The Brief

L.A. officials moved forward with an encampment clearing in Hollywood on Friday, after payment problems to homeless service providers caused a week-and-a-half delay. Over 25 people accepted motel rooms from the encampment as part of Mayor Karen Bass’ Inside Safe program, according to a spokesperson for the mayor.

An LAist reporter was there for the first hour of the operation in front of the Sunset Sound recording studio early Friday, and spoke with unhoused people, Mayor Karen Bass and other city officials.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (second from left) at the encampment operation in front of Sunset Sound in Hollywood on Friday, May 31, 2024.

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Unhoused people said they were feeling hopeful and looking forward to moving indoors.

“I'm pretty excited about this. This is looking pretty promising,” said Sean Caffey, a sculptor and cancer survivor who’s been living on the streets with his dog. He was missing almost all of his teeth, and said they were knocked out when he was beaten up by people who stole his sculpting tools.

“It's harder than you think to get housing,” he said. “I've been trying to get a house for like a minute, like at least a year.” Bass told him the city would make sure he gets dental care.

“I'm excited to shower and to have a bed and clean clothes,” said another man, who gave his first name as Adam and didn’t provide a last name.

Bass was there for over an hour, going tent to tent to talk with unhoused people, as well as outreach workers and reporters, and waved goodbye to the first bus of unhoused people who left for the motels.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass waves to the first bus of unhoused people leaving an encampment in front of Sunset Sound in Hollywood and heading to city-provided motel rooms on May 31, 2024.

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“No human being should live like this,” the mayor said of the city’s encampments.

“Even though it takes a while [to move people indoors], and even though it's expensive, it is far more expensive in terms of human lives compromised, and in terms of the businesses, the safety, everything else, to leave people on the street,” she added.

Bass announced to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce earlier this week that a series of large encampments in the area would be going away over the next month.

A worker removes items from an encampment in front of Sunset Sound in Hollywood on Friday, May 31, 2024, after unhoused people began to be bused to motel rooms.

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How many people have come inside under the mayor’s program? 

Bass acknowledged challenges around service providers being stretched to their limits, which the nonprofits say stems from being shortchanged and paid late by the city and county’s homelessness agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“We've been working so fast, we've done so many of these [Inside Safe operations], that we've really pushed to the limit the community based organizations,” Bass told reporters Friday.

L.A.’s homeless population has surged in recent years, with the latest count showing 32,680 people living outdoors. The latest report posted by the city, with data through March 15, shows the Inside Safe program has brought 2,482 people indoors since the mayor started it in December 2022. Among them, the report says 78% are still sheltered or housed.

As part of the current fiscal year budget, approved a year ago, the city council required two data reports about Inside Safe each month. The latest report on the city’s website is two months old.

Judge David O. Carter has scheduled a hearing for next Thursday to press for more frequent public updates about Inside Safe spending. Carter is overseeing L.A.’s biggest homelessness case, in which downtown business and property owners are pushing for faster city action to shelter people and clear encampments.

A delay over payment problems

The Hollywood encampment clearing was delayed by a week and a half over late payments by the city and county’s joint homeless services agency — a problem that exploded into public view recently.

At the county Board of Supervisors’ meeting last week, multiple homeless services providers said they have to take out loans, and are at risk of not being able to pay their staff, due to delayed payments from the agency for contracted services. They warned officials last week that they’re at the “breaking point” over the problem and faced possible cuts to staff and services. The supervisors and Mayor Bass vowed to work quickly to fix the issue.

The Sunset Sound operation was scheduled for last Tuesday, but the nonprofit that would serve people at motels indicated it would be unable to serve people at the motels because of the payment delays by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

That issue has since been worked out, according to PATH and city officials.

LAist asked the mayor about the payment problems delaying Friday’s operation.

“This system is broken in a lot of different ways, and it has been for years. What I believed when I came in office, and I believe today, this is an emergency. We have to get people off the streets immediately, while at the same time we're fixing the system,” she responded.

“But we did come to a little bit of a crisis point, because again we had stretched the system so far. So we had to take a step back for a minute, fix the financing, make sure that the community based organizations got their payments.”

