The Brief

A year since California established heat rules for indoor workplaces, labor organizers say employees are still being exposed to dangerously high temperatures on the job.

According to survey data released last month by the California Fast Food Workers Union and Oakland-based labor rights group Worksafe, roughly 60% of fast food chain employees in the state are still dealing with excessive heat during their shifts — and almost half of those surveyed have experienced heat illness symptoms.

Out of the 338 employees surveyed across dozens of cities, only 9% said their employers actually complied with rules meant to protect workers from excessive heat on the job.

“California fast food workers fought for the Indoor Heat Illness Prevention standard, and now we are fighting to make its protections real,” wrote Anneisha Williams, member of the state’s Fast Food Council, which negotiates working conditions with restaurant chains.

In response to the data, labor organizers are asking local officials to organize more “know your rights” training for employees within the fast food industry.

However, these protections against excessive heat on the job actually apply to all indoor workers in the state, including those employed in manufacturing, warehouses, supermarkets and offices. And the state’s workplace safety agency Cal/OSHA is responsible for making sure companies actually follow these rules — and investigates potential violations.

KQED spoke to both Cal/OSHA and labor rights advocates to understand these workplace protections and how workers can advocate for themselves if their employer is enabling a dangerously hot work environment.

And even if you don’t feel comfortable talking about these things with your supervisor, you should know: you still have options.

What are California’s new heat protections for indoor workers?

The state’s rules for indoor workplaces are about a dozen pages long and are split into two sections:

• Your rights as an employee — and responsibilities of your employer — when temperatures in the workplace reach or exceed 82 degrees.
• What your employer must do when temperatures reach or exceed 87 degrees.

Remember, these rules refer to the temperature of the area where you work, not the temperature outside on the street. Once temperatures reach 82 degrees inside your indoor workplace, your employer needs to provide you with four things:

Water for employees

Employers must provide each worker with at least two gallons of water per day, which is about two 16.9 oz water bottles per hour.

This water should be “fresh, pure and suitably cool,” said Eric Berg, chief of health for Cal/OSHA. “Water should be free of charge. Employers can never charge employees for this,” he said.“It has to be as close as practicable where employees are working.”

If a worker needs more water during their shift, they should be able to drink all the water they need without fear of reprisal. If folks are running low on water, it’s the employer’s responsibility to have a plan in place to get more water before it runs out — not the employees’.

Cool-down areas for employees

“This can be an outdoor shaded area or an indoor rest area that’s cool,” Berg said. This space must stay at a temperature that’s less than 82 degrees and be available whenever a worker feels like they need it. These cool-down areas also must be big enough to comfortably fit employees and have fresh water that is easily accessible.

However, Berg adds, cool-down areas must also be spaces that workers aren’t discouraged from using, like a manager’s office. “It’s not going to feel comfortable to rest inside the manager’s office,” he said.

Rest for employees

According to the state’s indoor heat rules, workers in California have the right to take preventative cool-down rests whenever they feel close to overheating. This break can happen in the designated cool-down area anytime during a worker’s shift. While they’re taking that break, their supervisor needs to check in with them to ask if they are experiencing any symptoms of heat illness. A worker can keep resting until they feel ready to go back into the workplace.

If a worker feels or shows symptoms of heat illness (like vomiting, feeling disoriented, walking unsteadily or acting irrationally), their supervisor needs to immediately provide first aid or get the affected employee medical attention. And if someone is, in fact, found to be experiencing heat illness, they can’t be ordered back to work until all their symptoms have gone away and they have fully recovered.

Training for employees and supervisors

Both employees and supervisors need to be trained about these new Cal/OSHA protections, which are required by law. Workers should know the symptoms of heat illness, while employers should ensure supervisors are trained on how to monitor the health of their team and what to do during an emergency.

Your rights when indoor workplace temperatures reach 87 degrees

Once your workplace reaches 87 degrees, your boss still needs to provide you with the four basic protections (water, cool-down areas, rest and training) above. But on top of those, they also need to start doing what Cal/OSHA calls “assessment and control measures.”

