The Brief

For four years, Shane Hutchison lived in a tent in the middle of the desert outside Lancaster, miles from the nearest grocery store. The 53-year old started each day the same way — with methamphetamine.

“It's almost like you feel you have to have it just to be able to make the seven-mile hike one-way for water,” Hutchison said. “Out there in the desert, it becomes a tool of survival.”

Last summer, an outreach worker asked Hutchison if he wanted to be a part of a new Los Angeles County program in which he could earn gift cards each week he could pass a drug test.

The program, which started last year, is one of the only treatment options available for unhoused Angelenos addicted to stimulants, including methamphetamine. While the approach has been used in drug treatment for decades, it’s now gaining traction in L.A. County. And there’s evidence to show it’s been successful.

People can be prescribed methadone to manage their addiction to heroin, fentanyl and other opioids. But experts say there are no approved medications to help people addicted to meth and other stimulants.

That makes an incentives approach even more crucial, practitioners said.

“ There aren't a whole lot of treatment options that are not just abstinence-based,” said Kim Roberts, chief program officer at shelter provider L.A. Family Housing. “Folks can be looking to change their relationship with stimulants, but maybe not ready to discontinue alcohol use or marijuana use.

“This program is really tailored to the idea that we can start to chip away at a substance use disorder and that it doesn't have to be all or nothing.”

Hutchison said he’d never seriously tried quitting before, but this time he was ready. He’d been recently diagnosed with an aggressive skin and bone cancer.

“I gave up,” he told LAist. “I threw away everything I had out there in the desert. I left there, walked away with my dog and my backpack, and here I am now.”

Hutchison completed the 13-week program in March and earned about $600 in Visa gift cards, according to county health officials. Today, he says he’s sober, living in a two-bedroom apartment in Palmdale and working full-time as a carpenter.

“If it wasn't for the program, I'd probably still be out there on meth,” he said.

About one in three homeless Californians regularly use methamphetamine, according to a UC San Francisco report released in March. Meth is a leading cause of overdose death among L.A. County’s unhoused population, according to the L.A. County Public Health Department.

California started experimenting with incentives programs in 2023, becoming the first state to get federal approval to spend Medicaid dollars on programs that essentially pay people to break their addiction to stimulants.

The concept, known to some as “contingency management,” is not yet common among L.A. County’s homeless service providers. There are more than 75,000 unhoused people in the county, but so far programs have been offered at six local homeless shelters and drop-in centers.

And it’s not without skeptics. Over the years, some clinicians and members of the public have likened the approach to bribery and expressed ethical concerns about paying people for something they should be doing anyway.

A contingency management patient checks in with county health workers before a urine analysis test.

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Thomas Lynch

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L.A. County Department of Health Services

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‘Not about a transaction’

L.A. County’s program began last spring as a collaboration between the Department of Health Services’ Housing for Health division and several homeless services providers.

It’s funded by a county grant aimed at reducing overdose deaths among the unhoused. For the fiscal year that began this month, more than $400,000 in county funds are dedicated to that grant.

The county provides money for gift cards and sends behavioral health teams trained in contingency management. Those teams work mostly out of vans equipped as mobile clinics, rotating through various locations including recent stops in North Hollywood and the San Gabriel Valley.

In May, the county launched new programs in Santa Fe Springs and Harbor City. Later this month, they’ll launch one near MacArthur Park, county officials said.

L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath supported bringing the program to a transitional shelter in Canoga Park called the Willows, where 25 residents are expected to complete their 13-week cycle later this month.

“This program is not about a transaction,” Horvath told LAist. “It's about how you develop trust and an ongoing relationship with people. So not only do they know that you are invested in their wellbeing, but they become invested in their wellbeing themselves.”

Participants in the county’s program get weekly Visa gift cards ranging from $10 to $50 for passing drug tests and also for meeting other goals like going to medical appointments, obtaining identification cards or signing up for public benefits.

The programs do not remove participants for failing drug tests.

“It's very much come as you are,” said Savann Duong, a clinical work supervisor with the county program. “There's no judgment. If you test positive, that's OK. Let's talk about it. You know, what happened this week?”

Methamphetamine can be detected in urine analysis tests up to three days after use. If participants test positive, they won’t get their weekly gift card, but they’ll still have the chance to be tested again the following week.

That’s crucial, according to Kim Roberts of L.A. Family Housing, which operates the Willows.

