The Brief

A large white cross fixed to the roof of Crossroads United Methodist Church rises above the church’s property along Wilmington Avenue in Compton.

On most days, the cross overlooks a nearly empty 1-acre parking lot. Even on Sundays, it sees a lot of bare asphalt. At most 50 parishioners show up each Sunday.

But for the Rev. Adrienne Zackery, the warm and enthusiastic pastor at Crossroads, ministry means more than packing the pews for Sunday service.

“Preaching and singing and worship is very important,” Zackery said. But with membership declining, she said, the church’s mission has grown to include community programs for job seekers, families separated by the child welfare system and people returning from prison.

“The world is our parish,” Zackery said. “That is the outlook and the vision that we have for ministry here.”

Soon, Zackery hopes, the church will further its work by building 65 apartments for families struggling with homelessness. The project, still in early stages, aims to replace a parking lot and existing church structures with a new multipurpose building. Lower levels would include worship and community spaces, with four more stories of affordable housing rising above.

But Zackery, like many religious leaders across Southern California, faces local limits on what her church can build. She’s hoping policy makers will ease those restrictions, because she feels a spiritual responsibility to help people experiencing homelessness.

“When the Lord's Prayer says, ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth,’ it is the responsibility of the church to meet the needs of the community, which include housing,” she said.

Most of the pews at Crossroads are empty on Sundays, but the Rev. Adrienne Zackery hopes to revitalize the church by building housing on its land.

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David Wagner

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L.A. churches have land for thousands of new homes

Half a million low-income households in L.A. County don’t have affordable housing, according to the nonprofit California Housing Partnership. And more than 69,000 people across L.A. County are unhoused on any given night, according to the region’s latest homeless count.

Many churches in L.A. want to help address that housing shortage. Some have dwindling congregations, but plenty of land. They have the will to develop housing, but lack the permission they need from cities to build.

Unless state or local lawmakers act, to satisfy local zoning rules, Crossroads will have to build about 20 fewer apartments, which likely wouldn’t provide enough financial return to get developers interested in pursuing the project.

John Oh is a community organizer with the multi-faith social justice group L.A. Voice. Previously a Methodist pastor in Glendale, Oh currently shepherds L.A. County churches through the daunting process of developing affordable housing. He said he’s in touch with about 20 congregations interested in building a total of 2,000 apartments, but their plans are often blocked by local restrictions.

“Roughly two-thirds of the congregations that have reached out to us can't do anything in terms of development because of poor zoning,” Oh said. If churches can’t count on permission to develop more homes on their land, “It’s really in many cases impossible to build.”

‘Yes in God’s backyard’

Some state lawmakers now hope to bypass local zoning roadblocks through Senate Bill 4, a proposal to allow religious organizations and higher education institutions to build affordable housing without asking cities for special approval. SB 4 has already passed the state Senate, and is coming up for a vote in the Assembly’s housing committee on Wednesday.

Proponents say SB 4 would overcome NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) sentiment by eliminating requirements for lengthy city planning reviews and contentious public meetings. Instead, the bill would streamline affordable housing proposals on religious lands under state rules. It would give religious organizations the ability to build such projects “by right,” allowing them to say “yes in God’s backyard,” or YIGBY for short.

In a 2020 study, researchers from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that California has about 38,800 acres of religious land suitable for housing development.

The parking lot at East Whittier United Methodist Church, where parishioners want to build 60 units of affordable housing, sits empty most of the week.

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“That's about the size of the city of Stockton,” said David Garcia, the Terner Center’s policy director. In L.A. County, more than 2,000 acres of religious land suitable for housing are located in wealthy, high-resource neighborhoods. “These places are really well situated in communities that have access to greater economic and educational amenities,” Garcia said.

But with that potential, the Terner study also found barriers. City zoning maps dominated by suburban development can restrict church housing plans. In the city of L.A., more than 42% of religious land suitable for affordable apartments is zoned for single-family homes — not apartments.

Garcia said that’s a deterrent for religious leaders who want to help bring down the region’s large homeless numbers.

“Going through the city process to obtain a variance to be allowed to build a handful of homes in a surplus parking lot can actually end up being more trouble than it's worth for these organizations,” Garcia said.

