The Brief

Los Angeles County’s first centralized dispatch center to quickly connect unsheltered people with housing, treatment and other services will start taking requests from the public on Tuesday, according to officials.

The county’s Emergency Centralized Response Center (ECRC) started operating in January to centralize intake to the various services and programs for unhoused individuals run by a host of county and city departments, agencies and outreach teams.

Since opening, the center has responded to 436 referrals, according to county officials. One referral can include multiple unsheltered people, they said.

So far, the center has only taken referrals from elected officials and governmental agencies.

But that’s changing on Tuesday, when the public will be able to submit reports to the center through LA-HOP, a homeless outreach portal that was previously run by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Based on county data, this could lead to a significant increase in the number of requests to the new dispatch center.

Officials gave a tour on Thursday to reporters and took questions.

Before the center was created, “you would have all of these outreach teams descending upon this one site [of an encampment], which is not a good use of resources,” said Elizabeth “Libby” Boyce, who oversaw the implementation of the dispatch center.

As a centralized information hub, officials say the dispatch center can now coordinate across several agencies and teams to receive requests for services and direct a group of 150 outreach teams to help provide timely interim housing and necessary support to unsheltered people.

When county supervisors decided to pull hundreds of millions of dollars of homeless service spending from LAHSA — a joint city-county agency — and instead have the county directly oversee it, city leaders expressed concern that the city and county would lose coordination of their efforts.

During Thursday’s tour, officials pointed to the expanding dispatch center as a place where both governments work closely together.

L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who chairs the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee, said she’s hopeful the coordination will lead to better outcomes.

“By establishing an Emergency Centralized Response Center we will be able to expand our access to data, increase both accountability and coordination, and ensure that every dollar we are spending as a city — and by extension we as a region — is going further,” Raman said.

ECRC teams working on processing homeless service referrals and dispatching outreach teams.

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How it works

At the ECRC, four teams are responsible for processing referrals — or requests for services — dispatching and supporting teams and updating referrals, county officials said. Each team handles requests for two of the county zones known as service planning areas.

There are also representatives on site every day from the county’s departments of Mental Health, Health Services, Public Health, Substance Abuse Prevention and Control, Military and Veteran Affairs and Social Services, as well as LAHSA and L.A.’s City Administrative Officer, according to the county.

The dispatch center also helps coordinate encampment solution efforts such as Inside Safe and the county’s Pathway Home program, as well as teams that conduct cleanups in unincorporated areas, officials said.

Together, all of these departments, agencies and individuals combine their resources to provide relief efforts, officials say.

The new dispatch center has recently been providing their services in Whittier Narrows, a large park in the San Gabriel Valley.

“There are so many entities that have a footprint there,” Boyce said. “You have [state] Fish and [Wildlife], you have the Army Corps of Engineers, you have unincorporated [county], you have this city… you have Caltrans — somebody’s got to facilitate a discussion with all those people, which we’ve been doing.”

The dispatch center’s director, Donald Holt, also pointed to the multi-jurisdictional Ballona Creek in West L.A. He said the dispatch center coordinated meetings with multiple local law enforcement agencies, which were able to move unsheltered people from the area while connecting them with services.

Before the center’s creation, the various government entities would have received separate calls and enacted separate operations in Ballona Creek. This lack of communication would leave pockets of the area uncleared, with unsheltered people moving from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Ultimately, Donald said they were able to engage with about 45 people and get 15 indoors in Ballona Creek in one day by coordinating with multiple agencies.

Boyce said the center now collect information information daily about available beds across the county from publicly-funded interim housing providers — which she said hovers at around 30 to 50 beds — allowing the dispatch center to provide unsheltered individuals with interim housing options even when there are no available beds in the specific jurisdiction they’re located in.

And unlike previous intake approaches, county officials say the new dispatch center updates the person who requested a referral. Officials say that’s part of their effort to build a “feedback loop” that builds trust.

For instance, instead of getting an automated response informing them when their LA-HOP ticket is closed, people will receive real-time information about what resolution programs are being planned in response to their request, officials say.

