The Brief

Tenants in the city of Los Angeles must repay all of their past-due rent from earlier in the COVID-19 pandemic by Thursday or they could face eviction.

The repayment deadline marks the end of nearly four years of city rules that gave tenants safeguards from eviction if they couldn’t keep up with rent due to pandemic job loss or illness.

Landlords say these protections have lasted far too long, putting unfair financial burdens on the city’s rental property owners. But tenant advocates point to data showing that many L.A. renters continue to carry large debts, and many could soon be at risk of losing their homes.

“Landlords have been waiting for this date,” said Bijan Ghaemi, an organizer with Community Power Collective and a member of the Keep L.A. Housed coalition. “There’s going to be a huge wave of evictions.”

A new study from the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with the L.A. Housing Department, found that up to 93,000 city households have COVID-19 rent debt due by Thursday’s deadline.

The key dates

Rent in L.A. was never canceled during the pandemic — only delayed. The city’s protections for late rent ended back in February 2023. But protections have so far continued for tenants with unpaid balances from months prior.

An earlier deadline in August 2023 required tenants in the city to repay debts from the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic. Now, the city’s Thursday deadline requires tenants to pay back everything they owe from October 2021 through January 2023.

Barbara Schultz, who directs eviction defense work at the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, said lawyers are already in short supply for renters currently facing eviction. She worries that shortage, coupled with the end of rent debt protections, could drive L.A.’s rising homelessness numbers even higher.

“The concern is that if there will be more evictions filed, tenants will not be able to find representation and they will be displaced and potentially rendered homeless,” Schultz said.

Last year’s homeless count released in June found the number of people experiencing homelessness in the city had jumped 10% from the prior year to a total of 46,260.

Where’s the rent relief?

The city launched a rent relief program in September 2023 aiming to clear these debts before the deadline. The application period closed in October. By Tuesday afternoon, the city had distributed less than $8 million of the $30 million in total available funding.

The city council voted last week to continue eviction protections for rent relief applicants who’ve been approved, but who have yet to receive payments. However, pending applicants who have not been approved will head into February without protections.

The city does not have enough funding for everyone who applied. Applicants requested the city’s help paying off more than $470 million worth of back rent.

Rose Serna, a single mom in Highland Park with about $4,000 in pandemic rent debt coming due Thursday, said she applied for the city’s rent relief program but has not yet received approval. She said she trusted the city to make tenants whole before the deadline.

“It feels hugely irresponsible of the city when we are in such a dire housing and homelessness crisis,” said Serna, who previously spoke to LAist about her housing instability. “I was trying to do everything they were telling us to do. And in the end, I guess it wasn't okay to follow their advice because now it's just like the rug is being pulled from under us.”

Serna said she’ll do whatever she has to do to stay housed, even if it means seeking loans or going into credit card debt.

Will evictions spike after Feb. 1?

Evictions in L.A. County have already eclipsed pre-pandemic levels. Landlords filed close to 48,000 evictions last year, a 25% increase from 2022 and more than the 40,572 filings in 2019.

Dan Yukelson with the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angele, a local landlord advocacy group, doubts the expiring protections will cause a huge spike in evictions.

He said many landlords have already discussed payment plans with tenants who owe back rent. In other cases, he said, tenants with large unpaid balances have already moved out.

“There has certainly been enough notice given to tenants about the rent due date,” Yukelson said. He acknowledged some landlords will have no choice but to evict.

“Inevitably, owners will need to recover their units,” he said. “Because they have mortgages, much higher insurance, trash hauling fees to pay and everything else. They just can't sustain themselves unless they're collecting the revenue that's legally owed to them.”

Up to 93,000 households are behind 

For their study, researchers with the University of Pennsylvania used survey data to estimate how many renters will be affected by the city’s looming deadline.

Researchers estimate that about half of the nearly 93,000 renters behind on rent owe relatively small sums of money (three months worth of rent or less). But up to 17,000 households were carrying large balances (one year’s worth of rent or more).

The researchers also surveyed landlords, finding that those who own 50 units or more were much more likely to pursue eviction than owners with less than five units.

