The Brief

Nothing says summertime like children selling lemonade outside their homes. A paper cup of the sweetly tart concoction can be so refreshing on a sweltering summer day. And in Los Angeles, there is often an added bonus — the lemons are most likely local, picked from trees in the children’s own yards.

Lemons are so plentiful today that it's not uncommon to see baskets full of Lisbons, Meyers and Eurekas being offered for free in front of houses.

People unload them on their neighbors, having used as many as they can in lemon curd, lemon bars, lemon pies, homemade limoncello, and of course, lemonade.

But the lemon, and its big sister the orange, are much more than just fun fruits for home gardeners. The course of the citrus industry in California has dramatically shaped the state's economic fortunes and brought it worldwide acclaim as a bountiful Eden of health and happiness.

Mediterranean climate

A family picking lemons in 1928

Orange and lemon seeds were first brought to California by Spanish missionaries colonizing the area in the late 18th century.

The Spanish soon discovered that the area’s Mediterranean climate, its mild winters and plentiful sunshine (most California lemons are harvested in winter and early spring), made it the ideal place to grow citrus. The Mission San Gabriel and Mission San Fernando had the most luscious groves, and its fruits were used to feed acolytes and keep illnesses like scurvy at bay.

However, from the start, the growth of citrus in California had an exploitative underbelly. “The Spanish may have brought the seeds and whatnot, but they made the Native Americans, whom they press-ganged into doing labor, actually plant and harvest and tend to the crops,” says Benjamin Jenkins, associate professor at the University of La Verne and author of Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California.

 The commercialization of citrus began in 1831, when an enterprising French immigrant named Jean-Louis Vignes bought 104 acres of land just outside the original Pueblo de Los Angeles (now the Arts District) on the Los Angeles River. On his sprawling ranch, named El Aliso, he grew grapes to make his famed wines, as well as orange and lemon trees.

He soon had competition in the form of his neighbor, a former Kentucky fur trapper and cowboy named William Wolfskill. On his equally sprawling ranch, he grew grapes, oranges (he helped develop the famed Valencia orange) and lemons, and by the 1840s he had the largest citrus grove in North America.

Horse-drawn float of the Cahuenga Valley Lemon Association in a parade in Hollywood

(

Los Angeles Public Library/Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection

)

The enormous volume and consistent quality of California citrus, and the fortune that could be made growing the fruits, soon caught the attention of visitors.

In much of the country lemons and oranges were a rare luxury, but here they were so plentiful their unmistakable scent filled the air. In 1870, an Eastern visitor to Los Angeles wrote an essay extolling the city in the Los Angeles Daily News:

Its climate cool, from the sea breezes, it is the most agreeable in the world, its soil productions beyond parallel. Immense vineyards, orange and lemon groves, give beauty to the landscape; and I can only say that if I had my life to begin, and had the talent… I should not hesitate to place myself there at once.

A lemon grove in Altadena

(

Los Angeles Public Library/Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection

)

New varieties

Southern Californians also began to experiment with citrus, creating their own unique varieties. While the Lisbon lemon, a variety originally from Portugal, continued to grow in abundance, it was soon matched in popularity by the Eureka lemon, a thornless, everbearing and hearty variant propagated by Los Angeles nurseryman Thomas Garey in 1877.

So profitable was the citrus industry, according to Jenkins, that its produce was one of the main reasons that the major rail companies began to extend their lines to Los Angeles in the late 1800s.

And when they did, they chose to build their terminals and rail yards directly around the Wolfskill and Vignes’ properties, a logistics’ gold mine in terms of exporting citrus across the country. Soon, the area was swallowed up by the railroads, and citrus moved into open land elsewhere.

“California didn't invent the citrus industry in the United States,” Jenkins says. “But it definitely dominated by the time the railroads came in about the 1880s and 1890s.”

Women working in a lemon packing house, part of the California Fruit Growers Exchange

(

Los Angeles Public Library/Security Pacific National Bank Photo Collection

)

Boosters in Southern California saw the orange and lemon as powerful PR tools to entice sickly, wealthy Midwesterners and Eastern settlers in search of health and rejuvenation. Sanitariums, where you could recover from tuberculosis and other ailments in the sunshine and clear California air, began to open, and many of the patients, once healed, never left the state.

