The Brief

The Los Angeles City Council on Friday approved an ordinance requiring hotels and short term rentals like those offered through AirBnb to obtain a police permit in order to operate.

Under the new ordinance, short term rental owners will have to submit information such as business and tax details and building and safety information to Los Angeles police to obtain a permit. Owners will also have to divulge any previous criminal history.

Proponents say the requirement will help the city better manage short term rentals and address public safety concerns over rental party houses, human trafficking, drug sales and prostitution. But opponents, including the Los Angeles Police Commission, small businesses and some hotel owners, say the permits will be too onerous.

To that end, Councilmember Marqueece Harris-Dawson requested a report within 45 days from the city attorney, housing and planning departments on an alternative to the police permit.

Issues with the police permit process

According to a report by the police commission, the new law is expected to push the current annual batch of about 5,000 permits to 14,000.

“Current staffing is insufficient to handle this additional burden,” the report states.

Ray Patel of the Northeast Los Angeles Hotel Owners also called the language regarding the requirements “vague.”

“The police department or the police commission can make those requirements up as time goes along,” he said. The ordinance, he added, puts the onus on the hotel owner for violations by a guest.

“What does the city do with a big building or even a limited service small building sitting in the middle of the town that is empty that can no longer operate as a hotel?” Patel said. “And from the owner's perspective, you know, if they had a loan on their mortgage, well, how are they going to pay that loan down now?”

Ed Colman, a 71-year-old who’s been an Airbnb short term rental host for nine years, said the police permitting process is unfair and would add “a whole other layer of bureaucracy.”

“I'm not open to the public. I'm not a hotel. I'm not like a hotel,” Colman said. “No one can walk off the street and rent the room in my home. It's by invitation only. These are our private residences by law. That's what the Home Sharing Ordinance states.”

Under the city’s Home-Sharing Ordinance, hosts have to submit a federal or state issued ID plus two forms of documentation showing that the home they want to rent out is their primary residence. Some of the criteria to get a permit also include no pending citations from law enforcement or city agencies. The permitting process also states that “hosts must not engage in any commercial uses for purposes of a party or an event.”

Colman said adding a police permit requirement to the list will just squeeze him even more.

“I've been living in this home for 40 years and I depend on the income from my guest room to allow me to remain in my home,” he said.

Heather Carson, co-founder of the Homeshare Alliance Los Angeles, said the city is already behind in issuing permits under Home Sharing Ordinance.

“The idea of adding an additional permit makes absolutely no sense when they can't even process the current permits properly,” she added.

The city council voted unanimously earlier in the week to move the proposal forward with the addendum, even though some members expressed concerns.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez said during a hearing on Tuesday that police permits work for some businesses that serve hundreds of people on a daily basis, but those aren’t the same as something like an Airbnb, “where someone would sleep for a couple of nights.”

And Councilmember John Lee, who echoed the concerns of the Asian American Hotel Association, said he thought the process of developing the ordinance had moved too quickly.

“Stakeholders have not been aware of this proposed expansion of the police permitting process until a few weeks ago,” he said.

How the police permit came about

The new ordinance was part of a deal that the city council struck with the local union, Unite Here Local 11, last month. Under the proposal, new hotel developers would be required to replace any housing that is demolished during construction, either by buying new housing or constructing new projects. Also included in the deal were provisions “to address nuisance hotels and prevent the use of short-term rentals as ‘party houses,’” according to council president Paul Krekorian’s office.

“We need hotels to welcome the thousands of visitors we receive, but new hotel construction cannot come at the cost of our current housing stock,” Krekorian said. “Irresponsible hotel and short-term rental operators cannot be allowed to endanger the public safety or impair the quality of life in our neighborhoods.”

The new deal between the council and the union is meant to replace a March 2024 ballot measure that would have required hotels to have vacant rooms made available for unhoused people.

Kurt Petersen, co-president of Unite Here Local 11, said the ballot measure was born out of members’ “inability to pay rent.”

