The Brief

In 2019, Orange County settled a years-long legal battle that marked a turning point in the way the county addresses homelessness. In the years since, there has been significant progress on the number of shelter beds and standards of care at those shelters. But those signs of progress are accompanied by more troubling indicators.

The shift started in 2017 when county officials sought to clear out a large homeless encampment that had become a health hazard and an embarrassment for public officials. Advocates for people experiencing homelessness sued, arguing that because of a dearth of shelter beds — and appropriate beds for people with disabilities — there was no place that people experiencing homelessness could sleep without violating the law.

The result: What's come to be known as the Catholic Worker settlement (Orange County Catholic Worker was one of the plaintiffs), which is actually a group of similar settlements involving more than a dozen O.C. cities.

Four years later:

• People sleeping on public property have to be assessed by outreach workers and offered appropriate shelter before law enforcement can enforce anti-camping rules. 
• There are more emergency shelter beds. But often with more restrictions on who can use them. 
• Shelters have to adhere to standards of care and there's an appeal process when disputes arise. 
• There's more permanent supportive housing. But not nearly enough to meet demand. 
• Federal emergency housing vouchers have helped fill the need for affordable housing. They expire in 2030. 
• There are no longer massive encampments in places like the Santa Ana riverbed. But there are still more than 3,000 people without shelter on any given night, many of them in encampments that are more hidden and, advocates say, likely more dangerous. 
• The number of unhoused people dying annually in Orange County has more than doubled in the last five years — to some 500 people last year.

The pre-pandemic lawsuits that led to many of these changes are similar to ones currently playing out in Los Angeles. LAist talked to officials, lawyers, homeless service providers, and people experiencing homelessness in Orange County about what's unfolded over the past several years.

From riverbed encampment to permanent housing: One woman's long journey

Kathy Schuler was living in a tent next to the Santa Ana River channel in central Orange County when I met her in early 2017. Eventually, an estimated 800 to 1,500 people ended up in the sprawling encampment, including Schuler's adult son and daughter.

It stretched for about two miles behind Angel Stadium and the Honda Center. Advocates sued each time county officials tried to clear the encampment.

[Read: The Court Case That Forced OC To Stop Ignoring Its Homeless]

During a survey of the encampment in April 2017 with Judge David Carter — the same federal judge who oversees several big cases on homelessness in L.A. — Schuler showed off the homey details of her tent, including a framed photograph of her with her kids and their bevy of dogs. The area in front of Schuler's tent was neatly swept and decorated with potted plants.

Kathy Schuler in front of her tent next to the Santa Ana riverbed in central Orange County in 2017.

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The following year, in February 2018, Schuler and everyone else in the encampment were told they had to leave. The county promised motel vouchers and help finding permanent housing as part of a deal between advocates and county officials brokered under Judge Carter's watch.

A line of people experiencing homelessness at the Santa Ana riverbed.

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On a sunny February morning, Schuler and her encampment neighbors packed up their things and waited for buses to take them to their assigned bed.

Six years later … 

I visited Schuler, now 66, and her dog Freeway this spring in their one-bedroom apartment in Tustin, where they've lived since 2021. The apartment is in a breezy, well-kept complex.

Schuler's walls are covered with jigsaw puzzles she's finished and mounted. Her patio is filled with plants, including a few she's been caring for since her time at the riverbed encampment.

Kathy Schuler and her dog, Freeway, in their patio in Tustin.

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What she likes most about her apartment: "Mine," she giggled, a smile spreading across her face. "Mine."

But it took Schuler more than three years of shuffling through motels and shelters to get her apartment, and only with a lot of help from advocates.

"How long is it gonna take?" Schuler remembers thinking on many occasions. "I'm glad I had people helping me out that know what's going on, you know," she said. "Because I had no clue."

Schuler's adult son and daughter still don't have permanent housing. Her daughter lives in a motel that's been converted into interim housing, part of Project Homekey. Her son and his girlfriend live in their vehicle, Schuler said.

Carol Sobel, a lawyer who's been involved in many of O.C. and L.A.'s most consequential cases on homelessness, said Schuler's too-long road to housing is "not a success."