“If you were to look at newspaper accounts from Victorian California, from the Gilded Age advertisements, and correspondence people are sending back east, they’re absolutely thinking of California as a paradise, where in particular a lot of invalids come to try to heal themselves of consumption or tuberculosis or other lung problems,” Jenkins says.

“And part of the prescription that many of their doctors would tell them is that you spend some time in your sanitarium, but then you buy a little plot of land in California, you plant some oranges, and you get hopped up on vitamin C from maybe the lemonade that you're growing as well.”

The Cahuenga Suburban newspaper from 1896

(

Los Angeles Public Library/Security Pacific National Bank collection

)

The rise of Sunkist

In 1893, the Southern California Fruit Exchange, which is now known as Sunkist, was formed by a co-op of growers to help protect their assets and to lobby for California grown citrus. The powerful group (now based in Valencia) became a powerhouse in PR, placing advertising in paper and magazines across the country, promoting orange juice and lemonade as all-American staples.

“They promoted the idea that you should not only drink lemonade, but make sure that it's Sunkist made from lemons in California,” Jenkins says. “In The Saturday Evening Post or Ladies Home Journal they would have lavish illustrations showing a huge pitcher of lemonade with maybe a couple of lemons sitting next to it, touting the benefits of vitamin C and how it's like drinking a little bit of California sunshine.”

The campaigns were a brilliant success, and the consumption of lemonade across America spiked dramatically. The number of lemon trees also grew from 62,000 lemon bearing trees in 1882 to 800,000 trees by 1901.

The same year Sunkist formed, Limoneria, one of the first agribusinesses to tout the lemon as its primary crop, was founded in the Ventura town of Santa Paula. By 1908, it was known as “the greatest lemon ranch in the world.” That year, the Ventura Free Press reported:

A further increase in the size of the largest lemon plantation in the world...will be the result of planting this season at the Limoneira Ranch. There are now...27,000 bearing lemon trees on the property, and this year trees will be on 300 acres more. The crop last year was the largest since the planting has begun. Bigness is not the chief end kept in view by the management of the ranch. The growth of the enterprise, in fact, has come from never flagging efforts to maintain and improve the quality of the product.

But while many were making their fortune in the citrus business, the people who did the actual work in the groves were primarily poorly paid immigrants.

“The people who worked in these fields were primarily Chinese immigrants who had formerly worked for the railroads,” Jenkins says. “The Chinese were often made to live in railroad box cars because those were the houses that were available.”

As restrictions on Chinese immigration were passed, Korean, Japanese and European immigrants increasingly worked backbreaking days in the blazing sun, cultivating California’s dream fruits for the masses.

Photograph from the Valley Times dated December 22, 1962 shows Mrs. Ernest Ortega, from Reseda, holding a large lemon from her tree

(

Los Angeles Public Library (Valley Times collection)

)

Hollywood lemon groves

Citrus soon found a new booster when a director named Cecil B. DeMille came west in 1913 and leased a lemon grove in the small hamlet of Hollywood. There, his company shot The Squaw Man, the first feature-length movie filmed in Los Angeles, amongst the lemon trees.

According to Taschen’s beautiful new book The Gourmand’s Lemon: A Collection of Stories and Recipes, DeMille was not the only Hollywood pioneer to stake his claims on a citrus ranch.

In 1918, Charlie Chaplin opened his first studio in a lemon grove on Sunset and La Brea. “The silent star kept a few of the trees on his lot,” The Gourmand notes, “as evidenced by a goofy snippet of footage that shows him picking a lemon and pulling faces as he tries to eat it, skin and all.”

Even the lemon industry would be fodder for on screen hijinks. According to The Gourmand’s Lemon, in a 1923 short, entitled Oranges and Lemons, comedian Stan Laurel played a citrus worker trying to pack a citrus crate, while constantly being foiled by a wayward conveyer belt.

