducking into a bar.

Alex Kissin, a Venice resident, attended a Rec and Parks meeting Thursday morning to complain that the Fan Zone didn't deliver.

"The park was effectively unavailable to the community for more than a week," said Kissin, who is also a member of the Venice Chamber of Commerce. "The free public, public elements described in the report simply did not materialize."

Event organizer John Cohn told LAist that around 2,500 free tickets were made available for the Fan Zone, but acknowledged that the free viewing party didn't happen.

" This was a spectacular event about which all of us should be proud," said Cohn, CEO of Venice Beach FWC, LLC, the company that put on the event. "Not only did we put a lot of smiles on faces of people all across Venice and Los Angeles, but I think that this gave an opportunity for Venice to put a positive face on the world."

Cohn said that he had to change plans for the free viewing area after LAPD prohibited plans to put up screens showing the matches on the closed-down street, citing concerns about security and crowd control.

" We actually had planned a free block party along Windward," he said. "It had been included in our planning, and LAPD scotched it."

LAPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The License Agreement with the city had also included plans for a "free Health and Wellness Fair" in Windward Plaza on July 12, the day after the Fan Zone ended. But that event required a ticket, too, which Cohn said cost between $25 and $90.

Both event organizers and representatives for the Recreation and Parks Department said that there was a last-minute change in who would put on the Fan Zone, which caused a big organizational challenge.

Cohn, who runs Venice Soleil Nails & Spa, said Councilmember Traci Park's office approached him about taking over the fan zone after the original person who won the FIFA bid pulled out just around ten weeks before the World Cup.

Sonya Young Jimenez, a Recreation and Parks Department superintendent, told the Rec and Parks Commissioners Thursday that there would be an after-action meeting to figure out what could have been done differently.

" I know with the Olympics coming, we want to use this as a way to make it better for next time," she said.

LAist reached out to Park, who represents Venice, but her office did not respond in time for publication.

On Instagram, the councilmember posted an article about the Fan Zone with the caption, "Venice Beach just showed the world what’s possible."

California officials are taking the Orange County city of Costa Mesa to court — not for something local officials did, but for something they failed to do: plan for more housing.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Thursday that his office has submitted filings asking courts to compel Costa Mesa and four other cities to comply with the requirements of California’s housing element law.

“These five that we are suing today are outliers,” Bonta said in a news conference. “They are scofflaws.”

State law requires cities to plan for new housing growth once every eight years. Bonta said for this cycle, 95% of local governments have submitted their housing elements — documents that detail how cities plan to accommodate the required number of new homes, including units affordable to low-income families.

In addition to Costa Mesa, Bonta’s office is demanding compliance from Calexico, Half Moon Bay, Ridgecrest and Turlock.

Gustavo Velasquez, director of the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, said the cities are shirking their responsibility to plan for about 24,000 new homes combined.

That adds up to 24,000 families who, Velasquez said, “could have a path to a home in their communities where they work, where their kids go to school, maybe where they grow up.”

“Every jurisdiction that fails to meet its obligations is simply shifting the burden and asking everyone else to make up for that difference,” he added.

Costa Mesa officials did not respond to LAist’s requests for comment. State law requires the city to plan for 11,760 new homes by 2029. In City Council meetings, elected leaders have said meeting that goal will require community engagement on a massive rezoning effort.

The latest in a string of city/state battles

This is not the first time Orange County leaders have earned the reproval of state housing regulators. A long-running court battle between the state and Huntington Beach recently ended with that coastal city approving a plan to accommodate about 13,000 new homes.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said the latest legal action is meant to show that no city is able to flout state law.

“California can't solve the housing crisis while some cities sit on their hands and dare us to do something about it,” Newsom said in a statement. “These five jurisdictions had every chance to follow the law and plan for their fair share of housing. They chose not to, so now they'll answer for it in court.”

The cities were supposed to turn in their housing elements more than two-and-a-half years ago, state officials said. In past housing planning cycles, the state has done little to punish cities that blow deadlines or deliver unrealistic housing elements. Bonta said this cycle will be different.

“We are done with delays,” Bonta said. “It's no secret that California's housing shortage is one of the most pressing challenges facing our state. Every delay in compliance translates into delayed housing opportunities for families, for workers, seniors and young people across the state.”

Why this cycle is different

The housing element process forces cities to plan for more housing, but it doesn’t force them to actually build it. Instead, cities can comply with the law by doing things like giving developers more incentives to build denser housing, or rezoning certain neighborhoods to allow apartments.