“This replacement ordinance will replace that housing one for one at the same affordability levels, which means that no more housing will be displaced by luxury hotel developments,” he said. “And that's a major gain, not just for our members, obviously, but for all Angelenos.”

The police permit requirement for short term rentals and hotel owners, Petersen said, was included “to curb the abuse of Airbnb and others in taking housing that's meant to be for residents and illegally converting it into hotels.”

Airbnb did not immediately comment on the ordinance.

Teachers in Los Angeles are calling on community members to help students get safely to and from school. The request comes as the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign continues and as many campuses reopen.

For families in L.A. Unified, the new school year will begin on Wednesday, Aug. 12. Ahead of that date, educators this week held a news conference in front of the district’s headquarters in downtown L.A. where they announced two upcoming trainings: one for all school employees and another for community members at large.

“Our students are why we exist as educators. We owe them more than an education . . . We owe them a school where they feel safe to learn, to dream, to thrive — just like the children of those ICE agents, just like the children of those who are initiating these policies,” said Guadalupe Carrasco Cardona, a member of United Teachers of Los Angeles and an English language development coordinator at the Edward R. Roybal Learning Center in Westlake.

At the news conference, Cardona was joined by colleagues who form part of Unión del Barrio, a grassroots organization founded in San Diego. Armed with megaphones and walkie-talkies, volunteers patrol neighborhoods and warn community members about the presence of federal immigration agents.

Ron Gochez, a history teacher at Dr. Maya Angelou Community Senior High in South L.A., emphasized the context in which students must make their way to class. Last summer, the Supreme Court stayed a lower court order that barred federal agents from targeting people based on factors like perceived race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or “speaking English with an accent.” Critics say the majority effectively green lit racial profiling.

“This is not business as usual. The kids have suffered tremendously,” Gochez said, noting that some of his students’ family members and neighbors have been detained and deported.

“The way we keep students and parents safe, before school and after school, is by being on the streets,” added Ingrid Villeda, a teacher at 93rd Street Elementary in South L.A.

Villeda also urged Angelenos to continue documenting arrests with their phones.

“We need everyone out, and we need everyone ready to record,” she said.

Upcoming trainings  

• For the general public, there will be an in-person training at 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, at the United Teachers Los Angeles building. Address: 3303 Wilshire Blvd., 10th floor, Los Angeles

• For people who work at schools — including teachers, administrators, bus drivers, campus aides, custodians and office staff — there will be an online training at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 14. To participate, you must register online.

On Sept. 17, 2017, California Highway Patrol officer Nathaniel Partridge checked in his patrol car almost four hours before his shift ended and drove 35 miles home. That day, and on at least two other occasions, he was paid overtime for the hours he didn’t work.

Partridge wasn’t alone. Dozens of CHP officers at an East Los Angeles patrol division routinely did the same while working traffic enforcement details on highway construction sites. On paper, the practice had been forbidden for five years, but no one objected until a 2019 audit.

“I took the chance to go home and would fall on the consequence if I was called back,” Partridge told CHP investigators, according to court documents.

The result was the smallest patrol division in Southern California running up an overtime tab that was three times that of the region’s largest division, according to the internal audit. That finding led CHP to drop the hammer on the East LA station 2020, when it moved to dismiss dozens of officers, including Partridge.

This week, after Partridge’s case lingered for six years through state personnel hearings, a Justice Department investigation and trial court, a California appeals court found that a one-year suspension without pay was appropriate discipline, over the objections of the California Highway Patrol, which wanted him fired.

David Mastagni, Partridge’s lawyer, said the ruling “reflects fundamental fairness.”

“Accountability and second chances are not in conflict,” Mastagni said.

No one — not CHP administration, the personnel board, nor the officer himself — dispute what happened: Partridge was paid $288.98 for three hours and 45 minutes of overtime he didn’t work, which investigators alleged was part of a long-running grift at the East LA station to fabricate overtime hours.

Partridge and dozens of other officers were fired in 2020, according to the appeals court decision.

In February 2022, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a total of 302 criminal counts against 54 officers, alleging they had collectively defrauded the public of more than $200,000.