By the 1930s, California’s two most famous exports were films and citrus. They collided at the San Bernardino National Orange Show in 1939. According to Douglas Cazaux Sackman, author of the fascinating Orange Empire: California and the Fruits of Eden, visitors to the expo were greeted by “manikins of Joan Crawford and Marlene Dietrich lolling in the lawn chairs among garden paths laid out with lemons and lolling in orange chairs among garden paths laid out with lemons and grapefruit, and pretty-boy Clark Gable in neat white flannels and open throat shirt under a fake orange tree glistening with two large golden globes.”

Movie stars also found that lemons, still plentiful though the major groves were long gone, aided them in their strict beauty regimens. “Tinseltown’s Golden Age sirens enjoyed their lemons off screen,” The Gourmand’s Lemon notes. “Rita Hayworth rinsed her hair with lemon juice, Joan Crawford rubbed elbows with it, Katharine Hepburn scrubbed her face with sugar and lemon, and Marlene Dietrich sucked on lemon wedges between takes, believing it would keep her facial muscles perfectly taut for the camera.”

Workers rights

In 1942, the Bracero agreement was reached, which permitted Mexican citizens to come to America as temporary workers in agriculture, and they began to dominate the citrus groves. “For a majority of these men working in the grove, they had to leave their families behind to live and work here,” says Jose Cabello, state interpreter at the California Citrus State Historic Park in Riverside. “Their homes were pretty dismal, hastily made and set up in fairgrounds, old warehouses, prison barracks, and sometimes even along the Santa Ana River.”

After WWII, urban sprawl, industrialization and a decline in the citrus industry pushed most of the remaining commercial groves out of Los Angeles and Orange County and into the Central Valley, where they remain to this day. But Sunkist would not be daunted and continued to promote California citrus products across the world, increasingly encouraging people to use lemons in new and novel ways.

“A lemon is not one product but a group of totally different products,” said Don Francisco, the marketing genius of Sunkist. “A lemon may be classed as a pie, a hair rinse, a cool drink, a hot drink, a garnish, a mouthwash, a vinegar or a skin bleach. The toilet and medicinal value of the lemon are alone sufficient to bring it fame.”

By the 1960s, the fight for farm workers’ rights spearheaded by the Agriculture Workers Association had begun to open Californian’s eyes to the inequity of Big-Ag. The lemon, once a symbol of youth and promise, began to be seen in a more sour, cynical light. In her 1966 essay Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream, Joan Didion wrote of a lemon grove that was “too lush, unsettlingly glossy, the greenery of nightmare.”

Today, the history of citrus in California can be best experienced at the California Citrus State Historic Park in Riverside. The lush, fragrant living museum is home to thousands of citrus trees and offers tours and educational programs documenting the history of citrus in the state, and the memories of those who worked in the field.

“We grow about 70 different types of citrus,” Cabello says. “And among those 70, about 12 of those are lemons.”

His favorite lemon in the park is the variegated pink Eureka lemon, created right here in California. “It's a very unique kind of lemon because as its name suggests, the fruity flesh on the inside is a pink color,” he says. “The lemons, as they're forming, theylook like little watermelons because the fruit has green stripes on it that you would expect a normal watermelon to have. So, this specific lemon is pretty sour. You would expect it to be. But I find them really delicious.”

Although most Angelenos now only see lemon trees in backyards and parks, California produced a 50-year high of 1.06 million tons in 2022-2023. So, next time you squeeze a lemon into your iced tea or over your hair for some natural summer highlights, remember — you are holding a bit of California history in your hands.

Duplex projects will be allowed to move forward once again in two Southern California cities affected by last year’s fires. The change of course is the result of a court showdown between advocates for denser housing and local elected officials who wanted to ban more units from cropping up in burn zones.

The cities of Malibu and Pasadena have agreed to settle with the plaintiffs who brought forward a lawsuit that challenges local jurisdictions’ suspension of Senate Bill 9 in high fire risk zones, according to documents obtained by LAist.

Sonja Trauss, executive director of YIMBY Law, a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said the result will help residents get more out of their properties.

“I want them to know that they can build,” Trauss said.

How we got here

SB 9 allows single-family homeowners across the state to build duplexes and split their lots. It became state law in 2021. SB 9 applicants can use the law to create up to four units where a single-family home once stood, in some cases. The law takes away the ability of local governments to block these projects.

