The Brief

California lawmakers are preparing for a historic surge in federal funding for affordable housing construction, a tsunami of subsidy that advocates say could as much as double the number of low-rent units produced by the state over the next decade.

It comes from an unlikely source.

Buried deep among the cuts to social services in President Donald Trump’s signature spending package, the One Big Beautiful Bill, is an increase in support for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit that affordable housing advocates have sought for years. Those tax credits are the most important federal funding available for affordable housing, and they’re used in low-income projects throughout California.

Exactly how much difference this boost will make in the Golden State depends on many factors, including tariffs, labor costs, state funding, and more. But experts agree the change could help California build thousands more affordable homes each year.

“It’s a very big deal,” said Matt Schwartz, president and CEO of the affordable housing nonprofit California Housing Partnership. “These provisions are a huge shot in the arm for an affordable housing field that has been suffering under exhausted state resources.”

It's no wonder those provisions haven’t gotten much public attention. The federal law, which Trump signed on July 4, extends and expands tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the richest and adds trillions to the federal debt while imposing historic spending cuts to Medicaid, other patches of the social safety net and clean energy programs over the next decade. For California’s Democratic leadership and its liberal-leaning electorate, there isn’t much to love and plenty to hate.

“From a California perspective, there have certainly been a lot of concerns with that bill,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, which advocates for affordable housing development.

But the spending package gives affordable housing boosters something to celebrate, even if many in blue California are reluctant to do so publicly.

Because the expansion to the tax credit program, part of a preexisting bill, was folded into the broader package, “the federal government has given us a green light to double production,” said Pearl.

Last week, the state committee that oversees these credits approved changes to its application process that incentivize developers to take advantage of the new federal policy.

What exactly do tax credits have to do with affordable housing?

Rather than fund public housing construction directly like it used to, the federal government rerouted most of its affordable housing funds through the tax code beginning in the 1980s. These tax credits are issued by states to affordable developers, who then sell them on to deep-pocketed banks, insurance companies and other financial behemoths, trading tax cuts for ownership shares in affordable housing projects.

It’s a financial Rube Goldberg machine, and it’s everywhere. If there’s an apartment project designated for unhoused people or low-income tenants in your neighborhood, chances are tax credits helped get it off the ground.

The credits come in two basic flavors. Both are getting a major boost under the new federal law.

One credit lets its owners write roughly 9% of the cost of construction on a project off their tax bill each year for 10 years. Those 9% credits are doled out by the federal government to the states, who then turn around and award them to developers. There are always more qualifying projects than there are credits to fund them, especially in California. The Trump-backed spending package boosts the total number of these credits by 12% each year indefinitely.

The other type of credit, the 4% credit, doesn’t come with a cap, which means it is technically available to any developer who qualifies. How a developer qualifies is the rub. Historically, an affordable project needs to cover half of its costs with particular tax-exempt bonds — which, like the 9% credits, are in short supply — to make full use of the 4% credits. The federal bill reduces that requirement, so that a project only needs to cover a quarter of its cost with the bonds.

“The bottom line is the federal government is making additional tax credits and bond capacity available,” Pearl said, “which is one of the biggest things you need to produce affordable housing nationwide, and especially in California.”

The state receives more requests for bond financing each year than it can grant, said Marina Wiant, executive director of the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee. Her committee last week voted to change its application to line up with the new federal requirements — reducing the percentage of a new project that must be financed via bonds, and allowing projects already approved to reduce their bond financing. That lower threshold means there will be more bond money to go around, and more projects will get funded, she said.

“There are a lot of projects still in the queue that are waiting for bond financing,” Wiant said. “So this immediate change will have a pretty immediate impact this fall.”

How did this affordable housing boost get into Trump’s spending plan in the first place?

Schwartz’s group and others have been fighting for this tax credit increase for years, garnering bipartisan support along the way, he said. Republican lawmakers tend to view tax credits as a “good kind of subsidy,” he said. Because they are used by corporations, they are more palatable than food stamps and other direct assistance that are viewed as handouts.