Churches hope to help the unhoused — and themselves

East Whittier United Methodist Church sits on a peaceful 4-acre campus featuring well-tended rose bushes and a lively day care center. But the sprawling church property lacks the large congregation it once had when it was built in the 1950s.

Paul Gardiner is one of about 20 active parishioners. He said, “At 84, I’m one of the younger members of the group.”

Paul Gardiner stands in the driveway of East Whittier United Methodist Church.

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Lately, Gardiner has been helping with the church’s effort to develop affordable housing for seniors on the back half of its property. Gazing over the church’s extensive parking lot, Gardiner said, “Basically, it's unused land that needs to be used for good purposes, like housing. As good Christians, we need to be helping our fellow human beings while we're helping ourselves.”

The church would be helping itself, Gardiner said, because leasing the land to a nonprofit developer could generate new income for the congregation. Keeping the church from shutting down would also help the on-site day care center, the Boy Scout troop and Alcoholics Anonymous groups that use church facilities and programs that provide homeless shelter during cold winter months.

For Gardiner, the need for this kind of housing is obvious. He’s seen homelessness become much more visible on Whittier’s streets and in local parks. Some of the church’s winter shelter residents, he said, were employed in food service jobs, but still couldn’t afford housing.

“If I was out on the street, I'd want people to help me get back off the street,” Gardiner said. “I don't want million dollar homes or $3,000 apartments in this area. I think we need to be a little more conscious of the needs of some of our community members.”

Cities fear pushback from homeowners

But East Whittier United Methodist Church faces one big problem: They’re right in the middle of a suburban neighborhood full of detached homes. And one city official told LAist that Whittier will not support changing the church’s zoning to permit an apartment building.

“It is completely surrounded by single-family residential,” said Brian Saeki, Whittier’s city manager. “Having a multistory, much more dense development there is an incompatible land use for that area.”

Saeki said allowing a tall building on the church’s parking lot could result in apartments looking down into the back yards of nearby single-family homes.

The city of Whittier reserves 86% of its residential land for single-family homes, according to a recent UC Berkeley study on zoning patterns in Southern California.

Whittier officials have approved housing on other religious properties, including a project to build 25 detached condominiums on land owned by Trinity Lutheran Church of Whittier. That site is not surrounded by single-family homes. If the East Whittier church’s proposal ever went to a public hearing, Saeki said, “I would think that there would be significant opposition.”

Elected officials in cities such as Los Angeles and Santa Monica have expressed support for SB 4’s goal of removing local barriers to affordable housing on religious land. But other elected leaders from cities such as Beverly Hills and Brentwood oppose the bill over what they see as a loss of community input and local control.

The bill’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, said SB 4’s streamlining would not remove all restrictions, but would give religious organizations more certainty around what they’re allowed to build.

“California’s housing shortage is driving an affordability crisis that is crushing working families, and many in the faith community want to help,” Weiner said in an emailed statement. “SB 4 gives them the tools to build critical housing while respecting the density requirements set by residential communities.”

Cars speed by the La Cienega Inn in Pico-Robertson, a motel recently purchased by a Jewish congregation that plans to repurpose the site for permanent supportive housing.

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Even with dense zoning, funding is hard to come by

Many churches in L.A. are waiting for a final vote on SB 4 before getting their housing hopes up. But other religious groups are closer to breaking ground.

The non-denominational L.A. Jewish congregation Ikar has seen its membership expand to more than 1,200 households in recent years. To accommodate that growth, Ikar plans to build a new headquarters along a stretch of La Cienega Boulevard in L.A.’s Pico-Robertson neighborhood.

The site currently houses Ikar’s offices, a community gathering space and a run-down motel scheduled to close at the end of the year. Three years ago, Ikar began developing plans to demolish the existing buildings and construct a new worship space, community center, cafe, offices and 60 units of permanent supportive housing for formerly unhoused seniors who would receive on-site services provided by the homelessness nonprofit The People Concern.

Brooke Wirtschafter, Ikar’s director of community organizing, said adding a few stories of affordable housing on top of the project makes sense because the city of L.A. encourages this kind of development through an incentive program called Transit Oriented Communities.

“We're in a transit corridor,” Wirtschafter said. “We should be fully able to build the building that we want to build without having to ask for any special exemptions.”