"How many years to get them stability?" she asked of Schuler and other plaintiffs in the riverbed eviction case. "It is a constant battle."

What the data shows

There is some evidence of positive changes around homelessness in Orange County. There are also much more somber signs.

Point-in-time

The latest point-in-time count, from 2022, found nearly 17% fewer people experiencing homelessness on a given night compared to the previous count in 2019. Still, there are more than 3,000 people who sleep outside or in their vehicles with no shelter.

The 2022 count also revealed stark disparities: The share of the unhoused population identifying as Black or Native American was much higher than their percentage of O.C.'s total population.

Additionally, the percentage of the unhoused population considered chronically homeless (for more than a year) rose from 19% in 2017 to 42% in 2022.

Housing inventory

The county's inventory of short- and long-term housing available for people experiencing homelessness has increased substantially since 2017, according to annual data submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Orange County "Housing Inventory Count" for people experiencing homelessness, 2016-2023.

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Orange County Homeless Management Information System, http://ochmis.org/housing-inventory-count-hic/

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The county has added close to 1,000 emergency and transitional shelter beds to its inventory since 2017.

Available rapid rehousing, which provides short-term rental assistance, and permanent housing have both doubled since 2017, according to county data. Much of this increase is thanks to emergency housing vouchers provided by the federal government as part of the pandemic-induced American Rescue Plan.

Funding for those extra vouchers runs out in 2030.

People living off of Beach Boulevard in Garden Grove regroup during a break in the rain and after a raid on the encampment that periodically sprouts up here.

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Despite these gains, a recent county report shows the county has failed, year after year, to build enough permanent supportive housing for chronically unhoused individuals, despite pledges to do so in Carter's courtroom. And there's no improvement in sight, by the county's own estimates, given the steep rise in construction costs in recent years.

In 2018, the county projected this type of housing with built-in social services would cost $344,444 per unit. The report notes that the real, average cost per unit of developments funded between 2018 and 2022 was nearly 45% more — $497,570.

"If current development cost trends continue, it is projected that the average per unit cost for supportive/affordable housing in Orange County will be approximately $550,000," the report reads. Nearly 60% of that total is construction costs.

In the absence of permanent housing, homeless service providers told LAist that people are staying in emergency shelters much longer than intended. Data show the average length of stay in shelters here is more than five months. The data also show that more people return to homelessness after a shelter stay than move on to permanent housing.

Deaths of people 'without fixed abode'

Perhaps the starkest contrast to O.C.'s improvements in addressing homelessness comes from a committee convened by the sheriff's department to review deaths of unhoused people. The committee's report, released earlier this year, found that deaths doubled between 2017 and 2021. They've only increased since then — to some 500 people last year.

COVID-19 seemed to claim a relatively small number of the deceased — 17 people in 2021, according to the report. The main causes of death were drug overdoses — especially fentanyl — heart disease, and getting hit by a vehicle.

[Read: The Explosion In Unhoused People Dying From Fentanyl And Meth Is A Wake-Up Call For LA, Service Workers Say]

In defense of the Catholic Worker settlement 

Brooke Weitzman is a lawyer with the Elder Law and Disability Rights Center, one of the groups that initially sued the county. She worked closely with Sobel on the case and has a more optimistic view of its success.

For one thing, she said, people living on the streets are getting assessed for and offered, when possible, shelter and treatment options before they're ticketed for sleeping or loitering in public spaces.

"In the areas that are a part of the settlements, we aren't seeing anti-camping enforcement anymore," Weitzman said. "Certainly law enforcement is still enforcing other non-poverty related crimes like substance use or theft. But … being unhoused, sleeping in the park, those we're really not seeing tickets for the way we did before the litigation."

Weitzman said suing officials over homelessness was never going to solve the housing crisis, but forcing cities to build more temporary shelters has also made them realize just how hard it is to move people into permanent housing.

"Coming out of the cases, no city in Orange County can honestly tell you they don't have a problem with access to housing," she said.

