The Brief

Here in the rugged foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada, the streets aren’t littered with needles and dealers aren’t hustling drugs on the corner.

But meth is almost as easy to come by as a hazy IPA or locally grown weed.

Quinn Coburn knows the lifestyle well. He has used meth most of his adult life, and has done five stints in jail for dealing marijuana, methamphetamine, and heroin. Now 56, Coburn wants to get sober for good, and he says an experimental program through Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program, which covers low-income people, is helping.

As part of an innovative approach called “contingency management,” Coburn pees in a cup and gets paid for it — as long as the sample is clean of stimulants.

In the coming fiscal year, the state is expected to allocate $61 million to the experiment, which targets addiction to stimulants such as meth and cocaine. It is part of a broader Medi-Cal initiative called CalAIM, which provides social and behavioral health services, including addiction treatment, to some of the state’s sickest and most vulnerable patients.

Since April 2023, 19 counties have enrolled a total of about 2,700 patients, including Coburn, according to the state Department of Health Care Services.

“It’s that little something that’s holding me accountable,” said Coburn, a former construction worker who has tried repeatedly to kick his habit. He is also motivated to stay clean to fight criminal charges for possession of drugs and firearms, which he vociferously denies.

Coburn received $10 for each clean urine test he provided the first week of the program. Participants get a little more money in successive weeks: $11.50 per test in week two, $13 in week three, up to $26.50 per test.

They can earn as much as $599 a year. As of mid-May, Coburn had completed 20 weeks and made $521.50.

Participants receive at least six months of additional behavioral health treatment after the urine testing ends.

The state has poured significant money and effort into curbing opioid addiction and fentanyl trafficking, but the use of stimulants is also exploding in California. According to the state Department of Health Care Services, the rate of Californians dying from them doubled from 2019 to 2023.

Although the cutting-edge treatment can work for opioids and other drugs, California has prioritized stimulants. To qualify, patients must have moderate to severe stimulant use disorder, which includes symptoms such as strong cravings for the drug and prioritizing it over personal health and well-being.

Substance use experts say incentive programs that reward participants, even in a small way, can have a powerful effect with meth users in particular, and a growing body of evidence indicates they can lead to long-term abstinence.

“The way stimulants work on the brain is different than how opiates or alcohol works on the brain,” said John Duff, lead program director at Common Goals, an outpatient drug and alcohol counseling center in Grass Valley, where Coburn receives treatment.

“The reward system in the brain is more activated with amphetamine users, so getting $10 or $20 at a time is more enticing than sitting in group therapy,” Duff said.

California is paying Medicaid enrollees who use meth, cocaine, and other amphetamines to stay sober. As part of the experiment, participants can earn up to $599 a year for submitting clean urine tests. A Nevada County nonprofit organization called Common Goals has enrolled more than a dozen people since launching its program early this year.

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Duff acknowledged he was skeptical of the multimillion-dollar price tag for an experimental program. “You’re talking about a lot of money,” he said. “It was a hard sell.”

What convinced him? “People are showing up, consistently. To get off stimulants, it’s proving to be very effective.”

California was the first state to cover this approach as a benefit in its Medicaid program, according to the Department of Health Care Services, though other states have since followed, including Montana.

Participants in Nevada County must show up twice a week to provide a urine sample, tapering to once a week for the second half of treatment. Every time the sample is free of stimulants, they get paid via a retail gift card — even if the sample is positive for other kinds of drugs, including opioids.

Though participants can collect the money after each clean test, many opt for a lump sum after completing the 24-week program, Duff said. They can choose gift cards from companies such as Walmart, Bath & Body Works, Petco, Subway, and Hotels.com.

Charlie Abernathybettis — Coburn’s substance use disorder counselor, who helps run the program for Nevada County — said not everyone consistently produces a clean urine test, and he has devised a system to stop people from rigging their results.

For example, he uses blue toilet cleaner to prevent patients from watering down their urine, and has dismantled a spigot on the bathroom faucet to keep them from using warm water for the same purpose.

If participants fail, there are no consequences. They simply don’t get paid that day, and can show up and try again.

