The Brief

Nearly six months into their labor union dispute against Southern California Kaiser Permanente, eight mental health care workers banded together last week in an organized five-day hunger strike to highlight their cause.

“Kaiser’s trying to starve us out, that’s clear — so, give them what they want,” said Adriana Webb, a member of the National Union of Healthcare Workers who chose to subsist solely on water and electrolytes from Monday morning through Friday evening. “I feel hungry for equity. I feel hungry for change. How is this any different?”

Now engaged in the longest mental health strike in U.S. history, the Southern California workers have been seeking a new union contract that would include:

• more mandated time between therapy sessions for patient follow up
• restoration of pension benefits that were removed from new employee contracts in 2015
• cost-of-living wage adjustments

After a long list of Democratic members of the state Assembly and Senate wrote Kaiser in December urging it to accept the union’s “reasonable contract proposals” — and after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Feb. 6 written request for both sides “to prioritize the common good that have allowed Californians to rise above our difficulties and resolve our differences” — state Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly and former Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg have agreed to mediate.

Kaiser executives threw their hands up and walked out of mediation talks on March 11 when the union continued pressing its three major contract issues. Today bargaining talks are scheduled to resume.

Steinberg mediated a similar open-ended strike for Northern California Kaiser mental health care workers in 2022, which lasted 10 weeks and resulted in Kaiser meeting most of the union’s demands.

“We know Kaiser can provide all these things if they wanted to,” said Webb, a medical social worker in the infectious disease unit who stood on the picket line in front of Kaiser’s Los Angeles Medical Center on Sunset Boulevard. “They already provide it to our Northern California counterparts, and all we’re asking for is the same thing. Kaiser still can’t explain why we deserve less or our patients deserve less.”

In a written response to CalMatters questions, Kaiser Permanente spokesperson Terry Kanakri discussed Kaiser’s overall commitment to work with more than 40 unions that represent 80% of its employees.

“Every one of the 80 contracts is different, and each reflects the differences in operational needs, local market economics and wages, professional classifications of the employees in each local, and a host of other factors,” said Kanakri.

“Our goal is and has always been to reach an agreement that makes Kaiser Permanente the best place to give and receive care. We have made — and repeatedly improved — our proposals during bargaining in an effort to reach an agreement. However, in nearly nine months of bargaining, NUHW has made very little movement on the key bargaining issues.”

Although not aware of any specific details of the 2022 NorCal strike or the current SoCal strikes, University of Southern California professor of healthcare finances and economics Glenn Melnick gave his overview on today’s health care labor climate.

“Northern California has the highest wage index in the country,” he said. “I think it’s 20 points higher than L.A. — maybe 25%. So there’s economic reasons why there’s differences. An economist would say, ‘Mental health care worker, you want these benefits? Move to San Francisco.’

“And many employers are cutting back pension benefits these days. Ten or 15 years ago, pension benefits were much more generous across the board. Kaiser could easily afford to give them these benefits and not think twice, but it’s bigger than just these workers. It’s the ripple effect, right?”

Melnick also speculated that health care workers’ negotiating power has waned as the COVID pandemic, which drove demand for their services, has somewhat subsided.

From April 8 through 12, the hunger strikers spent eight-hour days alongside their picketing fellow union members and each night together fasting at a West Hollywood church. Sleeping in a community space barely big enough for eight air mattresses huddled beside the piano against a back wall, they shared a bathroom and took turns showering in a motel room next door.

Medically cleared beforehand, they received daily wellness checks from volunteer union nurses.

“Right now, I feel like I could go another month,” said Zhane Sandoval, propped up on an elbow from their mattress on the morning of April 11, day four of the hunger strike. “So test me, Kaiser!

“Kaiser says that it’s a union employer, but all we’re seeing is union busting. All we’re seeing is separation, trying to divide. But their efforts just lead us to unite.”

Union organizer Rachel Forgash, who stayed overnight with the hunger strikers at the church, expressed frustration over the protracted standoff.

“Kaiser has exceeded all of our expectations in their unwillingness to bargain in good faith and drag this out as long as possible,” she said. “In Southern California, they’re about to start bargaining with the Alliance, which is a huge group of unions at Kaiser, and I think they’re afraid that — when we win — it’s going to set a precedent for other unions to fight just as hard.”