However, after the 2025 fires, some homeowners affected by the fires erupted with anger over the prospect of their burned-down neighborhoods being rebuilt with denser housing. They argued more homes — and the additional residents that come with them — would clog evacuations and hurt neighborhood character.

In July 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an order giving local leaders the power to block the law in very high fire hazard areas within the Palisades and Eaton fire burn zones.

Elected officials in L.A. city, the county of L.A., Pasadena and Malibu followed suit and adopted policies to stop processing SB 9 applications in those areas.

Advocates for increased housing development, including YIMBY Law, sued the governments, alleging they didn’t have the authority to suspend laws passed by the legislature.

Trauss told LAist housing advocates believe the order is being misused for political purposes.

“ It chips away at the policy,” she said. “Especially in the Palisades, everybody could watch the political back-and-forth that caused that to happen.”

The backlash on social media to SB 9 projects in the Palisades was led by former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the fire and later mounted an unsuccessful campaign for L.A. mayor.

What the settlement means

According to the settlement documents, Malibu and Pasadena have agreed to repeal the local ordinances that blocked SB 9 projects by the end of September. The settlements still require City Council action to undo those bans.

The cities are also supposed to process any pending SB 9 applications that were submitted, paused or rejected.

Another plaintiff in the lawsuit — Andrew Slocum, CEO of Green Development Company — said he thinks Newsom never should have signed the executive order in the first place.

Slocum said he hopes to see recovering homeowners have more options when rebuilding their properties. Last year, he told LAist he was working with homeowners on SB 9 projects.

The settlement “allows for the people to hopefully be able to come back and resubmit that application,” Slocum said, “because most people who are doing SB 9 are the homeowners themselves.”

The Pasadena City Council took the first step toward repeal on July 20, according to city spokesperson Lisa Derderian. She said they’ll start processing SB 9 applications once the vote is finalized.

“The City reached a conditional settlement with YIMBY in recognition of the uncertainty inherent in litigation and the significant passage of time since the Eaton Fire in January 2025,” she said in a statement.

LAist contacted officials in the city of Malibu for comment but has not heard back.

What’s next

The county and city of L.A. are still fighting the lawsuit. They control land use in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, home to the lion’s share of properties affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires.

State officials also continue to defend the restrictions. Newsom’s office stands behind the executive order and plans to defend it in court, according to a state official.

Trauss said the parties met for  a trial setting conference a few days ago.

“ I want the folks in the county and in the city of L.A. who could build … to have hope,” she said.

The lawsuit is playing out while state legislators are moving forward with a new bill, SB 1090, which would expand the ban on SB 9 to all of Altadena.

One Hollywood icon is prepping for a comeback. The Cinerama Dome – one of the most famous movie theaters in the world – has been closed since the COVID pandemic. But it's now got a new lease on life, thanks to SONY Pictures and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema.

The studio announced it will lease, restore and reopen the famous theater in 2028; Alamo Drafthouse plans to program and operate it and 14 other screens at the adjoining multiplex.

"Hot damn! We're bringing the Dome back, baby," SONY Pictures Entertainment Motion Picture Group CEO Tom Rothman said in a statement. "We believe in moviegoing down to our soul, and no venue on Earth stands more for that than the one-of-a-kind Dome."

"There's a lot of passion behind this theater," says Michael O'Leary, who heads Cinema United, the global association of movie theater owners. He says while the Cinerama Dome's closing was a symbol of the pandemic, its recovery is proof the pandemic is behind us and movie theater-going is back.

"It's really exciting," agrees Escott Norton, former executive director and current board member of the Los Angeles Historic Theatre Foundation. "There's been a lot of people waiting with baited breath to see when the dome is going to reopen. People think of this as the ultimate Hollywood experience."

As an LA native and former film production designer, Norton has great memories of going to the Cinerama Dome. He says it was always an immersive experience to watch movies inside the geodesic-shaped auditorium designed to show wide screen movies.

"When I saw Close Encounters on this giant screen curved around me, it knocked my socks off," he says, adding he was also blown away watching Apocalypse Now at the Dome. "The movie opens up with this wide screen of just a quiet jungle, birds tweeting and then it explodes. Being surrounded by that on the curved screen, it still gives me tingles thinking about it."

