The Brief

To slow the rise of homelessness, one program in Los Angeles County has been using artificial intelligence to find and offer help to people before they lose their housing.

The program has shown promise at preventing homelessness. But first, outreach workers need to convince people the help they’re offering isn’t a scam.

“We hear all the time from our clients that our program sounds too good to be true — what’s the catch?” said Dana Vanderford, head of the Homelessness Prevention Unit run by the L.A. County Department of Health Services.

The stakes are high for the prevention unit. Many policy experts have become convinced that L.A. County won’t solve its homelessness crisis by focusing only on the expensive, lengthy process of moving people from the streets into new housing.

Prevention advocates note that for all the people in L.A. who’ve been rehoused in recent years, more have become unhoused. This stark math recently helped persuade county leaders to vote against $21 million in planned budget cuts to prevention programs.

But the work of preventing homelessness is complicated. In many cases, the difference between keeping someone housed and watching them fall through the cracks comes down to a delicate human interaction — two strangers trying to establish trust in an unexpected phone call.

The art of building trust

In a Skid Row office building, Emily Gonzales-Zentgraf looked at a spreadsheet and dialed a phone number. This time, someone actually picked up.

“Hi,” Gonzales-Zentgraf said. “I'm calling from L.A. County's Department of Health Services Housing Stabilization Team. How are you doing today?”

The person on the other end said she was at a doctor’s appointment.

“OK, I'll give you a call later today,” Gonzales-Zentgraf said before making a note in her spreadsheet.

The goal was to get this person enrolled in services provided through the county’s prevention unit, a special initiative of the Department of Health Services’ Housing for Health program.

Housing for Health is now being cited as a model for the county’s new approach to funding homeless services. Last week, elected leaders voted to pull hundreds of millions of dollars in annual funding from the region’s troubled L.A. Homeless Services Authority.

The prevention unit can offer quick cash assistance for things like rent, medical care or car repairs. It also gives people six months of case management and help signing up for other county programs.

Gonzales-Zentgraf wasn’t able to sign up the person she reached on the phone for help yet. But she considered the call a success.

“Every time I'm able to have a conversation with someone, it's me building trust,” she said.

Many people eligible for help are unreachable

Outreach workers say they’re getting better at winning that trust. One strategy is to avoid the word “homeless.” They’ve found it can scare people. Instead of saying they’re with the county’s “Homelessness Prevention Unit,” they say they’re with the “Housing Stabilization Team.”

Improving the program’s contact success rate is critical. At last count, more than 75,000 people are experiencing homelessness in L.A. County. Even as thousands move into shelters and apartments each year, thousands of others become newly unhoused.

In the past, only about 21% of the people the prevention unit called ended up enrolling in the program. About half never called back at all.

“Phone numbers wouldn't work,” said Vanderford. “Voicemails would be left and not returned.”

She said the people they’re trying to reach are by nature difficult to contact. Many are sick and frequently in and out of hospitals. Some can’t afford reliable phone service. Others have been stung by past experiences with government programs.

“We've learned a lot in the last couple of years about what works in cold calling our clients, but we still get clients who hang up on us,” Vanderford said.

Dana Vanderford, associate director of homelessness prevention for L.A. County's Department of Health Services, stands in the call center where outreach workers try to establish connections with people on the brink of losing their housing.

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If calls, emails and physical mail all fail, the prevention unit will try to establish contact through a person’s medical provider. For now, the unit does not send text messages because of concerns about running afoul of federal telemarketing laws. Some hope that will change.

In a world where spam calls seemingly never cease, Vanderford said her team understands the need to patiently explain what the program is and what it offers.

“That's something that keeps us up at night,” she said. “There's some segment of eligible clients who we’re not reaching. But I think the trade off there is we know that we're reaching a group of people who have a really high level of need.”

Using AI to predict homelessness

County prevention workers know the people they’re reaching out to are at high risk of homelessness because they’re relying on a statistical model created by researchers with the University of California system’s California Policy Lab.

The model uses artificial intelligence to comb through county records on emergency room visits, psychiatric admissions, food assistance, arrests and other factors that put someone at high risk of becoming unhoused in the next 18 months.

Janey Rountree, executive director of the California Policy Lab, said the predictive model identifies people with about a 1-in-4 chance of becoming unhoused.

“What we know from the unit so far is that 90% of people complete the program and are still housed,” Rountree said. “Which is great.”

Rigorous studies on the program are still in the works. Results from a randomized control trial are expected in 2027.