Aida Valvidia, a psychiatric social worker at Kaiser’s Sylmar facility, and Melissa Chavez, a medical social worker at Riverside, both started working for Kaiser before the 2015 contract negotiations reached a settlement, so they each have pension benefits that 70% of their fellow mental health care union members do not. Yet both chose to participate in the hunger strike.

“For the people who don’t have pensions, I think it’s unfair,” said Valvidia. “Why do I have a pension and you don’t? Because you started later? That makes no sense to me. We’re equals.”

Chavez and her husband have been on strike together since Oct. 21. “Kaiser members deserve equity and access to timely quality care,” she said. “Workers are experiencing high caseloads, inadequate and unsafe staffing, lack of time, lack of tools.”

The hunger strike week started with iconic labor leader and activist Dolores Huerta visiting the picketers on April 8, two days before her 95th birthday. “I know that you’re not just doing this on your own behalf,” said Huerta, surrounded by cheering union members in their red union T-shirts. “You’re actually doing this on behalf of all the patients at Kaiser that are not getting the mental health services that they deserve.”

The union cites a recent 88-page report from the state Department of Managed Health Care, which notes that Kaiser’s failures to remedy 19 of the 20 violations in 2022 led to $200 million in state fines. The union has also filed its own complaints alleging Kaiser mismanages patient triage and appointment scheduling, by hiring unlicensed clerical staff and using algorithmic programming.

“Despite the persistent efforts of NUHW to mislead the public, the Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) has not identified new deficiencies in our mental health care,” said Kanakri’s statement. It went on to say that Kaiser met with the state department “last week in our first quarterly review and demonstrated the extraordinary progress we have made on all the deficiencies outlined in the Corrective Action Work Plan.”

“We’re in disbelief,” said hunger striker Nick Nunez, a therapist in Kaiser’s Virtual Medical Center, which lends support to any patients in need across Southern California. “They take out ads in the paper saying everything’s fine — that they’re providing adequate care to their patients and everything is top-notch. It’s so bizarre and unbelievable.”

Andrew Kane worked as an associate clinical social worker at the Los Angeles Medical Center he now pickets and fasted at. “It’s a little odd, a little surreal,” he said, noting that he happened to see a patient in the world outside of Kaiser. “Fortunately — or unfortunately — he didn’t notice me, so we didn’t have to have that interaction.”

Kane started in June 2024, so he’s been on strike longer than he’s received a Kaiser salary.

As the strike persisted without end in sight since October, many workers have returned to Kaiser due to financial concerns. But some communicate the problems they see internally while back at work.

“They’re actually the ones documenting all the things going wrong,” said hunger striker Kassaundra Gutierrez-Thompson, a psychiatric social worker in Kaiser’s ADAPT virtual online treatment program. “We have DMHC investigators talking to a lot of our returned back staff. Unfortunately, a lot of our managers are combatting them.

“And so, a lot of our members are kind of scared, having to advocate for our patients.They’re fighting a different kind of battle inside.”

Rage Against the Machine guitarist and political labor activist Tom Morello joined the Kaiser picketers on April 9 to perform a short acoustic set, and U.S. Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove and state Sen. Maria Elena Durazo visited the strikers April 11.

Hours later, they broke their fast with religious leaders passing around a ceremonial bread loaf.
“We can’t just be treated like numbers,” said hunger striker Ana Vargas Garcia, who also saw members remotely through the ADAPT program. “Patients can’t be treated like numbers. There’s real lives behind everyone that we see, behind every worker at Kaiser. That’s a big part of why we’re doing this.”

In the days immediately after last January’s Los Angeles firestorm, state lawmakers and civic leaders promised to turbocharge the rebuilding effort. For California, where the permitting and construction of homes is infamously slow and costly, the scale of destruction stood as a singular challenge.

A year later, the charred homes, the melted appliances and the toxic ash have mostly been removed, the dirt beneath scraped and then carted away. Many of the residents whose houses were spared have returned. Permits for reconstruction have been filed, architects and contractors hired. Battles with insurance companies, utilities and banks persist, vacant lots and blackened trees abound, but look around and — here and there — you’ll find new construction.

