The Brief

As Dr. Rishi Patel’s street medicine van bounces over dirt roads and empty fields in rural Kern County, he’s looking for a particular patient he knows is overdue for her shot.

The woman, who has schizophrenia and has been living outside for five years, has several goals for herself: Start thinking more clearly, stop using meth and get an ID so she can visit her son in jail. Patel hopes the shot — a long-acting antipsychotic — will help her meet all of them.

Patel, medical director of Akido Street Medicine, is one of many street doctors throughout California using these injections as an increasingly common tool to help combat the state’s intertwined homelessness and mental health crises. Typically administered into a patient’s shoulder muscle, the medication slowly releases into the bloodstream over time, providing relief from symptoms of psychosis for a month or longer. The shots replace a patient’s oral medication — no more taking a pill every day. For people who are homeless and routinely have their pills stolen, can’t make it to a pharmacy for a refill or simply forget to take them, the shots can mean the difference between staying on their medication, or not.

“They’ve been an absolute game-changer,” Patel said.

Street medicine teams bring the shots directly to their patients wherever they are — whether it’s in a tent along Skid Row in Los Angeles, in a dugout in the middle of a field in the Central Valley, or along the bank of a stream in Shasta County. Doctors can diagnose someone, prescribe the medication, get their consent and give the shot within a matter of days — or sometimes even more quickly — and with minimal paperwork and red tape. They don’t need a psychiatrist’s sign-off.

It’s estimated that California is home to more than 180,000 homeless residents. How to help the sickest of them — people with severe, untreated psychosis who might wander into traffic or otherwise put themselves in danger — has become a hot-button issue, with Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers creating new and sometimes controversial ways to get people into treatment. In a recent UCSF survey of homeless Californians, 12% reported experiencing hallucinations in the past 30 days, and more than a quarter said they’d ever been hospitalized for a mental health condition.

Doctors say the goal of giving an antipsychotic shot to someone living in an encampment is to get them thinking clearly, so that they can start engaging with social workers, sign up for benefits and get on housing waitlists. While Newsom’s new CARE Court allows judges to order people into mental health treatment, and other recent legislation makes it easier to put people with a serious mental illness into conservatorships, doctors administering street injections take a different approach. The treatment is voluntary, and people can get help where they are, instead of in a locked facility.

An Abilify Maintena shot being prepared by the Akido street medicine team at their main office in Bakersfield on May 28, 2024.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters/CatchLight Local

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Some success stories are dramatic. Doctors talk about patients who one day are babbling incoherently, and a week after a shot, are having conversations.

“It’s been pretty common that that’s the initiation of, ‘We’re going indoors,’” said Dr. Coley King, director of homeless health care for the Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles. He said he’s seen dozens of patients get off the street after taking these shots.

As with any medication, the shots can have side effects. And while a patient can stop taking a pill and generally put a stop to a negative reaction, once they’ve been given a shot, they have no choice but to wait a month for the drug to wear off.

Despite some street doctors’ rave reviews, injectable antipsychotics still aren’t reaching everyone who experts say they could help. Street medicine teams report having just a handful of patients on these medications at any one time (King’s team in Los Angeles has about two dozen). Some patients don’t want the shots, balking at the idea of having a drug in their system for an entire month, especially if they have feelings of paranoia related to health care.

And street doctors complain that hospitals still seem to prefer discharging patients from temporary psychiatric holds with a bottle of pills they may or may not take – instead of giving them a long-acting shot.

Losing track of patients

One of the biggest challenges street doctors face in administering these shots is following up with patients.

In Kern County, Patel hasn’t seen the woman he’s looking for since his team gave her first antipsychotic shot almost two months ago. Now she’s past due for another dose.

It’s worrying, Patel said, “because I don’t know how she did on it.”

The last place they saw her was at an encampment known as “The Sump” in the Central Valley farming community of Lamont, where she lived in a plywood shack along a muddy ditch behind a farm. But code enforcement recently cleared everyone out of that area, and Patel’s team doesn’t have a phone number or any other way to contact her.