The Cinerama Dome in October 2021.

(

Mario Tama

/

Getty Images

)

The Cinerama Dome was built in 1963 by William Forman – the founder of Pacific Theaters, who had popularized drive-in cinemas. Forman commissioned a French architect who had studied under R. Buckminster Fuller, a designer of other geodesic structures. The theater was originally made to showcase Cinerama, a format developed in the 1950s that was part of the widescreen craze designed to lure viewers away from television and back to cinemas.

Forman was able to get the theater constructed in 16 weeks … just in time for the world premiere of a madcap comedy called, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The movie ran four hours long, with an intermission. Filmmakers had originally planned to use the Cinerama format, but abandoned it, shooting in Ultra Panavision 70 millimeter instead.

Still, it featured a who's who of comedy at the time – including Sid Caesar, Edie Adams, Milton Berle, and Buddy Hackett. Buster Keaton even makes a ten second cameo. "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World played at the Cinerama Dome, the brand new theater, for two years without stopping," recalled Karen Sharpe, the widow of the movie's director, Stanley Kramer. The former TV actress and producer spoke at a rally to preserve the Cinerama Dome last year, and talked about the star-studded premiere.

"It was a real happening," she remembered. "Bobby Kennedy came, Adlai Stevenson came and President and Mrs. Kennedy accepted the invitation to attend the opening. A few days before, they called to say 'So sorry, we have to [decline] the invitation because President and Mrs. Kennedy have to go to Dallas.' And we know what happened in Dallas."

Over the decades, the theater became a mecca for cinephiles. The dome was sometimes costumed like the movies it screened. Once, a replica Godzilla appeared to burst through the egg-like roof. Another time it was painted green with ears to resemble Shrek's head. Figures depicting the Pink Panther, Spider Man and the Minions have perched or crawled atop the Dome.

And fans were treated to countless premieres and special events, like when filmmaker Quentin Tarantino personally welcomed audiences to his 2019 feature Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. For the film, he included exterior shots of the Dome.

Two years later, after the Cinerama Dome's operators went bankrupt during the pandemic, Tarantino talked about how it was one of his favorite LA landmarks.

"I don't know if I could 100% afford it, but I would love to own the Cinerama Dome," he said on The Jess Cagle Show on SiriusXM. "That would be fantastic."

Tarantino already owns two other historic LA cinemas. But other preservationists and activists have been working to revive the dormant theater. Many of them credit the efforts of Benjamin Steinberg, a 27-year-old filmmaker and actor who appeared on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

"The Cinerama Dome is the most famous movie theater in the world," Steinberg said, standing outside the boarded-up theater. "It seemed like it was going to be a demolition by neglect. So I was, like, something has to be done."

Steinberg created a campaign to save the Cinerama Dome. He organized a few street rallies, and wrote an online petition that amassed more than 30,000 signatures.

Ben Steinberg projected images onto the dome as part of a campaign to save the theater.

(

Ben Steinberg

)

Then in March, Steinberg went even further to get the attention of the Forman family, which still owns the property: he projected images of the owners' faces onto the outside of the Dome, asking them to reopen the theater.

"We actually projected it for two hours and then they called the police on us," Steinberg explains. "We didn't get arrested; The police just said that the ownership considered it an escalation and harassment. I never wanted to anger the owner, so we stopped immediately."

Steinberg's stunt created a lot of buzz, and may have moved the needle, says theater preservationist Norton. His group had been consulting with architects on restoration plans in hopes that someone would save the day.

"We were all working behind the scenes. But Ben Steinberg really got on board on social media to save the dome," says Norton. "I'm very happy he did. You know, you sort of have to rattle the chains sometimes."

Meanwhile, Sony has promised to preserve the Cinerama Dome's history while ensuring its future.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A pair of federal court battles unfolding in the coming weeks could reshape the future of homelessness funding across the Los Angeles region.

Two separate lawsuits challenging recent actions by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will help determine whether L.A.’s embattled lead homelessness agency can compete for up to $241 million in federal grants this year and how that money can be spent.

