The Brief

L.A. County officials are concerned that major cuts could be coming to federal money that houses people in the region following a meeting with a high-ranking Trump administration appointee and a new executive order from the president.

This comes as county leaders say they're already facing a perfect storm of local, state and federal funding reductions to the social safety net.

President Donald Trump’s order last Thursday calls for prioritizing housing grants to states and local agencies based on whether they’re enforcing — to the maximum level legally allowed — bans on urban camping, loitering, open use of illegal drugs and urban squatting.

A meeting two days earlier underscored that L.A.’s housing funding is at risk, county officials say. At the meeting, a Trump appointee at the federal housing agency said he would be recommending the president “defund” Los Angeles, according to Amy Perkins, a county official at the meeting. The appointee emphasized that he believes L.A. is failing to do enough enforcement, Perkins said.

In an interview with LAist, Perkins said the comments were by William Spencer, the regional administrator for California and other states at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The department funds billions each year in housing subsidies and services across L.A. County.

According to Perkins, Spencer told her, “Mr. Trump will make all the decisions here. But I just want you to know, when he asks me for my recommendation — and he will — I will tell him to defund Los Angeles.”

Spencer did express support for continuing funding for housing specific populations, Perkins said: veterans, women with children, people with disabilities and existing housing voucher programs for youth.

But Spencer said L.A. was housing people who don’t need it, and disagreed with drug and alcohol use being considered a disability — saying drug use is “bad choices” and not a disability, according to Perkins.

Perkins, who is the top housing and homelessness advisor to L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, said two staff members from her office were taking notes during the meeting about what was said.

Spencer has not responded to voicemails from LAist requesting comment. A HUD spokesperson said the department “has not made any official comment on the matter.”

Perkins said a theme in Spencer’s remarks was his view that L.A. doesn’t want to enforce laws. She said Spencer didn’t specify what exactly he wanted to see L.A. do differently on enforcement.

Perkins said she noted that citations are being written in L.A. for people being on streets, and asked what enforcement would look like for Spencer. He did not have an answer, she said.

“There wasn't something that he said, even when I tried to talk through enforcement,” Perkins told LAist. “I literally was waiting with [a] pen in my hand for one small suggestion. There was none.”

Spencer was critical of housing subsidies for people who use drugs, according to Perkins, saying L.A. wants “to house people who make bad choices and use drugs.”

According to Perkins, Spencer also said people need to work and L.A. keeps subsidizing housing for people who don’t really need it.

Perkins said Spencer’s remarks underscored the risk of federal funding cuts to local housing subsidies — on top of known cuts planned to programs — and that it’s important to prepare.

“I don’t think it can be understated how much all of the cuts that we’re seeing from this federal government will impact homelessness directly,” she told LAist.

Early in the meeting, Perkins said, Spencer expressed a desire for a mutual understanding that the country is $36 trillion in debt and needs to balance the budget.

Perkins said she responded that “we don’t think it should be balanced on the backs of the most oppressed, marginalized people in the country.”

Californians pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal funding, according to an often-cited analysis by the public policy research institute of the State University of New York. California paid $72 billion more than it received — the largest amount of any state — in the 2022 federal fiscal year, that analysis found.

Last Thursday, Perkins briefly mentioned the meeting with Spencer while she spoke at a live-streamed county discussion about upcoming funding cuts for housing and homelessness. LAist then followed up with requests to Spencer, HUD and Perkins for more details. Perkins ultimately agreed to an interview.

The potential impact

Trump’s executive order says it’s aimed at making communities safer by restoring public order and helping shifting people into longer-term institutional treatment.

“Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe,” the order states. “Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.”

The county’s chief executive says the executive order could cut funding for homeless services and housing in the county, which flows both through local housing authorities and federal Continuum of Care funding through the L.A. Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).

“That executive order, again, looks like there will be implications and ramifications for the work that we do in our homelessness services — basically that that funding will be cut or reduced in some shape, form or fashion,” said county CEO Fesia Davenport during a public presentation to county supervisors on Tuesday.