The Akido street medicine team checks for a patient they are looking for in a homeless encampment in a dirt field in Arvin on May 28, 2024.

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Larry Valenzuela

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CalMatters/CatchLight Local

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The first place they look is another encampment known as “the Shrine,” because it once held a shrine to Santa Muerte, a Mexican saint of death often prayed to by drug dealers. The team drives the van through an empty field of dead, yellow grass. Several people are living in room-sized pits they’ve dug into the dirt and covered with tarps and sheets of metal. Next to the vacant land is a vineyard, with rows of vines dotted with small, green grapes.

She’s not there, so the team hands out sack lunches and bottles of water, then gets back in the van and leaves.

“We’ve seen results,” said Kirk McGowan, a street medicine nurse with Akido. “But we’ve seen more failures than successes. That’s just kind of the nature of the situation.”

Who should prescribe antipsychotic injections?

In most cases, the people prescribing and administering antipsychotic shots in homeless encampments are general practice doctors — not specially trained psychiatrists. That’s because despite the growing prevalence of street medicine, street psychiatrists are still rare, according to a recent USC report.

“You look over your shoulder and there’s not a psychiatrist there helping you out,” King said. “And we want to meet the need. We want to take care of these patients. They’re really, really ill, they’re really disorganized, and suffering and dying on the streets.”

There are no legal restrictions preventing a general practice doctor from administering these injections. But some practitioners think the responsibility should be reserved for psychiatric providers.

“These medications are in there for an extended period of time,” said Keri Weinstock, a psychiatric nurse practitioner who practices street medicine in Shasta County. “They do come with risks. There are specialty things that come along with some of these specialty meds, and it’s a lot to learn when you have to know everything else, too.”

Some street doctors who give these shots seek out additional psychiatric training, while others learn on the job — often with a psychiatrist on speed dial, just in case.

“I don’t think it’s rocket science to diagnose schizophrenia, as long as we’ve done it with some thoughtfulness,” King said.

In-the-field diagnoses aren’t always clear-cut, Patel said. Sometimes, people do such a good job of hiding their symptoms that it’s hard to tell they’re dealing with psychosis. Or, instead of experiencing obvious hallucinations or other symptoms commonly associated with schizophrenia, patients experience “negative symptoms,” such as extreme social withdrawal.

When those types of cases arise, Patel calls a psychologist for a second opinion.

While these drugs are generally considered safe, they do come with a risk of side effects that can include dizziness, sedation, stiffness and decreased mobility. Those symptoms might be no big deal for someone living in a house, but for someone on the street, could be catastrophic, said Dr. Shayan Rab, a street psychiatrist with Los Angeles County’s Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement team. It could make someone more vulnerable to being attacked or robbed, or prevent them from accessing food or shelter.

“It’s a very serious kind of action that’s being taken and a lot of time needs to be spent before you say, ‘Hey, this individual is safe for a long-acting injection,’” he said.

To make sure a patient doesn’t have an adverse reaction, doctors typically give them an oral dose of the same medication for a few days before administering the shot.

There’s also a risk that after a street doctor gives someone a shot, that patient could later get sent to the hospital on a temporary psychiatric hold. Doctors there might not know the patient already has a long-acting dose of antipsychotic medication in their body, and might give them another dose.

Before giving someone a shot, Dr. Aislinn Bird wants to be 100% sure their symptoms are actually caused by psychotic disorder, such as schizophrenia, and not complex PTSD, major depressive disorder, methamphetamine use, or something else. Overdiagnosis of psychotic disorders is rampant, especially in the African American community, Bird said.

“You have to be sure you really know the correct diagnosis,” said Bird, who serves as director of Integrated Care at Health Care for the Homeless in Alameda County.

But Dr. Susan Partovi, who practices street medicine on Skid Row in Los Angeles, said that’s an “antiquated way of thinking.” When someone is experiencing psychosis, it’s an emergency that needs to be treated as soon as possible, no matter the cause, she said. Her preference is to treat the symptoms first, and then see if the patient wants to work on other issues, such as substance use.