What does this mean? Put simply, your employer needs to start keeping a detailed record of the temperature in your workplace throughout the work shift. The records need to include the date, time, and specific location of all measurements.

And something important to clarify: your employer cannot just look at the weather app on their phone and record that temperature. They need to manually measure the temperature of the workspace itself using an actual thermometer.

Having this record in place can also help workers in the future if they need to report an unsafe workplace, said AnaStacia Nicol Wright, policy manager at Worksafe, an Oakland-based labor rights nonprofit that’s advocated for years in favor of indoor heat protections.

“If the employee chooses to take some kind of legal action, there are these records that were supposed to be kept that they can request access to,” she said.

Something else to keep in mind: if your job requires you to wear full body clothing throughout your shift, your employer is required to start keeping track of temperature earlier on, when it’s 82 degrees.

“Full body clothing would be protective equipment or coveralls meant to protect the product or protect the employee from contamination,” Berg from Cal/OSHA said. “It doesn’t include breathable clothing, like a uniform.”

Is my employer required to have A/C installed during a heat wave?

No, the new heat regulations don’t require employers to install air conditioning in the workplace if they don’t already have it.

In its rulebook, Cal/OSHA considers air conditioning to be a type of “control measure” and employers “shall use control measures … to minimize the risk of heat illness.”

If A/C is available on-site, it should be turned on to bring the temperature down to below 87 degrees. The same goes for any cooling fans and swamp coolers available. And if this isn’t enough to bring temperatures below 87 degrees, employers then have to start applying other strategies, including:

• Requiring cool-down breaks with more frequency
• Rotating different workers in high-heat areas
• Distributing personal heat-protective equipment to employees

But if there isn’t A/C already on-site — as is the case in many Bay Area homes and workplaces — an employer isn’t required to install it. That’s because Cal/OSHA has to take into account all the different types of workplaces in California before establishing a new rule, Berg said. This part of the rulebook “doesn’t dictate a specific measure,” he explained. “It just says to look at all the possible controls and implement what’s effective and what’s feasible for that workplace.”

However, that doesn’t prevent workers from coming together to request A/C if they feel they need it — as was the case of Acevedo and her coworkers at the Taco Bell in San José.

Do these protections apply to everyone who works indoors?

Cal/OSHA’s heat rules protect every person working indoors in California — with one exception: people who work in prisons, local detention facilities and juvenile facilities. California’s prisons employ tens of thousands of guards, nurses, janitors and other positions, along with nearly 39,000 incarcerated people who also have jobs in state prisons, most of whom make less than $1 per hour.

Despite the fact that prisons are also exposed to extreme heat — officials are currently investigating the death of a woman imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility in Madera County that advocates say was a case of heat exhaustion — Cal/OSHA does not include this population in the new protections. That’s because regulators agreed to exempt state prisons as part of a compromise with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration, which claimed including prisons would cost these facilities billions of dollars to comply.

Outside of prisons, these regulations apply in every single indoor workplace in the state, including restaurants, schools, offices, shops, warehouses, factories and any other type of facility where employees work indoors.

They also apply when workers lack a permanent legal status in the United States. “All our regulations that protect workers apply regardless of what papers a person may have or not have,” Cal/OSHA’s Berg said. “Immigration status has no importance whatsoever.”

Heat protections also apply in workspaces where employees are working without a formal job contract in place. If there’s an exchange of money for work you’re doing, that establishes an employer-employee relationship, even without a signed contract.

It’s over 82 degrees where I work, but my employer isn’t following the state’s rules. What can I do?

Now that these rules are in place, workers have a role to play in making sure their employers actually follow them, Wright with Worksafe said.

“We can’t just rely on the goodness of humanity,” she said.

First, share the information

If your employer isn’t providing you and your coworkers with enough water, rest or training during a heat wave, you are protected by law to bring this up to your supervisor.