Rountree said early results suggest preventing homelessness saves money in the long run. Research on the prevention unit shows that on average, it takes about $6,500 to stabilize a participant’s housing. Helping someone find new housing after they’re already living on the street tends to be much more expensive.

“Our system is trying to solve a crisis, and it does not have enough funding to do everything it needs to do,” she said. “The future, I think, is around thinking strategically around the maximum impact for dollars.”

Reaching out before people know they need help

Preventing homelessness is not as easy as it sounds. First, you need to know who is going to become unhoused. Otherwise, prevention dollars may end up going to people who — while seemingly vulnerable — were not likely to become unhoused in the first place.

Researchers say looking at eviction filings is not always a reliable way of predicting homelessness. Some renters who get evicted do become unhoused. But many do not. They might move in with family members or find cheaper housing elsewhere.

People at high risk of becoming unhoused are also likely to not be renting directly from a landlord. A 2023 UC San Francisco study found that in the months leading up to their homelessness, 49% of Californians were not lease-holders. Instead, they were chipping in on rent as a roommate or living somewhere for free.

All of this makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint who will become unhoused. Often, people don’t realize they’re on a slippery slope to homelessness. Many never think to ask for help.

Unlike programs in New York and Chicago, which rely on people calling a homelessness prevention support line and asking for aid, L.A. County’s program proactively finds people at high risk and calls them.

Research has shown the Angelenos identified by this model rarely ask for help on their own.

“We were not only finding a unique group, but we were finding a group that was more vulnerable,” Rountree said.

Armando Carrillo plays with his Pomeranian dogs, Snuggles and Elle, inside his living room in Arcadia on March 29, 2025. Enrolling in homelessness prevention services helped him secure pet food assistance through Pasadena Humane.

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He picked up a call that changed his life 

Armando Carrillo was part of that unique group. He had lost his job as an after-school tutor and was close to maxing out his credit cards when he got a call last year from an unknown number.

“I ended up trying to swipe it away, and I accidentally swiped it to answer,” said Carrillo, who lives in an Arcadia apartment with his disabled mother and two siblings.

At first, Carrillo was skeptical. He said he hadn’t asked for any help avoiding homelessness. But he later realized the offer was genuine after the county mailed him a letter confirming the offer.

By enrolling in the program, Carrillo found help covering his portion of the rent, paying down his debts and feeding his family’s pets. He said getting treated for anxiety and depression was critical in helping him find a new job as a special needs aid in a local school district.

Now Carrillo has stable housing. He said he’s glad he didn’t hang up the phone that day.

“I felt very, very, very lucky that I was one of the people considered to be helped because I would have ended up homeless," he said.

Carrillo said he understands why others don’t immediately answer the phone. But he urged people who get the calls to check their voicemail, even if they don’t pick up at first.

“It's OK to be skeptical,” he said. “Especially now, with everything that's going on, a lot of scams and all that… All it takes is looking [the prevention unit] up on Google. Within 10 seconds, you know that they're a legit organization.”

The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount's sweetened bid to buy the entire company is "superior" to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.

Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount's offer.

"We've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid," the streaming giant said in a statement.

Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.

'If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table," Sarandos told the trade publication Deadline Hollywood.

Netflix promised that Warner Bros. would operate as an independent studio and keep showing its movies in theaters.

But the political realities, combined with Paramount's owners' relentless drive to expand their entertainment holdings, seem to have prevailed.

Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.

On Thursday, hours before the Warner announcement, Sarandos headed to the White House to meet Trump administration officials to make his case for the deal.

The meetings, leaked Wednesday to political and entertainment media outlets, were confirmed by a White House official who spoke on condition he not be named, as he was not authorized to speak about them publicly.

President Trump was not among those who met with Sarandos, the official said.

While Netflix's courtship of Warner stirred antitrust concerns, the Paramount deal is likely to face a significant antitrust review from the U.S. Justice Department, given the combination of major entertainment assets. Paramount owns CBS and the streamer Paramount Plus, in addition to Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable channels.

The offer from Paramount CEO David Ellison relies on the fortune of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And David Ellison has argued to shareholders that his company would have a smoother path to regulatory approval.

Not unnoticed: the Ellisons' warm ties to Trump world.

Larry Ellison is a financial backer of the president.

David Ellison was photographed offering a MAGA-friendly thumbs-up before the State of the Union address with one of the president's key Congressional allies: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican.

Trump has praised changes to CBS News made under David Ellison's pick for editor in chief, Bari Weiss.

The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Semafor Wednesday that he was pleased by the news division's direction under Weiss. She has criticized much of the mainstream media as being too reflexively liberal and anti-Trump.