Antipsychotic injectables, such as Abilify and Invega, tend to be most prevalent in street medicine practices. But street doctors also administer long-acting injectable HIV medication, as well as medication for addiction such as Vivitrol — an injectable, long-acting medication that can help reduce cravings for opioids and alcohol, and protect against overdose.

Silencing the voices in his head

Ricardo Fonseca Jr., who goes by “Ricky,” has been homeless for two years, living in a tent behind a Dollar Tree, then in a park in rural Kern County. The 31-year-old said he was working as a welder until he had a sudden mental breakdown and started hearing voices.

The voices said horrible things to him. Sometimes they yelled, and he yelled back, scaring those around him. He used methamphetamine to cope.

“It was getting to the point where I just felt like killing myself,” Fonseca said.

Two months ago, Fonseca started taking a monthly shot of the antipsychotic drug Abilify. Since then, “everything’s changed,” he said.

Now, Fonseca is staying at a friend’s house and considering going to school. He says he’s stopped using meth.

“I can finally hear the birds and the crickets,” he said. “I couldn’t hear them before.”

Data center builders don’t tell the public how much water they use, according to a new report — and the industry is encroaching into water-stressed and vulnerable communities.

The report, by the think tank Next10 and researchers at Santa Clara University, finds that planned data centers — the ganglia of artificial intelligence — are spreading to regions reliant on overtapped groundwater and strained surface water, with potentially major effects in the Central and Imperial Valleys.

But, reinforcing previous studies, the researchers found that a patchwork of state, federal and local policies allows data center operators to avoid publicly disclosing their actual water use.

California lawmakers tried to address this last year, but California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure. Now, the legislature is trying again, with bills mandating disclosures about water use and planning.

“We have this huge build out, and we have very little data,” said Irina Raicu, who directs the Internet Ethics program at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University.

Paired with California’s precarious water supplies, Raicu said, “It’s just not a good combination.”

Shaolei Ren, an expert on the environmental impacts of AI at UC Riverside who was not involved in the study, said the findings point to a much broader problem.

“Limited publicly available information about data center water use makes it difficult for communities, water providers and researchers to have meaningful public discussions and responsibly assess power-water trade-offs,” Ren said in an email.

Murky water use 

Few environmental impact reports for California’s data centers were publicly available online, the researchers found.

Raicu and co-author Iris Stewart-Frey, a professor of environmental science, went looking for the reports, meant to assess and disclose a project’s impacts for both nature and people under the landmark California Environmental Quality Act.

They found almost none. The ones they did find were largely for facilities in the city of Santa Clara.

Through interviews with planning officials, they discovered that projects can slip through with little environmental review if they fall under certain size or water use thresholds, or if they meet a city or county’s criteria for other approval pathways. These include something called ministerial approval, which requires planning agencies to approve a project that meets local zoning and other standards.

Even for data centers that undergo more stringent environmental scrutiny, the researchers found that documentation is rarely available to the public.

In the few cases the planning documents were posted publicly, the information — on the data center’s owner or operator, size, type of cooling system, the amount of water used, whether it’s recycled or potable — was often “missing, contradictory, or vague,” the report said.

The researchers said they contacted water providers in areas where data centers cluster, seeking usage data. None responded.

A shift to vulnerable regions

California’s data centers mostly cluster in the south San Francisco Bay Area and the city of Los Angeles, with smaller concentrations in Sacramento and San Diego.

But the report noted large, planned projects in rural and less affluent regions — like in Santa Clara County’s Gilroy, as well as in the heavily agricultural Imperial Valley.

“They need a bunch of cheap land,” Raicu. “If we’re not careful, they will end up being pitched, very convincingly, to communities that have real needs — without enough attention being paid to the water part.”

Khara Boender, director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, which has opposed bills mandating more granular water-use reporting, said in an email the industry is “committed to being a good neighbor.”