It might be possible that they are indeed unaware of the new regulations — and if that’s the case, you can share with them the complete Cal/OSHA rules and let them know that the agency can even help them create a plan to fulfill all the requirements.

Keep a record of what’s going on

Unfortunately, not all workers may have a positive relationship with their supervisor. If you think your employer is simply refusing to provide heat protections, Wright recommends that you start documenting what’s happening at work.

“Document, log and write down whenever your employer fails to provide these protections,” she said. These notes don’t have to be too complex, she adds — they can be as simple as making a quick note on your phone or on a piece of paper that you keep to yourself, which describes things like asking your supervisor for water or a cool-down break and being turned down.

“Just write down the date and time,” Wright said. She gives the following as an example of what an effective note could look like:

July 1: there was no cooldown area provided. At 1:30 p.m., I asked my employer if I could sit down and take a break in his office because it has A/C and he said no. I asked again at 3:30 p.m. because I told him I wasn’t feeling well. He said no again.

Keeping track of everything going on at your workplace will help you later down the line if you choose to file a complaint against your employer with Cal/OSHA. With that in mind, Wright recommends talking with your employer about heat issues through email or text so you have a written record of their response as well.

“Now it gets tricky,” she said, “because once you start documenting things like that — especially if you work somewhere where you’re not normally talking via email correspondence — [your employer] will probably get the idea that you’re trying to lay the groundwork for a legal case.”

If you’re nervous about how your boss may react if you start talking about what’s happening at your job, another option is to first talk to your coworkers and check in if they’re also struggling with the heat. “If you act in pairs — if you were to go and complain with another employee, you’re engaging in what’s considered ‘concerted action’ and that gives you some additional protections,” Wright said.

Stay calm and document anything you’re experiencing that goes against the rights the state legally affords you.

You can file a safety complaint against your employer with Cal/OSHA by contacting the agency’s field office closest to your place of work. A list with the contact information of each field office is available on the Cal/OSHA website. You can even file a complaint anonymously if you fear possible retaliation by your employer.

What if your employer retaliates against you?

Documenting when your employer isn’t keeping you safe — and speaking out about it — is protected in California by law. In fact, it’s illegal for an employer to fire or cut the hours of someone who speaks up about their labor rights.

But while that’s what the law says, the reality can be much more complicated.

“They can’t retaliate against you — but the reality is that they can,” Wright said.

Some employers will step up and start following safety rules once they see workers start to take action, she said. “Sometimes you put them on notice that you know your rights.”

“But you do have to unfortunately consider that this could put you on your employer’s radar and risk losing your job because of it,” Wright said. “It’s not fair. It’s not right. Anytime we have a client, we have to tell them of what may happen once you file against your employer.”

If you lose your job or hours after talking to your employer about heat protections, you have a reason to file a retaliation complaint with the state Labor Commissioner’s Office. You can file a retaliation complaint online by calling (714) 558-4913 or through email.

While it takes several months for a complaint to move through the Labor Commissioner’s Office, this agency does have the power to investigate employers, impose penalties and give affected workers their lost wages or even their job back.

This guide includes reporting from KQED’s Farida Jhabvala Romero and Brian Krans, and was originally published on August 6, 2024.

Proposition 36, which passed in November 2024, promised California voters a new era of “mass treatment” for people struggling with addiction and a crackdown on repeat petty thieves amid a spike in retail theft.

The debate around the measure, called “The Homelessness, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act,” was fueled in part by a series of videotaped smash-and-grab robberies splashed across local TV news and images of unhoused residents shooting up drugs in the streets.

Voters signaled they wanted a crackdown and they approved Prop. 36 with nearly 70% casting ballots in favor of it.

A little more than a year later, the measure is getting mixed reviews.

Supporters say it's been effective in holding repeat offenders accountable. Critics say it's been a return to mass incarceration without the promised treatment for people with substance abuse.

How Prop. 36 works

Prop. 36 stiffened penalties for repeat theft and drug offenders.