“We are looking at what I call a tidal wave of profound impacts, all hitting at the same time,” she said of the overall effects of federal funding cuts to Medicaid, the costs incurred from the January wildfires and the county’s $4 billion settlement of thousands of sexual abuse claims dating back decades.

Davenport said officials are currently preparing for how to disentangle federal money from county funding of housing and services in the event it's cut.

What the feds fund

HUD funding supported housing for about 259,000 people in L.A. County last year, according to the department’s data. That included about 176,000 people on housing choice vouchers.

Additionally, federal funding through HUD’s Continuum of Care program for homeless services currently serves over 10,000 housing units across L.A. County, according to LAHSA. That $220 million this fiscal year supports 9,204 units of permanent housing with services — 8,444 of which receive funding to support their rent — as well as 683 units of interim housing, according to LAHSA.

LAist reporting intern Vitus Larrieu contributed reporting to this article.

Singer-songwriter Dwight Yoakam has lived in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. But coming up during the 1980s in the clubs of L.A. and the San Fernando Valley, you might say his style is more California Country than anything.

Yoakam recently sold out The Roxy for a concert benefitting Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles. The 69-year-old musician and actor had a lot of backup from a younger generation of country acts.

He was joined on stage by Grammy-nominated people like Lukas Nelson — as in Willie’s son — guitar prodigy Marcus King and others.

Dwight Yoakam and Lukas Nelson (center) take the stage at The Roxy.

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“It’s flattering on a personal level that five artists of that generation would come and collaborate with me to do this. But more importantly it was gratifying to hear their response to the charitable cause of Children’s Hospital,” Yoakam said.

Yoakam and wife, Emily Joyce, had a very personal inspiration for organizing the benefit concert. In 2020, during the peak of COVID, their own infant son was seen at Children’s Hospital. They were relieved it was nothing, but an experience Emily relayed to Yoakam changed him.

“She heard the little boy behind in another recovery bed come to. Five or six. And his eyes opened — I guess his father was there with him at his bedside. And he said ‘Was I brave daddy?’ And I said: ‘Wow, it puts everything in life in quick perspective.’"

Yoakam said the experience stuck with Joyce so much that she was determined to put a benefit show together. And it was heartening having so many of his friends back him up for the "Rockin’ for the Kids" concert, Yoakam said. The night even had a surprise on-stage FaceTime call from actor Billy Bob Thornton. The actor and director — who cast Yoakam in his 1996 film Sling Blade — was originally scheduled to help emcee the event, but was stuck at an iced out movie shoot in New Jersey.

Los Angeles calling

Yoakam came out to the warm California sun in the late 70s, and it wasn’t long before he was gigging hard at long gone honky-tonks like The Palomino and The Corral in the San Fernando Valley.

“[I] spent a year of my life on the off nights [at The Corral] — let me tell you — that’s the real world,” Yoakam recalled. “The time I was out there doing, you know, five sets a night. You’d start at nine and end at two in the morning... And you know I really made my bones there.”

It wasn’t long before Yoakam’s California Country music was mixing and merging with a new scene in L.A. One that blended the punk rock ethos with the twang of country.

“The crossroads of time and place happened again in the early 80s with the quote ‘Cowpunk’ movement. A lot of them were punk rock bands. Like The Dills became Rank and File. The Plugz — with a Z — became Los Cruzados,” Yoakam said.

He would go on to share the bill with bands like X and The Blasters. And Yoakam was embraced by crowds of punk rockers too.

“I said, ‘You know what? We don’t have to play The Roundup out in the Valley, we don’t have to play just The Palomino. I said ‘We can go over the hill,’” he said.

Yoakam remembered it was Bill Bentley, a former music editor for the LA Weekly, who saw him performing at The Palomino and then invited him to play Club Lingerie on Sunset Blvd.