Earlier this month, Ikar submitted its development application to the city. They’re hoping to receive swift approval under Mayor Karen Bass’ executive directive requiring city departments to review and approve affordable housing plans within 60 days.

Even with better zoning and speedy review periods, the Ikar project is not a done deal. Their nonprofit developer partner, Community Corporation of Santa Monica, is still seeking the public funding it needs to build from various local, state and federal sources.

“Not just one source gives you the entire pot [of money] to build,” said Jesús Hernández, Community Corporation’s housing director. “We're talking five or six sources on this particular development, with each source having their own set of requirements, timing and metrics.”

On top of government bureaucracy and time-consuming application processes, Hernández said the Ikar project is challenging because it seeks to build affordable housing in L.A.’s high-cost Westside.

“Land values are just much higher as you move west,” he said, and public agencies are under pressure to bring down the price tag of affordable housing development. Some projects in the city of L.A. have ended up costing more than $700,000 per unit.

Brooke Wirtschafter stands in the hallway of Ikar’s offices on La Cienega Boulevard.

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Building on L.A.’s Westside may be expensive, but Wirtschafter said it’s the right thing to do.

“If we want to use housing to help desegregate our cities, we're going to need to build affordable housing in high-cost neighborhoods,” she said.

Wirtschafter hopes Ikar will break ground next year, with residents moving in three years from now. Housing development isn’t easy, she said, but she hopes changes in California law will help religious groups live out their faiths in more concrete ways.

“In the Torah, there's one commandment that appears more than any other, and it's the commandment to love the stranger as yourself,” Wirtschafter said. “People who are unhoused in Los Angeles are people who we have othered. We have made them other and strange. It's our obligation as people of faith to see the dignity in each one of those people and to bring them inside.”

As the race to represent L.A.’s Council District 9 remains too close to call, candidate Estuardo Mazariegos’ campaign has accused the campaign of Jose Ugarte, the front-runner, of potential ballot tampering.

The Mazariegos campaign made the accusations Monday, saying it had filed a complaint with the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk. In a press release, the campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

In one case, Mazariegos’ team accused Ugarte campaigners of filling out a ballot on a voter’s behalf without her knowledge of who she was voting for.

“Taking people’s ballots, filling them out, and not following legal voter assistance guidelines in a district that has faced so much disenfranchisement is disgusting,” Mazariegos said in a statement.

Mike Sanchez, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk, said his office had forwarded the news release to the district attorney for review. He also pointed to the California Elections Code, which says that a “ballot shall not be disqualified solely because the person authorized to return it did not provide on the identification envelope their name or signature.”

Under California law, a voter can authorize another person to return their mail-in ballot — an approach also called ballot harvesting.

Justin Levitt, a  professor of constitutional law at Loyola Marymount University, told AirTalk Tuesday that there is no legal limit on the number of ballots an individual can turn in on others’ behalf, so long as they aren’t being compensated per ballot returned.

“Even if there were some sort of administrative wrongdoing, as long as there's no indication of fraud with the ballot itself, those ballots will all be counted,” he said.

Levitt said, however, that signing a ballot and then handing it to someone else to fill out would be illegal.

“ To the extent that there are allegations now that the DA may investigate, I suspect that's what they'll be focusing on,” Levitt continued.

The Mazariegos campaign also sent a collection of photos to the press, including one of a campaigner, USC student Amir King, returning a stack of ballots at a ballot drop box.

The Mazariegos campaign alleged that representatives for the Ugarte campaign had collected voters’ ballots to drop off without signing the appropriate line identifying the individual who returned the ballot.

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Courtesy of Estuardo Mazariegos' Campaign

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Ugarte’s campaign responded to the accusations by pointing to a post by King on Instagram in which he accused the Mazariegos campaign of bullying him and making false claims about him.

“Why is he attacking me? For participating in our democracy, as is my right under California state law and for helping others participate in democracy, as is their right under California state law,” King said in the post.

As of Tuesday morning, just under 300 ballots separate Ugarte and Mazariegos, with 44,000 ballots left to count in L.A. County. It’s not clear how many ballots in Council District 9 are left to count.

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

An off-duty Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy died in a motorcycle crash near Marina Pacifica on Friday.

The crash happened at about 11 p.m. at the intersection of Pacific Coast Highway and Second Street, according to Long Beach police.