Here’s how the measure works: If you have been convicted of two misdemeanor thefts of $950 or less, prosecutors have the option of charging your third petty theft as a felony, which carries up to a three-year prison term.

Before Prop. 36, petty theft was a misdemeanor, regardless of how many times you did it.

When it comes to drug offenses under Prop 36, if you have been convicted of two possessions of a small amount of hard drugs (fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine), prosecutors have the option of charging your third possession as a felony. But you don’t have to go to prison if you agree to go into drug treatment.

In 2025, California prosecutors filed more than 19,000 Prop. 36 felony drug cases and more than 15,500 felony theft cases, according to a study by the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice released in March. Most people were released on bail pending the outcome of their case.

Nearly 900 Californians have been sent to state prison under Prop. 36, since it went into effect in December 2024. County jail populations have grown by nearly 3,000 since the measure passed, driven by a surge in felony bookings of people who have not yet been sentenced.

In Los Angeles County alone, there are about 1,150 individuals in jail because of Prop. 36 — about a 9% increase in the jail population, according to county Public Defender Ricardo Garcia. The surge in defendants is adding caseloads to his already overworked attorneys, he said.

The same is happening across the state.

“This is really compounding the workload crisis,” said Kate Chatfield, executive director of the California Public Defenders Association.

The data represents a reversal of yearslong declines in incarceration, and they are occurring amid all-time lows in California’s crime rate.

“It really is a return to mass incarceration,” Chatfield argued.

Black people overrepresented

Black people are dramatically overrepresented in Prop. 36 charges, according to the study. In Contra Costa County, for example, Black residents account for more than half of all Proposition 36 theft charges, despite making up less than one-tenth of the population.

Prosecutors say the law has been effective.

“It’s been a valuable tool to go after chronic and repeat thieves,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

Hochman said his office brought more than 3,300 Prop. 36 felony cases against people charged with their third petty theft in 2025.

He said his office brought over 1,900 felony cases against people charged with their third possession of hard drugs.

He said he couldn’t immediately provide numbers on how many of the drug defendants opted for rehabilitation over prison.

Statewide, fewer than 1 in 5 people arrested on Prop. 36 drug charges have been ordered to treatment, and fewer than 1 in 100 have completed a program, according to the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study.

Lack of treatment beds

One reason for the low treatment numbers is a scarcity of treatment beds throughout the state.

“There just isn’t enough treatment to meet the need,” said the center’s Maureen Washburn. “People aren’t getting connected to treatment. They aren’t succeeding in treatment programs once they’re in them.”

Treatment, a major promise of Prop. 36, has been an “abject failure,” she said.

Hochman agreed treatment is lacking.

“We do not have anywhere close to enough drug treatment and mental illness beds in a county of 10 million people,” he said.

The district attorney argued the state needs to provide more funding for treatment beds.

“Sacramento has not funded at any meaningful level,” he said.

In a March letter to the chair of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee, the co-author of Prop. 36 — Senator Tom Umberg (D-Santa Ana) — said at least $400 million dollars in new funding is needed for treatment facilities.

“I think spending taxpayer dollars on drug treatment — both in the short term and in the long term — is a smart way to address public safety issues,” Umberg told LAist.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested in his budget $100 million dollars for treatment over three years.

But Chatfield said people facing Prop. 36 charges shouldn't be locked up in the first place. Drug offenses should be handled as a public health issue, she argued.

“Even the low level misdemeanors for theft are economic crimes,” she said. “These are crimes of poverty.”

Unequal application of Prop. 36

In addition to a paucity of treatment beds, the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice study found charging rates vary dramatically by county. Orange County alone accounted for nearly 20% of Prop. 36 drug charges and 40% of theft convictions in 2025 despite representing just 8% of the state’s population.

“This inconsistency across counties exacerbates California’s longstanding problem of providing differing ”justice by geography,” the report stated.

Empirical evidence of the effect of Prop. 36 on the crime rate is lacking. But Umberg said he believes it has reduced retail theft.

