The Brief

Preliminary results of last month’s Los Angeles County homelessness count show a year-to-year drop in the number of people living outdoors, according to data released months earlier than usual.

The data, from the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA, is incomplete. It was distributed three months earlier in the process, as the agency faces an upcoming vote that could see the county take over direct oversight of hundreds of millions of dollars the county currently sends LAHSA every year.

Usually, no data is released from the annual Point-in-Time homelessness count until late June, after the full count is tabulated and a survey is conducted to estimate how many people were living in the tents and vehicles counted early in the year.

But this year, LAHSA Chief Executive Va Lecia Adams Kellum handled it differently. She released raw, incomplete data, as county supervisors prepare to vote April 1 on having the county seize control of funding after a pair of scathing audits about LAHSA.

Adams Kellum’s administration sent out a news release Thursday about the preliminary drop in the count and calling for continued county support of LAHSA. The release said the data indicates the unsheltered homeless count in L.A. County will drop by 5% to 10% when the final count is released later this year. That follows last year’s count showing a drop after years of increases.

“It’s important for decision-makers to focus on change while continuing the momentum LAHSA, the rehousing system, the city and county have produced over the last two years,” Adams Kellum said in the release.

“L.A. has been waiting years for this moment. Let’s trust what we have built and the real progress we are making,” she added.

The projected reduction in street homelessness “is a reason why we want to see [the] city and county continue to work together," she told ABC 7 about the preliminary results.

LAHSA is jointly funded by the city and county and overseen by a commission appointed by city and county elected officials.

Data is missing

Because the information is being released so early, some data is missing, according to footnotes LAHSA released to LAist in response to a public records request. Counts of unhoused youth are not included, and numbers could change for special counts along parks and highways, officials say.

“Note that all raw unsheltered counts (for each year) exclude estimates of occupants of dwellings as well as unsheltered youth who are added to the count as estimates from the result of the Youth Count,” one footnote says.

The preliminary data also does not include the annual multiplier data developed by USC researchers, which LAHSA has said “is crucial to developing the annual Homeless Count estimate.”

The preliminary data released by LAHSA show the 2025 count found 3,600 fewer people and dwellings — such as tents, makeshift shelters and vehicles — compared with the previous year. That’s about an 11% drop.

This year’s count also saw a drop in volunteers. About 10% fewer people signed up compared with participants last year, and many of those who registered this year did not show up after LAHSA moved the count back by a few weeks because of the January wildfires.

Adams Kellum’s administration has said the drop in volunteers shouldn’t affect the quality of the count.

LAist excluded from media briefings

In a deviation from past practice, Adams Kellum did not invite LAist to her briefings of reporters on the count results.

In the previous two counts since Adams Kellum took the helm at LAHSA, LAist was invited to the media briefing in advance of the official release, where the results were released and reporters could ask questions.

LAist was not invited to her Wednesday briefings of the Los Angeles Times and ABC-TV Channel 7 about the preliminary results, which were part of a presentation about her efforts at the agency.

The Times and ABC 7 published articles on it Thursday morning. LAist requested copies of the data. It took three hours of requests from LAist, including contacting Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass’ office, before LAHSA disclosed the preliminary data.

Adams Kellum did not respond to questions about why she departed from her past practice.

LAHSA spokesperson Paul Rubenstein responded that the count information was provided during wider-ranging conversations with other outlets, but has not answered who initiated those interviews and why LAist was not invited.

The file name of the document sent by LAHSA was "Media Briefing March 2025."

Questions about missing documents

About two weeks ago, LAist began asking LAHSA about hundreds of supporting documents that appear to be missing for last year’s count. That count recorded the first drop in unsheltered homelessness in many years in the city of LA.

Adams Kellum’s administration says it has not withheld any records from LAist but has not yet explained why scans of handwritten counts for more than 200 census tracts appear to be missing from what her agency disclosed in response to a records request.

LAist also has reported on an ethics breach at the agency, involving Adams Kellum signing a $2.1 million contract with her husband’s employer — despite previously telling LAist she had followed conflict-of-interest rules banning her from such involvement.

Her husband is the director of compliance at the vendor.

LAHSA ultimately paid about $1.7 million under that one-year contract — ending in December — without any reports on the vendor’s performance or contract compliance, according to a LAHSA public records response to LAist.

