The Brief

The number of people in Los Angeles County who participated in the first year of a program aimed at providing court-led treatment plans for people who live with serious mental illness remains far below initial state projections, according to data from county mental health authorities.

Known as CARE Court, the new program was promised as an innovative approach to bringing thousands of Californians living with untreated serious mental illness under the care of mental health professionals.

But numbers from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health show the county received about 16% of the petitions it was projected to get during the first six months of the program. From December of last year through mid-November, 308 petitions were filed in L.A. Superior Court, authorities said.

The petition numbers from Orange and Riverside counties are similarly low compared to estimates of how many people in those areas are potentially eligible for CARE Court.

“It’s been very frustrating to watch the slow pace of petitions by anyone other than family members,” Lisa Dailey, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, a group that advocates for policies that benefit people living with serious mental illness, told LAist. Still, Dailey has hope for the program and thinks it deserves more effort.

Some critics see the paltry engagement as indicative of a failed policy. But supporters say the program needs more time and effort from county behavioral health departments.

Gov. Gavin Newsom, who championed the new approach, said he’s proud to see “early achievements,” including some 1,400 people throughout the state who were connected to CARE Courts or county services directly.

In March 2022, Governor Newsom spoke with local mental health service providers and officials about CARE Court. The discussion was held at a facility in South L.A. that’s a temporary home to about 30 people who are getting treatment for mental health or substance use struggles.

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Robert Garrova / LAist

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State officials estimated before the program’s launch that it could help between 7,000 -12,000 Californians a year.

Slow progress 

CARE Court allows family members, behavioral health workers, first responders and others to ask a court — by way of a petition — to step in with a voluntary care plan for someone living with serious mental illness, like schizophrenia. If the plan fails, the person could be hospitalized or referred to a conservatorship.

Between Dec. 1, 2023 and Nov. 20, there were 308 petitions filed in Los Angeles County, far below the roughly 1,900 state officials projected for the first six months of the program. Of those, 28 participants signed on to agreements and four moved forward to the stage in which they were expected to receive a CARE Plan, ordered by the Superior Court.

Some experts say that progress has been slow, particularly in a county where thousands of people living with serious mental illness sleep on the streets every night.

The 2024 Point-In-Time count found that 24% of unhoused people over the age of 18 self-reported that they live with a serious mental illness, according to the Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority, which conducts the annual count.

Martin Jones, a program manager with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, said there are about 70 county staffers working on CARE Court. He said working with human beings — gaining their trust and establishing a rapport — takes time and that just physically getting someone to court can take multiple staffers.

“I think that we’ve seen a lot of success from individuals who we’ve been told if CARE had not intervened this person would have died on the streets,” Jones said. “How do you really calculate the value of those kinds of stories? And I believe that it’s incalculable.”

Jones said he expected the first wave of L.A. County CARE Court graduations to happen early next year.

‘A very narrow niche’

For Alex V. Barnard, author of the book Conservatorship: Inside California’s System of Coercion and Care for Mental Illness, the lackluster CARE Court numbers were all too predictable.

“It was clear from the beginning that this was a program that would be very hard to access, and would serve a very narrow niche,” Barnard wrote in an email to LAist.

Eligibility criteria for CARE Court state that a participant must be diagnosed with a psychotic spectrum disorder, like schizophrenia. Bipolar disorder is not included. The criteria also say that the participant can’t be in ongoing treatment.

Barnard said he predicts that CARE Court will remain a small piece of the mental health treatment landscape, overshadowed by what was known as Senate Bill 43, a new state law that expands the criteria for involuntary treatment.

The measure, signed by Newsom in October 2023, changed state law to allow people living with a serious mental illness or severe substance use disorder who are unable to provide for their personal safety or medical care to be deemed “gravely disabled” and held against their will.

Barnard also questions whether the multi-million dollar investment in CARE Court might have been better spent on beds and services, which the county is severely lacking.

“It's really not clear why you need a court to get mental health departments to provide mental health care to individuals with mental health challenges, though, versus fixing issues around financing and prioritization within that system,” he said.

‘A policy failure’ 

Eve Garrow, senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, said funding directed towards CARE Court should instead be going to community-based care. The low participation numbers are evidence to her that the effort is not working.

“I think by any measure, I would say the CARE Act to date is a policy failure,” Garrow said. “It’s used precious resources — public funds — to fund a court system that is not even being used.”