Both legal challenges reflect a broader fight over the Trump administration's efforts to remake federal homelessness policy and crack down on perceived misspending by local governments overseeing federal assistance programs.

Will lead L.A. agency stay suspended?

The lawsuits center on HUD’s national Continuum of Care grant competition, the largest source of federal homelessness dollars flowing to L.A. each year.

Since the 1990s, HUD has required metropolitan areas like L.A. County to submit one single application for the region’s entire chunk of annual funding. The L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA, has been responsible for submitting that application on behalf of the region.

That changed in June, when HUD suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity pending a federal investigation into alleged financial mismanagement. The federal agency said LAHSA’s suspension meant it was not allowed to apply for this year’s grants, even though the agency has been working on an application.

LAHSA sued to overturn the suspension and is moving forward with its application while awaiting guidance from the court. U.S. District Judge David O. Carter has scheduled a hearing for Aug. 6 on LAHSA’s motion for a preliminary injunction.

HUD has since formally invited homeless service providers to apply directly for the federal homelessness money, bypassing LAHSA entirely.

Meanwhile, the L.A. County Development Authority has offered to apply for the region instead of LAHSA, if necessary.

HUD’s application deadline is Aug. 26. That’s when LAHSA, or an alternative applicant, would submit its final application to the federal government.

Shift away from permanent housing

The second lawsuit between HUD and local officials focuses on how federal homelessness dollars can be spent.

The L.A. Continuum of Care historically spends about 90% of its more than $200 million federal funding allocation on permanent housing interventions — including subsidies to help cover people’s rent, according to LAHSA.

That approach is part of a philosophy and strategy known as “housing first,” which prioritizes providing unhoused people with a stable place to live as the first step towards recovery from life on the streets. Additional issues, like unemployment, addiction, mental illness or other health problems, are typically addressed only after first moving someone indoors.

But that approach is now under fire from the Trump Administration, which has made multiple attempts to remake the federal Continuum of Care program to fund fewer permanent housing beds and focus more on drug treatment, recovery and enforcement.

As the Trump administration geared up to pivot away from the “housing first” model, HUD initially proposed rules limiting permanent housing to 30% of local spending. Last year, the city of L.A. and other municipalities joined litigation challenging the HUD guidance.

This June, Judge Mary McElroy struck down the proposed HUD rules, but denied cities’ request for a permanent injunction.

HUD had already issued new grant regulations, this time capping permanent housing at no more than 60% of local spending plans, forcing the states to start over with a new legal complaint assigned to the same federal judge.

U.S. President Donald Trump greets United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner during the congressional picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on May 19, 2026 in Washington, DC.

(

Heather Diehl

/

Getty Images

)

States push back

Last month, nearly two dozen states, including California, sued HUD over those regulations, asking McElroy to again throw out HUD’s new funding rules.

The proposed rules put more than 5,000 Angelenos at risk for homelessness, according to projections by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit research and advocacy group.

The states hope for a ruling by Aug. 10, so that regions like L.A. have time to align their applications. The lawsuit argues the restrictions conflict with federal law and undermine the federal government's long-standing “housing first” strategy.

The Trump administration says the new rules are intended to move federal policy toward approaches emphasizing mental health treatment, addiction recovery and personal accountability.

If HUD prevails, local officials warn the consequences could ripple across L.A. County, affecting one of the region’s largest sources of funding for permanent supportive housing and other homelessness programs.

The federal funding at stake has been roughly a quarter of LAHSA’s annual budget in recent years and is among the largest single sources of money for the region’s homelessness programs, which are also funded by the state, county and city.

The story behind the Trump admin’s LAHSA fight

HUD imposed the suspension earlier this year amid mounting scrutiny of LAHSA's financial oversight and operations. Auditors and local officials have raised longstanding concerns about the agency’s internal controls, contract monitoring and oversight of homelessness funds.

LAHSA argues HUD's suspension is unlawful and could jeopardize the region's ability to secure funding.

On July 2, Carter directed HUD and LAHSA to propose an order to temporarily keep the current funding process in place while the case moves forward. The two sides couldn't agree on the terms.

LAHSA sent an email to service providers last week urging them to continue with the current process.