“We aren’t going to change behavior by penalizing people for their addiction,” Abernathybettis said, noting the ultimate goal is to transition participants into long-term treatment. “Hopefully you feel comfortable here and I can convince you to sign up for outpatient treatment.”

Abernathybettis has employed a tough love approach to addiction therapy that has helped keep Coburn sober and accountable since he started in January. “It’s different this time,” Coburn said as he lit a cigarette on a sunny afternoon in April. “I have support now. I know my life is on the line.”

Growing up in the Bay Area, Coburn never quite felt like he fit in. He was adopted at an early age and dropped out of high school. His erratic home life set him on a course of hard drug use and crime, including manufacturing and selling drugs, he said.

“When I first did crank, it made me feel like I was human for the first time. All my phobias about being antisocial left me,” Coburn said, using a street name for meth.

Coburn escaped to the solitude of the mountains, trees, and rivers that define the rural landscape in Grass Valley, but the area was also rife with drugs.

Construction accidents in 2012 left him in excruciating pain — and unable to work.

Coburn fell deeper into the drug scene, as both a user and a manufacturer. “You wouldn’t believe the market up here for it — more than you can even imagine,” he said. “It’s not an excuse, but I had no way to make a living.”

Financially strapped, he rented a cheap, converted garage from another local drug dealer, he said. Law enforcement officers raided the house in October, and authorities found a gun and large amounts of fentanyl and heroin. Coburn, who faces up to 30 years in prison, vigorously defends himself, saying the drugs and weapons were not his. “All the other ones I did. Not this one,” he said.

Coburn is also in an outpatient addiction program and is active in Alcoholics Anonymous, sometimes attending multiple meetings a day.

Every week, the small payments from the Medi-Cal experiment feel like small wins, he said.

He is planning to take his $599 as a lump sum and give it to his foster parents, with whom he is living as he fights his criminal charges.

“It’s the least I can do for them letting me stay with them and get better,” Coburn said, choking back tears. “I’m not giving up.”

Every week, the small payments from the Medi-Cal experiment feel like small wins, Coburn says.

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Angela Hart

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This article is part of “Faces of Medi-Cal,” a California Healthline series exploring the impact of the state’s safety-net health program on enrollees.

Some electric bikes in California could soon require license plates under a proposed state bill aiming to address the rise in electric bike related injuries.

AB 1942 or the E-bike Accountability Act, would apply exclusively to Class 2 and Class 3 electric bikes.

Class 2 bikes can be operated without peddling until it reaches the speed of 20 miles per hour.

Class 3 bikes reach a max speed of 28 miles per hour; motor assist could only kick in with peddling.

The bill would also require owners to carry proof of ownership and would direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to establish a registration process. It was introduced by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda in Contra Costa County earlier this month.

E-bike injuries spiked 18 fold between 2018 and 2023, according to state traffic data.

The bill may be heard in committee March 16th.

NASA could launch four astronauts on a mission to fly around the moon as soon as March 6.

That's the launch date that the space agency is now working toward following a successful test fueling of its big, 322-foot tall moon rocket, which is standing on a launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"This is really getting real," says Lori Glaze, acting associate administrator of NASA's exploration systems development mission directorate. "It's time to get serious and start getting excited."

But she cautioned that there's still some pending work that remains to be done out at the launch pad, and officials will have to conduct a multi-day flight readiness review late next week to make sure that every aspect of the mission is truly ready to go.

"We need to successfully navigate all of those, but assuming that happens, it puts us in a very good position to target March 6th," she says, noting that the flight readiness review will be "extensive and detailed."

The Artemis II test flight will send four astronauts on an approximately 600,000-mile trip around the moon and back. It will mark the first time that people have ventured to the moon since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972.

When NASA workers first tested out fueling the rocket earlier this month, they encountered problems like a liquid hydrogen leak. Swapping out some seals and other work seems to have fixed these issues, according to officials who say that the latest countdown dress rehearsal went smoothly, despite glitches such as a loss of ground communications in the Launch Control Center that forced workers to temporarily use backups.

Members of the Artemis II crew — NASA astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen — are starting their roughly two-week quarantine to limit their exposure to illnesses before their flight.