“I have been told by a huge number of folks in law enforcement and also in the business community — particularly in the retail community — that it has had an effect on retail theft,” Umberg said.

Hochman said it's too early to tell if people are being deterred by Proposition 36.

“We’re waiting on statistics that we’ll probably get sometime this year to see if the deterrent aspect is also working — that we actually have fewer people going ahead and committing these crimes,” Hochman said.

But crime was on the way down before Proposition 36 passed. Violent crime fell 6% and property crime dropped 8.4% in California in 2024 — the year Prop. 36 passed.

Chatfield of the California Public Defenders Association maintains voters were “sold a bill of goods” on the measure.

“They were told this was about homelessness. They were told this was about treatment. And it absolutely was not," she said. "It was about increasing incarceration.”

Using a tablet or TV to calm a fussy child might work in the short-term, but a new study out of UC Irvine finds it could backfire later.

The study, published in Developmental Psychology, found that higher device use was linked to more behavior issues among toddlers, like biting or hitting or kicking — as well as more parental stress.

The study followed more than 200 families in Orange County and Washington, D.C., over time, from when a child was 9 months old to 2-and-a-half years old.

“Emotion regulation skills — like their own ability to calm and distract themselves — [they] might be being displaced by devices instead,” said Stephanie Reich, professor of education at UC Irvine. “And if [kids] don't have that skill, they might act out more, have more behavior problems.”

More behavioral problems in turn can make parenting more stressful, which means it’ll make it more likely that kids get devices again, creating a cycle parents can get stuck in, Reich said.

The study also found that mothers experienced more stress later when using devices to distract their children, but that wasn’t the experience for fathers. While higher device use was linked to more behavior problems, fathers did not feel the level of stress as much as mothers.

When mothers were stressed, they were more likely to use devices, Reich said. She couldn’t definitively explain why there was a difference between parents, but said that in general, parenting work falls more to mothers.

“They just might be more overwhelmed, or taking on more than fathers when it comes to day-to-day parenting,” she said.

The study notes the type of parent-child interactions that might be replaced by devices, including picking them up, holding and rocking them, and talking to them calmly and reminding them to breathe.

“All of these types of interactions, from physical touch to language use to breathing tips for calming, offer the developing child opportunities to cultivate their self-regulatory skills,” the authors wrote.

A federal judge said she’ll need more time to decide whether to grant a temporary court order to give immigrants detained at Adelanto ICE Processing Center immediate relief.

Immigrants rights groups and a private firm filed a lawsuit against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security in January. They allege that the approximately 2,000 people currently held at the Adelanto complex are subject to inhumane treatment.

On top of squalid conditions, plaintiffs say detainees are fed cold, unsanitary food and expected to drink dirty water. They also allege detainees must often wait several months to see a doctor, if they ever do.

“The conditions in which these non-citizens are being held in the Adelanto detention facility, as alleged in the petition, are certainly concerning,” said Judge Sunshine Sykes at a hearing Tuesday for the Central District of California. “I think that each of us would never want to be in that position.”

Still, Sykes said she was tentatively inclined to “deny the motion [for a preliminary injunction] without prejudice or to allow plaintiffs to withdraw the motion and refile it,” which would give the immigrants rights groups a chance to address her concerns. She then gave the attorneys the opportunity to respond and, potentially, convince her otherwise.

What’s happening at Adelanto?

Adelanto is about 90 miles away from downtown Los Angeles. According to the lawsuit, the detention center does not accommodate detainees with special needs. Detainees with mobility issues, for instance, are assigned top bunks. And in a sworn declaration, one detainee described being put in handcuffs and ankle chains when she is taken to court appointments, even though she uses a cane.

Plaintiffs also say solitary confinement is used to retaliate against detainees who speak out against these conditions and to isolate those who are experiencing mental health crises. An LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data found that as of January, Adelanto is among the top 10 facilities that put immigrant detainees in solitary confinement across the country.

The detention center is run by The GEO Group Inc., one of the largest private prison operators in the United States.