Boender argues that data centers collectively “used significantly less water than other essential industries in 2025, including the agriculture, power, food and beverage, and semiconductor sectors,” but the coalition offers no data to back that up.

Collective use matters less than local impacts in a state where each community has its own mix of water supplies and strains, according to a previous study published by a team at UC Berkeley.

Whether data centers use a lot or a little water relative to agriculture or other industries, “what matters most is the scale of new local use compared to available local supply,” the Berkeley team concluded earlier this year. “Unfortunately, this picture is clouded by data deficiencies.”

In this week’s report, the Santa Clara University team drilled into those local supplies and community vulnerabilities to anticipated expansion.

“We’re at the brink of this happening in California,” Stewart-Frey, the environmental scientist, said. Her report, she added, isn’t advocating against data centers. But “communities should know what they’re getting themselves into.”

Debates over proposed data centers are erupting in a Kern County desert community with dwindling groundwater and in the hot Imperial Valley, which draws from the strained Colorado River. 

Monterey Park residents in the San Gabriel Valley successfully opposed one data center project over environmental concerns and inadequate information and secured an upcoming vote on a citywide ban.

In a letter to city officials, a representative for the developer dismissed opponents as “rage-baiting an uninformed mob to pressure your decisionmaking.”

Raicu pushed back. “If those communities are uninformed about the issue — whose fault is that? Who should be informing the people so that you don’t have this kind of pushback, if there is no need for it?”

New laws v. Big Tech

Last year, Assemblymember Diane Papan, a Democrat from San Mateo, authored a bill requiring data center operators to report estimated or actual water use to their water supplier when seeking or renewing a business license or permit.

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed the measure amid industry pressure, saying he was “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements about operational details on this sector without understanding the full impact on businesses and the consumers of their technology.”

Now, Papan is trying again with two bills. One largely reprises last year’s measure, with additional reporting required to the city and county. The other would bar local governments from approving new or expanded data centers unless the developer discloses information about their water use and plans.

It would also set other requirements — like prohibiting development in overdrafted groundwater basins in places like the San Joaquin Valley, unless state water managers OK it.

“You cannot manage what you have not and cannot measure,” Papan said. “The public likes transparency, and they should.”

Both bills cleared a key legislative chokepoint this week but face staunch opposition from the tech industry and business groups.

“If they run out of water, guess what happens? And they can’t cool their systems — are they going to succeed?” Papan said. “To which I say, help us help you.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

Founders Jenny Yang and Chris Capizzi spent seven years operating as a pop-up without a brick-and-mortar location. Opening their doors to local vendors pays homage to their own roots selling at Los Angeles markets, from the Melrose Trading Post to the Pasadena Rose Bowl Flea Market.

“Mega giant online sellers have the scale and the resources and the patience and the reach to capture most people,” Capizzi said. “Whereas for us, I think we have to be really creative — we have to band together.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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Yang and Capizzi’s long history of vending at markets taught them how isolating running a small business can be. At their market, they aim to build connections with each vendor and strategize the best timing and layout so everyone can succeed.

“[Amazon and Barnes & Noble] are Goliath, and we’re not even David — we’re just the ant underneath David’s foot,” Capizzi said. “I think we can do what we do and try to get as many people, at our level or even smaller, to get together.”

Weekly markets at A Good Used Book have captivated the neighborhood since its opening in October 2023, with charming names like “Sunday Funday,” “Saturday School” and “Hi-Fi Friday Night,” plus hand-drawn flyers by well-known artist Noah Harmon. Now, it’s become a weekly occurrence where LA pop-ups can display their own crafts, allowing local readers to indulge in a little more than a pocket paperback.

Each week holds a Pandora’s box of niche snacks, crafts or trinkets you didn’t know you needed, ranging from Southeast Asian-inspired trail mix to natural incense sticks to vintage Japanese audio equipment. One week you might be enticed to adopt a kitten from a rescue booth outside, another week you might impulsively get a stick-and-poke tattoo in the back of the store.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

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Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

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On one sunny Sunday afternoon, Brandon Stanciell hand-tossed fresh pizza dough on the sidewalk outside the bookstore. His 2-year-old pop-up, Pizza Ananda, which he named after his daughter, is an homage to her and to Italian cooking, a hobby he started during paternity leave. An hour before the market closed, Stanciell had already sold out and garnished his last pepperoni-and-hot-honey pie for one lucky customer.