Doug Becht, who oversees homeless services for the county, said he's proud of the progress since the lawsuits, especially of the standards of care to which all county-funded shelters now have to adhere.

"So regardless of what shelter either an individual or a family go in, they are assured that their service and the atmosphere and the environment and the care that they receive will be high," he said.

The county's legal settlement also establishes a grievance and appeal process — for example, if a shelter or treatment program wants to kick out a participant — and the right to appeal disputes all the way up to Judge Carter.

A volunteer with Wound Walk OC takes the vital signs of a man sleeping in an underpass in central Orange County.

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But Becht said a lack of housing options remains a major challenge, along with limited capacity to act quickly.

“When someone’s ready, and interested in help and is interested in working towards ending their homelessness, we gotta be there and ready to receive that," he said. "And in a lot more cases than ever, we are. But we’re still not able to do it for everyone at every point and that’s where we want to be.”

What critics say

David Gillanders, executive director of the homeless services organization Pathways of Hope in Orange County, questions how much positive change came out of the riverbed lawsuits.

"It has not resulted, I don't think, in enough people getting housed," he said. "But what I do hope it's done is stimulate some conversation around what homelessness is, how homelessness actually works, why people go homeless."

Without a right to housing, which doesn't exist in the U.S. or California constitutions, Gillanders is skeptical about how much progress on homelessness can be accomplished through the courts.

"The ultimate lawsuit is one that makes housing a human right literally," he said, "not just as a slogan that we sometimes say, but actually makes it an entitlement. Short of that, there's nothing that will solve homelessness."

Sobel, after more than two decades of suing elected officials to force them to open shelters, told LAist she no longer believes it's an effective strategy.

"I think we've fallen into this trap about this being a solution when all the evidence around is it hasn't worked and it doesn't work because at the end of the line, there's no housing," Sobel said.

The O.C. Catholic Worker case has served as a template for a federal lawsuit filed by a business group against the city and county of Los Angeles over the lack of shelter and mental health treatment for people experiencing homelessness. The city of Los Angeles settled their part of the case last year.

L.A. County is currently appealing a ruling by Judge Carter rejecting its settlement. The judge said he wanted to see more beds and more court oversight in the settlement.

Despite Sobel's doubt about fighting homelessness through the courts, she doesn't plan to stop.

"I think about how much worse it would be if we weren't doing this," she said. "You just have to keep fighting and you have to hope that one day, somebody's going to say, 'Look, this is not making sense.'"

Curious gardeners have been noticing more grasshoppers — a lot more. And inquiring minds want to know why — and what can be done about these insects with a reputation for destruction.

" So what happens is the standard grasshopper that we think of can become a locust if the weather conditions are right," said Lynn Kimsey, a distinguished professor emerita at UC Davis who specializes in bugs.  "In a true outbreak, they would be, you know, crossing roads by the thousands."

We are nowhere approaching outbreak proportions in Southern California.

But Eric Middleton, an entomologist with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources who works in pest management, can answer the why.

Big shocker: It's the weather

"For a grasshopper population to grow, you need a wet winter or spring so there's a lot of vegetation growing," said Middleton, who is based in San Diego. "Then you need warm conditions, which allow the young grasshoppers to emerge."

Think back to the intense bouts of rain Los Angeles received over the last months, the green hillsides and recent heatwave — these are the exact conditions for a grasshopper explosion.

"It's the same thing that triggers locust outbreaks in the Middle East and North Africa, or North Dakota, places like this," Kimsey said. "It's pretty common."

Many species of grasshopper skip and scatter around Southern California. Probably the most common, Middleton said, is the gray bird grasshopper. They're 2 to 3 inches long, with larger wings, and  their populations start peaking around now.

Another common species is  the valley grasshopper, which is about an inch long.

What you should do? Less is more

Depending on the species' life cycle, both Middleton and Kimsey said they expect this overpopulation to taper off by summer.

"It's not going to be a permanent thing," Kimsey said. " Usually they become bird food or mammal food because everything likes to eat them."

If they pose a threat to your garden, don't go reaching for insecticides, the experts said.