“We've created the space for people to come back and say, ‘Hey, this week wasn't it for me. I'm gonna try again next week,’” said Roberts. “And their housing is not dependent on it.”

To end the homelessness crisis, Horvath said the county must provide unhoused Angelenos with more than just shelter. Additional support, like drug treatment, is crucial.

“From a dollars-and-cents perspective, it's just waste if you aren't actually treating people and meeting them where they are,” Horvath said.

Not everyone completes the treatment. In the first few cycles of the county program, about three in 10 participants completed the full 13 weeks, officials said.

The incentive program uses rewards for clean drug tests to combat substance abuse and addiction.

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Mark Leong

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CalMatters

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History and evidence

Rewards programs are a new approach for L.A.’s homeless service providers, but dozens of studies have shown that positive reinforcement through small incentives is the most effective treatment available for stimulant use disorder.

Participants who received contingency management were 22% more likely to be drug-free six months after treatment than participants who received other types of treatment, like cognitive behavioral therapy, according to a recent research review.

“The one thing that we have to really significantly address stimulant use, based on 30 years of research, is contingency management,” said Thomas Freese, director of UCLA’s Integrated Substance Abuse programs.

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has offered gift cards to reward people for clean drug tests since 2011. Since that time, those programs have served more than 8,000 veterans struggling with stimulant addiction, according to the VA.

The American Society of Addiction Medicine and American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry recommended this kind of treatment as the standard of care for stimulant use disorder in 2023, pointing to evidence showing it’s been more effective than anything else at helping people overcome stimulant addiction.

That same year, California became the first state to earn federal approval to use Medicaid dollars to pilot contingency management programs for Medi-Cal patients struggling with stimulant use. Earlier this year, more than 6,000 patients were enrolled in about 100 programs in the statewide pilot. About 35% of those who started the program finished, according to the UCLA researchers.

That pilot is expected to continue until at least the end of 2026.

The budget reconciliation bill signed into law by President Donald Trump this month cuts Medicaid spending in California, in part by imposing new work requirements on Medicaid recipients beginning in 2027.

Gov. Gavin Newsom said he expects the paperwork and administrative hurdles involved will result in up to 3 million California enrollees losing coverage.

The new law includes an exemption to the work requirements for people who are in treatment for substance use disorder. This should save the state’s contingency management pilot, but experts say they are waiting to see how the new rules play out in practice.

L.A. County’s program operates separately from California's Medicaid pilot. Despite some recent cuts to county homelessness funding, this particular county-led effort is funded for at least one more year, county officials said.

The fourth cycle of L.A. County’s traveling contingency management program will conclude this month at the Willows, a transitional housing site in Canoga Park.

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PracticeLA

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Battling addiction and stigma

Public programs that support people experiencing addiction often face pushback from voters and elected leaders, service providers told LAist.

Harm reduction is a public health approach that recognizes addiction is a health condition and that some people aren’t going to quit using drugs. Harm reduction interventions typically focus on minimizing the negative health effects of drug use.

In L.A. County, that includes distributing items like clean syringes, drug testing kits and doses of naloxone to treat opioid overdoses.

Many struggle to understand that approach, said L.A. Family Housing’s Roberts.

“If you talk about wearing a seatbelt when you're driving and frame that as harm reduction, people are totally fine with it,” said Roberts. “If you talk about drinking one less glass of wine as a housed person, people are totally fine with it. When you start to introduce paying people to stop meth use, all of a sudden there's a real visceral reaction that folks have, that in some way we are enabling.”

The county’s contingency management program relies on harm reduction principles, but it’s also explicitly aimed at motivating people to stop using stimulants.

Holden Bender-Bernstein, a mental health specialist at The Willows transitional shelter in Canoga Park, sees the approach as a middle ground.

"While this is a harm reduction program in some ways — in that no one's punished for coming back with a test that's positive for a stimulant, it also really relies on abstinence,” he said. “I think this is actually a good bridge for folks to understand that there's a difference between the idea of needle exchange and something like this, where they are depending on negative urine tests.”

Shane Hutchison, 53, says he used methamphetamine for nearly 20 years before getting clean last year.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist

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Many participants stop attending treatment if they fail a drug test, even though the program encourages them to return, program managers told LAist.

“A lot of our folks, because they have that long history of feeling shame and guilt when it comes to substance use, they don't come back,” said Savann Duong. “ And that part is really hard.”