Martin Maciel, 40, was heading south on PCH when he collided with a vehicle traveling east on Second Street, throwing the rider from the motorcycle, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office.

The other vehicle’s driver remained at the scene and cooperated with investigators, who believe speed was a contributing factor in the crash. Police did not specify which driver they suspect was speeding.

The Sheriff’s Department said Maciel was a 10-year veteran of the force and an Army Reservist. He worked at the Norwalk Station as a motorcycle deputy after starting his career at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility and working patrol at the Transit Services Bureau.

“Throughout his years of service, Deputy Maciel was a valued member of the department, and his dedication will be remembered by those who had the privilege of serving alongside him,” the Sheriff’s Department said in a statement. “Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, friends, and all who knew him.”

In recent years, Long Beach has been fighting a stubborn rise in traffic deaths. Last year, the city recorded 53 fatal crashes, its highest total in more than a decade.

Friday’s crash marked the city’s 41st fatal traffic collision this year. At this time last year, Long Beach had recorded 43 fatal crashes.

To fight speeding in particular, Long Beach recently installed automated speed cameras that are scheduled to start issuing tickets in December.

Inflation-scarred consumers are finding a bit of relief these days at an unlikely place: the gas pump.

The average price of gasoline dipped below $4 a gallon Tuesday for the first time in three months, according to AAA. The price of regular gas has fallen by 38 cents in the last month to a national average of $3.98.

The overall cost of living, however, remains stubbornly high. Consumer prices in October were up 0.4% from the previous month, according to a report Tuesday from the Labor Department. That's a bigger monthly increase than forecasters had expected.

Rising housing costs accounted for about a third of the monthly increase. Grocery prices were also up sharply during the month.

Why gas prices are falling

The drop in gasoline prices in recent weeks is thanks to a combination of falling crude oil prices, refineries' switch to a cheaper blend of winter fuel, and the typical seasonal drop in demand for gas.

"Temperatures are getting colder," says Patrick De Haan, petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. "People who have boats and RVs are probably done for the year. I would say, by Thanksgiving, so long as we don't get any wild cards geopolitically, the national average could be $3.75 a gallon."

Gas prices are still at a record high for this time of year, however — about a dollar a gallon higher than when the U.S. went to war with Iran. Even with the recent drop in prices, this year's drive to grandma's for Thanksgiving could be the most expensive ever.

Diesel prices have also fallen, but more slowly than gas prices. AAA says the average price of diesel fuel is $6.15 a gallon, down about 13 cents from a month ago.

The high cost of diesel fuel is another byproduct of the war — not only the U.S. war with Iran but also Russia's war with Ukraine. Russia is ordinarily a big exporter of diesel fuel, but that supply has largely dried up because of damage to Russia's refineries.

"When a country like Russia isn't exporting diesel, that is very impactful for the global market. So diesel prices – they will come down but they will still remain very elevated," De Haan says.

Heating oil prices are also high

Rising diesel prices are also driving up the cost of heating oil in the northeast, because heating oil is a close cousin of diesel.

Mild fall weather has kept heating costs in check so far, but De Haan says a blast of cold air could push heating oil prices even higher.

Higher diesel prices also affect the cost of other goods that have to be moved by truck or train or cargo ship.

"You're starting to see higher freight costs get passed through," says economist Mike Reid of RBC Capital Markets. "We've seen it show up notably in goods that are heavily imported — apparel, recreation goods, IT equipment."

In a speech Tuesday before the inflation release, Federal Reserve Chris Waller suggested that energy shocks could have more lasting effects on inflation that previously though. Waller suggested the central bank may need to raise interest rates more aggressively to curb price hikes than markets had previously expected.

No annual comparison for inflation this time

While Tuesday's inflation report shows how much prices rose in the last month, it does not include the typical reading on how prices have changed over the last year. That's a casualty of last year's government shutdown, which idled hundreds of government price-checkers so prices from October 2025 were never recorded for comparison.

The Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank estimated before Tuesday's release that consumer prices in October were up 3.7% from a year ago. That would outstrip average wage gains of just 3.1% during the year, so the typical worker is losing buying power. That's a big reason for the heavy turnout in last week's mid-term elections. 49.1% of eligible voters took part in the election, the second highest total for any midterm in more than a century.