 "Usually, they don't do a ton of damage to your garden," Middleton said.

So try catching them by hand or using temporary netting.

" This too shall pass," he added.

Alternatively, Kimsey said, they make a killer snack.

"They really are quite tasty. I highly recommend it," she said. "Like French fries, especially if you fry them."

What sounds come to mind when you think of the rainforest? There's a good chance it's the singing of gibbons, primates with powerful vocalizations that can travel 2 miles.

Turns out, in Santa Clarita of all places, there's one of the largest populations of these long-armed primates in the United States.

Less than 10 miles off the 14 Freeway, down a bumpy dirt road, the Gibbon Conservation Center takes up about 5 acres of land speckled with trees.

The place is home to 41 gibbons of five different species. These tailless primates are known as lesser apes and they have arms that are one-and-a-half times longer than their legs. They can leap dozens of feet in the wild.

I visited recently to meet director Gabriella Skollar and hopefully catch the gibbons in concert. Originally from Hungary, Skollar came here as a volunteer in 2005 and has remained ever since. Now she lives on the site, caring for the animals.

“When I started working with Gibbons, I just felt like they are very emotional," Skollar said. "I see them hugging a lot. They are holding hands. And I also learned how rare they are, so I just kind of connected with them... They are very fragile and sensitive and mischievous."

Gabriella Skollar, director of the Gibbon Conservation Center in Santa Clarita.

What kinds of things can these intelligent animals get up to? Skollar said stealing glasses, trying to get into pockets and scrolling through pictures on her phone, believe it or not.

Skollar introduced me to a family of critically endangered gibbons whose numbers have dwindled to about 1,000 in the wild in places like Vietnam and China. Some have fluffy white cheeks that give away their name: Northern White Cheeked Gibbons. They got a snack of blueberries, the mom tossing them up and down in her hand while her nine-month-old baby clung to her.

The grounds here are lovingly-kept with vintage metal chairs and benches for hanging out with these primates. Inside the cages there are gibbons with bushy white eyebrows, hairdos that flip up over their ears and bulbous throat sacks that give them a couple extra chins.

So how did they all end up here? Skollar said the center was founded by her late teacher, self-taught primatologist Alan Mootnick.

“When Alan started in 1976, he had a small place in Chatsworth... and he had a couple Gibbons... And neighbors started to complain about the vocalizations. So he moved here in the 80s," Skollar said. "He ended up here because there was no one here and the center kind of needs to have a buffer from neighbors because their vocalizations can be heard from up to 2 miles away."

One of the gibbon friends at the Gibbon Conservation Center.

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Hunting, poaching and deforestation are hurting gibbon populations around the world. Of 20 species, only one isn’t endangered. The center’s mission is to promote the conservation, study and care of gibbons through public education and habitat preservation.

And Skollar isn’t alone in that work. A small team of dedicated staff and volunteers keep this place running, like Jodi Kleier, who was popping pieces of steamed sweet potatoes into the mouth of a hungry gibbon.

“I think it’s their personalities and how different and unique they all are is what I really like about gibbons,” she said.

The gibbons eat six to eight times a day to mimic their foraging behaviors in the wild. Sophia Paden was hard at work in the kitchen, surrounded by sketches and paintings of gibbons on the walls.

“So we are preparing what we call the afternoon feeds for the Gibbons. So we’ve got the apples preparing, we’re going to do some banana leaves and some mango pieces,” Padden said.

Besides eating, though, there’s maybe one thing that gibbons seem to love even more.

“From day one, I was just fascinated with their song,” Skollar said. “It’s just incredibly powerful and emotional.”

Skollar studies gibbon vocalizations and said the main function of their song is to mark their territory and tell their neighbors that this is their home. Adult males and females will sing a duet, with their offspring often chiming in. I was hoping to catch one of their daily performances that start at sunrise, but was snubbed at first.

Skollar showed me how to kickstart the concert: we made a guttural grunting sound that can signal its time to sing. And then...

The gibbons’ singing is so powerful, it felt like the hairs on my arms stood up, a cacophony you can feel in your chest.