About 71% of large landlords surveyed said they planned to evict tenants behind on rent after the expiration of earlier city protections, compared to 39% of smaller landlords.

At the same time, smaller landlords reported more difficulty keeping up with their mortgages during the pandemic. About 37% of surveyed small landlords with late rent fell behind on their mortgage at least once during the pandemic. Among larger landlords with late rent, about 20% reported missing mortgage payments.

What resources are available?

City outreach workers have already begun tracking down tenants at risk of eviction, offering to connect them with legal services. The city also funds a program called Stay Housed L.A. that can refer low-income renters to free attorneys in certain cases.

In a statement, City Councilmember and housing committee chair Nithya Raman said, “With the landscape for renters changing once again on February 1, it is imperative that we ensure that Angelenos know their rights and that the City is here to help them.”

The city’s housing department is encouraging tenants to call their hotline at (866) 557-7368 for help understanding their rights. Last year, the city council passed a host of new regulations to help renters including a rule that bars landlords from evicting tenants over less than about one month’s worth of late rent. LAist has also put together a comprehensive guide on L.A.’s ever-evolving rental housing regulations.

These days, mochi might bring to mind the ice cream selection at Trader Joe's or the cute, shaped donuts at Mochinut, which have made the chewy rice cake an L.A. favorite.

But for more than 1,000 years in Japan, at this time of year, fresh mochi has been celebrated through mochitsuki — a rhythmic New Year's ceremony in which steamed glutinous rice is pounded with wooden mallets into smooth, elastic cakes symbolizing good fortune.

Yama Sushi Marketplace is turning this tradition into a public celebration with a free mochitsuki event Saturday at its Koreatown location. (The marketplace also hosted two previous events, one Dec. 20 at the San Gabriel location and the other last Saturday in West L.A.).

The ceremony

Scott Kohno, CEO of Yama Sushi Marketplace, grew up eating mochi and attending mochitsuki festivals around Los Angeles. He describes the spectacle as "like a dance."

The two-part process requires pounders wielding mallets and turners flipping the rice between strikes, demanding rhythmic precision to avoid injury. Attendees at the Yama events can try their hand at pounding.

Cultural significance

The New Year marks the biggest holiday celebration in Japanese culture. In Japan, Oshogatsu is observed Jan. 1, with the main celebrations beginning on New Year's Eve and continuing through the first days of January.

Traditionally, Mochitsuki is celebrated chiefly through community events, but many families also rely on store-bought mochi rather than pounding their own.

Kodama Taiko performers demonstrate the rhythmic "dance" of mochitsuki, synchronizing the pounding and turning of steamed glutinous rice.

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The word mochi comes from the Japanese word motsu, which means "to hold," Kohno said. "And so it's very symbolic: holding onto good fortune for the coming year.”

The ceremony holds personal meaning for Kohno, who recalls participating in mochitsuki throughout his childhood. For him, the pairing of mochi and the new year represents a time of reflection — acknowledging his staff and customers while looking ahead.

The demonstration held at Yama will be led by Kodama Taiko, a performance group that has brought mochitsuki to various Southern California communities for several years.

A partnership of legacy brands

This year, Yama is partnering with Fugetsu-Do, the historic Little Tokyo mochi shop founded in 1903 and now in its third generation of ownership under Brian Kito, whose grandfather, Seiichi Kito, started the business.

Kohno sees the partnership between the two businesses — Yama has operated for more than 40 years — as a continuation of Japanese community resilience in Los Angeles.

The partnership feels personal for Kohno, who grew up eating Fugetsu-Do mochi and now sells its products at Yama.

"These two legendary brands coming together, we think it's a natural fit," he said.

An attendee tries his hand at pounding mochi during Yama Seafood Market's Dec. 20 mochitsuki demonstration in San Gabriel.

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The events pair taiko drumming with rhythmic mochi pounding, offering a celebratory experience most attendees will witness for the first time. For Kohno, these gatherings serve a larger purpose: bringing the community together while passing traditions to future generations.

"I hope that the customers really can understand that Japanese food is beyond just the tasty dishes, that there's a lot of symbolism tied to the culture behind it," he said.