The federal government has declined LAist's request for interviews and comments, and The GEO Group has not responded to those requests.

The arguments for and against an injunction

In the hearing, Judge Sykes raised concerns that The GEO Group and the Adelanto warden are not named in the lawsuit. She also questioned how the court could enforce an order for immediate relief and wondered if there might be a more “efficient” way for the plaintiffs to proceed.

The federal government has asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit altogether. Pushkal Mishra, representing ICE and DHS, said “between the government and the alleged injury are the independent, discretionary, uncertain and speculative day-to-day activities of a third party.” The GEO Group and its employees, he argued, “are the proper defendants in the case, not [the] government.”

The advocates' lawsuit underscores that companies like The GEO Group are subject to inspection by the federal government. Recently, ICE gave the Adelanto ICE Processing Center a “good” rating. Since September 2025, at least four people have died in detention at Adelanto, the most recent March 25.

At the hearing, Vanessa Young Viniegra, a fellow at Public Counsel, refuted the federal government’s argument that ICE and DHS should not be named defendants in the case.

“The Supreme Court has been clear that the government has a constitutional duty to care for the people in its custody and the people that it chooses to detain,” she said, “regardless of whether it employs a private company.”

Judge Sykes interjected: “I don't think I'm saying that the government is not a proper defendant. I'm saying that The GEO Group [and] the warden of Adelanto may need to be joined or brought in as defendants as well.”

Young Viniegra noted that the motion for the emergency court order provides the government “some leeway” in terms of how it obligates Adelanto to provide adequate care for detainees.

“We're not asking the court to order, you know, a specific number of staff,” she said. “It's up to the government to comply with its constitutional obligations and exactly how it does that and its relationship with GEO is for it to decide.”

What's next?

Sykes said she’ll need more time to make a decision. In addition to the preliminary injunction, she is also navigating the federal government’s motion to dismiss the case and a motion by the plaintiffs to make this a class action lawsuit, meaning the court’s outcome would apply to all Adelanto detainees.

Learn more about Adelanto

• Is Adelanto's ICE detention facility a ‘concentration camp’? And does it matter?
• Adelanto ICE facility's use of solitary confinement is among 10 highest in US, data shows
• These Angelenos journeyed to Adelanto to protest conditions at immigrant detention centers

When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen anything quite like architect Richard Neutra’s iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like.

But by the end of the century, the Jardinette had become dilapidated, its historic significance hidden behind years of neglect.

Now, this pioneering piece of L.A. architecture is coming back to life.

Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it. With the renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original concept once again is coming into clear view.

“It was a big, heavy lift,” Hassid said, describing the project as the most complicated in his career. “There are so many apartment buildings in L.A. But none of them will have the story or any of the significance that this does.”

First steps for a now-famous architect

In the 1920s, Neutra was a young Austrian architect who had recently moved to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.

Historians cite the style he would go on to develop — with its flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors — as defining the language of mid-century California modernism.

Neutra's Palm Springs Kaufmann Desert House from 1946 and his Silver Lake VDL Research House II from 1965 became iconic homes of the period.

Richard Neutra's family lived in the VDL Research House II, located in Silver Lake and designed by Neutra with his son, Dion.

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Michael Locke via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr

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But the Jardinette, built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A., coming just a few years after his arrival in the United States.

Architecture historians say Neutra’s goal was to strip down the Jardinette’s design, maximizing light and fresh air in the building’s 43 modestly sized apartments, all in keeping with the burgeoning International Style.

Long ribbon windows are the most striking feature in an otherwise unadorned facade. Windows join at corners and stretch across nearly entire walls, connecting living rooms and kitchens. Panes in the walls of interior closets bring “borrowed light” into shadowy interiors.

Neutra outfitted many of the apartments with balconies that cantilever off reinforced concrete. The balconies were ideal for outdoor plants — hence the name Jardinette, or Little Garden.

The restoration of the Jardinette Apartments is nearly complete.