That appears to be common practice at LAHSA with the service providers it collectively pays about $700 million in county and city tax dollars each year, according to an audit and a written explanation from LAHSA to LAist.

Adams Kellum distances herself from audit’s findings

The most recent audit of LAHSA, overseen by a federal judge, found that LAHSA has made it impossible to accurately track homelessness spending, by failing to collect accurate data from its vendors and hold them accountable. That audit has further fueled calls for the county and city to pull funding from the regional agency and instead oversee it directly.

Speaking during her media briefing with ABC-TV Channel 7 on Wednesday, Adams Kellum emphasized the audits "cover a sliver of the first year of my time at LAHSA.”

But the audit overseen by Judge David O. Carter examined a period that included 15 months of Adams Kellum’s time leading LAHSA, according to the report released by the court. Adams Kellum became CEO in late March 2023, and the audit looked at a period running from mid-2020 to June 30, 2024.

She has not responded to an email asking for clarification.

Carter has scheduled a public hearing March 27 on the audit’s findings. He has asked some city and county elected officials to attend.

After copper wire theft left the Sixth Street Bridge in darkness for years, the city of Los Angeles has hired a Pasadena-based engineering firm to restore the lighting, a move aimed at improving safety for Boyle Heights and the surrounding neighborhoods.

City officials contracted Tetra Tech to relight the bridge, which has been plagued by copper wire theft since its opening in 2022. The outages have frustrated residents and commuters who use the bridge to walk, run, bike and drive between downtown LA and the Eastside.

Aging infrastructure, copper wire theft and delayed repairs led to nearly 2,000 streetlight service requests in Boyle Heights in 2024. Nearly seven miles of copper wire have been reported stolen from the Sixth Street Bridge.

Tetra Tech began working on the project’s design in January and is scheduled to restore the wiring to all lights along the bridge, including along roadways, barriers, ramps, stairways and arches before the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games come to Los Angeles that summer, according to a Feb. 18 news release from Councilmember Ysabel Jurado’s office.

The firm – which was selected by the city’s Bureau of Engineering – will fortify the pull boxes, service cabinet and conduits to protect against copper wire theft. Tetra Tech will also install a security camera system to deter vandalism and theft.

“When our streets are well-lit, our neighborhoods feel safer and more connected,” Jurado said in the news release. “The Sixth Street Bridge plays a vital role in connecting Angelenos between the Eastside and the heart of the City.”

Jurado – who pledged to look into fixing the Sixth Street Bridge lights when she was elected in 2024 – said the partnership with Tetra Tech “moves us one step closer to restoring one of the City’s most iconic landmarks as a safe, welcoming public space our communities deserve.”

According to officials, the total contract value with Tetra Tech is $5.3 million, which includes work on the Sixth Street Bridge as well as the Sixth Street PARC project, which encompasses 12 acres of recreational space underneath and adjacent to the bridge.

The PARC project will make way for sports fields, fitness equipment, event spaces and a performance stage. PARC’s grand opening is anticipated later this year.

Because the work for the PARC project and the bridge is connected, the Board of Engineers recommended using the existing PARC contract with Tetra Tech to ensure completion ahead of the 2028 Games, officials said.

The cost for the design work on the bridge alone is roughly $1 million.

On Thursday, Jurado announced that her streetlight repair crew had restored lighting and strengthened infrastructure for more than 400 streetlights across her district, including Boyle Heights, Lincoln Heights, and El Sereno. Next, they plan to tackle repairs in downtown L.A.

For the last 70 years, the  27th Street Bakery hasn’t just been the go-to place for people who want to spend less time in the kitchen — it’s become a staple in South Central, providing jobs and security for people living in the neighborhood.

The bakery is Black-owned and in its third generation as a business. It’s co-owned by sisters Denise Cravin-Paschal and Olympic gold-medalist Jeanette Bolden-Pickens, as well as her husband Al Pickens.

“My grandfather employed a lot of people around here as he was growing his business and so have we,” Cravin-Paschal told the LA Local. “They feel that this is a safe place to come. We have the respect of being here for 70 years and so we enjoy it.”