"I think they're doing a great job," Carr said at a Semafor conference on trust and the media Wednesday. As Semafor noted, Carr previously lauded CBS by saying it "agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Each spring, the land around Diamond Valley Lake in Riverside County bursts into a vibrant array of native wildflowers. This year, it’s happening earlier than expected because of the recent rains.

The lake’s wildflower trail is scheduled to reopen this Friday, Feb. 27. Here’s what you should know before you go.

What the trail has to offer

The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which manages the body of water in Hemet, says wildflower blooms are already dotting the hillsides around the ecological reserve at Diamond Valley Lake.

Think of a bright color wheel — that’s the kind of colorful blooms you’ll see. The hills grow orange California poppies, baby blue eyes, red bush monkeyflower and yellow tidy tips, to name a few. You’ll also get a peek at SoCal’s largest drinking water reservoir.

Known as the Judy Abdo Wildflower Trail, the 1.3 mile loop extends from the Lakeview Trail, close to the trail head and parking area. You can see a map here. The hike has some rugged terrain, but it’s rated as easy-to-moderate.

• Address: 2615 Angler Ave., Hemet
• Hours: Wednesdays through Sundays, 6:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

When you visit, don’t go too late! No entry is allowed after 3:30 p.m. Starting March 8, it’ll be open until 5:30 p.m. (with no entry after 4:30 p.m.).

You’ll have to pay $4 per person to use the wildflower trail. Parking costs $11 (or $5 if you’re: 62 years and older, a military member or a veteran).

Observe safely

Wildflower blooms are very popular in Southern California because of how beautiful (and Instaworthy) the scenery is, but you should tread cautiously.

About 10 years ago, Diamond Valley Lake’s trail had to be closed because crowds of visitors trampled the wildflowers. So when you visit, make sure to follow these etiquette tips so the bloom can be enjoyed by everyone.

A mammoth solar farm is moving forward in the heart of California. If built, which seems increasingly likely, it would cover 200 square miles of land and generate 21,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power entire cities. Huge batteries will store some of that power until it's needed most.

Farmers are among the project's backers. They don't have enough water to grow crops on big chunks of their land, and they're looking for new uses for it.

"We're farmers, and we would rather farm the ground," says Ross Franson, president of Woolf Farming and Processing, his family's business. "If we had the water to do it, we would farm it. But the reality is, you don't. You have to deal with the cards you're dealt."

Franson is on the board of the Westlands Water District, a farmer-run organization that's a key player in this effort, negotiating with solar companies and government regulators on behalf of its members. Westlands is an agricultural power and has long represented the interests of farmers in a large swath of land on the western side of the San Joaquin Valley, between the towns of Firebaugh and Huron. Decades ago, it helped persuade the federal government to build a giant canal to deliver irrigation water to this area from rivers far away in Northern California.

Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District, on land that could become a solar farm.

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Yet these farmers are now facing a new water crisis. The canal has been delivering less water in recent years because of droughts and competing claims on that water. Until recently, the farmers had a backup water supply: They could pump water from aquifers a thousand feet underground. Now, though, a new state law is coming into force that bans overpumping from the aquifer.

So farmers in Westlands have been leaving large chunks of land unplanted. Another large piece of land, now owned by the Westlands Water District itself, has been fallowed because irrigating it could release high levels of a mineral called selenium that can poison wildlife or people. The farmers, and the district, have been looking for new ways to put that land to use.

A solar developer called Golden State Clean Energy seized the opportunity. Several years ago, it presented Westlands Water District with a master plan for a collection of vast solar projects.

Developers say scale will justify new power lines 

Patrick Mealoy, a partner at Golden State Clean Energy, says they had to propose a solar farm that would generate an enormous amount of power to make the case for new multibillion-dollar power lines to carry electricity from the San Joaquin Valley to Los Angeles and Silicon Valley. Mealoy says smaller proposed projects have stalled because they weren't big enough to justify building those power lines.

"In order to actually have solar be productive, you need size and scale, a mass of projects that support the necessary investment in high voltage transmission lines to collect the electrons and move them," Mealoy says.

Getting the managers of California's electrical grid to approve construction of those transmission lines could be the project's biggest remaining hurdle. If built, the cost of those power lines, along with the benefits of greater electricity supply, eventually will show up in consumers' electricity bills.

Franson says his immediate reaction to the proposal was "Yes, we need to do this." Negotiating the details and completing an environmental review took several years, but in December, the Westlands Water District's board voted to move ahead.