In 2022, 40 groups — including JusticeLA, Disability Rights California and ACLU California Action — signed a letter saying the program would strip “people with mental health disabilities of their right to make their own decisions about their lives.”

Garrow said she believed CARE Court was the wrong response to a very real problem: “Which is people with serious mental health disabilities -- many of whom are unhoused -- living without access to the care and services they need,” she said.

In her experience, Garrow said, most people who are offered quality mental health care will accept it voluntarily.

More time 

Still, other mental health policy watchers are sticking by CARE Court, even if its initial expansion has been sluggish.

Dr. Susan Partovi, a family physician who does street outreach with the L.A. Centers for Alcohol and Drug Abuse, said the low participation may be partly because the Department of Mental Health needs to make more people aware of CARE Court and who it might help.

“I think they really need to be advertising this on a regular basis, because it’s hard to remember,” Partovi said, adding that the underwhelming numbers were a reminder for her that she could be filing more petitions.

According to the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, just 10 petitions came from provider networks.

Dailey, with the Treatment Advocacy Center, said county efforts have been partly to blame for what she sees as “unfortunate” numbers in the program’s first year. Jones, with the Department of Mental Health, said the county was now making a push to train more first responders on how to file petitions and when they might be appropriate. Only 22 of L.A. County’s 308 petitions were filed by the county Department of Mental Health.

The overwhelming majority came from family members.

“If there was no need for it, you wouldn’t see this initial rush from family members to try to get people into care,” Dailey said.

Californians will see the minimum wage increase to $16.90 per hour starting Jan. 1. The adjustment — a boost of 40 cents per hour — was calculated in August by the Department of Finance as part of its minimum wage annual review required by state law.

California has been raising its minimum wage over the past decade. Former Gov. Jerry Brown in 2016 signed a watershed law to increase minimum wage from $10.50 per hour to $15 per hour, plus annual adjustments for inflation.

The current rate of $16.50 per hour suggests that a minimum wage worker needs to work 98 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom rental at fair market rent in California, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

California is one of 19 states to raise minimum wages in 2026, according to payroll company ADP. Cities and counties can also set their own minimum wages. This year, over two dozen local jurisdictions have increased local minimum wages. West Hollywood will have a $20.25 minimum wage starting in January — the highest of any California city, according to the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

Voters last November narrowly rejected a ballot measure that would have increased the minimum wage to $18 per hour. But some low-wage workers this year have successfully lobbied for bumps in pay in specific industries.

Under laws Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in 2023, fast food workers earn a minimum wage wage of $20 an hour and health care workers are on track to make $25 an hour.

That momentum extended to Los Angeles hotel and airport employees. Labor organizers in May secured a city minimum wage increase to $30 per hour for those workers by the 2028 Olympics. Large businesses fought back, arguing that wage hikes will only increase challenges for the tourism industry, which is still struggling to find its footing after the pandemic.

After failing to gather enough signatures for a ballot measure to repeal the new minimum wage, business groups later filed a different measure that could gut millions of dollars of revenue from the city’s general fund.

Following the move, Los Angeles City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson this month introduced a motion to delay the full wage increase from taking effect until 2030, according to reporting from the Los Angeles Times.

Labor leaders rebuked the motion, calling it “repulsive.” 

“You can’t threaten to blow a hole in our budget and then the only way to stop it is on the backs of workers,” said Kurt Petersen, co-president of the union that represents many hotel workers, UNITE HERE Local 11. “That kind of raw extortion and shakedown has no place in our city.”

According to Peterson, a coalition of community organizations and unions are beginning to collect signatures for a ballot measure that would raise the minimum wage to $30 per hour for all workers in Los Angeles.

“The power is everyone together,” said Peterson. “Working people need help and raising wages is the easiest, most straightforward thing to do. Going up 40 cents per hour in 2026 doesn’t move the needle at all.”

Cayla Mihalovich is a California Local News fellow.

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

The Los Angeles Angels have settled with the family of pitcher Tyler Skaggs, who died of an overdose in 2019, as first reported by The Athletic. The terms of the settlement have not been made public.

The 27 year-old pitcher was found dead in a suburban Dallas hotel room shortly before a road game against the Texas Rangers. A toxicology report found a mix of alcohol, fentanyl and oxycodone in his system.

