The Brief

California regulators took a first step Thursday toward banning the fabrication of artificial-stone countertops, popular with consumers but implicated in a workplace epidemic of the lung disease silicosis.

More than 600 health professionals signed a petition in December asking the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board to prohibit fabrication of the countertops, which are made of crushed quartz, adhesives and pigments. California would be the first state to effectively ban the product.

After a daylong meeting in downtown Los Angeles, the board voted unanimously to grant the petition and ask the state’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, known as Cal/OSHA, to draft an emergency temporary standard to address the outbreak. The rule would be in place for a year while the agency considered permanent regulations. A committee composed of physicians, scientists, union officials and industry representatives would advise Cal/OSHA.

Quartz contains high amounts of silica, one of the most common minerals on earth. When slabs containing quartz are cut, ground or polished a toxic dust with the consistency of flour is released. That dust collects in workers’ lungs and causes silicosis, an incurable illness that leads to early death.

Public Health Watch, LAist and Univision were the first to report on what was then a cluster of about 30 silicosis cases in Southern California in December 2022. As of last week, the state had recorded 286 cases in Los Angeles County alone and another 120 in Orange County.

Statewide, there were 560 cases and 31 deaths. Fifty-eight workers had received double-lung transplants, which will prolong their lives by, at best, 10 years.

The vast majority of the afflicted workers are young or middle-aged, Latino immigrant men.

Thursday’s meeting began with hours of in-person and online testimony from dying workers and their families, and sobering presentations by state officials. Amy Heinzerling, chief of the Emerging Workplace Hazards Unit of the California Department of Public Health, said the agency had identified 85 new cases of silicosis among fabricators in the first four months of this year. Enhanced regulation by Cal/OSHA “has not solved the problem,” she said. “It is time to consider other approaches to this public health crisis.”

Elizabeth Noth, an industrial hygienist with Cal/OSHA, said the state has seen a doubling of silicosis cases among countertop fabricators every 13 months. If quick action isn’t taken, she said, the tally of cases in California could reach 900 by the end of this year. Noth said pulverized silica dust contains ultrafine particles, known as nanoparticles, which circumvent all but the most sophisticated respirators. When they enter workers’ lungs, they cause progressive scarring, known as fibrosis, for which there is no cure.

One sick worker urged the standards board in Spanish to “do something to stop this evil.” Said another: “We want you to take this artificial stone away.” A third said his illness had put an “expiration date” on his life.

Representatives of countertop manufacturers, which have been named in hundreds of worker lawsuits, blame the silicosis epidemic on poor workplace hygiene and inadequate enforcement.

“Banning a product to compensate for failed enforcement is irresponsible,” said Matt Thurston, a regional director for Cosentino North America, a major manufacturer of artificial stone. Cosentino is headquartered in Spain, which has recorded some 2,500 cases of silicosis – more than any other nation.

Dr. Jane Fazio, a pulmonologist with UCLA Health who has treated more silicosis patients in California than any other physician, offered an emotional rebuttal to such arguments. Her patients, she said, suffer “slow and then quick and then very painful deaths. This disease is really unlike any other.” Silicosis, she said, “should not exist” in 2026. “Period. End of story.”

Public Health Watch interviewed three ailing countertop workers in Southern California earlier this week. Each was dealing with the physical and emotional fallout from a double-lung transplant. Each insisted he’d never been told about the dangers of fabricating artificial stone. Had he known, said Jeison, 44, of Anaheim, “Not even if I was crazy would I have worked in this industry.” (Public Health Watch agreed to use only Jeison’s first name because he does not have legal immigration status.)

‘They lied to me and they lied to my employers’

At a meeting in Santa Rosa last month, the standards board heard testimony from five former fabrication workers who said they wore masks and used water when they cut artificial stone slabs but weren’t warned that the dust was much more hazardous than that given off by natural stone, like granite. Four of the workers appeared in a prerecorded video with their identities concealed because they did not have legal immigration status.

“You could feel how the dust entered our lungs,” said a man from Orange County identified as Crispin. He said he wanted manufacturers “to stop selling this material because there are still many workers who are not yet sick and don’t know what is coming.”

A fifth worker, Jose Francisco Andrade Pena of Alameda County, testified in person. He spent 33 years fabricating artificial stone in the Bay Area and was diagnosed with advanced silicosis in 2024.