Just how much could these new tax credits help? That depends on who you ask.

The changes in policy could fund the construction of an extra 1.22 million affordable rental units nationwide over the next 10 years, according to an estimate by the accounting firm Novogradac. That works out to roughly 20,000 extra units per year in California.

But many things could get in the way. If the cost of building goes up because of tariffs, increased labor costs or interest rate hikes, developers might decide not to use the tax credits. Trump’s spending package also keeps corporate tax rates low, which could reduce the value of the housing tax credits.

And, because housing is so expensive to build in California, most projects can’t rely solely on tax credits — they need other local and state funding, too. But that funding is in short supply. Extra money given out during the COVID-19 pandemic has dried up. A statewide $20 billion affordable housing bond was set to go before voters last year, but it was pulled off the ballot amid fears it would fail.

As a result, Schwartz estimates California will see closer to 10,000 new low-income homes built per year as a result of these extra tax credits, not 20,000.

“I think it’s going to take us a couple of years to ramp up,” he said.

Another potential obstacle: The cuts Trump’s spending package imposes on other areas — including the cuts to Medicaid that are expected to result in 3.4 million Californians losing coverage over the next 10 years — could exacerbate poverty for many people and undermine the benefits of the tax credits.

“It’s a tremendous irony,” Schwartz said, “that (the tax credit increase) was in this incredibly harmful ‘big ugly bill,’ as we call it.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

This story first appeared in the Boyle Heights Beat.

Air regulators on Thursday ordered Lineage Logistics to strengthen odor-control measures, expand air monitoring and improve communication with residents as cleanup of the burned warehouse continues.

The South Coast Air Quality Management District hearing board unanimously approved an abatement order on the second day of a public hearing into a series of air quality violations tied to the June fire in Boyle Heights.

The board did not require Lineage to pay any financial penalties, which several elected officials, including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, had requested in light of the numerous air quality violations it had been issued.

Lineage is required, among other things, to:

• Each day remove 10%, or about 8.8 million pounds, of the food waste stored in the facility at the time of the fire; 
• Conduct more monitoring for airborne pollutants further from the warehouse; 
• Increase communication with the community, including providing updates on the cleanup in Spanish.

Many of the order’s requirements had already been implemented at the site, Lineage representatives said, while the community communication plan and increased air quality monitoring is expected to happen within five days.

Representatives for AQMD said the order was designed to strike a balance between swift food waste removal and work to control the odors plaguing the community. AQMD focuses specifically on air pollution regulation.

Dominic DiCarlo, Lineage’s vice president of global safety and compliance, said that he believes all of the rotting bulk food items will be removed by next week, without citing a specific date. He added that it would take another week to remove the rest of the material and fully disinfect the facility.

Bass ordered that all biohazard food waste be removed from the facility by Aug. 14. It’s unclear if Lineage will meet the mayor’s deadline.

DiCarlo said the company expects to spend between $80 million and $100 million on the cleanup and remediation of the burn site. He claims that about 80% of the approximately 88 million pounds of food stored at the facility has been removed to about 10 landfills and recycling facilities in Southern California and Arizona.

“This order will ensure that there are enforceable conditions on [Lineage] as it completes this cleanup project, which will minimize odor impacts on the community and expedite removal of food waste which is the source of these odors,” said Josephine Lee, senior deputy counsel for AQMD.

A new guide from a group of local scientists helps Angelenos affected by the 2025 L.A. fires navigate questions about soil testing and clean up.

The guidelines are based on soil tests conducted by USC CLEAN and Community Action Project Los Angeles on more than 6,000 lots in and around burn zones in the Pacific Palisades and Altadena.

Sujeet Rao, the health and well-being practice director at Public Exchange at USC, who contributed to the guide, said it's a response to questions that he and other contributors knew residents had.

“We all came together … to help fire affected families understand and navigate questions they may have about environmental contamination related to the fires,” Rao said.