The illegal drugs that led to Skaggs' death were provided by former Angels communications director Eric Kay. Kay has been sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for his role in the death. His trial included testimony from five other Major League Baseball players who said Kay supplied them with oxycodone.

The case playing out in Santa Ana was a civil, wrongful death lawsuit brought by Skaggs’ widow and parents. They argued that the Angels should have known Kay was providing drugs to Skaggs and other players on the team. The family said the franchise should be held responsible because drug dealing was essentially part of Kay’s job, which included acting as a so-called “gopher” for the players and otherwise keeping them happy.

Skaggs' family is seeking close to $100 million in lost earnings, along with compensation for pain and suffering, and punitive damages against the Angels.

In the wake of Skaggs’ death, Major League Baseball began testing players for opioid use and guiding players to treatment.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will now have a new name — the "Trump-Kennedy Center." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt announced the news on social media Thursday, saying that the board of the center voted unanimously for the change, "Because of the unbelievable work President Trump has done over the last year in saving the building."

The website for the center has already been updated to reflect the change, and new signage on the building went up on Friday.

Shortly after the announcement on Thursday, Ohio Democrat Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of the board, refuted the claim that it was a unanimous vote. "Each time I tried to speak, I was muted," she said in a video posted to social media. "Participants were not allowed to voice their concern."

When asked about the call, Roma Daravi, vice president of public relations at the Kennedy Center, sent a statement reiterating the vote was unanimous: "The new Trump Kennedy Center reflects the unequivocal bipartisan support for America's cultural center for generations to come."

Other Democrats in Congress who are ex-officio members of the Kennedy Center Board, including Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement stating that the president is renaming the institution "without legal authority."

"Federal law established the Center as a memorial to President Kennedy and prohibits changing its name without Congressional action," the statement reads.

Earlier this year, Trump installed himself as the chairman of the center, firing former president Deborah Rutter and ousting the previous board chair David Rubenstein, along with board members appointed by President Biden. He then appointed a new board, including second lady Usha Vance, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Fox News host Laura Ingraham and more.

Trump hinted at the name change earlier this month, when he took questions before becoming the first president to host the Kennedy Center Honors. He deferred to the board when asked directly about changing the name but said "we are saving the Kennedy Center."

The president was mostly hands off with the Kennedy Center during his first term, as most presidents have been. But he's taking a special interest in it in his second term, touring the center and promising to weed out programming he doesn't approve of. His "One Big Beautiful Bill" included $257 million for the building's repairs and maintenance.

Originally, it was called The National Cultural Center. In 1964, two months after President Kennedy was assassinated, President Lyndon Johnson signed legislation authorizing funds to build what would become the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Copyright 2025 NPR

It’s the benchmark of success, a milestone of responsible adulthood, a time-tested way to amass wealth for you and your progeny. Homeownership, we’re told again and again, is a status that every right-thinking person should aspire to — the white-picket-fence-fronted embodiment of the American Dream.

But what if it’s also a little overrated?

For generations it has been taken as a near article of faith across the country that ownership is both the financially and socially superior way to inhabit a home and that public policy makers should always promote it. California legislators and housing advocates spent this past year enacting sweeping policies aimed at making it easier to build housing of all kinds. This coming year, many of them indicate that they plan to focus specifically on providing more plentiful paths to homeownership.

They’ll have their work cut out for them.

The state’s homeownership rate of roughly 55% is second lowest in the nation, above New York, and a full 10 percentage points beneath the national average. Most of that gap, both common sense and researchers at UC Berkeley tell us, isn’t the result of an atypical fondness for the freedoms of renting but comes down to the price tag. The median price of a detached single-family home across in the United States is $426,800. In California, it’s $852,680. In San Francisco it’s well over $1 million.

With borrowing rates still hovering above 6%, those prices translate to estimated monthly mortgage costs between $4,000 to $6,000 or more. Even in all but the toniest neighborhoods of coastal California, that’s far above the cost of renting a typical apartment.

In Orange County, the estimated all-in monthly costs on a home (including taxes, insurance, maintenance and any association fees) is four times the average rent, according to a recent analysis by the commercial real estate firm CBRE. In Los Angeles and San Francisco, the “buying premium” is three times greater than renting. Nationally, it’s twice as much.

Is the extra cost worth it?

Economists and housing finance experts are careful to note that it depends — on a person’s financial circumstances, the particulars of their preferences and the market in which they want to live, how long they plan to occupy a home and, most challenging of all, what the future holds.