What services will people receive?

The people who accepted motel rooms Friday were bused to two motels served by PATH under a city-funded contract.

There, people will get three meals a day, on-site security and have access to case managers on site every day from 7 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., said Sasha Morozov, who oversees that work as PATH’s regional director.

The case managers, she told LAist, build relationships and help people with what they need, like getting an ID and other documents together to qualify for permanent housing, or access to a vaccine for their pet.

“Our goal at PATH is to end homelessness,” she said. “That's our mission.”

A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms.

Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government's standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other future statistics used for redrawing voting districts, enforcing civil rights protections and guiding policymaking.

Those standards were last revised in 2024 during the Biden administration, after Census Bureau research and public discussion.

A White House agency at the time approved, among other changes, new checkboxes for "Middle Eastern or North African" and "Hispanic or Latino" under a reformatted question that asks survey participants: "What is your race and/or ethnicity?" The revisions also require the federal government to stop automatically categorizing people who identify with Middle Eastern or North African groups as white.

But at a Friday meeting of the Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics in Washington, D.C., the chief statistician within the White House's Office of Management and Budget revealed that the Trump administration has started a new review of those standards and how the 2024 revisions were approved.

"We're still at the very beginning of a review. And this, again, is not prejudging any particular outcome. I think we just wanted to be able to take a look at the process and decide where we wanted to end up on a number of these questions," said Mark Calabria. "I've certainly heard a wide range of views within the administration. So it's just premature to say where we'll end up."

OMB's press office did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment.

Calabria's comments mark the first public confirmation that Trump officials are considering the possibility of not using the latest racial and ethnic category changes and other revisions. They come amid the administration's attack on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, a push to stop producing data that could protect the rights of transgender people and threats to the reliability of federal statistics.

In September, OMB said those Biden-era revisions "continue to be in effect" when it announced a six-month extension to the 2029 deadline for federal agencies to follow the new standards when collecting data on race and ethnicity.

Calabria said the delay gave agencies more time to implement the changes "while we review."

The first Trump administration stalled the process for revising the racial and ethnic data standards in time for the 2020 census.

The "Project 2025" policy agenda released by The Heritage Foundation, the conservative, D.C.-based think tank, called for a Republican administration to "thoroughly review any changes" to census race and ethnicity questions because of "concerns among conservatives that the data under Biden Administration proposals could be skewed to bolster progressive political agendas."

Advocates of the changes, however, see the new categories and other revisions as long-needed updates to better reflect people's identities.

"At stake is a more accurate and deeper understanding of the communities that comprise our country," says Meeta Anand, senior director of census and data equity at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "I am not concerned if it's reviewed in an honest attempt to understand what the process was. I am concerned if it's for a predetermined outcome that would be to ignore the entire process that was done in a very transparent manner."

Edited by Benjamin Swasey
Copyright 2025 NPR

A large black bear that was relocated earlier this year after being found under a house in Altadena is up to his old tricks again.

The bear, nicknamed Barry by the neighbors, was found last week under a different Altadena home, and wildlife officials are using a caramel- and cherry-scented lure to entice the roughly 550-pound male bear out of his hiding spot.

So far, they’ve been unsuccessful.

Cort Klopping, information specialist with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, told LAist the bear seems to be spooked by increased activity around the home, including media crews outside and helicopters overhead.

“It seems as though in this case, this bear has found this poor guy's crawlspace as a comfortable, safe-seeming, warm enclosure for denning purposes,” he said.

He said the space is “somewhere for this bear to kind of hang its hat when it's relaxing.”

How the bear returned

Wildlife officials can tell it’s the same bear who was lured out from under an Altadena house after the Eaton Fire because of the tag number on his ear.

The bear was trapped and relocated about 10 miles away to the Angeles National Forest in January, but Klopping said he’s been back in the Altadena area for around five months.

The male bear after it was removed from under an Altadena home earlier this year.

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The bear spooked a SoCal Gas crew who stopped by for repairs after the Eaton Fire in January.

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The Department of Fish and Wildlife fitted the bear with a temporary GPS collar so officials could keep track of it. The collar came off a couple months later while the animal still was living in the forest.

