The Brief

Ah geez: You're here because you're wondering if you should get back with your ex, aren't you?

Don't be ashamed: Almost half of people end up getting back with a past flame at some point.

But: Is it a good idea? Like, for reals? We turned that question over to listeners of AirTalk, LAist 89.3's daily news show, and got some mixed responses.

Listener thoughts:

• The heart wants what it wants, but sometimes chemistry alone isn't enough for a second chance to work out.
• Familiarity can be comforting but also masks real issues.
• On-again, off-again relationships don't just impact you — they impact others' perception of you.
• Sometimes trying again can give you the closure you didn't know you needed.

Listen: To the full AirTalk segment above to hear advice from relationship expert Lauren Salaun, and how one man's desert rendezvous with an ex left him stranded in SoCal.

Several Los Angeles-area organizations that serve survivors of domestic violence and people experiencing homelessness say a legal dispute over federal homelessness funding is holding critical dollars hostage.

Groups, now forced to cover up to millions of dollars in annual grant agreements, are running out of reserves, cutting staffing and relying on private donations to keep people housed and services running.

The organizations have had contracts stalled for months in a legal back-and-forth between the Trump administration and the region’s top homeless services agency, which has some programs starving for money.

“If these contracts don't get executed, if HUD doesn't start to reimburse agencies quickly … we're going to see more suffering on the street,” said Myong Kim, chief program officer at the Downtown Women’s Center. “It's going to be more tangible and more visible.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development told LAist it's not currently required to execute grant agreements after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay while it decides on HUD’s appeal in the coming weeks.

“HUD stands by its commitment and legal right not to continue supporting LAHSA, which even Judge [David O.] Carter and Mayor Karen Bass have acknowledged is an abject failure and riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

The region's top homeless services agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, told LAist that it’s not backing down and is actively pursuing legal remedies to force the federal government to honor its commitments.

“Frontline providers have kept lifesaving programs running for months without compensation,” spokesperson Chris Yee said in an email. “Releasing these federal funds is essential to maintaining their operations and protecting services for people who rely on these critical programs.”

Overall, HUD delays are expected to affect more than 50 local service providers, with the bulk of their renewal grants expiring in the next three months, according to LAHSA. Dozens of grants could be affected by the end of this year, totaling nearly $65 million.

A fight over who controls funding

The situation facing these providers is part of a broader delay with HUD's execution of FY2025 Continuum of Care grants, which has affected groups in other parts of the country, such as Ohio.

More than 1,300 of the FY2025 Continuum of Care renewal grant agreements — about one in five — had not been fully executed as of Monday, according to court documents reviewed by LAist. That includes more than 400 agreements that had not been issued by HUD.

But the L.A. grants are not just facing bureaucratic delays — they’ve become entangled in a fight over who controls the region’s federal homelessness funding.

HUD suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity this summer, and LAHSA sued. Some of the organizations’ leaders were hopeful a federal judge could clear the path for their contracts to be paid in August.

That’s when U.S. District Judge David O. Carter issued an order that, among other things, named a dozen service providers for which HUD has failed to execute grant agreements after getting award letters earlier this year. He wrote that the delays leave them without the funds they need to continue operating.

Carter ordered HUD to execute those signed agreements immediately. But about a month later, the order was paused by the Ninth Circuit.

“We expected HUD to immediately execute our grant agreements in compliance with Judge Carter's order,” said Jessica Reed, LAHSA’s director of Continuum of Care, during a LAHSA Commission committee meeting Wednesday. “Obviously, the appeal [by HUD] has continued to hold that up.”

LAist reached out to all 12 organizations named in the order, and several said they’re getting stuck in the middle of the legal dispute.

Groups in limbo for months

House of Ruth in Pomona, a roughly 50-year-old domestic violence agency that offers crisis, outreach, housing and legal services, has a roughly $286,000 grant tied up in the litigation, according to Pat Bell, CEO. The grant, which hasn’t been executed since April, pays for the organization’s transitional housing shelter.