“Please do not let this notice disrupt your current application preparation,” the letter said. “We strongly urge all service providers to stay the course.”

Other regional homelessness officials clarified they’re moving forward with the consolidated application and working to protect existing program funding.

Sarah Mahin, director of L.A. County’s new Department of Homelessness and Housing, said the county expects to receive more direction from the court before or at the August 6 hearing. Until then, Mahin said, “The existing competition process and LAHSA’s role as collaborative applicant should remain undisturbed while the court considers the preliminary injunction motion.”

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter walks on a tour of the VA's West LA facilities on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024 in West Los Angeles, CA.

(

Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

/

Los Angeles Times

)

How the feds are planning for court decisions

In a July 21 court filing, HUD said it intends to delay any final action against the L.A. Continuum of Care until Aug. 10, or whenever the court rules on LAHSA’s request for a preliminary injunction.

HUD also said that if the suspension holds and LAHSA and the court determine local applicants must apply directly, the federal agency will give providers an additional 30 days to submit their applications.

Carter is also overseeing a major L.A. legal settlement stemming from a lawsuit by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights over the city and county’s response to the homelessness crisis. Carter ordered all of the parties in the Alliance settlement to also appear at the Aug. 6 hearing in the case between LAHSA and HUD.

How service providers are preparing

Homeless service providers, caught in the middle of HUD’s legal battles with LAHSA and with states, say they want to make sure services aren’t disrupted.

LAHSA’s own deadline for local homeless service providers to submit their individual applications as part of the collaborative application process was last week. More than 100 local nonprofit service providers have already submitted theirs.

Several organizations told LAist they’re prepared to submit applications directly to HUD, including Hope the Mission, a large homeless services provider operating primarily in the San Fernando Valley.

“While larger organizations have the administrative capacity to pivot quickly, we are concerned about smaller, specialized community providers who may struggle to navigate a direct HUD submission without localized technical assistance,” said Ivet Samvelyan, a vice president at Hope the Mission.

Service providers told LAist they’re watching the two court cases closely, and awaiting clearer guidance from local officials about what to do next.

“Our concern is less about the application process itself and more about the policy direction it represents, which is an attempt to take funding away from evidence-based practices such as permanent supportive housing and instead fund programs that require sobriety and compliance,” said Tian Martinez, a spokesperson at Union Station Homeless Services.

The Alhambra City Council voted unanimously Monday to put a measure on the November ballot that will ask local voters to ban data centers citywide.

Why it matters

If the measure passes, Alhambra could become the second city in California to pass a ban on data centers through a public vote.

In June, Monterey Park became the first city to pass such a ban.

The details

Council members previously voted to establish an official definition of what qualifies as a data center. At an earlier meeting last month, they also added data centers to a list of prohibited facilities in office and industrial zones.

The new ballot measure proposes expanding the prohibition. It would effectively ban data centers in all of the city.

Residents weigh in

Andrew Yip, an Alhambra resident and an organizer with the group SGV Progressive Action, spoke about the importance of ballot language during Monday’s council meeting.

Yip said the name of Monterey Park's June ballot measure — Measure NDC, which stood for "No Data Center" — left some data center opponents unsure about whether to vote yes or no.

“It was very confusing,” Yip said. “I encourage the city to consider a different acronym if possible, maybe BAN, so people know to vote yes on a ban.”

The backstory

Local citizens and groups like No Data Centers San Gabriel Valley and No Data Center in Monterey Park have been organizing to oppose the construction of data centers and other infrastructure that supports them, such as battery energy storage systems.

Plans for a proposed data center in Monterey Park were pulled in March, and the Covina Planning Commission voted down a proposed storage system in June following public input.

What’s next

Alhambra voters will decide the fate of data centers in the city in the general election on Nov. 3. The ban needs a simple majority of support from local voters in order to pass.

How to keep tabs on the Alhambra City Council

The Alhambra City Council tends to meet a few times per month, generally on Mondays. Meetings typically start at 6 p.m.

Here’s how you can follow along:

• Attend in person: The council meets at City Hall, Council Chambers, 111 S. First St., Alhambra.
• Watch the live broadcast.
• Here’s how to submit a comment or contact the council.