The guide includes information about soil contamination, testing, cleanup methods and ways to reduce your exposure risk.

The dangers of soil contamination

When the Eaton and Palisades fires burned down houses and garages, items including paint, kitchen appliances and car batteries released dangerous substances into the environment.

Exposure to these substances can increase the risk of respiratory, neurological and reproductive problems, as well as certain cancers.

Lead was the most common concern, according to the scientists’ testing.

Rao said that’s worrying because lead is a neurotoxin.

“What that means is that [for] especially young children whose brains are still developing or women who are pregnant, lead can affect the development of the brain,” Rao said.

Should you test your soil? 

Rao said it’s hard to say whether any specific property needs soil testing or cleanup, but gave some general guidelines.

If your house burned, definitely.

If you saw ash in the air, on the ground or otherwise near your house during the fires, get your soil tested.

If not, testing is likely unnecessary.

Other things to consider are the age of the houses that burned and their proximity to your property.

“We do know that if you’re in a neighborhood that has a lot of old housing, it is more likely that there is lead that could have been mobilized,” Rao said. “The inverse of that is, in the Palisades, we generally see much lower levels of lead contamination because the housing there tends to be so much newer.”

What to know about soil testing

The guide suggests two main options for going about testing.

One option is to hire specialists to come to your house to collect and test samples.

The other option is collect samples yourself and submit them to a testing program, such as USC CLEAN.

In the testing results, look for contaminant levels that exceed the residential limits set by the Environmental Protection Agency or the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

Both account for how the area is used, including whether children are playing outside or people are gardening.

Cleanup methods

If your soil test results are above the EPA or DTSC limits, the guide offers four main methods to clean it up.

1. Excavation: Removing the soil, throwing it out at a disposal facility and replacing it with clean soil.
2. Capping: Putting clean soil, gravel or another physical barrier between the contaminated soil and the people and animals who may come into contact with it.
3. Immobilization: Adding compost, phosphorus or other materials to stop the spread of contaminants.
4. Bioremediation: Putting plants, bacteria or fungi into the affected soil to break down biodegradable contaminants.

Some soil remediation can be paid for through insurance. Costs will depend on the size of your yard and which contaminants are present. The guide estimates that the least costly options are capping and immobilization, which can run around $10,000.

The full soil remediation guide is on the Consortium website.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is once more trying to limit the number of people who are born in the country who can become American citizens, in a sign that even after his first attempt at limiting birthright citizenship was rejected by the Supreme Court, he’s ready to try again.

The president said he was signing two executive actions on immigration, including one limiting the number of people eligible for U.S. citizenship after being born in the United States.

The written executive order released later Thursday was narrower in scope than the previous one shot down by the Supreme Court and appeared to focus on restricting automatic citizenship to specific categories of people, including children born to adults with connections to foreign embassies or organizations, as well as anyone considered an “alien enemy” of the United States.

It also aimed to restrict birthright citizenship to anyone whose parents “engaged in fraudulent activity to obtain citizenship.”

A second order seeks to curb what Trump called “birth tourism” by increasing restrictions on visitors to the U.S. who want to obtain visas to give birth while in the country.

Trump said he thought his latest actions would be constitutional.

“I thought we were going to win it at the Supreme Court. Unfortunately, we had a bad decision, very unfair decision. Our country suffers because of it and we’re ending it a different way,” Trump said.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s previous efforts to declare that children born to people in the U.S. illegally or temporarily aren’t American citizens, and upheld a broad conception of birthright citizenship.

On Trump’s first day in office of his second term, he signed an executive order aimed at ending birthright citizenship, which allows anyone born in the United States to automatically become an American citizen.

Trump’s administration was immediately sued by opponents who said the executive order went against the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, which makes anyone born in the country a citizen, with very limited exceptions.

The executive order was blocked by several lower courts and never took effect.

In June, the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order by a 6-3 vote. But the vote was too close for many immigration advocates and legal observers who felt the legal question of birthright citizenship was a long-settled issue.