“I love that places like this allow us all to meet at once to share what we have and give it to the community around us,” Stanciell said.

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

(

Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

)

For the owners, building a community market is about deepening relationships with the people who walk through their doors. In an increasingly digital landscape, it is also a reciprocal partnership among local businesses.

“A lot of people talk about community building nowadays as a marketing strategy,” Capizzi said. “But I think the actual community building comes from talking to each vendor and each customer and being a consistent presence in the neighborhood.”

Nestled between Historic Filipinotown and Echo Park is a bookstore turned artisan craft space turned food market, all within 900 square feet. Every Sunday, A Good Used Book on Glendale Boulevard transforms from a retail bookstore into what they call “Sunday Funday Market.”

(

Nick Ducassi

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The LA Local

)

While customers browsed for unique titles, Gerin del Carmen worked her booth of ceramic dishware, oyster-shaped trinket holders and vases resembling miniature boxes. As a ceramicist, del Carmen draws from her Filipino heritage, including the Balikbayan boxes that represent immigrants sending gifts to family in the Philippines.

“Sharing the community and your space is such a big deal. This is not a huge, gigantic Barnes & Noble store,” del Carmen said. “It has so much foot traffic, and the fact that [the owners] are setting up and sharing the space once or twice a week with other vendors and other artists is huge.”

Yang and Capizzi may think of themselves as an “ant underneath David’s foot,” but A Good Used Book is building a colony of vendors, rooted in community.

Whether you and your friends are looking for a brunch spot to cater to everyone's palates, or taking a trip to the historic Grand Central Market, food halls make for an easy, affordable place to satisfy cravings — especially in SoCal, where diverse selections of dishes reign supreme.

But these spaces fill a void much deeper than our appetites. They bring new life to old storefronts, factories or even airfields (see list below), and can offer a way to keep dollars within the community by becoming a hub for local businesses.

With that said, here's a short list of food halls where you'll get more than just a killer meal.

For good vibes

BLVD MRKT food hall on the corner of 6th Street and Whittier Boulevard in downtown Montebello.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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BLVD MRKT is an open-air food hall in downtown Montebello that feels like a party. The 8,500-square-foot space currently has five eateries, or "concepts" as they're known in the restaurant industry, and hosts live DJs every Friday night and Sunday during brunch. They also host Open Vinyl Night on the second and forth Tuesday of every month, where patrons get $2 off beers and margaritas from Alchemy Craft if they bring a vinyl record to be played in the BLVD courtyard.

The space is pet-friendly and has growing concepts like Los Taquero Mucho, which offers classic al pastor, grilled chicken and slow-cooked carnitas tacos, as well as specialty flavors like vegan tacos with whiskil sautéed in coconut milk, and Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos, perfect for those who crave crispy, slow-roasted pork with a hint of sweetness.

Los Taquero Mucho participates in BLVD's incubator program, run by co-founders Barney and Evelyn Santos. The program offers mentorship to local entrepreneurs until they can set up shop permanently.

Pork Belly Cochinita Pibil Tacos with salsa from Los Taquero Mucho at BLVD MRKT in Montebello.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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BLVD MRKT is part of the couple's commercial real estate development firm, Gentefy. Its mission is to invest in retail and hospitality projects that ignite economic development and revitalization in Black and brown neighborhoods.

"Blvd Mrkt is our first project," Barney Santos wrote in a text message. "It was our social proof to prove to banks, investors and cities that a socially conscious business model could exist in a traditionally overlooked area."

VCHOS Pupuseria Moderna also has a spot in the BLVD courtyard, offering handmade pupusas with filling choices such as shrimp with spinach and cheese, and tender beef birria with a side of consommé, onions and cilantro. Coffee lovers can get an Oaxacan Mocha at Cafe Santo, or stop by Cold Pizza for a wood-fired slice.