Countertop manufacturers “never explained how dangerous [artificial stone] was,” Andrade said in Spanish. “They lied to me and they lied to my employers. They continue to lie today ... It is painful and frustrating to know that the government still allows this toxic product to be sold. Artificial stone should have been removed from the market long ago.”

Andrade paused repeatedly during his testimony to cough or collect his breath. Before he was diagnosed with silicosis, he said, he was the person his family depended on.

“I worked hard to provide for them and took pride in being strong. I could lift 60 pounds easily, work a full day and still have energy for my family. Today, that life feels very far away ... Even small outings are difficult ... I get tired very easily and have to plan my entire life around my breathing.”

California tightened workplace regulations for silica in December 2024, and Cal/OSHA stepped up enforcement of the countertop fabrication industry. As of mid-May, the agency said it had opened 181 inspections of fabrication shops, assessed about $1.9 million in penalties to shop owners and issued 26 stop-work orders for the dry-cutting of countertop slabs, a practice that creates thick clouds of white dust.

Still, there is only so much Cal/OSHA can do.

As of January, the agency’s inspector workforce had a vacancy rate of 35 percent. California only has one inspector for every 99,000 workers – compared to one for every 23,000 workers in Oregon. California has an estimated 1,342 countertop fabrication shops, many of which are small, mobile and hard to find. That may be an undercount, officials say.

Artificial-stone – also known as engineered-stone – countertops became popular with consumers over the past 15 to 20 years because of their durability, relative value and versatility (they come in a wide variety of colors). But there are safer alternatives. Slabs made of crushed, recycled glass release amorphous silica, which is far less toxic than crystalline silica, whose jagged, microscopic fragments are unleashed during fabrication of quartz. Granite and marble are safer, too; they contain some crystalline silica, but not nearly as much as quartz. Other countertop options include laminate, porcelain and concrete.

The standards board’s vote Thursday to grant the petition seeking a fabrication ban was nearly derailed when the chairman, Joseph Alioto Jr., suggested that an advisory committee and a silica science subcommittee be convened before any emergency rule was considered. But the two other board members present — Derek Urwin and Nola Kennedy —convinced Alioto that the state needed to act with urgency, given that a new silicosis case is diagnosed, on average, each day.

Urwin, an engineer with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, was especially persuasive. After the vote, James Nevin, a lawyer whose firm represents more than 750 countertop workers, called Urwin “a hero who just saved 100,000 California fabrication workers’ lives.”

Federal ban unlikely

Should California impose a fabrication ban, it would join Australia in deciding that artificial stone can’t be worked with safely, even when precautions are taken. Australia enacted a nationwide ban on the product in 2024 after recording an estimated 1,000 cases of silicosis among countertop fabricators.

A nationwide ban in the United States, however, seems unlikely.Marty Davis, CEO of the biggest American manufacturer of artificial-stone countertop slabs, Cambria, is a major Republican donor who has pressed Congress to shield slab makers from liability for silicosis outbreaks. Davis also has argued for tariffs on imported quartz slabs.

At a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee hearing in January, Rebecca Shult, Cambria’s chief legal officer, testified that the underlying problem “is not the stone slabs or manufacturers and distributors like Cambria. The problem is the unlawful fabrication cutting businesses who violate the regulations and requirements seemingly to gain unfair economic advantage.”

But Tina Jordan, who owns a countertop fabrication business in Colorado with her husband, Jimmy, told the subcommittee that following the rules didn’t save their son, Tyler, from being diagnosed with silicosis and kidney failure after working there less than a decade.

“We have always operated a clean shop and have done everything we thought we needed to do to keep our employees, including our own son, safe,” Tina Jordan testified. “We spent $500,000 on sophisticated, wet-cutting computerized machinery ... From inception we installed a custom-built ventilation system with filters to extract dust. We require our employees to always wear masks when fabricating ...”

Her family’s mistake, she said, was believing salespeople who assured them that the fabrication of quartz-based slabs required no special safeguards. “These engineered stone ... companies did not warn us that their products were more dangerous than natural stone or that we needed to do anything differently other than what we were already doing to fabricate them safely.”

Last month, a jury in Denver awarded Tyler Jordan $17.45 million in his lawsuit against Cambria and another manufacturer, Hyundai USA LLC. One of his lawyers remarked after the verdict that “only a human wearing a Class A hazmat suit” could safely work with artificial stone.

Jim Morris is executive director and editor-in-chief of Public Health Watch, a nonprofit investigative news organization.

