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.

Topline:

Street flooding: Roadway flooding was reported this morning on the westbound 134 Freeway at the 5, near Glendale and Griffith Park.

Coastal Flooding: All weekend, forecasters have warned of dangerous rip currents and an elevated risk of coastal flooding.

Flooding was reported yesterday in Seal Beach and Long Beach.

"We have quite a few reports already of waves up to 10 feet on some beaches — Zuma Beach especially, where we've gotten reports [of] strong rip currents," said Todd Hall, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

Advisories and closures:

• An ocean water quality rain advisory has been issued for all L.A. County beaches until Wednesday, Sept. 9 at 2 p.m. That means to avoid ocean water contact for at least 72 hours after the rain.
• A coastal flood advisory and a high surf advisory for L.A. and Ventura county beaches remain in effect until Tuesday, Sept. 8 at 11 p.m.
• The City of Seal Beach is closing two beach parking lots due to flooding concerns.

What's next: Hall said to expect more showers across L.A. County throughout Sunday. On Monday, he said isolated rain is expected, mostly in the mountains.

A sign on the front door says “Beekeeper owned,” and inside the Hive & Hanger store in Burbank, the layout is a mix of vintage clothes, antique jewelry and something rather unexpected: a pop-up Bee Museum.

The owner is Carrie Diazzz, a vintage maven turned urban apiarist. She admits with a smile  two extra Zs at the end of her real last name are a homage to her beloved bees.

When the store opened in 2020, it was originally all-vintage. “I was not looking to change careers,” she said, but after taking a two-hour beekeeping experience course, she was hooked.

Hive & Hangar in Burbank doubles as a bee museum.

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“I don’t like dirt, and I don't like bugs. I'm a heels and lipstick, nails, kind of person,” she said. “There's just something magical about the honeybee. The more you know, the more you want to know.”

That prompted her to pursue a bee master certification at UC Davis. She collaborated with Elina Niño at the university’s Bee Lab to curate information and research to bring her pop-up Bee Museum to life almost a year ago.

A crash course in bees

The Burbank Bee Museum.

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There’s a Bee 101 explainer by the front door, which shows the differences between bees and wasps, and fun touches like pop songs containing the word “Honey,” and a list of Noteworthy Beekeepers including Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, Leo Tolstoy, Emily Dickinson, Angelina Jolie and Sherlock Holmes.

One long-standing myth is that honeybees are stingers. “People always ask me how often I get stung, but I don’t wear gloves, and I don’t use smoke, and it very rarely happens. And honeybees die after they sting, as opposed to wasps, who can sting repeatedly,” she said.

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Most arresting is a floor-to-ceiling collage series of framed model fruits, vegetables, nuts and berries, all of which the honeybee has a role in pollinating. Beside that is an exhibit on pesticides, one of the insect's biggest threats. Pieces of dried honeycomb are everywhere.

Diazzz has also been hosting school trips for the Boys & Girls Clubs. “I might be the only beekeeper they will ever meet,” she noted. The point is to give bees the respect they deserve. “Did you know that it takes 12 honeybees their entire lives to make one teaspoon of honey?”

Rescuing hives across Southern California

The Bee Museum serves up not just honey, but bee knowledge.

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There are no live bees in the store, but Diazzz has her own hives in Burbank.

“They are from rescues: I cut the hive out from a wall,” she explained. She takes care of hives from San Diego to Bel Air, with many in the San Fernando Valley, and a couple with a view of the Hollywood Sign. Her caretaking quests have taken her on skyscraper roofs, at apartment buildings and in parking lots.

Almost a year ago, she began her studies as a honey sommelier at the American Honey Tasting Society in Connecticut, where she learned about the science and experience of honey. Her future includes going off to Bologna, Italy, the world honey hub, for the final round of studies and tests at the Albo Nazionale degli Esperti in Analisi Sensoriale del Miele or the National Register of Experts in Sensory Analysis of Honey.

Carrie Diazzz, owner of the store and the museum, sells small jars of honey sourced locally and from her own hives.

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“Nectar and honey are not the same thing,” she explained. “Nectar is the liquid sticky substance that bees collect from flowering plants and take back to the hive. They transform it into honey by dehydrating the moisture out of the nectar, and capping it over with wax.”

Diazzz recently held her first informal tasting experience at The Bee Museum, and has small batches of various local honeys for sale: cactus, sage, and honey from her own hives. “I usually leave the honey alone, and only take any extra they have made to sell,” she said, because bees use the honey as sustenance. Her favorite? “A toss-up between dandelion and sunflower. Orange blossom is delicious too, but very sweet.”

Maybe you, like me, are a daily puzzle player. Maybe you like a Wordle, or a crossword, or one of the other entries from the New York Times puzzle empire.

But maybe you're looking for something else.