The current state planning cycle has delivered much higher housing goals to coastal cities like Costa Mesa. Historically, housing growth in Southern California was channeled further inland, concentrating new construction in parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

But this time, local planning officials took a different approach. They significantly boosted goals in coastal employment centers with the aim of putting residents closer to their jobs. That triggered a political backlash in cities that saw their allocations skyrocket.

In the previous cycle, which covered the years 2014 through 2021, Costa Mesa’s goal was to plan for only two new housing units.

Karlo Campana, a father of three in Tustin, took four weeks of paid leave after the birth of his son in May, just as the dad was able to for his older children.

“You need that adjustment period of like, ‘I need to figure out how we're going to adjust now to a new child into our family,'” he said. “My wife isn’t doing it on her own, she doesn’t feel like she’s alone on this journey. She feels like she has support, and that’s another benefit.”

Campana is among a growing number of fathers who are taking paid leave in the state to care for a new child, and part of a larger cultural shift in the increasing roles dads play in caregiving. Now, for the first time in the program’s history, more fathers than mothers in California are applying for leave.

California’s program offers up to eight weeks of paid bonding leave for workers of all genders.

In 2025, men accounted for 51% of bonding claims filed.

It’s a massive shift from when the program started in 2004, when men made up about 18% of claim applications. The state additionally saw a record in applications for paid family leave in 2025. That includes leave to care for a sick family member.

“We're in a very different place in terms of our understanding of gender roles, of paternity leave, of dads' roles than we were twenty plus years ago,” said Molly Weston Williamson, policy director at Paid Leave for All, a national organization that advocates for paid family leave policies.

Campana has seen the shifting attitudes in his own family.

“It's funny — my mom sees me being really involved with my kids, changing diapers, staying up with them at night, reading books, cooking for them, and my mom's like, ‘Your dad really didn't do much of that … I didn't know that was something dads did,’ And she was like, ‘I'm glad to see you're doing that,’” he said.

The trend is playing out elsewhere, as well. California is one of 14 states along with D.C. that have passed laws for paid family leave. Williamson said she’s also seen dads make up a higher proportion of those taking paid family leave in those states in recent years.

Why now?

In addition to changing gender norms, Williamson said there are other factors at play that’s likely contributing to the increase in men filing for claims: greater awareness about the program in general in California and recent changes to the benefit.

In 2025, the state increased the amount of income a worker can recoup while they go on family leave. Before then, most workers would get 60% of their pay. Now, they can get 70% to 90% of their income.

“ We definitely heard from a lot of fathers that they went out to take bonding leave, then came back [to work] when they got their first check because they realized [that] 60% just wasn't going to cover their bills,” said Jenya Cassidy, director of the California Work & Family Coalition, a statewide advocacy organization based in the Bay Area. “ I do think that the expanded wage replacement, especially for low income fathers maybe is part of that — that they're able to take the time.”

But both Cassidy and Williamson said more research is needed to understand the data. Barry White, a spokesperson for the state Employment Development Department, which administers the program, said the department couldn’t provide “definitive reason(s)” in the increase in male bonding claims.

“We're getting one particular vantage point into this data, which is useful and valuable, but it's only telling us sort of part of the story,” said Williamson.  ”Is it that more dads are working and therefore are potentially eligible for these benefits? Is it that women are deciding not to take leave?  We'd need other kinds of information to better understand the full picture.”

Williamson said, for instance, mothers who leave the workforce after having children would not be captured in the data.

Who benefits from paid leave?

Research has shown that paternity leave has benefits beyond allowing a father the time to bond with their new baby — it has positive effects on the whole family, including better health outcomes for both parents. Paid parental leave is also linked with lower incidents of postpartum depression and even a decrease in infant mortality rates. It’s also linked to higher employee retention.

Campana said taking paid leave allowed him to team up with his wife in taking turns feeding their baby, or changing constant diapers.

“People don’t think about the mental strain," he said.
"Like, you’re both a little bit sleep-deprived. And you’re kind of just adjusting. Nobody gives you a playbook.”

As someone who didn’t have close friends who were dads, Campana also joined the local chapter of a nonprofit support group, Dads Supporting Dads, for a community to lean on. The group provides virtual support groups and meetups for dads in an aim to help change “the narrative around modern fatherhood.”

Initially, Campana said he wasn’t sure about taking leave with his first child because of lingering stereotypes.

“ I think dads feel like they need to be the provider. I felt guilty for sure,” he said. “I think that’s because my dad … he worked three jobs, and so it was very different for him. It was hard for him to be present, and I think that’s the one thing now — it’s like, ‘No, be present. Be there for your kids. You have that paid time.’”