After the Eaton Fire burned across Altadena a year and half ago, an unusual sight reappeared up amid the ashes and debris: a giant werewolf wearing a large T-shirt, with a big rainbow-colored heart that said, “I love Altadena.”

“Where he sits on that hill, the sun behind him when we were there in the evening, the sun was setting and the clouds were perfect. It was just such a weirdly hopeful thing,” said Taylor Jennings, who was visiting from Fresno last summer when he saw Norman standing over the fire-torn intersection of Lincoln Avenue and Mariposa Street.

“All around there’s devastation, and there’s an 8-foot [tall] werewolf. At that point, I realized how Altadena is feral, and he just seemed like the perfect mascot,” Jennings said.

Norman Jr., as the werewolf is affectionately known, appeared on this burned-out corner lot in West Altadena just days after the fire, replacing a previous werewolf that popped up on the property a few years earlier.

Both belong to Jubilee House, a large sober living home for men operated by the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. One of the residents bought the original werewolf just in time for Halloween a few years ago and named him Norman — a nod to the home’s eerie resemblance to Norman Bates’ house in the 1960 classic slasher film Psycho.

Courage Escamilla hams it up with Norman Jr. on a recent weekday afternoon.

(

Steven Cuevas

/

KQED

)

House manager Brian Woodruff said trick-or-treaters would never stop by the house.

“Every year I bought candy, every year,” Woodruff said, laughing, as he stood on the cleared lot near Norman Jr. “And I always ended up being the one eating all the candy!”

That changed after Norman appeared on the front lawn. The trick-or-treaters came in droves, lured by the werewolf’s grinning fangs and gnarled outstretched arms. They’d stop and take pictures with Norman and leave gifts and thank you notes. So, the guys at the house decided to keep him up year-round and started creating new outfits for Norman to mark the changing of the seasons.

“Summer was coming up, we can get the Big-and-Tall catalog, we can order him a tank top,” Woodruff recalled. “And then I went online, and I found some oversized sunglasses,” he said, chuckling at the memory.

Then came the fire. All ten residents of Jubilee House got out safely, but the place burned to the ground. Among the debris lay the mangled pieces of Norman’s metal limbs.

“The first time I came up, I didn’t expect to be so disoriented, you probably experienced this, too,” said Pastor Tim Hartley, the director of the Jubilee House program. “I didn’t know where I was.”

A few weeks later, hoping to boost morale, Hartley started shopping for and found a replacement: Norman Jr.

“Once we put up that werewolf, it became this landmark [after the fire] that people could use for where they were in Altadena, as well as this source of hope for people,” Hartley said.

That’s what Norman Jr. came to symbolize for longtime Altadena resident Courage Escamilla.

“He’s kind of a symbol for people in town who for their whole life have struggled to ever feel like they fit in because they’re eccentric or different or stand out,” Escamilla said.

Rigoberto Gonzales runs through the extensive menu of his Mexican food truck.

(

Steven Cuevas

/

KQED

)

After the fire, he became an advocate and community booster, helping to organize rallies and fundraisers. Escamilla’s hard to miss, usually pulling up to community events on his motorcycle, sporting a red durag, with a raccoon tail dangling from the back of his waistband.

“You feel like you’re now in a community that embraces the weird, the unusual, and so for me, Norman represents the message that we embrace and appreciate the strange and unusual in this town,” Escamilla said.

After all, he said, fictional “monsters” are often just misunderstood.

“They’re often unfairly targeted, and I always felt like I related to that on some subconscious level and have always loved monsters for the fact that they can be loved,” Escamilla said.

“Symbols of things that were previously seen as repugnant are now seen as something that represents love and acceptance, and I find that rather special.”

Norman Jr.’s main character was another Altadena resident who lost her home. She stepped up to the task, creating new seasonal outfits and making sure he stayed upright when it was stormy.

On a spring day, she draped the werewolf’s plastic and metal body and articulated limbs in a form-fitting fake fur suit with a big red heart on its chest, hand-stitched for his frame.

With everyone from the sober living home scattered to new locations, Hartley welcomed her help.

“She honored this space in a way that I just appreciated,” Hartley said. “And then she’d say, he’s a little rickety, so I’m going to put out the word to have people come help me secure him, and these strangers would all gather to help, which I just loved.”