Members of ECRC teams working together at a computer.

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Put to the test

The ECRC welcomed its first staff members on Jan. 3, Boyce said. Four days later, wildfires erupted across Southern California.

“We had to jump in,” Boyce said. “We’re an emergency entity — if there’s a natural disaster, if there’s any emergency, we can be the conduit to the unsheltered, we can be the messenger. And that happened with the wildfires.”

Ultimately, in January the dispatch center worked to evacuate 17 interim housing shelters, supplied more than 6,000 N-95 masks and relocated 500 people, Boyce said.

L.A. County Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Kathryn Barger proposed the ECRC in a motion approved by the Board of Supervisors in September.

“We’ve gone from a motion in September to a space that was operational in December and then responding to the county’s largest-ever disaster by January,” Horvath said. “I cannot really stress enough how unprecedented [this is].”

Supervisor Horvath speaking to reporters at a panel on Thursday.

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Looking to the future

As the dispatch center expands, officials there say they aim to focus on building trust through engagement.

“Most of the individuals that are experiencing homelessness in [an] area, they have ties in that area… and so they’re very reluctant to leave,” Holt said. “There are just some areas where the resources are extremely scarce, and so you have to continue to try to build that rapport, and hopefully they’ll be receptive to relocate.”

Officials say they’d welcome additional government agencies to send staff to the center.

“If any city or municipality wants to come and join us, they may, and then we can help be a little bit more direct with helping them with their unsheltered issues,” Boyce said.

With the anticipation of a surge of new requests when the dispatch center opens to the public, Boyce said she is confident their team is prepared to respond.

“We have room for more, and we’re ready to take it on.”

[Have you had an experience with the county’s new dispatch center? Contact our reporting intern Kahani Malhotra at kmalhotra@scpr.org.]

Nick Gerda contributed to this report.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced several significant rule changes for the 99th Oscars, including AI protections for actors and writers as well as expanded eligibility for international films.

In a statement to NPR, the Academy on Saturday said the changes are in response to listening to the global filmmaking community and addressing barriers to entry in its eligibility process.

The Academy added that its rules and eligibility standards have always evolved alongside technologies such as sound, color, and CGI, and that AI is no different. Awards rules and guidelines are reviewed and refined each year.

A blow for Tilly Norwood 

Among the most noteworthy changes, the Academy now explicitly states that only roles, "demonstrably performed by humans with their consent" are eligible for Acting awards. In other words, AI creations like the much-hyped Tilly Norwood cannot hope to win a Best Actress Oscar anytime soon.

Particle6, the production company behind Norwood, did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment on Saturday about its creations' ban from consideration. In March, Norwood commented, "Can't wait to go to the Oscars!" in an Instagram post announcing its newly released music video.

The Academy also requires screenplays to be "human-authored" and said it reserved the right to investigate the use of generative AI in any submission.

Meanwhile, qualifying flesh-and-blood human actors can now be nominated for multiple performances in the same category if those performances get enough votes to land in the top five. So, someone like Anne Hathaway, who has five major movies scheduled for release in 2026, could now theoretically sweep the nominations – though that outcome seems extremely unlikely.

"If an actor has an extremely prolific year, might we even see someone swallow up three of the five nominations?," wrote Deadline's awards columnist and chief film critic Pete Hammond about the changes. "Probably won't happen, but it's now possible."

Under previous rules, an actor could only receive one nomination per category. If they had two high-ranking performances in Best Actor, for example, only the one with the most votes would move forward.

International films prioritizes filmmakers over countries

While international films can still be the official selection of their countries, now they can qualify by winning the top prize at a major international festival such as the Palme d'Or at Cannes, the Golden Lion at Venice, or the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.

Historically, countries "owned" the nomination, and only one film per country was allowed. The new rules allow multiple films from the same country to compete if they are critically acclaimed, and it shifts the honor from a geopolitical entity to the filmmakers themselves.