But across the country, the gap between renting and owning is “way out of line” with the historic norm, said Laurie Goodman, an economist at the Urban Institute, a liberal-leaning thinktank in Washington D.C.

In 2018, Goodman co-authored a paper on homeownership in the United States, which came to the fairly unambiguous conclusion that most people most of the time would be better off buying a home (assuming they can afford the monthly payments) compared to renting.

“Homeownership is not the universal panacea, but the financial returns on homeownership have been more beneficial than renting for most homeowners and will likely remain so if current patterns continue,” Goodman wrote in a corresponding blog post at the time.

Current patterns did not continue: Today we see dizzying prices and interest rates and flat rents in most places. Homeownership isn’t nearly the financial slam dunk it once was, she said.

Take a market like San Francisco. The average price of an admittedly rare single-family home in the city is $1.38 million, according to Zillow. Depending on the size of a buyer’s downpayment, that would work out to a monthly loan payment of roughly $6,500. The average rent for one is $4,350.

In order for all those extra monthly payments to eventually pay off, the value of the house will need to soar vertiginously into the indefinite future. Or rents, which determine how much a person can save by not buying, will need to shoot up as well. Or the stock market or other possible places a well-heeled renter could park all the extra money they aren’t spending on a mortgage, will need to flatline.

Or a combination of all of the above.

A person buying into that market is assuming a very specific and by no means certain version of the financial future, said Goodman.

Either that, or they’re just “desperate to own in San Francisco because they’re just desperate to own in San Francisco,” she said. “For whatever reason.”

The case for renting forever

For many Californians, this isn’t actually a decision. The number of renters who can buy locally and get away with spending anything less than 40% of their income on monthly homeownership costs are in the single digit percentages in Los Angeles, San Diego, Riverside, Sacramento, San Jose and Ventura, according to the CBRE report. Being a tenant in California is hard enough. More than half of California renters are spending more than 30% of their income on rent as it is.

But for those lucky enough to rent by choice, it’s not necessarily a bad choice to make.

Remember that yawning “buying premium” between the monthly cost of owning and renting? A wealthy tenant is in a position to save and invest the difference. Though homeownership is often touted as the best way to build wealth, it’s not the only way. It might not even be the best way: On average and over long stretches of time, the stock market regularly outperforms median home prices — albeit, without quite so many tax benefits and other boosts that federal and state governments shower upon homeowners.

Rather than pouring every last dollar in disposable income (and then some) into a single depreciating asset that threatens to leak when it rains, parking that money elsewhere also allows a renter the option to diversify.

“I think more people are starting to be interested in renting and saving at the same time, because they've been priced out of owning a home, but they still want to achieve their financial goals and they're looking into those alternatives and getting more savvy about it,” said Redfin economist Daryl Fairweather.

Running the numbers on whether renting and saving is, in fact, the better financial call gets very “murky,” she said. Much of it depends on the future of home prices, local rents, stock prices, interest rates and how long a person plans to stay put. It’s a hugely complex and individual choice and it’s not risk-free. Fairweather touted an online rent-vs-buy calculator produced by the New York Times.

But California’s specific conditions — high prices relative to rents, high maintenance and insurance costs, the relatively large number of tenants protected by rent control policies of one kind or another — the financial argument for renting may be about as good as it's ever been.

The perks of owning property

Even if renting is a better deal on paper, there are plenty of reasons someone might want to buy that have nothing to do with money.

Space is one: For a host of regulatory and financial reasons, the vast majority of rental units are apartments while detached single-family houses are predominantly reserved for owners. Especially for growing families, the option is often either to cram your spouse and kids into an urban apartment or drive out of the city (and possibly out of the state) until you can afford to buy.

Education is another. Rentals are also more likely than owner-occupied units to be in neighborhoods with poorly performing public schools and elevated crime rates.

For some, homeownership also comes with an entirely non-monetary warm and fuzzy factor, whether it’s independence — deciding when and what color to paint your walls, for instance — or a sense of security.

Finally, just because someone can save and invest the extra hundreds or thousands of dollars a month that would have gone to a mortgage payment, that doesn’t mean they will. No one likes making a mortgage payment, but by converting part of your paycheck each month into home equity, it acts as a kind of forced savings plan. It's perpetually tempting not to save.

“It takes more discipline to go against the social trend,” said Fairweather.

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