Glaze says she spoke to several of the astronauts during the recent test fueling, as they were in Florida to observe the preparations. "They're all very, very excited," she says. "They are really getting a lot of anticipation for a potential launch in March."

Copyright 2026 NPR

An exhibition that takes visitors through the magical water worlds of the 2008 film Ponyo and the hand-drawn artistry of Studio Ghibli is now open at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

The films from the Japanese animation studio and director Hayao Miyazaki have captivated imaginations around the world for decades — this reporter with my four tattoos of favorite Studio Ghibli characters included.

This is now the second time the Miracle Mile museum has dedicated an exhibition to Miyazaki’s works, with the focus on Ponyo arriving more than four years after the retrospective of all his animated feature films.

“These drawings have never been shown outside of Japan,” Shraddha Aryal, the museum’s executive vice president of exhibitions, told LAist. “We have an amazing conservation team who actually cell by cell took care of these, conserved these and that was what led us to say let’s do another exhibition really highlighting their artwork.”

The exhibition includes more than 100 items from Studio Ghibli, including animation cells from Ponyo.

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The cult of Studio Ghibli

Since Studio Ghibli’s founding in 1985, the animation powerhouse has created more than 20 feature films, including My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service and most recently The Boy and the Heron, steadily gaining international acclaim.

Its Spirited Away is among the most celebrated animated movies of all time, becoming Japan’s highest-grossing film and holding that record for 19 years. It was also the first hand-drawn film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003.

The studio and Miyazaki would achieve the same feat again two decades later with The Boy and the Heron in 2024.

Studio Ghibli’s films are often fantastical with a lens of childlike wonder, but they also touch on difficult topics like the horrors of war, fascism, greed and environmental destruction. Characters are complex, with women and girls regularly in strong roles, such as the spear-wielding San or the brave but stubborn Kiki.

For me, there’s something about the carefully crafted storylines and colorful style that still make me feel like I’m exploring the forest with Princess Mononoke or stuck in a secret world of sorcery with Spirited Away, even as an adult.

Miyazaki's magical world

Ponyo is one of Miyazaki’s most kid friendly films — with positive themes of courage and curiosity as the audience tags along with the adventures of the young main characters. Plus, there’s no unnerving scenes of parents being turned into pigs like in Spirited Away (if you know you know).

The 2008 film tells the story of its namesake, the magical goldfish-like creature, Ponyo, and her budding friendship with a 5-year-old human boy named Sōsuke. The film follows Ponyo’s desire to leave her underwater world and become a human to be with Sōsuke, disrupting the balance of nature and having to contend with challenges like a tsunami along the way.

The exhibit creates a 3D version of the filmic world where visitors can climb inside an interactive version of Sōsuke’s green bucket or walk on wave displays like Ponyo in the tsunami.

“Ponyo exhibition is all about this character’s perseverance, and the joyful nature and triumph through ups and downs, [being] willing to explore a new world,” Aryal said. “And it's such a beautiful love story about friendship.”

Reimagining Ponyo

The exhibition includes rare Studio Ghibli donations on display in North America for the first time ever, such as original Miyazaki drawings and Ponyo animation cells, according to the Academy Museum. Guests can explore more than 100 items hand-picked by the studio, including an original animation desk and a make-your-own stop-motion station.

The experience is designed for all ages, reporter superfans with several tattoos of Studio Ghibli characters included.

But Jessica Niebel, the museum’s senior exhibitions curator, told LAist she hopes the Ponyo exhibition helps children feel inspired by the "beautiful messages” of the movie, especially after last year’s L.A. fires and the COVID pandemic.

“Sometimes you live through times where you have a tsunami, where you lose your magic or your mojo, you know, you're not quite sure of your identity,” she said. “[Miyazaki] gives us hope and courage that we can be free and run on the waves like Ponyo.”

“And instead of seeing things as a threat, maybe we use them to carry us,” she continued.

Dipping into the 3-D world

The exhibition is split into four sections focused on different aspects of the film.

The first dives inside Ponyo’s magical underwater home, introducing some main characters with a scene played on a screen spanning nearly the entire room.