Bell said LAHSA has told her an executed contract was unlikely to come anytime soon, forcing House of Ruth to float the funds in the meantime. The organization is now reducing staffing for its transitional shelter, including layoffs and cutting hours, according to Bell.

“We have six months of paychecks going out to the staff that are providing the transitional shelter services without any reimbursement,” Bell said.

House of Ruth is not an isolated example.

The Downtown Women’s Center based in Skid Row, which provides housing, employment and mental health services to survivors of violence experiencing homelessness, has been waiting on a $3.5 million annual contract since July, according to Kim, the chief program officer. The renewal contract supports rent payments for survivors of domestic violence, she said.

The Downtown Women’s Center has been covering about $150,000 a month in costs with private donations since then, but Kim noted that’s “not going to last forever.”

“In the midst of all the politics, and in the midst of all the back and forth, we really need to remember that these are individual lives — women, their children, their dependents — that are at risk and that are counting on us to move things forward,” Kim said.

‘Wreaking havoc’

The People Concern, an L.A. County nonprofit that provides housing and services to people experiencing homelessness and survivors of domestic violence, has two outstanding contracts for a little more than $2.2 million combined, according to John Maceri, CEO. He said a few other contracts that are set to end in the coming months could also be affected, bringing the total to about $3.3 million.

The People Concern is relying on donations and reserves, but Maceri said cash flow is a particularly big challenge, and it’s “really wreaking havoc in the system.”

He said they’re approaching an untenable situation.

“Ultimately, the people who are hurt are the people that we're serving,” Maceri said. “Because at some point, organizations cannot continue to finance debt.”

Jewish Family Service L.A. has been waiting since April on a contract for its transitional shelter that supports women and children who survived domestic violence.

Eli Veitzer, CEO, said the organization is tapping into its reserves to cover the roughly $300,000 portion of annual costs to keep the shelter open until at least next summer. But that can’t be a long-term solution, he noted.

Veitzer said LAHSA has fallen short in critical ways, but blocking funding to the agency without another path for service providers “essentially shuts down the system.”

“HUD hasn't proposed an alternative method for getting these funds to the providers and the clients who need those services, and that's the part that is the most upsetting,” Veitzer said. “There's a complete disregard for the impact of the people in L.A. County who need these services desperately, and who benefit from these services.”

Why it matters

Scott Cummings, a professor of legal ethics at the UCLA School of Law, told LAist it’s not unusual to seek a stay after an order like Carter’s. But litigation takes time, and the programs are effectively put on hold while it’s worked out in court.

“There are short-term wins for the [Trump] administration in just playing this delay game,” Cummings said. “The delay can actually last a long time, and in the meantime, the programs are suffering, and the people they're serving are suffering.”

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath commented on the contracts in Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, saying: “A top concern is the 2025 LAHSA COC contracts that HUD is refusing to execute, although those programs are already operating without funding.”

Horvath requested an update next Tuesday from the county’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing to go over the remaining contracts at LAHSA.

The Ninth Circuit is expected to hear arguments next Tuesday, according to court documents, and Carter has scheduled a status conference for the week after.

LAist’s Aaron Schrank contributed to this story.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

MacArthur Park will host two more Fall Friday Nights this month, with a Glow Party on Friday and a free outdoor movie night next week as the city continues its community programming at the park.

The free events are open to the public from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and include free food, games, entertainment, activities and community resources.

Friday’s Glow Party will include a DJ, glow sticks, dancing and interactive games.

The Sept. 25 movie night will feature a screening of “The Super Mario Galaxy” on a large outdoor screen.

The two events are the final Fall Friday Nights scheduled at MacArthur Park this year. The series has been held at the park since 2024 and brings together city departments, neighborhood organizations and service providers.

