The Brief

When we first met “Nono” last summer she was living in an encampment under the 405 Freeway, straddling the Los Angeles neighborhood of Palms and Culver City. She’d been living there for several years in a tent, relying on volunteers and people in her community for resources like food, water and harm reduction.

The group that provided these resources to Nono — and dozens of other unhoused people at the encampment — is called PUMA, or Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid. It’s not a formal nonprofit but a group of volunteers who come together every week to provide things like clean needles, antiseptic wipes and Narcan — not to mention homemade burritos.

“They save lives and that's a big deal,” Nono told us in August. “That's really hard to say in, like, homeless communities.”

The idea of harm reduction is not to encourage use. Providing these tools is proven to prevent death or infection among the users, keeping people alive until they can maybe get some more permanent help in the way of housing or substance abuse treatment.

Months after we first met Nono, the encampment where she’d been living was cleared out. As part of that October sweep, Nono was given a voucher for a motel, a key element in L.A. Mayor Karen Bass’s Inside Safe program. Here’s Nono in a video produced by the mayor’s office where she’s referred to as “Noelia.”

“I walked in and literally that was the first time I felt safety and peace and a sense of 'this is the beginning of the rest of my life,'” she tells the camera.

The How to LA team recently caught up with her and others near the motel, which is south of Palms on Sepulveda, to talk about life in the Inside Safe program.

Living in a motel

The Inside Safe motels are independent contractors and people's experiences can vary depending on the location. So one person's experiences won't paint a complete picture of the program, which includes dozens of motels across the city and hundreds of people living inside of them.

On the evening we spent with Nono, at this motel, PUMA volunteers are supplying people with harm reduction tools like glass pipes and needle tips in different lengths — also toothbrushes.

Ndindi Kitonga, founder of PUMA, Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid

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“What brought us here is people are letting us know that they don't have adequate food, that they don't have harm reduction services,” says Ndindi Kitonga, cofounder of PUMA, “and that they are reviving each other, using the Narcan that they have.”

Nono agrees to talk to us, but she asks us to stop recording after a few minutes. She’s lost a lot of weight and says she isn’t feeling great.

“I'm under so much stress because of the security situation over here. It's just ridiculous,” she says. “They kicked my parents out.”

There’s a no visitors rule at this motel.

Nono says she hadn’t seen her parents “in ages.” “What if they’re all I had?” she asks. “Well, I don't even have them, and that was like the one time I’d seen them.”

Kitonga explains: “You cannot have visitors, even if that visitor is your motel mate, meaning someone who lives next door to you.”

Kitonga and her fellow PUMA volunteers have worked with people placed in Inside Safe motels before and says the “no visitor policy” is not always enforced. But it is at this motel.

Sign forbidding visitors to residents of a motel that's part of the Inside Safe Program.

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High hopes

Nono wants the Inside Safe program to work for her.

As you hear in the video from Mayor Bass’s office, she is optimistic about its promise. “This is finally the catapult that I've been waiting for, believing in, dreaming of and it's, it's all because, because of this project,” Nono said in that video.

So far, she says she hasn’t felt that safe.

Nono told us her doctor is concerned by her extreme weight loss, and that she got beat up on the sidewalk in front of the motel as someone stole her bike and wallet. And the “no visitors” rule makes her feel like she doesn't have any autonomy over her life anymore.

A man who says his name is Ivory Michaels joins the conversation with Nono.

“Your family can't visit. You know, you can't have people that may be your therapist,” he says. “They're not felons. These are grown people. What are you trying to do, isolate them?”

Michaels is not staying at the hotel. He lives in a tent across the street. He told us he used to be in the Inside Safe program but had his motel voucher revoked because, he says, he was labeled “defiant” after asking for clean linens and being told he could not have them.

“You're right, I am defiant,” he says. “I'm a grown man. I'm 53 years old. I shouldn't have limitations brought on me. You know? It's angersome.”

The rules being enforced at these places — from no visitors to limits on how many belongings one can bring in — have long been a sore point for some of the folks living in these interim housing programs, whether its through Inside Safe or something like a Tiny Homes project. The criticisms go at least as far back as the height of the pandemic, when unhoused people were moved into hotels and motels to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“Let me say this, it's not perfect, it's not meant to be the panacea. But it's one huge, proactive, step forward for those who've been suffering greatly,” says L.A. City Councilman Kevin de León who has a Tiny Home village in his district. “There's criticism that's abundant on Tiny Homes, don't let the perfect get in the way of the good.”

A motel in Culver City that's part of the Inside Safe program.

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It's the imperfect part of these programs — the lack of autonomy, the services and the feelings of isolation — that drive mutual aid volunteers like Kitonga to do what they do.

After the encampment where Nono was living in Palms was cleared out by city officials, Kitonga says, “People ended up in three motels. One is off of the 90, so still far away if you consider if you don't have a car, and then a bunch of other people were moved to South L.A.”