Norman Jr.’s caretaker declined to be interviewed and asked that we not use her name. But she did explain how Norman’s corner became a refuge for her after losing her home in the fire.

Pastor Tim Hartley shows off a Norman Jr. T-shirt, hand-screened by a local artist, to commemorate the Eaton Fire.

(

Steven Cuevas

/

KQED

)

Photos of the wolfman wearing the outfits she created started blowing up on social media, and life started returning to the neighborhood, with the pace of rebuilding picking up speed.

That’s when the little green taco truck from the San Fernando Valley appeared.

Behind the wheel was Rigoberto Gonzales. Also, a plumber who moonlights doing work on home rebuilds around town, Gonzales saw a need for food options that could appeal to the growing army of construction workers.

Knowing nothing about Norman’s story, he parked his lime green truck beneath the giant oak tree that shares the same corner. Norman’s caretaker was not happy. She asked Gonzales to move, even though his vehicle didn’t disturb or block access to the werewolf.

“Every time I see her, she was so mad, for no reason,” Gonzales said, as he took a break from the truck on a recent afternoon.

“Then she later tells me what’s the reason. She just doesn’t want me to be here.”

The conflict simmered for weeks. Gonzales said he felt unfairly targeted. He said he asked her why he needed to move.

“I mean, give me the reason [why] I have to move? And she only walked away,” he said.

The caretaker quit caring for Norman, claiming she felt unsafe. Gonzales insisted that not he, nor any of his staff or customers, ever harassed the caretaker in any way.

Then, a group of fire survivors, who never bothered talking to Gonzales or the property managers, rallied behind the caretaker. They accused Gonzales of exploiting a vulnerable, traumatized community and ruining the sacredness of Norman Jr.’s corner.

Then, it escalated. A disgruntled resident posted Gonzales’ license plate on social media.

Others threatened to call the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department or LA County Public Health. In a community forum on Facebook, one person “joked” about putting nails under his tires. Another person suggested setting off “stink bombs.”

Local therapist and activist Melissa Lopez said a few people tied to that same Facebook group later showed up to hassle Gonzales in person. After that confrontation, they appeared to have backed off.

“That hurts, to see some of these violent reactions, to say they were going to bring a truck and wall off the area to him,” Lopez said. “People are gathering up pitchforks, and [it’s] scary.”

Things eventually cooled down, but not without some sore feelings. Norman’s caretaker still hasn’t returned.

But Norman Jr. continues to be looked after by his community of admirers — including Lopez, who just got a colorful Norman Jr. tattoo on her calf.

Lopez said she found some similarity between the friction over Norman Jr. and a recent monster movie, director Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein film. In the adaptation, she said, the scientist gives Frankenstein’s creature a voice, and the creature tells his story.

“It’s so beautiful because of that, because you get to see that he’s been dehumanized, that we created a monster,” Lopez said.” And I think that’s so true of society. We create the monsters, and how quickly we go to ostracize, to condemn people.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

An underground oil pipe ruptured overnight Friday in East Los Angeles, spilling crude oil onto nearby streets, into storm drains and the Los Angeles River, authorities said.

Firefighters responded to a hazmat incident at about 3:19 a.m. Friday at E. Cesar E. Chavez and N. Eastern avenues, according to L.A. County Fire Department Public Information Officer Pauline Ncgee.  Officials said early reports indicated a boring crew conducting directional drilling for a fiber optic line struck a 16-inch petroleum pipeline.

The pipeline was spilling at about 5 gallons per second before it was shut off, Ncgee said. Los Angeles County Fire Department public information officer Jonathan Torres said they estimate between 2,000 and 3,000 gallons were spilled.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Hilda Solis’ office said the spill later reached the Los Angeles River and was moving downstream toward Long Beach and the ocean.

“I am calling for an immediate and thorough investigation into this incident to determine how this occurred and to ensure all responsible parties are held accountable. The environmental consequences of this spill are deeply concerning, and every agency involved must respond with the urgency this situation demands,” said Solis in a statement.

Crude oil from a pipeline rupture reached the LA River on Friday, May 22, 2026.

(

Courtesy of the Office of Hilda Solis

)

Cleanup crews from various agencies were at the scene, including the U.S. Coast Guard and California Department of Fish and Wildlife. LA County Fire said the surface-level cleanup was expected to be completed by the end of the day, but added that long-term cleanup and damage assessment will likely take days.