The Ponyo exhibition takes visitors inside the 2008 film's magical water worlds.

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The first section includes Ponyo's goddess mother.

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A portrait of Ponyo’s goddess mother, Granmamare, is set up behind a few bean bag chairs in the space, giving guests the sense she’s watching the sea creatures over your shoulder.

The second section centers on Ponyo leaving her home, following her curiosity to dry land where she meets Sōsuke.

The room intentionally reflects the green and blue tones of the film, with curved designs and an interactive bucket that mirrors Miyazaki’s spirit, according to Aryal.

The second section includes the original Japanese release posters from Studio Ghibli’s other famed films, including Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises.

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The walls are lined with the original Japanese release posters from Studio Ghibli’s other famed films, including Howl’s Moving Castle, Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises.

The third section takes you inside “the animators’ imaginative world,” Niebel said. The centerpiece is an original animation desk donated by Studio Ghibli and surrounded by Miyazaki’s detailed drawings for Ponyo.

The exhibition includes rare materials, such as a Studio Ghibli animation desk with drawing supplies.

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Makenna Sievertson

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Stations are set up where guests can make their own stop motion animation using sea creature cut-outs.

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Two stations are set-up on the side where guests can create their own stop motion animation scene using some of the sea creature cut-out materials sent by the studio, according to Arturo Arias, an Academy Museum educator and gallery attendant.

“It's really nice to have the sort of underwater theme happening and so people submerge — no pun intended — into it and just kind of play along,” Arias told LAist.

The final section focuses on the scene where Ponyo runs on waves instead of being swallowed by the water.

“That's a moment that's really close to my heart and I think it's sensational and only [something] Hayao Miyazaki could do,” Neibel said. “[Ponyo]'s just so joyful and so free.”

Painted waves cascade on the exhibition walls as a bright Ponyo pokes out, with behind-the-scenes clips showcased on the side.

The film follows Ponyo’s desire to leave her underwater world and become a human disrupting the balance of nature with a tsunami along the way.

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Makenna Sievertson

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LAist

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Behind the scenes clips from the making on Ponyo were showcased on the side in the last section of the exhibition.

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The movie may be nearly 20-years-old, but Aryal said the hopeful messages of Ponyo are still “really relevant” in the current world and political climate.

“It kind of becomes a refuge, if I may say that, this joyful refuge,” she said. “There is an option for you, even in this sort of disruptive climate that we're living in right now, that you can come and go through this joyful immersive experience.”

Details

The Academy Museum’s “Studio Ghibli’s PONYO” exhibition is open until Jan. 10, 2027. General admission to the museum is free for children and $25 for adults.

As the region’s lead homelessness agency, the main job of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority this year was to dole out nearly $700 million to contractors who operate shelters and other services for unhoused people.

But it turns out that more than halfway through the budget year, many of LAHSA’s 116 service providers are still waiting for LAHSA to pay them for those services. In all, the agency told LAist that it owes at least $69 million in outstanding invoices to providers. About 40% of those invoices are more than two months old.

Those delayed payments are causing cash flow problems for organizations large and small. Several providers told LAist that they've have had to dip into reserves or take on debt.

“These delays are one of the biggest issues for our organization because if we cannot pay our staff, we don't operate,” said Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, CEO of the nonprofit LA Family Housing. "That breaks the entire system and renders people homeless.”

Where things stand

LAHSA officials have said they're working to fix delays and make internal changes so that they don’t happen again.

And they offered details on how they got here:

• They said some payments were delayed because the agency is struggling to process an influx of recently submitted invoices.
• Other payments are delayed because the agency is still waiting for millions in payments, mostly from the city of L.A.

“While a combination of contracting delays, outdated internal policies, and a leadership vacuum caused by the historic funding shifts happening within the rehousing system all contributed to this bottleneck, we are already taking corrective action,” Ahmad Chapman, a LAHSA spokesperson, said in a statement.

At a LAHSA Finance Committee meeting Friday, Janine Lim, the agency's deputy chief financial office, broke down the issues based on agency.