As of this week, more than 2,600 residential permits have been issued between the Palisades and Altadena — roughly one for every five of the nearly 13,000 homes lost. Another 3,340 are under review.

For many displaced and traumatized homeowners, that represents an intolerably slow return to what was. But by historic standards, the Los Angeles recovery has been on the speedy side so far.

In a press release commemorating the first anniversary of the disaster, Gov. Gavin Newsom lauded the permitting figures as “historic.”

Last year local governments — the City and County of Los Angeles, as well as Malibu and Pasadena — issued permits for single-family homes and accessory dwelling units “three times faster” than they were in the five years leading up to the fire, the administration noted.

Rebuilding after disaster is almost always a grueling, slow process. Of the more than 22,500 homes destroyed in five of California’s most destructive fires between 2017 and 2020, fewer than four-in-ten had been rebuilt by 2025, a Los Angeles Times analysis from late last summer found.

A year after major fires ripped through Maui, Paradise, Redding and the outskirts of Boulder, Colo., 2%, 3%, 15% and 30% of the destroyed homes, respectively, had been permitted for reconstruction, according to a separate Urban Institute analysis.

Based on the pace of permitting, Los Angeles’ reconstruction is on a relatively fast track. But freshly-pulled permits aren’t completed homes.

“People can pull permits, but you know, if they don't have their costs sorted out — we've had folks abandon their plans,” said Devang Shah with Genesis Builders, which is selling pre-approved, fixed-priced rebuilds in Altadena. Using permits as a metric of progress may be premature, he said.

Some of the speedy progress that Los Angeles has seen may be due to regulatory changes imposed by fiat in the aftermath of the fire. In early 2025, both Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass mandated speedier permitting of like-for-like rebuilds — construction that stuck to the rough dimensions and design specification of the home that was there before. Los Angeles county rolled out a self-certification building plan approval pilot program for certain simple projects. Newsom waived building code requirements intended to ease the cost of reconstruction.

“We’ve got planning approvals in three days that would have normally taken three months,” said Tim Vordtriede, an architect who also lost his home in Altadena. The county has “done a remarkable job at making things as efficient and streamlined as a bureaucratic entity can.”

In the weeks after the fire, Vordtriede co-founded the Altadena Collective, a network of designers and architects that provides discounted design services, permitting advice and contractor recommendations to local survivors. He and his co-founders Chris Driscoll and Chris Corbett have also launched a nonprofit called Collective OR that is meant to represent inexperienced and anxious homeowners in negotiations with builders and architects.

The pace of reconstruction may simply benefit from the fact that it’s taking place in Los Angeles County: A mammoth economic hub flush with financial resources and political connections.

“We have access to a really good supply chain, there’s a lot of capital, there’s a lot of infrastructure,“ said Ben Stapleton, director of U.S. Green Building Council California.

That’s in contrast to a town like Paradise.

Since the majority of homes were destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire, fewer than one-in-five have since been rebuilt, said Colette Curtis, the Butte County town’s recovery and economic development director.

She cautioned against comparing the pace of rebuilding efforts across communities struck by disaster.

“It's impossible to say, ‘they were here by this date so we should also be there,’” she said. “The data set is just too variable.”

Paradise, a remote town with relatively low income, lacked the local services and philanthropic draw of places like Lahaina and the Palisades, she said. But lower land values and the fact that displaced homeowners haven’t had to compete with investors setting aside new units for tourist rentals was a net positive.

Another thing that may give Los Angeles a leg up: It’s a region that’s also heavy on expertise.

At around the same time that Vordtriede was setting up the Altadena Collective, nearby architect couple Cynthia Sigler and Alex Athenson launched the Foothill Catalog, a packet of ready-made architectural and structural plans that have been pre-approved by L.A. County.

With roughly 15 projects either under construction or gearing up to break ground, Athenson said the pre-approval process can shave at least 10% off the total development cost of a custom single-family home.

That’s in part by trimming the approval process. But that's also because prior to the fire, a "custom single-family home" in ALtadena was a luxury product.