Hutchison said he saved up the gift cards he earned in his treatment program. After graduating, he bought a toaster, slow cooker and other new appliances for his apartment.

But, he said, the real reward was weekly contact with treatment providers invested in his wellbeing. His mother died four years ago, while he was incarcerated on meth-related charges.

“I don't have a family, but I had a reason to go every Thursday,” he said. “They gave me hope to be somebody. I think the reason, more than the incentive, is just having somebody there who cares.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Since 1977, Richard Santillan has been to every Opening Day game at Dodger Stadium. 

“The tradition goes from my father, to me, to my children and grandchildren. Some of my best memories are with my father and children here at Dodger Stadium,” Santillan told The LA Local, smiling under the shade of palm trees near the entrance to the ballpark Wednesday morning. He was there to protest the team less than 24 hours before Opening Day.

Santillan, like countless other loyal Dodgers fans, is grappling with his fan identity over the team’s decision to accept an invitation to the White House and owner Mark Walter’s ties to ICE detention facilities.

More than 30 people joined Santillan on Wednesday morning for a press conference held near 1000 Vin Scully Drive to convey a message directly to the team. 

“We are demanding the Dodgers stop participating in funding of inhumane treatment of families and do not go to the White House to celebrate with the criminal in chief,” Evelyn Escatiola told the crowd. “Together, we have the power to make a change.”

Escatiola, a former dean of East Los Angeles College and longtime community organizer, urged fans to flex their economic power by “letting the Dodgers know that we do not support repression.”

Jorge “Coqui” Rodriguez, a lifelong Dodgers fan, spoke to the crowd and called on Dodgers ownership to divest from immigration detention centers owned and operated by GEO Group and CoreCivic.

Jorge Coqui H Rodriguez speaks at a press conference outside Dodger Stadium on March 25, 2026, to demand the Dodgers not to visit the White House following their 2025 World Series win.

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J.W. Hendricks

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The LA Local

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In a phone interview a day before the protest, Rodriguez told The LA Local he did not want the Dodgers using his “cheve” or beer money to fund detention centers. 

“They can’t take our parking money, our cacahuate money, our cheve money, our Dodger Dog money and invest those funds into corporations that are imprisoning people. It’s wrong,” Rodriguez said. 

Rodriguez considers the Dodgers one of the most racially diverse teams and said the players need to support fans at a time when heightened immigration enforcement has become more common across L.A.

The team’s 2025’s visit to the White House drew ire from the largely Latino fan base, citing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on immigrants. 

In June, the team came under further scrutiny when rumors swirled online that federal immigration agents were using the stadium’s parking, which immigration authorities later denied in statements posted on social media accounts.

The team again came under fire after not releasing a statement on the impacts of ICE raids on its mostly Latino fan base at the height of immigration enforcement last summer. The team later agreed to invest $1 million to support families affected by immigration enforcement.

When he learned the Dodgers were pledging only $1 million to families in need, Rodriguez called the amount a  “slap in the face.” 

“These guys just bought the Lakers for billions of dollars and they give a million dollars to fight for legal services? That’s a joke,” Rodriguez said. “They need to have a moral backbone and not be investing in those companies.”

According to reporting from the Los Angeles Times, former Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershawsaid last week that he is looking forward to the trip.

“I went when President [Joe] Biden was in office. I’m going to go when President [Donald] Trump is in office,” Kershaw said. “To me, it’s just about getting to go to the White House. You don’t get that opportunity every day, so I’m excited to go.”

The Dodgers have yet to announce when their planned visit will take place. 

Santillan sometimes laments his decision to give up his season tickets in protest of the team. His connection to the stadium and the memories he has made there with family and friends will last a lifetime, he said. On Thursday, he will uphold his tradition and be there for the first pitch of the season, but with a heavy heart.

“It’s a family tradition, but the Dodgers have a lot of work to do,” he said.

A local favorite mom-and-pop bookshop in Eagle Rock is facing displacement due to a steep rent hike. The owners say theirs is just one of several small businesses along Eagle Rock Boulevard struggling to keep up with lease increases.

Over the past 19 years, many in the neighborhood have come to love READ Books for its eclectic collection of used titles and shop dog Florence.

Co-owner Jeremy Kaplan said it’s been a delight to grow with the community over the years.

“Like seeing kids come back in, who were in grade school and now they’re in college,” Kaplan said.