“That introduced me to a different audience. And then we started playing... the rock n’ roll side of the hill,” Yoakam said.

By 1986, Yoakam was playing at The Roxy for the record release party for “Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. Etc.” The live performance was recorded and included on later releases of the album.

“We did the record release party, 40 years ago in March, at The Roxy. It was kind of a full-circle moment. Interesting book-end, if you will, from 1986 to now,” Yoakam said.

Yoakam will play Ontario’s ONT Field on March 21, right before heading out on tour with ZZ Top.

Tickets are available via Ticketmaster.

Thousands more students joined walkouts Friday to protest the Trump administration’s militarized crackdown on immigrants, detainment of children and violence against U.S. citizens protesting the raids.

By mid-afternoon, nearly 12,500 students from more than 85 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District had walked out, according to a district spokesperson. Hundreds of students in other districts — from Pasadena and the greater San Gabriel Valley to Orange County — also marched in their communities.

At Olive Vista Middle School in Sylmar, about 100 students—some as young as 11—walked out of their science, English, and math classes, then walked to a nearby park.

For many students, Friday’s walkout marks the first time they’ve ever participated in a protest. And after months of watching federal immigration agents violently detain people on social media, the students told LAist that protesting — on behalf of their communities and in honor of Renee Good and Alex Pretti — filled them with a sense of freedom and power.

Isaac, a seventh grader, walked out of science class.

“This felt like I was breaking out of some sort of chamber,” he told LAist. “I felt like I was being free for once.”

Many of the 12-year-old’s family members are from Mexico and he’s been worried about what could happen if they’re detained.

“I'm standing up for my family and my friends, our community, really,” he said. “The most we [can] do is what we're doing right now.”

After months of being scared every time his parents go to work, Isaac said the protest was a type of salve.

“It makes us feel better,” he said. “It makes us stronger.”

M, right, is a sixth grader at Olive Vista and organized the school's walkout.

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How to organize a middle school

A few weeks ago, M, an 11-year-old sixth grader at Olive Vista Middle School, asked her mom, Maritza Ocegueda, why students in Minnesota and elsewhere were walking out of school. LAist has agreed to refer to her solely by her first initial, after her mom raised concerns for her safety.

Ocegueda shared with her daughter that she walked out of Van Nuys High School as a junior in 2006 to protest proposed federal immigration legislation. Nearly 40,000 students from across Southern California joined the movement.

“ I was floored,” Ocegueda said. “It inspires me and gives me that little bit of hope… Maybe we can make a change.”

M decided to organize a walkout at her school concurrently with other students in the community. 

She made several lunchtime announcements about a walkout on Friday, Feb. 6 at 10:24 a.m.

“If you'd like to join, please come over here and if you have any questions, just ask me.”

Those announcements did not come easily to M, who is soft spoken and admittedly shy. “ I try to be the bravest I can,” she said. “ I want [my classmates] to understand how serious this [is] … [The federal government is not] letting people be themselves, like, they can't go to Home Depot without feeling unsafe.”

M, and several other students said some teachers and administrators discouraged their organizing. M said at one point she was pulled out of class for more than an hour to talk about the walkout.

“ One of the things I told the school [is] you dropped the ball because this is a learning moment,” Ocegueda said. However, she said she’s open to more conversations with school and district leaders on how to support students.

Maritza Ocegueda's daughter M organized Olive Vista Middle School's walkout. She said she's active in the community passing out food and clothes to unhoused neighbors and helping other people connect with resources.

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A Los Angeles Unified School District spokesperson provided a statement that said students were informed that walkouts are not school-sponsored, there are spaces on campus for students to exercise their freedom of speech and that they would be marked absent for missed class periods. A similar message was posted to the school’s Facebook page Thursday afternoon.

“Administrators routinely meet with students to share safety information and clarify options for on-campus expression—not to threaten or discipline,” the statement read. “Leaving campus during instructional time without permission is discouraged; that message is about safety and supervision, not suppressing speech.”

