The Brief

Los Angeles County is making progress on bringing dozens of new mental health beds and supportive housing units to the expansive Metropolitan State Hospital campus in Norwalk.

Run by the state, the psychiatric hospital opened in 1916 and at its peak housed thousands of patients. These days there are only about 800 patients there. With its 162 acres, tree-lined pathways, and boarded up buildings, the place looks like an abandoned city.

An aerial view of Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk.

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Bryan Chan / L.A. County

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At a meeting last month, county supervisors voted to sign off on a lease with the state for a portion of the campus. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill last year that cleared the way for the lease.

Now the county plans to begin renovating two of the decaying buildings to make way for 32 treatment beds, thanks to $65 million in Proposition 1 funding from the state.

“We are facing a crisis," said Kyla Coates, senior justice and mental health deputy for Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office. "We cannot have unused empty buildings that are government-owned sitting around. We need to renovate them, reuse them and turn them into places where we can really provide care to those who need it.”

The Metropolitan State Hospital campus.

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Courtesy Supervisor Hahn's office

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Hahn’s office said the Prop 1 funding would allow for the renovation of two buildings on the campus, each housing 16 subacute beds in a locked setting, for a total of 32.

Why 16 beds each? That’s because of a federal law that dates back to the 1960s which had the intent of getting states to move away from the large asylums of the time, some of which had become notorious for inhumane treatment. Known as the Institutions for Mental Disease (IMD) exclusion, it bars any facility focused on treating adults with mental illness from receiving Medicaid dollars if it has more than 16 beds.

How severe is the need?

The so-called subacute beds the county plans to build out are the “most urgent resource need” for the county to address the ongoing behavioral health crisis, according to a February 2024 report from a consulting agency hired by the county.

Estimates vary, but many experts say L.A. County needs hundreds more beds at this treatment level to meet the needs of residents living with serious mental illness.

In all, the plan is to renovate six buildings on the Metropolitan State Hospital Campus, with 50 one-bedroom apartments for permanent supportive housing and 70 interim one-bedroom apartments for people who have mental health needs.

The concept, several years in the making, would allow for what Coates calls a “state of the art mental health community,” where people could move from more intensive treatment to housing all within the same campus.

“This courtyard space is beautiful. We have visions to have outside space where people can gather, watch outside movies, exercise, garden,” Coates told LAist.

Inside one of the buildings at Metro State Hospital.

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Courtesy Supervisor Hahn's office

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Coates said some of the buildings have large windows that she hopes will let a lot of light into large indoor communal spaces. She added that steps will also be taken to preserve the architectural features of the buildings, which have historical landmark status.

Concerns from mental health advocates

“I’m happy that the unused land is being put to use,” Vanessa Ramos of Disability Rights California told LAist.

But Ramos, who has a schizoaffective diagnosis, said she is concerned about transparency any time people are committed institutionally. And Ramos worries that people could languish in a hospitalized setting, so she would like to see the county prioritize the supportive housing on the campus.

“What I would like to see out of the unused land at Metro is for there to really be pairing of treatment beds one-to-one with step down supports, so that there isn’t an influx of these [locked] beds without a place for people to exit to,” Ramos said.

“The stigma is that people living with mental health disabilities don’t recover. And we know that we do recover. We know that people can manage life outside of hospitalization," Ramos added.

In an email, Eve Garrow, Senior Policy Analyst & Advocate with the ACLU of Southern California, said there are also concerns from disability rights advocates that settings like Metropolitan State Hospital could cordon people off from the surrounding community.

“Segregation separates people from their communities, creates an institutional environment that can quickly slip into a culture of discipline and control, and underscores the perceived ‘otherness’ of people with disabilities," Garrow said.

Responding to these concerns, Coates pointed out that the campus is walking distance from bus stops and restaurants and that its location in Norwalk would allow people to access the larger community when they want to.

The county plans to begin construction at the campus next year.

After California lawmakers passed a state housing law that allows taller apartment buildings near train lines, Los Angeles leaders are facing a tradeoff: If they want to delay full implementation of the law, they’ll have to choose some parts of the city to upzone.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 79 into law last year. Starting July 1, the law is set to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall to be built next to subway stations and smaller buildings within a half-mile of light rail and rapid bus stops.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and a slim majority of the L.A. City Council had expressed opposition to SB 79, in keeping with the long-standing preference of many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.

Now, some L.A. leaders are scrambling to pull a delay lever that was built into SB 79. The provision allows cities to put off the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as they agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.

“If we don't do this, what happens is SB 79 goes into effect full-on,” said Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Committee, during a meeting on Tuesday. “I really want to avoid that happening.”