Copyright 2026 NPR

California will not become the first state to levy a wealth tax on its richest residents — at least not this election.

Voters rejected Proposition 40, a proposal to tax billionaires based on their net worth and financial holdings, by 52.8% to 47.2%, according to The Associated Press Monday. The measure had trailed behind for days before The Associated Press confirmed results.

Leaders for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the union pushing the measure, seemed to concede the race minutes before the polls closed but vowed to try again in 2028 if California’s Legislature “fails to deliver a real solution” to fund healthcare hammered by recent federal law.

“That’s not a hypothetical. That’s our plan,” said Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW.

Election Day was projected to be an all-around defeat for the union, known for aggressively pursuing ballot measures. Voters defeated union-backed Proposition 44, an effort to control how clinics spend money. Proposition 42, a billionaire tax countermeasure prohibiting future wealth taxes, was leading Monday evening by 51.6% to 48.4%. That measure could get in the way of SEIU-UHW’s future plans to try taxing wealth again.

The billionaire tax would have generated $100 billion for healthcare and education through a one-time, 5% tax on billionaires, according to SEIU-UHW. Opponents of the measure celebrated its defeat.

“Proposition 40 was a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy with little regard for the harms it would cause,” according to a statement from Evan Westrop, a campaign strategist for No on Prop. 40.

The opposition campaign, which was backed by wealthy tech investors and healthcare organizations, argued the measure had already driven billionaires from the state and permanently harmed income tax revenue. On Monday they said the state still faces “enormous pressure” to find other ways to fund healthcare hit by federal cuts.

Billionaire tax divided Democrats

From the outset, Prop. 40 revealed divisions among the Democratic Party and galvanized some of Silicon Valley’s wealthiest executives to spend hundreds of millions to defeat it.

Gov. Gavin Newsom became one of its earliest opponents, attempting through backroom negotiations to keep it off of the ballot altogether. He endorsed the billionaire-backed counter measure, Prop. 42, designed to ban all wealth taxes in California and kill Prop. 40. Newsom, along with Democratic allies such as Planned Parenthood of California and California Teachers Association, argued a one-time tax would not solve the state’s fiscal woes and would drive wealthy residents out of state.

The California Democratic Party and California Federation of Labor Unions supported the initiative and opposed its counter measures, arguing the state needed more revenue to shield workers and everyday Californians from the effects of dramatic federal healthcare cuts expected to kick 2 million residents off of health insurance.

Lorena Gonzalez, former Assemblymember and president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, said Prop. 40’s failure puts even more pressure on state and federal lawmakers to backfill federal Medicaid cuts.

Supporters of Prop. 40 blamed its loss on billionaires vastly outspending the Yes campaign, which raised $33.5 million.

“That is incredibly corrosive and corrupting to our democracy and our political system, and that's been dominating the discussion here in California,” Regan said.

Billionaires poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the campaign to stop Prop. 40. Google co-founder Sergey Brin led the charge, publicly moving out of state and donating $102 million to Building a Better California, a political committee he founded to oppose the tax. The group has served as a passthrough for other billionaire donors to oppose Prop. 40, including by funding the counterpropositions 41 and 42. Collectively, ultra-wealthy opponents donated $378.4 million to oppose the billionaire tax.

In a statement, Abby Lunardini, a spokesperson for Building a Better California, said the billionaire tax threatened to limit revenue for all services in California, including healthcare, by driving economic interests out of the state.

“It was a lose-lose for California, and voters clearly agreed,” Lunardini said.

Ultimately, opponents’ efforts succeeded.

Polling just ahead of the election indicated falling support for Prop. 40 despite growing sentiment for taxing billionaires more in general. According to a UC Berkeley Citrin-POLITICO poll, 45% of voters believed in taxing billionaires more to fund public services compared to 35% who believed the state should prioritize keeping billionaires in state because of the tax revenue and jobs they generate — but just 46% favored Prop. 40.

Infighting among Democrats could have also contributed to Prop. 40’s demise, said John Matsusaka, an economist and direct democracy expert at USC, ahead of the election. Research shows money doesn’t buy people’s votes or values on core issues like abortion, Matsusaka said, but it can exploit uncertainty.

“People these days are very tribal. When your tribe is arguing, people start to listen to the counterarguments,” Matsusaka said.

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