The California Highway Patrol issued a SigAlert for multiple streets surrounding the spill. Solis’ office said only one business was affected at the intersection and will remain closed until further notice.

The pipeline flows about 2,000 barrels of crude oil per hour and runs from Kern County to the Port of Los Angeles, Ncgee said. Authorities initially said the pipeline carried 4,600 barrels per hour but later corrected the number.

As of 8:40 a.m., a strong smell of gas lingered near the scene, which was about a block away from Esteban E. Torres High School.

Boyle Heights resident Cruz Flores said he was late dropping off his brother at Esteban E. Torres High School because of the street closures.

“A lot of students were late,” Flores said. “I’m just concerned about the students because you could smell it over there by the school.”

Flores said he saw Torres staff handing out masks to students as they entered the grounds.

A person at the front desk at Torres High, who did not want to provide their name, said the school remained open and the students and staff were provided with masks.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

WASHINGTON — Republicans struggled Thursday to find the votes to dismiss legislation that would compel President Donald Trump to withdraw from the war with Iran, delaying planned votes on the matter into June.

The House had scheduled a vote on a war powers resolution, brought by Democrats, that would rein in Trump's military campaign. But as it became clear that Republicans would not have the numbers to defeat the bill, GOP leaders declined to hold a vote on it. It was the latest sign of the slipping support in Congress for a war that Trump launched more than two months ago without congressional approval.

"We had the votes without question and they knew it, and as a result they're playing a political game," said Democratic Rep. Gregory Meeks, who sponsored the bill.

Republicans in the Senate are also working to ensure they have the votes to dismiss another war powers resolution that advanced to a final vote earlier this week, when four GOP senators supported the resolution and three others were absent from the vote.

The actions by congressional leaders showed Republicans are struggling to maintain political backing for Trump's handling of the war. Rank-and-file Republicans are increasingly willing to defy the president over the conflict.

House Republican Leader Steve Scalise told reporters that the vote was delayed to give lawmakers who were absent a chance to vote. House Speaker Mike Johnson did not answer questions from reporters as he exited the House chamber.

Frustration with Iran war grows on Capitol Hill

On Capitol Hill, patience with the war has worn thin as the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz disrupts global shipping and elevates gas prices in the U.S. Another House war powers resolution nearly passed last week, falling on a tie vote as three Republicans voted in favor.

Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he had the votes "locked in" this time around.

"People are beginning to finally listen to the American people who don't support the war in Iran, and I think there's a growing number of Republicans who see how devastating the war has been for our country," said Democratic Rep. Adam Smith of Washington state.

The lone Democrat who voted against the war powers resolution last week, Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, has said he will vote in favor of the legislation next time.

In a joint statement, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and other caucus leaders said Republicans were "cowardly" to pull the vote.

"Even as we prepare to recognize our nation's fallen heroes on Memorial Day, House Republicans refuse to show up and be accountable to the brave service members that have been recklessly put in harm's way," they added.

Republicans have been broadly supportive of Trump's efforts to destroy Iran's nuclear capabilities, but some are now saying the president's legal timeline to wage a war without congressional approval has expired. Under the War Powers Resolution of 1973, presidents have 60 days to engage in a military conflict before Congress must either declare war or authorize the use of military force.

"We're past 60 days so it's got to be brought to us to vote on. We're following the law," said Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican, adding that he plans to vote for the war powers resolution.

The dispute over war powers

The White House argues that the requirements of the War Powers Resolution no longer apply because of the ceasefire with Iran. At the same time, Trump has said he was just an hour away from ordering another strike on Iran earlier this week, but held off because Gulf allies said they were engaged in negotiations to end the war.

Still, Trump said on social media that military leaders should "be prepared to go forward with a full, large scale assault of Iran, on a moment's notice, in the event that an acceptable Deal is not reached." Trump has repeatedly set deadlines for Tehran and then backed off.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican who has so far voted against the war powers resolutions, expressed frustration with the Trump administration's stance, especially from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

"The current status quo, Pete Hegseth demonstrates how incompetent he is," Tillis told reporters, adding that he would be willing to vote for an authorization for use of military force.

Earlier this week, Democratic senators rallied outside the Capitol Wednesday alongside VoteVets, a left-leaning veterans' advocacy group. They placed signs on the Capitol lawn noting that the nationwide average price of gasoline had risen to $4.53.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat who served in the Iraq War with the Air National Guard, argued that the Iran war has amounted to a strategic blunder for Trump.