Options for delay

The state law lets cities delay implementation in neighborhoods deemed to be “low resource,” in areas at high risk of fires or sea level rise or are designated as historically significant. Even with those carve-outs, some higher-income neighborhoods near train stops will still be subject to upzoning.

The city’s Planning Department produced a report last week laying out three different approaches for the City Council to delay SB 79. All of them involve local incentive programs that would allow developers to build apartment buildings in neighborhoods currently zoned for single-family homes.

The first option would allow buildings up to four stories tall, while the second and third options would permit buildings up to eight stories.

During the committee meeting Tuesday, homeowners spoke against the changes the new law would bring and the city’s upzoning plans.

“Single-family neighborhoods are where families put down roots — they are the beating heart of Los Angeles and SB 79 runs a stake right through that heart,” said Shelley Wagers with the Beverly Grove Neighborhood Association. “We must use every tool to prevent irreversible harm and buy time.”

Advocates for increased housing development said they favored the report’s third option, which would allow mid-sized apartment buildings within a half-mile of existing train stops, as well as planned stations and rapid bus stops.

Scott Epstein, policy director for Abundant Housing L.A., said that approach “offers the best opportunity to meet our housing targets and ensure that neighborhoods rich in transit services and high-quality schools are doing their part.”

What happens next

The Planning and Land Use Committee could not get a three-person majority to agree on the best path forward, so the decision will now go to the full City Council for further debate.

Blumenfield said his recommendation as committee chair was to allow mid-rise apartment buildings in many neighborhoods, but only near existing train stops, not planned stations or rapid bus stops. He also recommended more exemptions for certain historic preservation zones.

Nithya Raman, a committee member who is also running for L.A. Mayor, said she found the report’s recommendations difficult to follow. Passing a delayed implementation plan could stave off changes in some neighborhoods, but only for a while, she said.

“Eventually we will have to do something,” Raman said. “So the question is just what do we do now and what do we do later.”

But council members have little time to figure out which approach they prefer. City planners told the committee that in order to have a delay ordinance in place by July 1, the council would need to decide what direction to take by early March.

This story was originally published by The LA Local on Feb. 25, 2026.

As federal immigration enforcement raids continue across Los Angeles, a broader demographic of people is stepping up to volunteer their time to monitor and document immigration raids in their neighborhoods, according to Ron Gochez, organizer with the rapid‑response network Unión del Barrio.

“We have senior citizen retirees showing up saying, ‘I’m an old white woman — how can I help?’ We have students from community colleges and universities. We have people who look like longtime activists and people who look like they’ve never done this before,” he said. “It’s solidarity being shown by Angelenos of all shapes, sizes, colors and ages.”

While longtime Latino organizers have led the patrols, their numbers are growing thanks to the new volunteers who aren’t necessarily Latino.

Unión del Barrio has outgrown their usual meeting space at the United Teachers union building in Koreatown, which used to draw a few dozen people.

Along with their patrols, the group supports families impacted by immigration raids and issues real-time alerts over social media.

In late January, the day after federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, about 400 people showed up for a training session, Unión del Barrio organizer Ron Gochez said.

“The very next day, we had 1,000 people on a Zoom training for educators — and we couldn’t have more because the Zoom limit was 1,000,” Gochez said.

Organizers in Pasadena expected a few dozen volunteers at All Saints Episcopal Church and were surprised when nearly 800 showed up for the training session, according to Pasadena Now.

For the first time, the majority of volunteers at a recent training session were white, Gochez said.

“I think the administration and ICE thought that by killing Alex (Pretti), that people would be scared and intimidated and would stop participating,” he said.

Instead, it has had the opposite effect.

Other immigrant advocacy groups say they’re seeing a similar surge in support. Representatives at the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA) and the Immigrant Defenders Law Center report a spike in volunteers, donations, and attendance at “Know Your Rights” workshops.

The legal advocacy group says they’re going to continue sustaining deportation defense, managed information hotlines, and expect that engagement to remain strong as federal immigration enforcement intensifies.

Ron Gochez, a member of Unión del Barrio, speaks to volunteers in South Los Angeles in February 2025.

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Andrew Lopez

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Boyle Heights Beat

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Residents living near Koreatown and Pico Union have seen a sharp increase in immigration raids in recent months. Unión del Barrio volunteer, Oscar, who provided only his first name out of concerns over retaliation from the federal government, has seen firsthand the effects of the raids.