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David Wagner

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Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian who consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette, said Neutra’s approach would have seemed utterly alien amid the 1920s development boom in L.A.

“All these other revival styles were happening: Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival,” said Lamprecht, the author of Neutra: Complete Works from the publisher Taschen. “This was not a milieu that encouraged, fostered or remotely understood the tenets of early modernism.”

Once-lauded edifice falls on hard times

The Jardinette helped secure Neutra’s fame far beyond the confines of Southern California. His work on the Jardinette was included in a landmark 1932 architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

But by the 1990s, the Jardinette had all but lost its visionary purity. It was painted pink and green. The previously uniform steel windows were mismatched, using cheap materials. The walls were graffitied.

By the late 20th century, the Jardinette had fallen into disrepair.

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“It was sad,” said Corey Miller with June Street Architecture, who worked on the renovation.

“It's just what happens when buildings get neglected,” he said. “It's important to look back on these ideas and not lose them and try to maintain them and not cover them up. Now, hopefully for another 100 years, more generations of people can experience the design the way it was originally intended.”

Working with the limits of a century-old building

The team behind the Jardinette’s renewal said the building was not easy to renovate. It was originally built without a cooling system. Its electrical system couldn’t meet modern energy needs. It didn’t have stand-up showers.

Installing those modern amenities while preserving Neutra’s original design proved challenging at times, said Anant Topiwala with June Street Architecture.

The team preserved whatever original materials they could, Topiwala said, but they needed to order custom tiles, windows and other parts in order to match historic photographs and documents.

A historic photograph shows the Jardinette in its original state.

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Courtesy Cameron Hassid

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“We were like archeologists, in a way,” he said. “There was a lot of peeling back. What do we think the paint color was? What do we think that wood detail was?

“Neutra didn't like angles. We needed to make sure, for example, the casing around the doors didn't meet at a mitered corner. There's just so many interesting things.”

Pulling permits for a protected landmark

The Jardinette has multiple historic designations. It’s in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And it’s protected as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Those classifications limit what kinds of changes are allowed in a renovation. Getting all the necessary permits was a job in itself, one handled by Michael Norberg with Cali Planners.

“Everything you can think of that could come up did come up on this building,” Norberg said. “But I think the bones have been reinforced. The historic aspect has been retained. The entire nature and history and spirit of this building is still here.

“And I love the fact that the city was willing to work with us on maintaining that,” he said.

How the past informs future plans

Hassid said the renovation should be completed by this summer. He added that he’s not yet sure what the building’s future will be, but he won’t sell it to a typical real estate investor. He recently put it on the market with Neema Ahadian of Marcus & Millichap.

“We've sold some really beautiful buildings, but nothing that has the history that you can find here,” Ahadian said. The buyer will need to be someone who understands the value of preserving a piece of architectural history, he said.

“This building's been through a few ownerships that have not necessarily had the same vision,” Ahadian said.

Two windows join at a right angle and a door opens to a balcony in one corner of a Jardinette apartment.

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When he first took on the project, Hassid said, colleagues told him he was nuts. But he said ultimately the effort was worth it to preserve an L.A. architectural gem.

“I hope we made Richard Neutra proud, bringing his building back to life,” he said.

What does real luxury look like? 

Neutra built the Jardinette at a time when movie studios were growing. The Paramount studio lot is just a few blocks away.

Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian with expertise in Neutra's work, consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette.

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David Wagner

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Lamprecht, the Neutra historian, said she’s looking forward to seeing how people occupy the apartments. She said Neutra designed the Jardinette to bring a new kind of luxury to occupants who might have included up-and-coming actors or below-the-line production workers.

“The luxuries in life are access to sunlight, to views,” Lamprecht said. “This was the raison d'être for this entire building: to provide graceful, expansive lives to people who weren’t in single-family dwellings in the Hollywood Hills.”

Whoever the next tenants will be, Lamprecht said, “I feel like, for the first time, this building is not invisible any longer.”