The bear is believed to have been spotted around the home last Tuesday, Klopping said, and the owner reached out to wildlife officials a few days later for help.

“I’ve seen pictures of this bear, and I’m shocked to be under that house,” homeowner Ken Johnson told LAist media partner CBS LA.

Officials said they were hopeful the bear would move along on its own. They encouraged the homeowner to set up a camera on the crawlspace and line the area with ammonia soaked-rags or a motion-activated wildlife sprinkler system to deter the bear from returning, Klopping said.

“These are all actions that would not harm the bear, not harm people, but they would make it less comfortable for the bear to be there,” he said.

But the bear stayed put.

“Right now, it seems like it's stressed,” Klopping said. “It seems like it's scared, and therefore, it's not really wanting to leave the security of where it is at the moment.”

The hope ahead

A pair of wildlife officials stopped by the home Thursday to set up the sweet-smelling lure and camera so the department can keep an eye on the bear’s activity remotely.

Barry didn’t take the bait immediately, Klopping said, but officials are hopeful the animal will feel more comfortable leaving the crawlspace once activity around the home dies down a bit.

Klopping also is warning people in the area to secure access points on their property so the bear just doesn’t move in there next.

“If I were in that neighborhood, I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that my crawlspaces would not be accessible,” he said, including covering it with something stronger than the wire mesh the bear got through before.

Bears also are extremely food motivated, and Klopping said they can smell your leftover chicken in trash cans on the curb from 5 miles away.

He encouraged residents to be mindful of trash that could be an easy meal for wildlife, as well as pet food and hummingbird feeders, which Klopping said biologists have seen bears drink “like a soda.”

You can find tips on how to handle a bear in your backyard here and resources from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife here.

There’s a new way you can track pollution in your neighborhood.

The SoCal Clean Manufacturing Coalition, a climate advocacy group, has released a map with the locations of more than 1,800 fossil fuel-burning industrial boilers across Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties. Many are at universities and hospitals, as well as some apartment complexes like the Park La Brea apartments in the Miracle Mile.

The map is part of an effort to push the South Coast Air Quality Management District, which regulates our air quality, to pass rules to require these large boilers to be phased out.

Why do these boilers matter?

Industrial boilers aren’t exactly the poster child of pollution, but they do play a role in Southern California. Boilers come in different sizes, and although there are electric types, many still burn fossil fuels to generate hot water, steam and, as a byproduct, nitrogen oxide.

South Coast AQMD says that makes it a source of pollutants. Nitrogen oxide contributors are not only a problem for smog and respiratory issues but also for the agency’s effort to meet federal air quality standards.

That’s why last year the agency approved new requirements for certain buildings to use zero-emission water heaters and boilers when they need replacement.

Teresa Cheng,  California director for Industrious Labs, a coalition member focused on creating cleaner industries, says these rules were for smaller “baby boilers” and that the coalition wants to see that applied to larger ones, which are covered under the agency’s 1146 and 1146.1 rule.

The push has caused concern in the gas industry. The California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, which represents small fuel retailers and industry suppliers, says boilers are essential in a wide range of manufacturing facilities that need high heat, like food processing, fuel production and more.

“CFCA is deeply concerned that requiring industrial facilities to abandon gas-fired boilers at the end of their useful life before the market is technologically or economically ready will still have severe consequences for manufacturers, workers and consumers,” the alliance said in a statement.

The organization says many facilities already have invested in “ultra-low” nitrogen oxide technology and that requiring a switch to zero-emissions equipment could destabilize the industry because of costs.

See the map

The map includes the number of boilers in each place, including how many aging units, and their permitted heating capacity. (That metric essentially correlates with how much pollution it can release.)

Cheng says the map is being shared to make the “invisible visible” so residents can know what’s around them. Most boilers are in communities that already deal with environmental pollution problems.

Boilers are even close to K-12 schools, like Glendale’s Herbert Hoover High School, which has its own.

“ These boilers have a very long lifeline,” she said. “If the air district doesn't pass zero-emissions rules for these boilers, we actually risk locking in decades more of pollution.”