Those charges didn’t last long. In December 2022, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge offered the officers a deal: Their charges would be reduced from felonies to misdemeanors and then dismissed if they repaid the money.

Fifty-two officers took that deal, The Sacramento Bee reported at the time.

The Highway Patrol called Partridge's actions “inexcusable neglect of duty, dishonesty (and) misuse of state property” when the organization fired him. When Partridge appealed, the State Personnel Board said it was “self-enrichment at the expense of the public’s trust,” but handed down a one-year suspension instead.

Partridge’s bosses found that discipline insufficient, and the CHP asked a California district court judge to override the suspension and reinstate the firing, saying the personnel board abused its discretion in reducing the penalty. The judge denied that petition, siding with the personnel board.

According to his superiors quoted in court documents, Partridge was a good cop. His evaluations recommended him for promotion and his disciplinary record was clean. But the administration at the California Highway Patrol argued at the State Personnel Board and in court that his conduct compromised his integrity.

This week, California’s 2nd District Court of Appeals agreed with the district court judge: The State Personnel Board didn’t overstep its bounds in handing down a one-year suspension.

“A reasonable decisionmaker could have dismissed Partridge, and a reasonable decisionmaker could have—and did—impose a one-year suspension without pay,” the court found.

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

For years, roughly 700 beds at Cal State Los Angeles that could be occupied by students have sat empty, even in what officials call a “highly housing challenged area.” The reason? Officials say lack of funding and deferred maintenance.

The out-of-commission resource has languished despite the California State University 2025 Systemwide Housing plan stating there’s a need for about 500 beds at the campus.

“The deferred maintenance happened over a period of several years, under previous leadership for the university and housing,” Erik Hollins, a spokesperson for the university, told LAist in a statement. “The pandemic certainly appears to have been a factor. Addressing accumulated maintenance and then getting those units back in circulation has been a focus of new leadership.”

Housing and Residence Life (HRL), which is responsible for maintenance, runs independent of university operations but reports to the Division of Student Affairs and Enrollment Management. The department has its own budget with funding coming from the rent and meal plans students pay for.

In the most recent housing budget posted online, from the fiscal year 2024-25, no funds were allocated to maintenance. LAist has requested housing budgets for 2025-26 and 2026-27.

It’s not just the beds out of circulation that need maintenance. Cal State L.A.’s student-run news organization reported earlier this year that “work orders for maintenance by those residents have gone unanswered for months, or even in some cases for several consecutive semesters.”

Hollins told LAist there’s demand for housing on campus in addition to modernizing older facilities. Some of the housing that isn’t being used was built in 1984 to house athletes during the Los Angeles Olympics.

“Under new housing leadership, we are reengaging with our Cal State L.A. students on the benefits of living on campus, resolving perception issues around deferred maintenance, and seeking new partnerships with local colleges, universities, and community organizations,” Hollins wrote.

Hollins added that the university is located in a “highly housing challenged area, while also serving a majority of students who live with their families in the immediate surrounding area.”

Cal State LA’s housing troubles

In 2025, auditors reported years of operating losses at Cal State L.A.’s housing program, leading to reserves being depleted.

Auditors noted that occupancy has dropped to as low as 60% in recent years, and student housing required “unanticipated emergency repairs.” Responding to the audit, Cal State L.A.’s director of housing wrote that the university had taken “sweeping corrective measures.”

“Because its apartment complexes are aging, HRL has also been forced to pay for unanticipated emergency repairs and planned maintenance projects that have challenged its budget,” auditors wrote. “These repairs were partially due to HRL not prioritizing deferred maintenance projects during the COVID-19 recovery. There are also ongoing issues with the water system and fan coil breaks at the newer South Village residence hall.”

At the time, Cal State L.A. said it would address the issues by “implementing short-term strategies to boost occupancy rates, student engagement, and facility upgrades, along with long-term strategies to renovate its older facilities and improve affordability.”

The university also said it would partner with community colleges, expand summer conference programs and require first year students to live on campus. In response to the audit, Cal State L.A. also promised facility renovations.