More info:

Yama Sushi Marketplace will host a free mochitsuki demonstration Saturday: Yama Seafood Market, 3178 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles (Koreatown), 11 a.m.-noon

For more information, visit yamasushimarketplace.com

Tyler Clites, an assistant professor in mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCLA, leads a team of researchers working on bionic technologies to prevent unnecessary amputations.

Earlier this year, after the Trump administration froze UCLA’s federal research funding, Clites held a meeting with his team where he delivered a dire warning.

“I think that we can weather this for three months,” he said. “But, after that, I might have to start letting people go."

At the time, Clites told LAist, his lab had 10 doctoral students, along with two post docs, “a few surgical residents” and 10 undergrads.

The worst-case scenario Clites feared did not come to pass. The Trump administration froze UCLA’s grants in July. By late September, the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation — the two largest federal funders of research at U.S. universities — were forced to restore some 800 grants at UCLA in response to federal court orders.

But the temporary freeze was long enough to cause permanent damage to some research teams. Plus, students and professors like Clites fear that budget reductions at the NIH and NSF may threaten their research capabilities and professional futures.

Dealing with the aftermath  

At UCLA’s pediatrics department, Cole Peters is part of a team that’s engineering T-cells to target proteins expressed by sarcoma tumors. Sarcoma is a rare type of cancer that originates in the body's bones and soft tissues, including muscles, blood vessels and nerves.

Currently, Peters told LAist, the five-year survival rate for pediatric sarcoma is around 66%, “which means 44% of the kids that get these tumors are going to die.”

Peters’s team uses mice to develop treatment options. “We're trying to get the patient's own immune system to attack [their] cancer,” he said.

The team gives the mice a human immune system, Peters added, “so that we can study how a human immune system would attack a human cancer.”

During the funding freeze, those in charge of keeping the mice healthy had to stop their work, and “the colony pretty much died out,” he said.

As a result, an experiment that he and his colleagues planned to start in August is now slated for the middle of January. This unnecessary delay, Peters added, “slows down the potential to generate a medicine” for children.

Cole Peters, a cancer researcher in UCLA's pediatrics department.

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Elle Rathbun, a sixth-year doctoral student in neuroscience who studies the brain's responses to potential stroke treatments, was also frustrated by the funding freeze.

To stem that loss, she applied for a predoctoral fellowship, which involved gathering a score of documents and letters of recommendation. All told, she said, that process took about a month.

During that time, Rathbun added, “I was doing sort of the bare minimum that my research required.”

“I just couldn't prioritize all the benchwork and the experiments [for my research] and mentoring undergraduates in the way that I was planning on,” she said. “I had to step back from all that.”

Ultimately, Rathbun did secure that fellowship. But then UCLA’s federal funding was restored, so she had to give it back. The rigmarole, she said, was a waste of time.

“I would have rather just been doing experiments and making discoveries,” she said.

Rathbun, Peters, Clites and other researchers at UCLA expressed relief at having their funding restored. But because the court decisions aren't final, they remain fearful.

“I think the biggest impact is [that] people are very reticent to hire,” Clites said. “I'm not really open to taking on a new graduate student . . . I'm much more risk-averse than I have been historically.”

For Peters, it feels like he and his colleagues are working with “a knife over [their] heads.”

Grappling with an uncertain future  

In addition to concerns around UCLA’s grants, researchers also worry about the broader state of federal funding.

A recent New York Times investigation — which used public data to analyze over 300,000 grants dating back to 2015 — found that NIH and NSF money is going to fewer grants under the Trump administration. There are also fewer opportunities available for new scientists through graduate student, postdoctoral and early-career fellowships and grants.

In practice, this means that researchers will face more competition for federal funding. The change could also push students to consider other careers.

Elle Rathbun studies the brain's responses to potential stroke treatments.

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Maya Weissman, a postdoc at UCLA’s Garud Lab, studies the evolution of the human gut microbiome.

The microbiome, she told LAist, helps us digest food, “but it's also connected to a wide range of health issues, including irritable bowel disease and Alzheimer's.”