So, with a tip of the hat to the people on Bluesky who helped me discover a bunch of games I love in the last month or two, I'm sharing a few games that I'm particularly enjoying these days — ones that are not NYT word games. (No disrespect to my original love, Spelling Bee.)

There are more, of course: the spelling bee game Beeswax, the word game Smush, the vexing Anthropeum, the movie games Framed and Cinematrix. Truthfully, I have more games in the "daily games" folder on my phone than I could ever actually play daily. But given a choice between puzzling and doomscrolling, I'll take the puzzles every time.

MapTap

Any idea where Regina is? Do your best in MapTap's daily geography game.

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MapTap is a very simple game. You are shown a 3D globe that you can rotate with your finger, but there are no lines dividing countries or territories. So you are just looking at the unmarked terrain of the world, and you are challenged to tap as close as you can to a particular named location. Maybe "London, England, U.K." You tap. It shows you the distance between where you tapped and where the place really is. You get more points the closer you are. There are five questions in each daily round.

This game can be genuinely humbling, because without those familiar borders showing, it can be difficult to even locate places you are very familiar with. (Without state and national boundaries, it always takes me a minute to precisely find even a place I myself have lived.) But what I love about MapTap is that as I do it, over and over, I actually get better at world geography, which is worthwhile and enriching.

TimeGuessr

Look carefully: What's your best guess for where and when this photo was taken? TimeGuessr makes you a detective.

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In the same family as MapTap is TimeGuessr, where each day's challenge is made up of five puzzles that each start with a photo. Your task is to choose, on a timeline, what year the photo was taken, and to choose, on a map of the world, where it was taken. Sometimes, the photos are of historically meaningful events, like the aftermath of a battle or a natural disaster. Sometimes, they are photographs of ordinary people going about their lives.

The trick with TimeGuessr is detective work. Some hints are straightforward: a sign in the window of a store that might tip off the location (if you can figure out what language it's written in), a license plate, something along those lines. But sometimes, the clues are more subtle. What are the people in the photo wearing? What do the cars look like? How is everybody wearing their hair? It's a fascinating exercise in putting together clues, and again, you can actually increase your knowledge of the world while you play.

The Loop

Everything is connected (somehow) in The Loop, which is a perfect first-thing-when-you-wake-up game.

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The Loop is my favorite early-morning game, perfect for when I'm only partially awake. It offers you 12 simple illustrations that you have to arrange in a circle so that each illustration connects in some way to the ones on either side of it.

So, for instance, in one round I played, a square-root symbol connected on one side to a carpenter's square (because square/square), which then connected to a picture of a toolbox (because a carpenter's square is a tool). On the other side, the square-root symbol connected to a carrot (because it's a root vegetable), and then the carrot to an icicle (because they're the same shape). It can be fun to crack all the different ways that the images connect to each other, but the game design also offers so many chances to get it right that there's a huge amount of grace for making mistakes. That, of course, is why it's perfect for being half-awake.

Clues by Sam

It's up to you to figure out who's innocent and who's guilty in Clues by Sam.

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Clues by Sam is a logic puzzle. It presents you with a grid — four across and five down — of people, each represented by a name, an emoji and an occupation. Your job is to figure out which of those people are innocent and which are criminals. (There is no set number; there could be lots of criminals or only a couple.) Your opening clue might say, "Michael is one of three criminals in row 2." Then you click on Michael and mark him as a criminal, and when you're right, that gets you another clue, and so on.

Like most of these games, this one is enjoyable largely because it's simple, but its diabolical twist is that you can't guess. If you try to label Jane innocent, for instance, and she eventually will be, but the game hasn't given you enough information yet to actually know that, then that answer is wrong and is rejected. You are only allowed to deduce from the clues you have, because it is genuinely the journey and not the destination. Note that Clues by Sam gets harder each day from Monday through Sunday, so if you're a beginner, give it a whirl early in the week to get the hang of it.

Catfishing

Catfishing asks you to figure out the title of a Wikipedia page from its categories — which is harder than it sounds.

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Without a doubt, the hardest game I play regularly. In this game, you get a list of at least some of the categories that a particular Wikipedia page belongs to, and you have to try to figure out what page it is. There are ten questions; my average score is about four, and the highest I've ever gotten is eight.

For example, if you know a page is filed under "20th century musicians," and "21st century musicians," and "American folk musicians," and "people born in Minnesota," you might start to zero in on Bob Dylan. But be warned: Many of the answers are far more obscure than that, and it's very common for me to give up and reveal the answer, only to learn that I never stood a chance, because I've never heard of the person (or event, or phenomenon) at all. It doesn't matter how many ways you classify certain medieval rulers or political conflicts of 19th century Iowa; I may never get there.

This piece also appeared in NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter so you don't miss the next one, plus get weekly recommendations about what's making us happy.

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