Largely positive response

The changes have prompted a largely positive reaction from the film community on social media, such as on the popular The Shade Room entertainment and celebrity-focused Instagram feed, where commenters widely praised the "human-only" move to protect creative jobs.

The Academy's Awards Committee oversees the rules in tandem with branch executive committees, the International Feature Film Executive Committee and the Scientific and Technical Awards Executive Committee.

The rules are scheduled to go into effect next year, covering films released in 2026.

Copyright 2026 NPR

Los Angeles changes fast, and oftentimes that means some of the architectural relics of our shared past get swept up and paved over in all the "progress." (RIP Garden of Allah.)

But there are still places where you can find ruins that tell a tale, like a long-forgotten speakeasy reputedly for old Hollywood near La Crescenta.

The ruins are still there 

On a recent afternoon, author and local historian Mike Lawler led me just beyond the boundary of Crescenta Valley Park. Joggers like me might have seen an old, towering stone arch shrouded by bushes there — and wondered what lies beyond.

Turns out there was once a place called the Verdugo Lodge back there and Lawler has spent years excavating its history.

A car speeds away from the lodge onto New York Avenue. The stone archway that still stands can be seen in the background.

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“It was a very high-end speakeasy for a time,” Lawler, who also helps run the Historical Society of the Crescenta Valley, said. “An amazing thing. And all the ruins are still here, just like this arch.”

Lawler said we don’t know exactly when the lodge was built, but we do have some of the picture starting in the late 1920s. The place was set up kind of like a timeshare where people bought 10 x 10 foot ‘tent lots’ that gave them access to on-site amenities. There was a golf course, stables, trout stream, a swimming pool — and a lodge with gambling and alcohol.

“The Crescenta Valley in the teens and '20s was a hotbed of moonshine, prostitution, all that stuff," Lawler said. "It was a quiet little community. But in all these canyons up here, stuff was going on. Illegal stuff!”

We don’t have a full guest list, but Lawler said it’s likely at least a few Hollywood types had gone up to the lodge to circumvent Prohibition era laws.

In some ways, it was kind of like the original glamping. Lawler said patrons probably weren’t doing much sleeping, though.

“They might have been unconscious!” he said with a chuckle.

Lawler led me to a road that swooped around a meadow. We passed by a massive swimming pool nestled into the hillside.

Once known as the “Crystal Pool,” it’s now empty and fenced off, with pitch black locker rooms below.

The exterior of the locker rooms for the old Crystal Pool.

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We continued our journey up the hill and eventually arrived at a cascading stone stairway.

And at the top, the big show: overgrown with orange monkey flowers and goliath agaves lies the foundation of the old Verdugo Lodge, with lofty stone fireplaces the only guardians keeping the surrounding oak trees at bay.

Lawler takes out a floorplan that one of the former owners drew up for him.

“This is what it was laid out like on the inside. So a dancehall, and band stand on that side... And then upstairs was the gambling,” Lawler said.

Lawler had in hand a copy of a Los Angeles Times article from 1933 he found. The headline reads: “Revelers Flee in Lodge Raid.”

“The police that raided it were here at 3 o'clock in the morning. And there were still 500 people here. And they said it was the classiest joint they had ever raided... Anyway, people were diving out of windows and everything,” Lawler explained.

In a ruin like this, covered with moss and overgrowth, the imagination can run wild, too.

The archway that still stands outside of what's now known as Mountain Oaks.

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Lawler pointed out a questionable door jam below the old dancefloor that’s been cemented over.

“That is a door. So what is behind there? So there’s a room in there that got walled in for some reason,” he said.

What we do know is that, sometime after the raid, the tawdry Verdugo Lodge and the surrounding land were purchased and then renamed Mountain Oaks by the Kadletzes — an entrepreneurial family who had run everything from a Turkish bath to a mini golf course. Over the next few decades, the family would rent the place out to local groups for recreational retreats.