• Under contracts funded by city, the agency doesn’t have some of the money it owes providers, Lim said.
• For county-funded contracts, LAHSA has the funds, but has failed to pass some of them to providers, she said.

Lim acknowledged her department failed to request certain county funds and told commissioners her team is overwhelmed by staff turnover and nonstop crisis management.

Lindsey Horvath's rebuke

The meeting prompted a harsh rebuke from L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath Friday night, who issued a statement demanding a public hearing about LAHSA’s late payments, a forensic audit and immediate payment of all outstanding invoices to county-funded contractors.

“If LAHSA were a publicly traded company, regulators would shut them down.” Horvath said, in a statement “LAHSA balance sheets don’t balance, and they fail to provide real-time financial information to their very own commissioners.”

LAHSA’s funding sources

LAHSA has an approved budget of about $828 million this fiscal year. Most of that money — $697 million — comes from a variety of government sources and passes along to contracted service providers.

This budget year it breaks down like this, according to LAHSA records:

• 46% from L.A. County
• 35% from the city of Los Angeles
• Nearly 11% from the federal government
• More than 8% from the state of California
• A small fraction from private philanthropy,

LAHSA representatives said the delayed payments stem partly from delays in finalizing contracts with homeless service providers this fiscal year, which started July 1.

By that time, the agency had only finalized about one third of its contracts with providers. Providers can’t file invoices until those contracts are final.

Now, eight months into the budget year, LAHSA said more than 99% of contracts are in place. But many weren’t finalized until December. Now that contracts are executed, there’s an “avalanche” of recent invoices from providers, covering the past six months, according to LAHSA officials.

Challenges for providers 

South L.A homeless services provider HOPICS said LAHSA owed it nearly $20 million as of last month, because of late contract executions and delayed payments across two budget years.

“Providers cannot continue operating on uncertainty and IOUs,” the Kelvin Driscoll, the nonprofit's director, told LAist. “To keep services operating, we, like other organizations, have had to exhaust reserves and take on debt.”

Some homeless services providers said late payments have been a problem, but not an insurmountable one.

“The issue of floating unpaid invoices is part of business, especially if we're working with bureaucracy and government.” said Rowan Vansleve, president of Hope The Mission. “Anybody who's taken a contract with the government is not expecting to be paid incredibly quickly.”

Still, as the size of L.A.’s homeless services sector has grown, some service providers say they are being asked to take on larger financial burdens. LA Family Housing is waiting on both reimbursement payments and advances for recent months, its CEO said.

“Our contract is with LAHSA,” said Klasky-Gamer. “We are delivering on our end of the contract by delivering the service. They're not able to deliver on their end of the contract because they don't have access to the money to pay us.”

At the Friday meeting, LAHSA Commissioner Amy Perkins said she had received “countless” calls from leaders of large providers who are considering closing down.

“They don’t want to say that publicly because they don’t want to scare their staff and they will do everything they can not to close,” Perkins said. “They have maxed out their lines of credit. There's no more rocks to turn over. Vendors are walking off jobs.”

Commissioners demands answers

Last year, L.A. County supervisors voted to strip LAHSA of about $300 million in county funding from LAHSA, beginning this July. Until then, county homelessness funding still goes through LAHSA.

Perkins, appointed to the LAHSA Commission by Horvath, told LAHSA officials on Friday that the payment crisis shows why the county's move was necessary.

"This is exactly why we have said for a long time that the structure of LAHSA doesn't work,” Perkins said. “How are you supposed to administer funding for people who won't pay you?”

Justin Szlasa, another LAHSA Commission member said he has frequently heard service providers complain that LAHSA pays them late.

Szlasa said he asked for an itemized summary of all of LAHSA’s unpaid bills. The report should have been easy to generate immediately, Szlasa said.

Months later, LAHSA still has not produced the document, he said. This month, he filed a public records request for that information, including which contractors LAHSA owes money to and how behind on payments it is.

“We as commissioners don’t have visibility into how we’re doing if we don’t know how much money we owe and how late we are with payments to these service providers on the front lines of our homelessness response,” Szlasa said.

LAHSA officials said the agency will work with outside consultants to update the agency’s finance operations to ensure providers are paid accurately and on time.