Her lab is funded by NSF and NIH grants. Having that money restored means she and her colleagues can once again access high-performance computing resources and other critical equipment. And if the undergraduate she mentors wants to conduct research this summer, she’ll be able to pay him.

“We're also able to recruit new members to the lab, because a lot of current members are graduating soon,” she added.

This is all cause to celebrate, Weissman said. But when she looks toward the future, her career is less certain. This year, she intended to apply for the NSF’s postdoctoral research fellowship in biology. But funding for that opportunity was not renewed.

The fellowship “is very prestigious,” Weissman said. “It would have helped my career to have that line on my resume. It would have also funded my salary for several years, and that would take pressure off of my boss, allow her to recruit more people. And it would have allowed me to fund my own experiments and give me a certain amount of independence.”

Weissman visited the NSF’s webpage repeatedly throughout 2025. She kept refreshing it, hoping that a new call for proposals would be posted.

“This huge pool of money that funds a lot of the brightest and most promising researchers at my career stage — it's just gone,” she said.

Moving forward, Weissman will have to spend more time looking for funding.

“Instead of applying for one big fellowship, I have to apply for a dozen little ones to try to cobble together some support,” she said.

Rathbun likewise aims to become an assistant professor at a university, where she can continue doing research.

“I am really reassessing my career path,” Rathbun said. “As much as I want to develop stroke therapies and therapies for other neurodegenerative diseases, and as competitive as I think I am for those positions, if funding is going to be unstable — if, down the line, I'm going to have to constantly be firing people because the NIH suspends grants — that's not viable. It's no longer my dream career.”

Disclosure: Julia Barajas is a part-time law student at UCLA.

One advantage of being someone who writes about food is getting to talk to people involved in L.A.'s food scene — from chefs to restaurateurs to frequent diners. That gives me insight into what trends are bubbling up and likely will come into full view this year.

Last year, I predicted the Manhattan cocktail and pavlova desserts would make a comeback and Orange County's dining scene would gain momentum. This year's forecast includes a range of predictions, from personal-sized treats to low-alcohol craft beers to diasporic cuisines ready to take center stage.

Desserts

Individual cake slices will be the hot new treat in 2026 — a perfect, commitment-free indulgence for one or two.

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Personal cake slices: Forget the whole cake. Expect individual slices to be the hot new treat — a perfect, commitment-free indulgence for one (or two).

Cinnamon rolls: The breakfast pastry, whether homemade or from your local bakery, will dominate social media feeds and the baked goods conversation.

Walk-in-only reservations

While restaurant reservations aren't going away, a new crop of restaurants will be less dependent on online bookings or will host only a few seatings per meal. This helps combat revenue loss from no-shows, reduce third-party platform fees and enable more precise staffing and inventory management.

All-day cafes with restaurant and nightlife elements

Your favorite coffee shop will also serve lunch and dinner, staying open late for drinks, thereby maximizing its concept to appeal to a broader range of customers.

Drinks

The cappuccino is making a comeback in 2026, with its carefully crafted 1:1:1 ratio of espresso, steamed milk and froth.

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The year of the cappuccino: Move over, latte. The sophisticated cappuccino is making a comeback. With its airier texture and perfect 1:1:1 ratio of espresso, steamed milk and froth, it's a balanced coffee choice that emphasizes traditional craft over the milk-heavy lattes that have dominated American coffee culture.

Low-ABV beers: We've seen low-alcohol wine and liquors in previous years, and now it's beer's turn to be in the spotlight. As more people prefer lighter-style beers, both independent brewers and larger brands will offer additional lower-alcohol options for consumers looking to avoid hangovers.

Kevin Lee at work behind the bar at Tokyo Noir, hand-carving the ice that defines his cocktails’ texture and clarity.

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Wonho Lee

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Artisan ice: In cocktail bars, expect more attention to ice in various forms, including shaved ice in different types of drinks, plus imported ice from other countries featured in cocktail menus.

Health and wellness

High-fiber vegetables like broccoli, carrots and leafy greens will get new attention in 2026 as the fibermaxxing trend emphasizes gut health.