“People have different feelings about it. Some people start tearing up when they hear it. Other people, they want to join in, they jump up and down,” Skollar said.

Over the past two decades here, Skollar said she’s cared for some gibbons who died in her care.

“They all were trying to sing until their last day. And you could tell that it was hard for them,” she recalled.

She remembered one of her gibbon friends from over the years who died from cancer.

“At the end we had to climb up to her to feed her, to her sleeping box. But every morning, she would open the sleeping box and stick her head out and just sing along with her daughters,” Skollar said.

If you’d like to hear the gibbons sing for yourself, the Gibbon Conservation Center offers a guided tour at 10 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Reservations are required.

More info at the Gibbon Conservation Center website.

NEW YORK — CBS News said Friday it will shut down its storied radio news service after nearly 100 years of operation, ending an era and blaming challenging economic times as the world moves on to digital sources and podcasts. Said longtime CBS News anchor Dan Rather: "It's another piece of America that is gone."

When it went on the air in September 1927, the service was the precursor to the entire network, giving a youthful William S. Paley a start in the business. Famed broadcaster Edward R. Murrow's rooftop reports during the Nazi bombing of London during World War II kept Americans listening anxiously.

Today, CBS News Radio provides material to an estimated 700 stations across the country and is known best for its top-of-the-hour news roundups. The service will end on May 22, the network said Friday.

The CBS Broadcast Center on 57th Street in New York on April 20, 2023.

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"Radio is woven into the fabric of CBS News and that's always going to be part of our history," CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss said in delivering the news to the staff. "I want you to know that we did everything we could, including before I joined the company, to try and find a viable solution to sustain the radio operation."

But with the radical changes in the media industry, she said, "we just could not find a way to make that possible."

Not the first radio cuts at CBS

CBS News cut some of its radio programming late last year, including its "Weekend Roundup" and "World News Roundup Late Edition," in an attempt to keep the service going.

It was unclear how many people will lose their jobs because of the radio shutdown. CBS News was cutting about 6% of its workforce, or more than 60 people, on Friday. It's not the end of turmoil at the network, as parent company Paramount Global is likely to absorb CNN as part of its announced purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery.

"Given the way things are going, I was saddened but I wasn't surprised by it," said Rather, who succeeded network legend Walter Cronkite in 1981 and anchored for 25 years.

When Rather covered the civil rights era for CBS News during the 1960s, he said he would file reports as frequently as a dozen times a day. Cronkite told America on television that President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated; Rather relayed the news for radio.

"Radio was considered an equal responsibility to television," Rather, now 94, said in an interview.

Along with newspapers, radio was the dominant medium in how Americans got their news from shortly after the dawn of commercial radio in 1920 through the 1940s, with people in their living rooms listening to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats" during the Depression. CBS News Radio's broadcast about Germany's invasion of Austria in 1938, the first time Murrow was heard on the air, was an historic marker for the service.

Edward R. Murrow, a CBS correspondent who made his name from the front lines of World War II and from confronting Sen. Joseph McCarthy during the 1950s Red Scare, during a speaking engagement.

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Broadcasters like Douglas Edwards, Dallas Townsend and Christopher Glenn were familiar voices on CBS News Radio. The beginning of the television era in the 1950s began a long slide for radio, often an afterthought today with the world online and on phones. Those seeking audio often turn to podcasts before radio.

"This is another part of the landscape that has fallen off into the sea," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers, a trade publication for radio talk shows. "It's a shame. It's a loss for the country and for the industry."

A major radio player for many decades

CBS News Radio was a major force for generations of Americans. "Its heyday spanned decades," Harrison said. "It was quality on every level. It sounded good. Its coverage was as objective as possible within the realm of human nature. Its resources were extensive. It had a very high trust factor that was considered the standard of the day."

The front page of CBS News' website did not immediately carry news of the demise.

Weiss, founder of the Free Press website and without broadcast news experience before being hired by CBS parent Paramount's new management, has quickly become a headline-maker and polarizing figure in journalism. She held a "60 Minutes" story critical of President Donald Trump's deportation policy from being broadcast for a month and has critics watching to see if she's moving the network in a Trump-friendly direction.