Fall Friday Nights was created in 2015 as an extension of the city’s Summer Night Lights program.

Families and residents gather at MacArthur Park during Fall Friday Nights on Sept. 4, 2026.

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Courtesy of Central City Neighborhood Partners

)

Eduardo Rodriguez, executive director of Central City Neighborhood Partners, said Fall Friday Nights grew from a partnership between the city, Mayor Karen Bass, CCNP and other community groups to create “more consistent, positive, family-centered activity at MacArthur Park.”

CCNP began activating the park this summer through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, which Rodriguez said showed that families wanted more welcoming events and accessible resources.

“The strong community response demonstrated that families want welcoming events, accessible resources, and reasons to return to the park,” Rodriguez said.

About a thousand people attended each of the first two Fall Friday Nights this year, Rodriguez said, for an estimated 2,000 people combined.

The Friday events are also part of a longer-term plan for the park.

Rodriguez said CCNP, through its “Meet Me at MacArthur Park” initiative, plans to establish a recurring presence at the park two days a week. CCNP will provide FamilySource services, youth and family programs, workforce and education resources, financial empowerment, wellness services, food assistance and other community support.

“Our goal is to turn individual events into long-term relationships with families and create consistent, visible, and positive activity at MacArthur Park,” he said.

For Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, the Friday events are part of a broader effort in MacArthur Park that includes clean teams, street medicine teams, overdose response and infrastructure improvements. 

Hernandez said residents are beginning to notice changes at the park, but argued that they came after years of work.

“This has been years of investment, of time, of money that me and my team have put into MacArthur Park and into Westlake from the moment I got into office,” she said on social media. 

Hernandez has also described that work as part of a broader approach to public safety that extends beyond law enforcement.

“The public safety ecosystem is not just law enforcement,” she said, pointing to street medicine teams and mobile overdose response teams working in the park.

The Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents have spent much of the summer carrying out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around MacArthur Park, while the city says it remains on track to install a perimeter fence this fall.

Fall Friday Nights “targets communities that may need a little extra care once the school year starts,” according to Bass’ office. 

Free clothing will also be distributed. CCNP will provide free transportation from its Westlake office, Tenth Street Elementary School and Virgil Middle School. Residents can call CCNP at (213) 482-8618 for transportation information.

Last year, Fall Friday Nights brought more than 3,000 people to MacArthur Park over four Friday nights, according to the city. The programming included arts and crafts, futsal, meals and other activities, while unhoused residents could also access medical care and other services.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday that he is directing state agencies to develop artificial intelligence safety recommendations, some of which were part of a bill he vetoed two years ago.

His change of tune on those measures, including requiring AI developers to include a “kill switch” to shut off certain programs in emergencies, comes in response to growing public alarm over the fast-developing technology’s potential “catastrophic” harms such as AI creating a bioweapon or bringing down the power grid.

Newsom is seeking recommendations from the Government Operations Agency and the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services by Nov. 16, meaning they could form the basis of a special legislative session on the issue. He floated the possibility of calling one in Politico on Thursday.

Newsom has sought in recent weeks to respond to several incidents in which AI agents from leading developers OpenAI and Anthropic broke away from testing environments, gained access to the open internet and carried out cyberattacks on other websites and companies. Earlier this month, a researcher set off a panic when he resigned from Anthropic while warning the technology could “kill all humans;” the researcher’s former colleagues were quick to agree.

The hackings have captivated the public and seem to confirm AI researchers’ fears that the fast-developing technology is improving its own capabilities beyond human control. Several industry leaders last week endorsed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s call for a slowdown in development.

Newsom’s Friday executive order directs the state agencies to recommend changes in state law to implement an external evaluation requirement, as well as requirements that AI companies’ safety frameworks required under the newest law be independently verified. He’s also seeking recommendations on how to require a kill switch, and how to expand the safety incidents companies must report to include “a range of loss-of-control incidents” such as the recent reported hackings.