Golden State is the plan's architect, but other solar developers will build sections of it. Construction could take a decade. Even though the Trump administration has abolished some financial incentives for solar projects, Mealoy says it's still a solid business opportunity.

"The state needs it. It's permitted. It's the right place for it. I'm excited about this," he says.

Grace Wu, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says "this is a fantastic place for solar" because the fallowed farmland isn't high-value habitat for wildlife.

Farmworkers wonder if they will also benefit

About 150 farmers within the Westlands Water District, including Jeremy Hughes, have signed up to put solar on some of their land. "We look at it as a new crop. We're harvesting electricity," Hughes says. The guaranteed income from those acres makes it possible to keep farming the rest of his land.

"Because of solar, we can continue farming in Westlands. It'll keep the farming community alive," says Jose Gutierrez, assistant general manager of Westlands Water District.

In the small towns nearby where many farmworkers live, however, there are worries that local residents won't see many benefits from the project. Among those towns is Huron, home to about 6,000 people. Rey León grew up here, working in his family's restaurant. Now he's the town's mayor.

Rey León is the mayor of Huron, Calif., home to many farmworkers who aren't yet sure what they will get out of solar coming to the region.

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Dan Charles

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"I'm worried about Huron," he says. This solar deal may be great for the landowners of Westlands, he says, but less farming means fewer jobs for people who worked in the fields and orchards. León wants some of the solar revenue to flow to this community for education and training, to help people find jobs in this new solar industry.

"We are shareholders," he says. "We kept these communities alive, these economies robust. There's no excuse to leave us out."

Westlands and Golden State Clean Energy have been discussing what they call a community benefits package, but officials haven't released any details.

A possible model for other parts of California

Caity Peterson, at the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), says other farming communities in California may try to imitate what Westlands is doing. Because they, too, will have to stop pumping so much water from the ground as the new state law comes into force. "There's going to be some kind of right-sizing of agricultural land in the San Joaquin Valley," she says.

According to a study that PPIC carried out, farmers in the valley will have to stop growing crops on between 500,000 and 1 million acres. There will be a lot of dry, sunny land in California, just waiting for a solar developer.

Copyright 2026 NPR

A truly Los Angeles twist on March Madness is back, but this year, Angelenos are invited to weigh in on the worst intersections in greater L.A.

Whether you feel personally victimized by the Virgil Avenue, Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards intersection by the Los Feliz border, which a city official called a “‘nightmare,” or break into anxious sweats every time you get in line for the Burbank Boulevard Costco — you can soon channel some of that frustration into a social media match-up.

After Koreatown was voted as having the city’s worst parking last year, the latest competition run by Americana at Brand Memes on Instagram is upping the stakes with infamous intersections.

The anonymous account holder, who goes by Mr. Glen Dale, told LAist the “One Bad Intersection After Another” bracket is designed to be a democratic process for people to collectively crown the worst in L.A. once and for all.

“No matter who wins, it's all bad,” Mr. Glen Dale said.

Voting kicks off this weekend, and the winner will be crowned by April.

How it works

The competition is divided into four rounds based on the general geographic area, with nine intersections in each round.

Starting Sunday, @americanaatbrandmemes will post the competitors on Instagram with a poll attached around 11 a.m. each day throughout March.

The polls will be open for 24 hours, and the intersection with the most votes will move on to the next round to face off against the others.

To complete this year’s lineup, Mr. Glen Dale again started with a list of his personal worst before turning to his followers for some suggestions.

The intersection of Harvey Drive and East Broadway toward the Glendale In-N-Out was a popular proposal, for example, but Mr. Glen Dale said he felt that may be too niche for the bracket.

“I tried not to narrow in too much on one area,” he said. “And then tried to use my own experience to be like, ‘Oh yes, these ones feel like hallmarks.’”

If your personal worst isn’t in the competition, you can also suggest an intersection in the comments by writing “WILDCARD: (your suggestion).” The suggestions with the most likes will be added to the competition, with a wildcard slot in each of the four rounds.

Some popular wildcard suggestions include the Cypress Park roundabout at Riverside Drive and San Fernando Road, the Glendale Boulevard and Riverside Drive intersection with the wonky left-turn lanes in Silver Lake, and for another year in a row — all of Koreatown.

“I always put [wildcards] in there because I'm always like there's something I'm not thinking of that someone's going to suggest,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “This is a fluid list, we could change it.”

The intersection voted as L.A.’s worst of the worst will be crowned on Americana At Brand Meme’s account by April 1.