Addressing her staff in January, three months into her job as CBS News boss, she invoked Cronkite's name as a symbol of old thinking and said that if the network continues with its current strategy, "we're toast." She announced the hiring of 18 new contributors and said CBS News needs to do stories that will "surprise and provoke — including inside our own newsroom."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Drivers know it really, really sucks to get gas right now.

California is (unfortunately) leading the nation in this gas surge, according to the American Automobile Association, which tracks fuel price trends.

And with prices in Southern California hovering around $5.75 (and beyond) — just for regular-grade fuel — it can feel like almost every station is trying to compete for the most notoriously priced gas.

What gives? And more importantly, how can you save on gas right now? We looked into it.

Why is our gas so expensive?

Prices at the pump have been skyrocketing since the start of the U.S. war in Iran last month because oil shipments are being bottlenecked along the Strait of Hormuz, a key supply route in the Middle East.

California feels this pain especially hard as the state imports a decent chunk of its oil from the region. Plus, that’s happening at the same time the state is doing its annual switch to the summer blend of fuel. So both of those things, coupled with our high gas tax, means the spike hits us hard.

If you zero in more to hubs like Los Angeles and Orange County, it gets worse. Kandace Redd, a spokesperson for AAA, said that’s tied to gas stations’ higher rent, wages and operating costs.

“That is often passed on to the drivers,” she said. “ So simply put, the higher the cost of living, the higher the price you’re likely to pay at the pump.”

Some relief could be on the way, but it’s unclear when that could happen.

How to save at the pump

• Don’t wait to fill up

During normal times, one subtle way you could save would be to fill up on certain days of the week. This is because California is one of the states that shows a predictable pattern at the pump, called price-cycling.

According to a GasBuddy study that analyzed weekly price changes, they found that the best day to get gas in California was Sunday, and the worst Tuesday. But that’s when things are relatively stable.

“During periods of rapidly rising prices … prices tend to keep increasing, not decrease, so filling up sooner is often best,” Redd said.

So if you know you need gas, don’t try waiting a few days for prices to drop until the situation changes. L.A.’s average gas price jumped 30 cents over the last week.

• Use GasBuddy’s 10 top lists

These show user-reported gas prices for stations near you. Here’s are examples of ones for Southern California:

• Top 10 Gas Station & Cheap Fuel Prices in L.A. County
• Top 10 Gas Station & Cheap Fuel Prices in Orange County
• Top 10 Gas Station & Cheap Fuel Prices in Riverside County

If you have a AAA membership, the mobile app also shows cheap gas nearby.

• Avoid stations in certain areas

If you want to pay less, stay away from stations in popular areas, like airports, tourist hubs or freeways. Neighborhoods with fewer gas stations can cost you more money, so finding a place that’s ripe with competition can also be better for your wallet.

Even position on the street corner matters. Redd said gas stations can charge more when they’re on a side with heavier traffic or when they’re more accessible.

“ Stations that are easier for drivers to enter, fill up and exit often attract more customers and may even charge a little bit more than that,” she said.

Stretch your gas tank by taking care of your car

You can save on gas beyond the pump, Redd said, by managing how your car is using fuel. For example, combining your trips or avoiding stop-and-go traffic times can cut down on consumption. It’s all about how you care for and use your car:

Reduce your load. That means clear out that trunk and take off that top rack when it’s not in use. When your car is heavier, it burns fuel faster to account for the load.

Maintain your vehicle. If you can afford it, keep the check engine light off and your tires properly inflated. This can help make sure you're using gas at your car’s intended rate. Underinflated tires are more resistant to movement, which can reduce the miles per gallon you get.

Watch your speed.  Your car uses more gas at higher speeds, so you really want to be sure to also avoid any sort of hard acceleration. If your car has an economy mode, that could also help by making your car run more efficiently.

 Turn off your engine when your car is parked or stopped for a long period of time. Blasting the air conditioning can also impact gas usage, though it’s a smaller margin.