The future of Mountain Oaks 

After they sold it in the ‘60s, Lawler said Mountain Oaks faced a “nightmare” of development threats. Over the years, some of the subdivided "tent lots" had been combined and sold off, Lawler said. A dozen private homes now stand on these pieces of land, next to the ruins of the Verdugo Lodge.

A map showing the Mountain Oaks public property acquired by The Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA).

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Last year, with help from the City of Glendale, a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant among other funding sources, the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) put up $6.1 million to acquire 33-acres of the land — not including the private lots where the homes stand — so the public can continue to roam the meadow and ruins.

Paul Edelman, MRCA's director of natural resources and planning, said his group will continue to manage the land, doing things like brush clearance, trash pickup and sign maintenance. And he said there are no current plans to remove the ruins or make any major changes to the property.

“If somebody comes up with a grand idea where they can find some funding for us to do something to enhance it, we’re always open to it,” Edelman said.

The purchase was good news for local preservationist Joanna Linkchorst.

“I grew up directly up the hill. But I always saw the sign that said ‘private property’ and didn’t really think about it until several years ago when I finally asked Mike. And he said, ‘Oh yeah, we got a resort speakeasy down the street,’” Linkchorst said standing among the oaks and overgrowth.

Linkchorst, who founded the group Friends of Rockhaven to preserve another nearby historic site, said it’s been amazing to see all of the decaying structures that were still hiding out at Mountain Oaks.

“There’s almost like these little ghosts in your head as you imagine what it was like when there was a beautiful wood floor and there was a second floor that people came jumping out of,” Linkchorst said.

Now, let’s check in to the Overlook Hotel.

That’s the fictional place Stanley Kubrick brought to life in his 1980 film The Shining, loosely based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name.

A local architect who hails from South Pasadena meticulously crafted a 3D model of the iconic space so Shining fans everywhere never have to check out.

‘I just couldn’t stop’ 

At his day job, architect Anthony Chieh mainly works on residential and boutique commercial spaces. But over the course of five months, he spent his nights meticulously recreating a virtual replica of the Overlook Hotel from the film that first scared him when he was 12.

Of course he started with the deeply haunted Room 237. That’s where Jack Torrance, played by Jack Nicholson, has a terrifying encounter with a ghostly woman.

Chieh's 3D rendering of Room 237

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Anthony Chieh

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“But once I started, I just couldn’t stop,” Chieh told LAist.

“I ended up modeling the Colorado Lounge, and then after that I was thinking maybe I should make the lobby and then arriving to the Gold Room, and then Grady’s bathroom.”

“It’s like a rabbit hole,” he said.

Users who download Chieh’s free 3D model can fly through all of those spaces, immersed in atmospheric sounds and music from the film.

“It’s interesting to dive into these kind of fictional environments and try to make sense of it,” Chieh said. “And the hope is people will get a different perspective once they’re in there.”

Kubrick’s take on the Overlook was famously inspired by real hotels like the Timberline Lodge in Oregon and the Ahwahnee in Yosemite. But the interiors you see in the film were created on sound stages in England.

“Real architecture, physical buildings, are built for people to live. And for movies, these are more meant to express the emotional aspect of things. It’s a psychological construct,” Chieh said.

In a recently published video essay on YouTube, Chieh dives deep into those psychological constructs and how, as he puts it, “Kubrick designed the Overlook Hotel not as a backdrop, but as the film's true villain.”

How spaces scare 

Chieh said during the monthslong process he was reminded of the power of architecture and design in the real world too – whether it’s an uncomfortably repetitive carpet design or a claustrophobic hallway.

“A physical construct can affect your emotion,” Chieh said.

“You can use it in a way to make people feel comfortable and you can also use it in a way to create fear.”

Chieh's 3D rendering of the Torrance's apartment in 'The Shining'

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What’s next for this architect moonlighting as a 3D modeler?

Chieh says he’s thinking about giving the spaceship from “2001: A Space Odyssey" the virtual treatment next. Or maybe turning to a local non-fictional space, like the Stahl House.

That is, of course, if he can ever escape the Overlook.