“This part of Los Angeles — Pico Union, K-town, MacArthur Park, Westlake — has been hit incredibly hard throughout the last year,” Oscar said, pointing to raids along the El Salvador Community Corridor in Pico Union. “They’ve gone up and down Pico multiple times.”

Westlake, a dense immigrant neighborhood predominantly made up of renters and noncitizen workers, has also been identified as one of the most vulnerable areas in L.A. to ICE raids, according to a county-sponsored study.

Oscar leads patrol training sessions, but before joining Union del Barrio, he patrolled his neighborhood with a friend to report on immigration enforcement. “It just didn’t feel like enough,” he said. “I wanted to be part of a space of dedicated organizers.”

Overall, he’s seen more people working together across racial and gender lines, with a common goal of protecting their communities, helping deliver groceries to impacted famlies, monitor their neighborhoods and feel like they have something to do in the face of the ongoing immigration raids.

Immigration agents detain a man selling flowers in Boyle Heights on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026.

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Courtesy of Verita Topete

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Centro CSO

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“People are coming in angry, determined,” he said. “but ultimately I think people feel empowered during the training.”

Unión del Barrio has expanded beyond its usual territory in South Los Angeles and the group now patrols in Boyle Heights, Long Beach, the San Fernando Valley, Beverly Hills and Brentwood, Gochez said.

“We have eyes and ears everywhere,” Gochez said. “I’m very comfortable saying there are thousands of people patrolling in the greater L.A. area.”

Although the group rarely solicits donations, Gochez said they have seen an uptick in funding, which helps cover costs from patrolling and printing “Know Your Rights” flyers and other materials.

Despite the heightened attention, Unión del Barrio has not altered its training curriculum, making sure that volunteers are following the law, but also aware that their safety is not guaranteed when they head out to monitor the immigration raids.

Organizers strongly discourage undocumented individuals or those on probation or parole from participating in community patrols, instead encouraging them to contribute in other ways.

“We’re not trying to become martyrs,” Gochez said. “We don’t want to be arrested, beaten or killed. But there is risk involved.”

The L.A. City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to make permanent a city pilot program that diverts police away from some mental health crisis calls.

Since launching in 2024, clinicians with the city’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response have handled more than 17,000 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. According to city reports, about 96% of those calls were resolved without police.

“We can’t keep deploying armed officers to handle mental health crisis calls because the outcome is Angelenos paying with loss of life and millions of their tax dollars for legal settlements,” Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who co-authored the motion to enshrine the program, said at Tuesday’s meeting.

According to Hernandez, in 2023, more than a third of LAPD shootings involved someone experiencing a mental health crisis.

Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson said the data from city reports was "incontrovertible and unassailable," showing the program’s success at diverting police and fire first responders away from mental health crisis situations.

Council members said the move to make the unarmed model permanent was also a matter of fiscal responsibility. According to a news release from the offices of Hernandez and Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, on average it costs the city roughly $85 per hour to dispatch LAPD officers, while a response from a UMCR team costs roughly $35 per hour.

Last fall, progressive policy advocacy group LA Forward, convened a summit of local and state officials with the goal of making UMCR permanent and expanding it.

Godfrey Plata, deputy director of LA Forward, told LAist his group was “incredibly excited” to see the city make the pilot program permanent.

Plata said he sees enshrining the program as a first step in expanding the program citywide, which his group hopes to do by the 2028 Olympics.

How the program works

In 2024, the city partnered with three nonprofit organizations — Exodus Recovery, Alcott Center and Penny Lane Centers — to provide teams of trained clinicians in service areas spread across L.A. The teams are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week within the Police Department’s Devonshire, Wilshire, Southeast, West LA, Olympic and West Valley divisions.

Crisis response workers are trained in de-escalation techniques, mental health, substance use, conflict resolution and more, according to a report on the program from the Office of City Administrative Officer. The teams don’t have the authority to order psychiatric holds for people in crisis, but they can work with them to find help locally, and spend more time on follow up than law enforcement can.

In its first year, Los Angeles’s Unarmed Model of Crisis Response sent teams of unarmed clinicians to  more than 6,700 calls for service, ranging from mental health crises to wellbeing checks. Only about 4% were redirected to the LAPD. Average response times have been under 30 minutes.

Examples of these interactions include members of the teams taking food to a woman who was crying and hungry, working with a business owner to engage with someone sleeping in a parking lot and sitting with a family for nearly three hours to help resolve a conflict involving a relative.

What’s next

The motion approved Tuesday also directs city officials to form a working group made up of the LAPD, the L.A. Fire Department and other agencies to address inefficiencies in the dispatch system. The goal of the working group will be to centralize unarmed crisis response dispatch and improve response times.