For eclectic tastes

Rodeo 39 Public Market in Stanton.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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An O.C. favorite, Rodeo 39 Public Market lives on Highway 39, also known as Beach Boulevard, in Stanton. This 40,000-square-foot space is an eclectic mix of more than 20 food and drink concepts and retailers. There are three outdoor patios and five murals, plus an arcade, tattoo shop and photo booth. Food options cover everything from Lil' Breezy's adobo breakfast burritos to Cajun crab fries at The Crawfish Hut.

Mural by artist David Flores outside of Joystix arcade at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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Rodeo's menu choices make it well-suited for a casual weekend brunch. At its entrance sits Here & There, where you can grab a coffee or matcha latte, or try one of their signature drinks like the Iced Vienna, a combination of milk with caramelly demerara sugar and your choice of matcha or espresso, topped with sweet cream and garnished with sea salt. The result is a drink that's smooth and not too sweet.

Eggyo bulgogi egg sandwich with spicy mayo at Rodeo 39 Public Market.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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Eggyo, a recent addition to Rodeo, offers Korean corn dogs and fluffy egg sandwiches on crispy, house-baked milk bread. Try the bulgogi option with spicy mayo for a savory kick. If you crave a cocktail, venture over to CAPO, which also serves craft beer. Or just sit on one of their sun-filled patios while you decide what to try.

For a page from history

The Hangar in Long Beach.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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The Hangar is a 17,000-square-foot food hall that pays homage to Long Beach's aviation history. It sits on former Boeing Co. land where military and commercial aircraft were built. Today, it serves as a dining destination at the Long Beach Exchange Shopping Center, or LBX, neighboring the city's international airport.

This space currently has a mix of 14 food concepts and two retail shops. Patrons can enjoy local favorites outside their flagship locations, like the Joe's Special bagel sandwich from Cassidy's Corner Cafe, with bacon, egg and the star of the show — tangy jalapeño cream cheese. Fans of spice can try Jay Bird's Nashville Hot Chicken, which offers chicken sandwiches and tenders, and Blazin' Fries, all with six levels of heat.

Historic aviation photos are displayed above food concepts at The Hangar food hall at LBX in Long Beach

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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Inside, there are vintage pictures of aircraft that were built at the site, and a wall of clocks showing the time in cities named Long Beach across the country.

A Pan Am Hawaii travel poster (left) and a TWA Spain travel poster (right) at the patio of The Hangar food hall.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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Outside, you'll find patio seating with umbrellas where you can sit and watch the occasional plane fly overhead. Or sit and enjoy the adjacent display of towering Pan Am and TWA posters promoting travel to Hawaii, Spain and Paris.

For fun and work

Mercado La Paloma on Grand Avenue in South L.A.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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Open since 2001, the approximately 34,000-square-foot Mercado La Paloma sits in the Figueroa corridor of South L.A., and is known for its focus on community, art and culture. From rotating art exhibits to colorful tiled tabletops, this space feels like it was made to nurture creativity.

Interior of Mercado La Paloma.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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There are meeting rooms to rent starting at $25 an hour. It's a space where locals can bring their laptop to work or study, or have a long conversation with a friend, with bites from six acclaimed restaurants.

Holbox's Erizo dish at Mercado La Paloma.

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Audrey Ngo

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LAist

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At the Mercado, visit Holbox for Michelin-starred seafood dishes like Erizo — velvety sea urchin laid atop a bed of tender scallop ceviche. The combination is fresh, flavorful and oceanic. Tip: If you can swing it, come on a weekday to avoid a long line, or order ahead.

For something sweet, walk over to Oaxacacalifornia Cafe & Juice Bar for a Spicy Pineapple Juice with a gingery kick, or go for the classic pairing of Hot Oaxacan Chocolate, made with your choice of water or milk, and light-as-air conchas crowned with a solid layer of vanilla or chocolate streusel.