M said that other teachers were more supportive and helped her spread the word about the walkout to other students.

“ What I've learned is students should not have to come protest 'cause that's what the adults should be doing,” M said. “Adults should know better to help out the community and students should not have to come out.”

Honks of support 

By mid-morning, students began to trickle out of Olive Vista.

As students joined the group of young activists, those already outside cheered and passing cars honked their horns in support. One SUV had a Mexican flag poking out of the sunroof.

Out by the curb, some of their parents, including M’s mom, were waiting. The adults encouraged the students to stick together and made sure the group waited for the light to turn before crossing the street to Sylmar Park.

" What's in my heart is that my parents are Mexican and I wanna support," said Jayden, an Olive Vista 6th grader.

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Once they gathered, the middle schoolers marched to a nearby park, carrying homemade signs and flags of Latin America.

One student turned to a friend and nervously quipped: “I just really hope we don’t get shot or tear gassed.”

‘They don't understand how much we love our parents.’

In conversation with LAist, multiple students said they live in fear of being separated from their families. They also worry that their parents could be mistreated if they are detained by federal agents.

Eleven-year-old Alejandro, for instance, usually goes to Sylmar Park to play baseball. Today, he said, he went to the protest to honor his mom and dad, Mexican immigrants from the states of Michoacán and Jalisco.

To critics who think he should have stayed in class, he said: “They don't understand how much we love our parents.”

“I just don't like how Donald Trump is calling us ‘animals,’ when we're the ones working our asses off to live paycheck to paycheck, while he's up there sitting in his chair throwing out orders at Kristi Noem,” said eighth-grader Jesús, referring to the Secretary of Homeland Security.

The 13-year-old had his family and his neighbors in mind during the protest, along with 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, whose deportation the federal government is working to expedite.

“The little boy who was captured with his little bunny hat, he was captured and he was sent to prison,” Jesús noted. “And that's just crazy, because how are you going to let a little kid inside a prison?”

The federal immigration activity in the San Fernando Valley has also left him feeling nervous, even when he is on campus. “I'm trying to study and then I just get reminded: maybe there's somebody waiting outside to take us.”

Sixth grader Sophia’ said she walked out for her grandmother who’s from Mexico. "I wanna represent our people and show that we aren't bad," Sophia said. "We are actually, like, a great community."

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As the students chanted and waved their signs, adults passed out snacks, water and pizza purchased with money donated from the community.

“They're here with clear intentions and they're here for a purpose,” said Michelle, the parent of another young protestor who requested LAist only use her first name. “I’m just proud of them.”

M, the organizer, said she wouldn’t have used that term to describe herself before the protest.

“Now that I'm looking at myself, I do see myself as a helper,” M said. She plans to continue helping her community, for example by distributing food and clothes to unhoused neighbors.

And she has some advice for any aspiring student organizers.

“ I was a shy kid, so I want them to be brave and speak up,” M said.

She said she planned to finish up the day at school after she ate.

Topline:

Why it matters: King Taco helped establish the template for the modern L.A. taqueria — shifting the city's understanding of tacos from the hard-shell, Americanized version to soft tortillas filled with carne asada, carnitas and tacos al pastor. As the late food critic Jonathan Gold noted, King Taco "solidified what we all think of as the modern Los Angeles taco sensibility."

Why now: The nomination comes as part of the city's ongoing effort to recognize Latino cultural landmarks.

The backstory: Founder Raul Martinez launched King Taco from a converted ice cream truck in 1974, eventually opening the Cypress Park brick-and-mortar location that became the chain's flagship. The business grew to 24 locations across Southern California, becoming a model for immigrant entrepreneurship and establishing key Mexican dishes like tacos al pastor and carnitas as L.A. staples.

What's next: The Cultural Heritage Commission will determine whether King Taco's original location retains sufficient historic integrity and continues to convey its cultural significance. If approved, King Taco would become one of the few designated restaurant landmarks recognizing Latino culinary contributions.