The East Side-ish Round

The first round focuses on the “East Side-ish” of L.A., including Silver Lake, Highland Park, East L.A., Echo Park and Eagle Rock.

The rounds are broken up by “side-ish” so people can focus their debates on the intersections, not the geographic boundaries of the bracket, according to Mr. Glen Dale.

The options include:

• Virgil Avenue / Sunset Boulevard / Hollywood Boulevard vs Sunset Boulevard / Sanborn Avenue / Santa Monica Boulevard
• Stadium Way / Academy Road vs Glendale Boulevard / Fletcher Drive / Silver Ridge Avenue
• Telegraph Road / Atlantic Boulevard / Triggs Street / Ferguson Drive vs wildcard vs Huntington Drive / Garfield Avenue / Atlantic Boulevard
• York Boulevard / N Avenue 50 vs Glendale Boulevard / Alvarado Street vs Avenue 42 / Eagle Rock Boulevard

Mr. Glen Dale said Avenue 50, which came up often in followers’ suggestions, could get its own bracket because the intersections in the area don’t seem to communicate with each other.

“You'll be sitting at a red light and seeing a green in front of you and being like, oh, when I get to that one it's going to be red,” he said. “But, you know, I ended up with York and 50 … [it] felt like a good representation of that street as a whole.”

The West Side-ish Round

The competition heads to Beverly Hills, Culver City, Westchester, Venice, Westwood Village and Brentwood for the second, “West Side-ish” round.

The options include:

• Beverly Hills 6 way stop vs Pacific Coast Highway / Chautauqua Boulevard / West Channel Road
• Washington Boulevard / Culver Boulevard vs Exposition / Robertson / Venice Boulevards
• Sunset Boulevard / Bellagio Drive / Bellagio Road / Bellagio Way vs wildcard vs Abbot Kinney Boulevard / California Avenue
• La Cienega Boulevard / Centinela Avenue / La Tijera Boulevard vs Wilshire / Westwood Boulevards vs San Vicente Boulevard / Montana Avenue

“It will be the Beverly Hills 6 stop,” one Instagram commenter wrote. “It is known.”

The Central LA-ish Round 

The third, “Central LA-ish” round takes us into the heart of Hollywood, West Hollywood, the border of Miracle Mile and Carthay Circle as well as the border of Wilshire Center and the Dayton Heights neighborhood.

The options include:

• Hollywood Boulevard / Highland Avenue vs Highland / Franklin Avenues
• Fairfax Avenue / La Cienega Boulevard vs Fairfax Avenue / Olympic / San Vincente Boulevards
• Jefferson Boulevard / La Brea Avenue vs wildcard vs La Cienega / Sunset Boulevards
• Franklin Avenue / Vine Street / 101 Freeway vs Virgil Avenue / Beverly Boulevard / Temple Street vs Santa Monica Boulevard / Western Avenue

The Los Angeles Times released a report this week ranking L.A.’s worst intersections based on traffic data, with the troublesome top spot going to Highland and Sunset in Hollywood.

The Valley-ish Round

Last but not least, the “Valley-ish,” which includes intersections in North Hollywood, Burbank, Studio City and Sherman Oaks.

This round also features my personal nemesis — Barham and Cahuenga boulevards.

I take this route relatively often to get from Burbank to West Hollywood and have to give myself a pep talk every time. The seemingly-constant congestion over the hill, driver confusion about what lanes lead where and people cutting into lines of cars just before a turn makes the experience feel like it takes years off my life.

The options include:

• Lankershim Boulevard / Vineland Avenue / Camarillo Street vs Burbank / Lankershim Boulevards / Tujunga Avenue
• Victory / Burbank Boulevards / Victory Place / 5 Freeway / Costco vs Ventura Place / Radford Avenue / Trader Joe’s / Sephora parking lots
• Harvey / W Broadway vs wildcard vs Sepulveda / Burbank Boulevards
• Mulholland Drive / Coldwater Canyon Avenue vs Barham / Cahuenga Boulevards vs Vineland Avenue / Magnolia Boulevard

Mr. Glen Dale agreed with my assessment, describing the Barham Boulevard intersection as his “white whale.”

“I hate going through that intersection, and it's not even that it's scary like other ones where you don't know what's happening,” Mr. Glen Dale said. “No matter which way you're going, everyone is converging onto Barham, and it just creates this madness.”

But Lankershim / Vineland / Camarillo appears to be an early follower favorite, as one commenter wrote, it “takes 2-3 business days to get through” and another added, “I’m rioting if [the intersection] doesn’t win.”