"Trump started a war, and he's made things worse than before," Duckworth said, pointing to Iran's new leadership and the country's willingness to put a chokehold on commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Republican leaders praised Trump for taking what they said was bold action to directly confront Iran, a nation that has been a U.S. adversary for decades.

"I'm an American. I don't believe in getting hit and walking away and pretending as though it didn't happen," said Rep. Brian Mast, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

For Congress, the growing momentum to pass a war powers resolution could eventually lead to a legal showdown over who has the final authority over military conflicts.

The legislation before the House is a concurrent resolution that lawmakers said would take effect without Trump's signature if it passed both chambers of Congress.

But Trump has also argued that the 1973 law — passed by Congress during the Vietnam War era in an attempt to take back its power over foreign conflicts — is unconstitutional.
Copyright 2026 NPR

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The long-shuttered St. Vincent Medical Center is set to reopen next month as part of a sprawling behavioral health and housing campus. 

The center, just a few blocks away from MacArthur Park is aimed at addressing homelessness, mental illness and addiction in the area. 

The first phase of the project, a 205-bed interim housing program for people struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders, is scheduled to open in June. The program will be housed at Seaton Hall on South Lake Street, according to developers.

The opening marks the first major milestone in an ambitious redevelopment effort that aims to transform the former St. Vincent campus into a centralized hub for social services.

“We try our best to do this on the streets,” said Victor Narro, project director at the UCLA Labor Center and a longtime organizer in the MacArthur Park area. “But it’s much easier when you have a physical location. This building may offer us an opportunity to provide services for the category of unhoused people who are chronically ill, who have suffered major mental health issues and also people who are really deeply addicted.”

“I think it’s something that’s been long overdue,” Narro added. 

Additional phases of the redevelopment are expected to open through 2027, with the full campus projected to be up and running before the 2028 Summer Olympic Games, developer Shay Yadin said. 

Yadin said the project is moving fast partly because developers are reusing the existing hospital campus rather than building entirely new facilities.

“We’re not adding a single square foot to this whole place,” Yadin said. “Everything we’re doing is internal renovation.”

The 7.7-acre property has a long history in LA. Founded in 1856 by the Daughters of Charity, St. Vincent is widely considered the city’s first hospital. But after years of financial struggles, the hospital’s previous owner declared bankruptcy and the facility closed in 2020.

Later that year, the property was acquired by Los Angeles Times Patrick Soon-Shiong through his company NantWorks, though most of the campus remained shuttered. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Soon-Shiong sought to use the campus as a coronavirus treatment and research center, according to the LA Times. 

At the end of last year, Yadin’s firm, St. Vincent Behavioral Health Campus LLC, purchased the property for $66.5 million, according to the LA Times. 

Reviving St. Vincent’s hospital

The full redevelopment is expected to cost roughly $300 million, Yadin said, and include more than 800 beds, including interim housing, permanent supportive housing, recuperative care and addiction treatment programs.

The project has rapidly gained support from the state and private sector at a time when California is investing billions into behavioral health infrastructure. The statewide measure Proposition 1 intends to expand treatment facilities, housing and services for people with serious mental illness and substance use disorders.

In a recent social media post, LA Mayor Karen Bass said St. Vincent is “what I’ve wanted to see happen for a long time: a place where people can get treatment, support, and build real, independent lives in permanent housing.”

In March, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the St. Vincent campus would receive $135.8 million through Proposition 1’s funding to support new mental health and substance use treatment facilities planned for the site.

In April, Health Net and the Centene Foundation, private healthcare partners, also announced a $6 million investment in the campus.

Yadin said the project is designed around what he describes as a “continuum of care” model — bringing housing, treatment and support services together in one place rather than spreading them across different providers and locations.

“A lot of individuals, especially within the unsheltered population, fall between the cracks between one level of care and the next,” Yadin said. “For them to finish a program and then say, ‘Go to the other side of town to organization X to get the next level of care,’ oftentimes these individuals don’t make it.”

The St. Vincent campus is intended to centralize services in one location, something he says is desperately needed when considering unhoused residents.

Some unhoused residents, Narro said, are full-time workers who simply cannot afford rent. Others have been chronically homeless for years and need long-term support. Others struggle with severe addiction or mental illness.

“That’s the more complicated one,” Narro said. “So you have to have a special type of wraparound services for them, which I think this building has the potential for.”