The bakery sits on Central Avenue, the focal point of Black Los Angeles between the 1930s and 1960s. As segregation laws were struck down, Black people in LA began to move elsewhere and took their businesses with them. The bakery, though, is still Black-owned and operating 70 years later.

Today it is considered the largest manufacturer of sweet potato pies on the West Coast, the bakery’s website states. Last year, the city and District 9 Councilmember Curren Price Jr. presented the bakery with a plaque that reads: “A Walk Down Central Avenue — A legacy of community: powered by the people and its places.”

It hangs on the wall in the bakery’s lobby along with several other photos and recognitions they’ve received over the years.

“Our goal is to keep this legacy alive and we’re celebrating 70 years of being here in business. We are so grateful to the community,” Bolden-Pickens said.

In celebration of its anniversary, a sign in the bakery says it is offering one slice of sweet potato pie for 70 cents on Saturdays starting this weekend through Oct. 31.

The bakery was a restaurant at first bringing Southern flavor to LA

The bakery began as a restaurant in the 1930s on Central Avenue founded by Harry and Sadie Patterson, according to the family and Los Angeles Conservancy. Back then, Central Avenue was the epicenter of LA’s Black community and Patterson, who came from Shreveport, Louisiana, decided to bring his Southern recipes to life in Los Angeles.

The restaurant later became a bakery in 1956, according to the bakery’s website. Patterson’s daughter Alberta Cravin and her son Gregory Spann took over the bakery in 1980. After Spann passed away, Cravin’s daughters — the sisters who are current owners — took over the family business. Five other relatives also help them out, Cravin-Paschal said.

These days, the bakery is open Tuesday through Saturday each week and the bulk of their customers are other businesses. They serve nearly 300 vendors including convenience stores like 7-Eleven, Ralphs grocery stores, Smart & Final, ARCO gas stations, restaurants and other mom-and-pop stores. Louisiana Fried Chicken has been a customer since 1980, Cravin-Paschal said.

An average delivery today is usually 45 dozen pies and they also ship orders out of state, Cravin-Paschal said.

She also told The LA Local they have six full time employees and most of them have worked for the bakery at least 25 years.

“I like working here, I like the people,” Maximina “Maxi” Rodriguez, a longtime employee, told The LA Local. After 32 years at the bakery, she said she plans to retire in June. “I’m going to miss it.”

Rodriguez said working at the bakery is a family affair for her, too. Her sister, Guadalupe Garibaldi, has worked at the bakery for over 40 years and her niece, Yoselin Garibaldi, is now a cashier and driver.

Patterson’s lessons inspired 3 generations to keep the business running

For Bolden-Pickens and Cravin-Paschal, running the bakery is a labor of love. Both told The LA Local that their grandfather taught them to stay true to the fresh ingredients they use and not to cut corners.

These lessons helped Bolden-Pickens in her life before taking over the family business. She won a gold medal as part of the U.S. 4×100 meter relay team in track and field during the 1984 Olympics.

“What I learned from being an Olympian is that it takes a lot of hard work. I learned that from my grandfather,” she said.

Bolden-Pickens said it hasn’t been easy running the business, but they’ve been able to stay afloat because of the lessons learned from their grandfather.

“I remember during the pandemic, we actually had to go to the egg farm and stand in line for a couple of hours just to get the eggs that we needed,” Bolden-Pickens said. “We use the best spices. We make our own vanilla.”

Cravin-Paschal said after the death of their brother Gregory Spann, who was the main baker for nearly two decades, they struggled for a few years to keep the recipe and taste consistent. But eventually they figured it out.

“We had a little rough spot because we all know the recipes but you have to put it together (correctly),” Cravin-Paschal said. “Now we’re back to the original taste.”

As marijuana use among teens has grown in the past decade, researchers have been trying to better understand the health risks of the drug. Now, a new longitudinal study finds that cannabis use among adolescents increases risks of being diagnosed with bipolar and psychotic disorders, as well as anxiety and depression, years later.

"This is very, very, very worrying," says psychiatrist Dr. Ryan Sultan at Columbia University, a cannabis researcher who wasn't involved in the new study published in the latest JAMA Health Forum.

Strong study design

Researchers analyzed health data on 460,000 teenagers in the Kaiser Permanente Health System in Northern California. The teens were followed until they were 25 years old. The data included annual screenings for substance use and any mental health diagnoses from the health records. Researchers excluded the adolescents who had symptoms of mental illnesses before using cannabis.