Regulation is unlikely from the federal government; President Donald Trump remains all-in on speeding up AI development in the face of competition from China and said the calls for a slowdown are a “conspiracy.”

Newsom, a likely 2028 presidential contender, said Friday in a press release that should “alarm every American.”

“We’re going to speed up our work on substantial and responsible AI oversight before it's too late,” he said.

California under Newsom has enacted several first-in-the-nation laws to curb the potentially existential risks of AI. In 2025 he signed Senate Bill 53, which requires large AI model developers to publish frameworks on how they manage safety incidents and assess catastrophic risk — defined as incidents involving 50 or more deaths, chemical or biological weapons or more than $1 billion of theft or damage. They also must report critical safety incidents to the state. Illinois and New York have similar laws.

But the measure was a compromise — a requirement for transparency rather than regulatory control — after Newsom in 2024 vetoed Senate Bill 1047.

Both bills were authored by Democratic Sen. Scott Wiener, whose San Francisco district is home to the most prominent AI companies.

The vetoed measure would have required the largest AI developers to receive safety auditing from third-party, external monitors, develop a kill switch and be subject to clearer legal liability if their technology causes harm. The measure divided Silicon Valley and received fierce opposition from several, but not all, of the largest AI developers.

Newsom wrote then in a veto letter that while he agreed with the need to require safety protocols, the bill could restrict AI development at large companies “at the potential expense of curtailing the very innovation that fuels advancement in favor of the public good.”

“I agree with the author — we cannot afford to wait for a major catastrophe to occur before taking action to protect the public,” he added.

Since then, more in the industry have embraced third-party evaluations. This year, Newsom signed two laws to verify and set standards for those external monitors. But the new laws did not require companies to use them.

In a recent call for a slowdown in AI development that was endorsed by several other industry leaders, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei also called for third-party monitoring; both that company and OpenAI say they will commit to the practice.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday approved a series of measures that halt the rebuilding of the burned Lineage warehouse in Boyle Heights and that steer funding toward fire recovery efforts.

In a unanimous vote, the City Council barred the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety (LADBS) from issuing any rebuild permits until after the Los Angeles Fire Department completes its investigation.

The council also directed the Department of City Planning, the city attorney and the LADBS to present an interim control ordinance prohibiting permits or certificates of occupancy for large cold-storage warehousing and distribution near residential neighborhoods and sensitive areas like parks, schools, day care centers and libraries in Boyle Heights. 

The ordinance, if approved, would be in effect for 45 days, with an option to extend by 10 months and 15 days. It could be extended by an additional year, or until the “appropriate land use regulatory controls have been prepared,” according to a city staff report. 

“This Lineage fire exposed the cost of systems that have concentrated industrial risk in working-class communities of color for generations,” said Councilmember Ysabel Jurado during the council meeting. 

“A facility should not be able to request a like-for-like rebuild while the fire investigation remains active and the surrounding community is still living with the consequences,” she added. 

Jurado pushed forward the measures, noting that “recovery doesn’t finish when the site is cleaned up.”

“Our responsibility is also to demand accountability and strengthen protections so residents do not experience a disaster like this again,” she said. 

Jurado said the measures will ensure Boyle Heights residents “aren’t left to navigate recovery alone or bear the financial burden of an emergency they did not create.”

The council also directed city staff to explore the feasibility of establishing a fund of up to $10 million to support the affected Lineage community. 

It also called for the reallocation of up to $940,000 in Los Angeles County Fire Assistance Grant Funds to the Boyle Heights WorkSource Center for Lineage Fire Recovery to support impacted workers and businesses. 

Additionally, council members instructed the LADBS and the city attorney to provide recommendations for increasing penalties for notices of violations “on projects that impose a significant impact to the community,” as seen in the Lineage fire. Recommendations should include a fee and fine structure that ranges from $25,000 to $1 million per fine, according to a city staff report.