So, she adds: “You just have people who've just been in a limbo in motel rooms with very few services, loss of their community and what have you,” she says.

About 1 in 6 people choose to leave the Inside Safe program.

An imperfect solution

The primary goal for officials in L.A. City and L.A. County is to get unhoused people off the streets and, first, into interim housing. The idea being that those much needed services — water, food, a sense of security — will be satisfied once people can get inside.

In theory, that’s when the Band-Aids provided by mutual aid volunteers, like Kitonga, can come off.

“We had to choose between providing those services and organizing those efforts… and actually looking for housing for people,” says L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, “where they could access those services in the context of a motel or a hotel room or a shelter site of some kind.”

Inside Safe is the mayor's flagship interim housing program and, by far, the largest. It's also the city's biggest response in terms of dollars spent. About 8,000 people have obtained a voucher for a room in one of the 38 available motels or hotels in the city.

According to our analysis of data released by the city, these vouchers cost about $8,000 per unit, per month, including additional costs like insurance. Since the program began last December, Inside Safe has incurred a total of $93.8 million in expenses.

People are promised three meals per day in addition to things like hygiene services and the overdose prevention resource Narcan. But so far, these needs are not being fully met.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass acknowledges the drawbacks. “We are building the plane while we fly it,” she says. “Mistakes are made along the way. We're learning about gaps and things that are woefully inadequate.”

Lack of permanent housing

The goal of the program is to offer an alternative to the street while people wait for permanent housing.

That transition has been slow.

The mayor “seemed to really expect that there would be a lot more available [places] for people to transition from the motels and Inside Safe spots to this longer-term housing,” says Nick Gerda, who covers unhoused communities for LAist. But “she’s running into this structural issue of a lack of affordable housing options for people.”

He notes that only “a couple hundred people” have been able to move on to a permanent place to live.

That means, he says, “The motels are largely full. There's much less capacity for people to move off the streets into the motels.”

“I wish we had a much better situation,” says Mayor Bass. “I don't think that moving people into motels, number one, is financially sustainable. But I was not going to accept the idea that while we're doing this stuff that people have to die on the streets. I think a motel room is better than somebody being in the street and possibly raped or killed.”

The Band-Aid remains

The city is not the only player when it comes to housing. Los Angeles County is responsible for providing mental health services, as well as other public health resources. But they spend a lot of money and time on housing, too.

Then there's LAHSA, the Los Angeles Homelessness Authority, the joint agency that sits between L.A. City and L.A. County.

“The bulk of what LAHSA does is refunding non profit groups, that provide the bulk of the homeless services in our system, especially the outreach work,” says Paul Rubenstein, LAHSA's deputy chief external relations officer, “the work that helps people find apartments, the work that helps people stay in apartments.”

Still, there are tens of thousands of Angelenos experiencing unsheltered homelessness. Less than half of them currently have access to one of these temporary housing programs.

“I always compare us to New York City,” says Raman, who was elected to the city council in 2020 and is up for reelection next year. “There are more unhoused people in New York than the county of Los Angeles, but only a couple of thousand … are living on the streets.”

That’s due to a court-mandated effort in the 1980s to have as many available shelter beds as unhoused people in the city.

“We don't have those shelter beds,” says Raman, “and as a result we have the astounding statistic that more people succumb to extreme weather conditions on the streets of Los Angeles than they do in the city of New York.”

Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid volunteers distributing supplies to unhoused and housing insecure people.

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Medical supplies provided by Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid to unhoused and housing insecure people.

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And so — to come full circle — it's these gaps that require the mutual aid groups to step in.

That is, until a more permanent fix can be found.

“I understand that no one individual or no one program or no one approach is actually at the heart or the problem of what's going on here because the social problems really are poverty, gendered violence, structural racism, gentrification,” says PUMA’s Kitonga. “They are the big ‘isms’ so, yes, I understand how and why the mayor is overwhelmed. They underestimated the scale and undertheorized what's going on here.”

Topline:

Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

• Extreme heat
• Emergency preparedness and recovery
• Protecting communities from pollution
• Water
• Public transit

About the organizers: The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including: Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment

LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.

The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.

Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.

The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.

The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.

The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."

The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.

"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."

The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.

The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.

The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.

Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.

"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."

Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.

The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.

The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.

Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.

This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare. 

Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."

NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.

The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.

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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.

“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.

It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”

The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.

Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.

“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”

In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”

Since the news of the deal broke late last week, it has sparked condemnation from a number of Democratic state leaders, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, as well as Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who leads the race for California governor.

“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”

The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs, staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”

The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”

Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”

“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”

Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.

Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.

“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.

The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.

Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.

Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.

To qualify, a business must:

• Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
• Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
• Be currently open and active for business
• Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
• Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships

The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.

It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.

His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.

Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.

The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.

“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.

In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”

Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.

He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.

“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.