"We looked at kids using cannabis before they had any evidence of these psychiatric conditions and then followed them to understand if they were more likely or less likely to develop them," says Dr. Lynn Silver, a pediatrician and researcher at the Public Health Institute, and an author of the new study.

They found that the teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were at a higher risk of being diagnosed with several mental health conditions a few years later, compared to teens who didn't use cannabis.

Teens who reported using cannabis had twice the risk of developing two serious mental illnesses: bipolar, which manifests as alternating episodes of depression and mania, and psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia which involve a break with reality.

Now, only a small fraction — nearly 4,000 — of all teens in the study were diagnosed with each of these two disorders. Both bipolar and psychotic disorders are among the most serious and disabling of mental illnesses.

"Those are the scarier conditions that we worry about," says Sultan.

Silver points out these illnesses are expensive to treat and come at a high cost to society. The U.S. cannabis market is an industry with a value in the tens-of-billions — but the societal cost of schizophrenia has been calculated to be $350 billion a year.

"And if we increase the number of people who develop that condition in a way that's preventable, that can wipe out the whole value of the cannabis market," Silver says.

Depression and anxiety too

The new study also found that the risk for more common conditions like depression and anxiety was also higher among cannabis users.

"Depression alone went up by about a third," says Silver, "and anxiety went up by about a quarter."

But the link between cannabis use and depression and anxiety got weaker for teens who were older when they used cannabis. "Which really shows the sensitivity of the younger child's brain to the effects of cannabis," says Silver. "The brain is still developing. The effects of cannabis on the receptors in the brain seem to have a significant impact on their neurological development and the risk for these mental health disorders."

Silver hopes these findings will make teens more cautious about using the drug, which is not as safe as people perceive it to be.

"With legalization, we've had a tremendous wave of this perception of cannabis as a safe, natural product to treat your stress with," she says. "That is simply not true."

The new study is well designed and gets at "the chicken or the egg, order-of-operations question," says Sultan. There have been other past studies that have also found a link between cannabis use and mental health conditions, especially psychosis. But, those studies couldn't tell whether cannabis affected the likelihood of developing mental health symptoms or whether people with existing problems were more likely to use cannabis — perhaps to treat their symptoms.

But by excluding teens who were already showing mental health symptoms, the new study suggests a causal link between cannabis use and later mental health diagnoses. Additional research is needed to understand the link fully.

'Playing with fire'

Sultan, the psychiatrist and researcher at Columbia University, says the study confirms what he's seeing in his clinic — more teens using cannabis who've developed new or worsening mental health symptoms.

"It is most common around anxiety and depression, but it's also showing up in more severe conditions like bipolar disorder and psychosis," he says.

He notes that mental health disorders are complex in origin. A host of risk factors, like genetics, environment, lifestyle and life experiences all play a role. And some young people are more at risk than others.

"When someone has a psychotic episode in the context of cannabis or a manic episode in the context of cannabis, clinicians are going to say, 'Please do not do that again because you're you're you're playing with fire,'" he says.

Because the more they use the drug, he says the more likely that their symptoms will worsen over time, making recovery harder.

"What we're worried about [is if] you sort of get stuck in psychosis, it gets harder and harder to pull the person back," says Sultan. "Psychosis and severe mood disorders, particularly bipolar disorder are like seizures in your brain. They're sort of neurotoxic to your brain, and so it seems to be associated with a more rapid deterioration of the brain."

Some electric bikes in California could soon require license plates under a proposed state bill aiming to address the rise in electric bike related injuries.

AB 1942 or the E-bike Accountability Act, would apply exclusively to Class 2 and Class 3 electric bikes.

Class 2 bikes can be operated without peddling until it reaches the speed of 20 mph.

Class 3 bikes reach a max speed of 28 mph; motor assist could only kick in with peddling.

The bill would also require owners to carry proof of ownership and would direct the Department of Motor Vehicles to establish a registration process. It was introduced by Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan of Orinda in Contra Costa County earlier this month.

E-bike injuries spiked 18-fold between 2018 and 2023, according to state traffic data.

The bill may be heard in committee March 16.