The local industry is “set up to serve that client who is building their dream home from scratch, with a very large if not unlimited budget,” said Athenson. Long-time homeowners displaced by fire, many of them on fixed incomes, represent a very different kind of buyer.

As builders, designers and policymakers scramble to rebuild in faster, cheaper and more fire-resilient ways, they may stumble upon a solution that could be of use long after the last home is rebuilt in Altadena, he added.

“Ultimately, we're providing a system for more efficient, affordable housing development,” said Athenson. “I'm excited about proving it in Altadena, and then seeing where it goes beyond.”

So far the county has approved more than two dozen of the catalog’s plans. Athenson said they are now discussing rolling out a similar batch for the Palisades with the City of Los Angeles.

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

A high-profile defense attorney for Nick Reiner, who is accused of killing his famous parents in their Brentwood home, has stepped down from the case and arraignment has been pushed to next month.

Reiner, 32, was expected to be arraigned Wednesday morning in Los Angeles County Superior Court in connection with the deaths of his parents, Hollywood legend Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, last month.

Instead, Nick Reiner’s lawyer, Alan Jackson, revealed to Judge Theresa McGonigle that he was withdrawing from the case.

"Circumstances beyond our control, but more importantly, circumstances beyond Nick’s control have dictated that sadly it's made it impossible for us to continue our representation of Nick,” Jackson told reporters after Reiner's brief court appearance.

The attorney said he is "legally and ethically" prohibited from explaining why he would no longer represent Reiner.

“We know the legal process will reveal the true facts of the circumstances surrounding this case,” Jackson continued. "We’ve investigated this matter top to bottom and front to back.“

He also said, "pursuant to the law in California, Nick Reiner is not guilty of murder,” and, “We wish him the very best.”

The L.A. County Public Defender’s Office will to take over Reiner’s defense.

“This is a challenging time for the entire legal process,” said L.A. County Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. “We ask for your patience, your understanding as we navigate this process through the legal system”

Nick Reiner has admitted in the past to struggles with drug addiction and mental illness. It remains unclear how much of that will factor into the case.

Deputy Public Defender Kimberly Greene, who will represent Reiner in court, said she had only spoken to her client briefly Wednesday morning.

“We’ve had no contact with the family," she said outside court. "I don’t think they were aware this was going on until this morning.”

Reiner, the youngest of the famous couple’s four children, two counts of murder and special-circumstance allegations — multiple murders and use of a deadly weapon — that would make him eligible for the death penalty if convicted.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman has said his office has not yet determined whether it would seek death or life without the possibility of parole. Such decisions are usually made after a preliminary hearing where a judge hears evidence from prosecutors.

Hochman has said he would consider the family’s wishes when making his decision.

On Wednesday, he told reporters the charges would lead to conviction.

“We are fully confident that a jury will convict Nick Reiner beyond a reasonable doubt of the brutal murders of his parents,” he said.

Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 68, were found dead Dec. 14 after police were called to their home on South Chadbourne Avenue.

Detectives with the Police Department’s elite Robbery Homicide Division, Homicide Special Section began an investigation and identified Reiner as the suspect, according to police.

The younger Reiner was located and arrested near Exposition Park close to USC at approximately 9:15 p.m., according to police. He remains in jail on a no-bail status.

His arraignment in now set for Feb. 23.

A year after the deadly Los Angeles County fires, California’s property insurance market remains problematic; survivors are suing insurers over delayed or denied claims; and most of the state’s policyholders are likely to see their premiums rise.

Seven in 10 L.A. fire survivors have yet to return home, some in part because of insurance claim delays, according to a new survey released this week by Department of Angels, a nonprofit group that was formed after the fires.

The survey also found that 4 in 10 insurance policyholders have experienced insurability issues, such as huge premium increases and dropped coverage, although state law mandates a one-year moratorium on insurers canceling or not renewing customers’ policies after the governor declares a state of emergency. Those with homes that did not burn down but are still standing are especially likely to have seen big increases in their premiums, according to the survey of 2,443 adults from Nov. 18 to Dec. 2, 2025.