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Fibermaxxing: Fiber is set for a big year. The trend emphasizes gut health and is popping up everywhere — in high-fiber foods like beans, lentils, artichokes and brussels sprouts that will get new attention, as well as an additive in pastas, drinks and snacks to boost fullness. It aids digestion, stabilizes blood sugar and helps lower cholesterol.

Smaller portions: Driven partly by the rise of GLP-1 medications, expect smaller meal sizes everywhere — from fine dining to fast food. Del Taco recently launched a $2.99 "Micro Meal" designed specifically for lighter-eating lifestyles, featuring deliberately small portions: a mini beef and cheddar burrito, seven to 10 fries and a single donut bite. It signals what's to come.

Cuisine from diasporic communities

We'll see a bigger emphasis on diasporic communities — populations displaced from their homelands through conflict, colonization or forced migration, as opposed to voluntary immigrant communities. Southern California's restaurant scene and cookbooks will spotlight Cambodian, Haitian, Palestinian and Puerto Rican cuisines — all shaped by displacement, conflict and colonial histories.

If there were more fitness instructors in the world like Creeper, getting in shape would be a lot more fun.

The satirical character, played by Frankie Quiñones, leads inspirational workout routines such as a CholoSpin class where scenarios like running out of beer at a barbecue push you to peddle harder because “we don’t want fools to start fighting each other."

Creeper has a spiritual side, too, with motivational wellness messages like “How to get rid of all your dumb energy … because sometimes life can get weird, homie.”

Quiñones has been creating content as Creeper for 15 years now, and he’s still finding new ways to keep the character fresh.

In Hulu comedy special Damn, That’s Crazy, which came out in October, Quiñones explained that he started developing characters when he was a kid as a form of personal escapism and based them on those around him. Quiñones' father was a big inspiration for Creeper’s sense of style.

“My dad was an old school cholo. Dickies creased, Chuck Taylors, white tee or the Pendleton,” Quiñones says in the special. “Always had the palm comb with the three flowers. Always had a lowrider.”

Quiñones added that he was around “the positive side of the culture” growing up in Los Angeles and that his dad is “one of the most positive men” he knows.

Quiñones’ childhood influences still are at play in his latest web series, Creeper’s Crib.

Growing up, Quiñones watched Pee-wee’s Playhouse, the whimsical 1980s children’s program that was populated with puppets and hosted by Paul Reubens’ performing alter-ego, Pee-wee Herman. Quiñones loved the show and grew to identify with Reubens as his own career advanced.

“When Creeper went viral, a lot of people were like, 'You should just do that.' … I was like, maybe that's going to be my career. I'm just gonna be this character. Am I okay with that or do I want to go another direction,” Quiñones said.

In releasing a new comedy special and launching Creeper’s Crib in the same year, Quiñones is saying he doesn’t have to choose.

Puppet sidekicks Rudy and Pantufla in Episode 6 of "Creeper’s Crib."

Pantufla the puppet

Creeper’s Crib follows the Pee-wee format in that there are vignettes, colorful characters and, of course, puppets! But let’s be clear: It’s not a kid’s show. Creeper still is the host, and his humor is good-natured but definitely adult-themed. Like featuring the dating exploits of the puppets.

A partially animated, talking hot water heater named Rudy is a frequent character. But Pantufla, the soft-spoken slipper, often steals the show. Even he is looking for love on websites like IfTheShoeFits.com.  

While Rudy is louder and quicker to react, Pantufla is the tranquil sidekick, commenting from his perch atop Creeper’s couch.

“He's like this spiritual guide, like, a chill-a** dude,” Quiñones said. “[Pantufla is] how you say slipper in Spanish, but it's such a funny word to me. That came because I have a bunch of sets of pantuflas for Creeper, like the Deebo slippers. And they wear out and they start opening up. … And it just came to life.”

Creativity took hold, and a torn-open slipper became a talking character.

“It's funny because people love Pantufla,” Quiñones said. “I got messages from this middle-aged white lady in Wisconsin. She's like, 'Oh, honey, I love Pantufla and the sound of his voice.'”

Creeper’s Crib features a special guest every episode with new installments on YouTube every other Monday.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.