Just past the doorway at ALTO, off busy Ventura Boulevard in Studio City, the bar opens up under exposed post-and-beam ceilings, tanned cowhides hanging along the walls like abstract art.

Grab a seat at one of the small tables and settle in for the open-fire South American restaurant's new, more casual bar concept, where street food takes center stage from executive Chef Esteban Klenzi and co-founder Juana Castellanos.

In its first year, ALTO has already landed a spot in the Michelin Guide California.

One culture, two chefs

Both chefs came up through fine dining — including time in Spain's Basque Country — and watched their peers wear rigid, high-pressure kitchen culture as a badge of honor.

But Castellanos and Klenzi wanted something different.

For Klenzi, cooking is as much about feeling as it is about food — an idea his new bar menu extends directly.

"It's like cooking at home for my friends or my family," he said.

ALTO Co-Founder Chef Juana Castellanos and Executive Chef Esteban Klenzi.

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Courtesy ALTO

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Their connection runs deeper than the kitchen, though. Both chefs grew up around the Río de la Plata, the shared basin uniting Argentina and Uruguay into a single Rioplatense identity — once part of the same Spanish colonial territory before an 1828 treaty, brokered under British pressure, split them apart. Not unlike the Basque Country straddling Spain and France: one culture, divided by a border neither side chose.

What to order

The bar leans into what Klenzi calls the rotisserías tradition — the everyday, prepared-food spots common across Argentina. That shows up in the Tongue & Trout Roe Toast ($17): sous-vide beef tongue over brioche, finished with a celery-carrot vinaigrette and a crown of trout roe. It's a savory, briny bite, perfect for sharing to start the meal.

Close-up of two pieces of toast on a dark plate, each topped with ruffled, thin-sliced beef tongue tinted pale pink, scattered with chopped herbs and diced vegetables, and crowned with a generous mound of glistening orange roe.

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Soledad Recatume

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The Real Deal ($18) — ALTO's take on the classic choripán sandwich — pulls from the dinner menu, too: short rib and smoked pork, the same cuts used in the Asado Banderita and Pork Txuleta.

When the pair first sat down to design the menu, Klenzi found himself facing a deceptively simple question: "Should we make a burger? Or shall we make a choripán?"

They chose the choripán, prizing the way beef and pork together deliver, in his words, "the best flavor you can get from both of them." Lard from the pork chop trim adds richness; the short rib's fat keeps the sausage moist, with smokiness carried over from that same applewood-smoked chop.

For something heartier, there's the Banderita & Frites ($39): a thinner cut of short rib than its dinner-menu counterpart, seared on both sides.

Alongside it, try the smashed potatoes from Weiser Family Farms, cooked in the charcoal oven with beef tallow. Klenzi refuses to serve french fries — this is his answer instead, crisp outside, rich with tallow underneath.

What to drink

A pour from ALTO's Vermucito Experience, served over ice with soda water.

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Ever since I wrote about Spanish vermouth last month, I've been a magnet for the stuff — not complaining, especially during these warmer months. ALTO had me covered, though the serving style looked nothing like what I'm used to.

Unlike the Spanish and Italian style of an orange slice and olive, Argentine vermouth is served over ice with soda water — lighter, easier to drink.

A cozy corner of ALTO's dining room, where velvet chairs surround a wood-burning fireplace.

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Courtesy ALTO

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On the table: a trio from the Vermucito Experience — Las Flores blanco from Uruguay, and La Fuerza's rojo and sideral from Argentina, Malbec-based pours ranging from $12 to $22.

"When you pour it in the glass, it's almost red. It looks almost like a wine," Klenzi said of La Fuerza's rojo, made with Malbec. "You can really feel the pure essence of the Malbec wine."

The regular dinner menu is a great choice for a special night out. But the bar is for every other night — the "almost every day" Klenzi imagined when he decided a choripán, not a burger, was the answer.

"If we see your face every day, we're gonna take care of you every day," Klenzi said.