But the building where Kaplan and wife Debbie rent was recently sold, and the rent increased by more than 130% to $2,805 a month, Kaplan said. He told LAist it was an increase his small business simply could not absorb.

Kaplan said he originally was given 30 days notice of the rent increase. After some research, assistance from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office and some pro-bono legal help, Kaplan said he pushed back and got the 90-day notice he’s afforded by state law.

California Senate Bill 1103 requires landlords to give businesses with five or less employees 90 days’ notice for rent increases exceeding 10%, among other protections.

Systems Real Estate, the property management company, did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment.

What can small businesses do? 

Nadia Segura, directing attorney of the Small Business Program at pro bono legal aid non-profit Bet Tzedek said California law does not currently allow for rent control for commercial tenancies.

Outside of the protections under SB 1103, Segura said small businesses like READ Books don’t have much other recourse. And even then, commercial landlords are not required to inform their tenants of their protections under the law.

“There’s still a lot of people that don’t know about SB 1103. And then it’s very sad that they tell them they have these rent increases and within a month they have to leave,” Segura said.

She said her group is seeing steep rent hikes like this for commercial tenants across the city.

“We are seeing this even more with the World Cup coming up, the Olympics coming up. And I will say it was very sad to see that also after the wildfires,” Segura said.

Part of Bet Tzedek’s ongoing work is to advocate for small businesses, working with landlords who are increasing rents to see if they are willing to give business owners longer leases that lock in rents.

What’s next 

After READ Books posted about their situation on social media, commenters chimed in to express their outrage and love for the little shop.

While he looks for a new spot, Kaplan says he’s forming a coalition of local businesses and activist groups to see what can be done to help other small businesses facing similar displacement. He wants to address the displacement issue for businesses like his, which have made Eagle Rock the distinctive neighborhood that it is today.

Owl Talk, a longtime Eagle Rock staple selling clothing and accessories in a unit in the same building as READ Books, is facing a “more than double” rent increase, according to a post on their Instagram account.

Kaplan said he’s been in touch with the office of state Assemblywoman Jessica Caloza and wants to explore the possibility of introducing legislation to set up protections for small businesses like his, including rent-control measures or a vacancy tax for landlords. Kaplan said he also reached out to the office of state Sen. Maria Durazo.

By his count, Kaplan said there are about a dozen businesses within surrounding blocks that are at risk of closing their doors or have shuttered due to rent increases or other struggles.

When READ Books was founded during the Great Recession, Kaplan said he knew it was a longshot to open a bookstore at the same time so many were struggling to stay in business.

“It was kind of interesting to be doing something that neighborhoods needed. That was important to me growing up, that was important to my children, that was important to my wife growing up,” Kaplan said.

“And then somebody comes in and says, ‘We’re gonna over double your rent.”

Topline:

Frozen budget: Most of the city’s Bureau of Street Lighting budget comes from an assessment that people who own property illuminated by lights pay on their county property tax bill. The amount people pay depends on the kind of property they own and how much they benefit from lighting. A typical single-family home currently pays $53 annually, and in total, the assessments bring in about $45 million annually for the city to repair and maintain streetlights. Changing the amount the Bureau of Street Lighting gets from the assessment requires a vote among property owners who benefit from the lights.

Ballots: L.A. City Council’s vote gives city staff the green light to prepare and send out those ballots. Miguel Sangalang, who oversees the bureau, said at a committee meeting earlier this month that he expects to send out ballots by April 17. Notices about the ballots will be sent out prior to the ballots themselves.

Near unanimous vote: L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez was the only “No” vote Tuesday, saying she wanted to see a more current strategic plan for the bureau. Sangalang said the bureau developed a plan in 2022 that lays out how money will be spent. Councilmember Imelda Padilla was absent for the vote.

Vote count: Votes will be weighted according to the assessment amount. Basically, the more you’re asked to pay yearly to maintain streetlights, the more your vote will count. Ballots received before June 2 will be tabulated by the L.A. City Clerk.

How much more money: According to a report, the amount needed in assessments from property owners to meet the repair and maintenance needs of the city’s streetlighting in the next fiscal year is nearly $112 million.

Use of the money: Sangalang said at a March 11 committee meeting that the extra funds would be used to double the number of staff to handle repairs and procure solar streetlights, which don’t face the threat of copper wire theft. That would all potentially reduce the time it takes to repair simple fixes down to a week. Currently, city residents wait for months to see broken streetlights repaired. The assessment would come with a three-year auditing mechanism.