Insurance premiums for everyone, not just fire survivors, were already expected to rise under new rules by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara. The commissioner, under pressure to improve availability of insurance in the state, last January implemented a plan that aims for quicker rate reviews and allows insurers to use catastrophe modeling and reinsurance costs in setting their rates. The plan took effect just days before the L.A. fires.

Now the response to the fires could also lead to even higher insurance premiums across the board, said Amy Bach, executive director of consumer advocacy group United Policyholders.

“I advocate for disaster survivors, but also for the entire community of policyholders,” Bach said. “For every ‘Eliminate the List’ bill, for every improvement we make to prevent post-disaster trauma around under-insurance, there’s a cost.” She said such actions will have ramifications for both insurance affordability and availability.

“Eliminate the List,” which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last year, requires insurance companies to pay 60% of personal property coverage limits, up to $350,000, to policyholders who experience a total loss without requiring them to submit a detailed inventory for at least 100 days.

Still, Bach knows that such mandates are necessary to improve survivors’ experiences after a fire, and lawmakers are introducing new bills to address their concerns. Her own group released a survey in November, reporting policyholder complaints that included insurer communication delays, claims payment delays and being assigned multiple claims adjusters.

The Department of Angels survey found that customers of State Farm and the last-resort FAIR Plan — the two largest insurers in California — were the most dissatisfied with their insurers’ response. California’s insurance department is investigating State Farm’s response to the fires, and has taken legal action against the FAIR Plan over its response as well, especially to smoke-damage claims. Those insurers, along with other companies, are also facing policyholder lawsuits.

“Our customer feedback reflects a different experience than what is being reported,” said Tom Hartmann, a State Farm spokesperson, in an email. “We’re supporting more than 13,500 customers affected by the wildfires, more than any other carrier, and have already paid over $5 billion to help them recover.”

Sam Strgacich, left, and his wife Rossana Valverde, right, examine soot damage at their home in Pasadena on April 26, 2025.

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Joel Angel Juarez

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CalMatters

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“We’ve paid almost $200,000 out of pocket to repair our home because of the FAIR Plan’s blanket denials of our remediation,” said Angela Giacchetti, a spokesperson for the Department of Angels who worked on the survey. She’s also a fire survivor whose Altadena home did not burn down but was badly damaged.

“While we are unable to comment on individual policyholders' claims, the California FAIR Plan does not direct where policyholders reside,” said Hilary McLean, a spokesperson for the plan. “The FAIR Plan evaluates every claim on its own merits and pays all covered claims up to the individual policy limits.”

The FAIR Plan said in a press release this week that it has handled about 5,400 claims and paid almost $3.5 billion to policyholders. It also said it “has taken steps to enhance its ability to serve policyholders” by securing a line of credit and reinsurance, helped by a $750 million catastrophe bond made possible by a new law allowing the FAIR Plan to get bond financing through the California Infrastructure and Economic Development Bank.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Association says insurance companies have paid $22.4 billion of the expected $40 billion in total claims from the L.A. fires.

The Department of Angels survey also found 79% of survivors are facing financial hardships, with more Black, Asian and Latino survivors falling behind on their rent or mortgage payments. In addition, 40% of those surveyed said they were very dissatisfied with the local, state and federal response to their needs.

Newsom said Tuesday that he is working with state lawmakers, the banking industry and others on new loans for rebuilding, and that the state will expand eligibility for the CalAssist Mortgage Fund. The governor’s office did not respond to CalMatters’ questions about whether he plans to propose any aid for renters who survived the fires, and about what else he is doing to continue to press the federal government for long-term disaster funding.

“This report says exactly what we’ve been hearing,” said Michael Soller, spokesperson for the insurance department. “Wildfire survivors want action and they want results.” He said the issues in the survey are top priorities for the department, and among other things pointed to a task force on smoke damage that the department has convened.

A bill sponsored by Lara and introduced by newly appointed Senate Insurance Committee Chair Steve Padilla, the Democrat from San Diego, late Tuesday would require insurance companies to submit to the state their disaster-recovery plans related to handling claims; double penalties for violations of fair claims practices during an emergency; expand upfront claims payments; give policyholders status updates within five days whenever their adjuster is replaced; and more.

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