David Wagner
covers housing in Southern California, a place where the lack of affordable housing contributes to homelessness.
Published April 7, 2025 4:41 PM
Last year, Armando Carrillo tried to decline a call from an unknown number. Instead, he accidentally answered it — and it changed his life.
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Zaydee Sanchez
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LAist
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Topline:
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.
The approach: L.A. County’s Homelessness Prevention Unit uses artificial intelligence to predict who is at high risk of becoming unhoused. It then calls people to offer quick cash assistance for things like rent, medical care or fixing a car. But nearly half the people contacted by the unit never call back.
Why it matters: Many elected leaders and policy experts have become convinced that L.A. will not solve its homelessness crisis by focusing only on the expensive, lengthy process of moving people from the streets into new housing. For all of the people getting rehoused, advocates argue, more are becoming unhoused, cancelling out hard-won progress. But in order to prevent homelessness, the county first needs to sign people up for help — a delicate process that relies on human trust.
Read on… to learn how accidentally answering a call from an unknown number changed one man’s life for the better.
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.
This LA County program can prevent homelessness — if it can convince people it’s not a scam
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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David Wagner/LAist
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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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Zaydee Sanchez
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LAist
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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.”
David Wagner
covers housing in Southern California, a place where the lack of affordable housing contributes to homelessness.
Published April 28, 2026 4:09 PM
The developer behind the newly renovated Jardinette Apartments wanted to return the Hollywood building to architect Richard Neutra's original vision.
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David Wagner
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LAist
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Topline:
When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen such an iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like. But by the end of the century, the Jardinette had become derelict, its historic significance hidden behind years of neglect. Now, this pioneering piece of L.A. architecture is coming back to life.
What’s new: Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it. With Hassid’s renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original conception is once again coming into clear view.
The backstory: The Jardinette was designed by Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra. With his flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors, Neutra would go on to define the language of mid-century California modernism. But the Jardinette, built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A., coming just a few years after he arrived in the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.
Read on … to learn why the building’s restoration matters to L.A.’s architectural history.
When it was first built nearly 100 years ago, the Jardinette Apartments building in Hollywood made international headlines for its radical design. At the time, Los Angeles had never seen anything quite like architect Richard Neutra’s iconoclastic vision of what apartment living could look like.
But by the end of the century, the Jardinette had become dilapidated, its historic significance hidden behind years of neglect.
Now, this pioneering piece of L.A. architecture is coming back to life.
Developer Cameron Hassid bought the nationally registered building in 2020 after previous owners tried but failed to restore it. With the renovation now nearing completion, the Jardinette’s original concept once again is coming into clear view.
“It was a big, heavy lift,” Hassid said, describing the project as the most complicated in his career. “There are so many apartment buildings in L.A. But none of them will have the story or any of the significance that this does.”
First steps for a now-famous architect
In the 1920s, Neutra was a young Austrian architect who had recently moved to the United States to work with Frank Lloyd Wright and fellow Austrian émigré Rudolph Schindler.
Historians cite the style he would go on to develop — with its flat roofs, expansive windows, deep overhangs and blending of the indoors and outdoors — as defining the language of mid-century California modernism.
Richard Neutra's family lived in the VDL Research House II, located in Silver Lake and designed by Neutra with his son, Dion.
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Michael Locke via the LAist Featured Photos pool on Flickr
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But the Jardinette, built in 1928, was Neutra’s first major commission in L.A., coming just a few years after his arrival in the United States.
Architecture historians say Neutra’s goal was to strip down the Jardinette’s design, maximizing light and fresh air in the building’s 43 modestly sized apartments, all in keeping with the burgeoning International Style.
Long ribbon windows are the most striking feature in an otherwise unadorned facade. Windows join at corners and stretch across nearly entire walls, connecting living rooms and kitchens. Panes in the walls of interior closets bring “borrowed light” into shadowy interiors.
Neutra outfitted many of the apartments with balconies that cantilever off reinforced concrete. The balconies were ideal for outdoor plants — hence the name Jardinette, or Little Garden.
The restoration of the Jardinette Apartments is nearly complete.
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David Wagner
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Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian who consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette, said Neutra’s approach would have seemed utterly alien amid the 1920s development boom in L.A.
“All these other revival styles were happening: Tudor Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival,” said Lamprecht, the author of Neutra: Complete Works from the publisher Taschen. “This was not a milieu that encouraged, fostered or remotely understood the tenets of early modernism.”
Once-lauded edifice falls on hard times
The Jardinette helped secure Neutra’s fame far beyond the confines of Southern California. His work on the Jardinette was included in a landmark 1932 architecture exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
But by the 1990s, the Jardinette had all but lost its visionary purity. It was painted pink and green. The previously uniform steel windows were mismatched, using cheap materials. The walls were graffitied.
By the late 20th century, the Jardinette had fallen into disrepair.
“It's just what happens when buildings get neglected,” he said. “It's important to look back on these ideas and not lose them and try to maintain them and not cover them up. Now, hopefully for another 100 years, more generations of people can experience the design the way it was originally intended.”
Working with the limits of a century-old building
The team behind the Jardinette’s renewal said the building was not easy to renovate. It was originally built without a cooling system. Its electrical system couldn’t meet modern energy needs. It didn’t have stand-up showers.
Installing those modern amenities while preserving Neutra’s original design proved challenging at times, said Anant Topiwala with June Street Architecture.
The team preserved whatever original materials they could, Topiwala said, but they needed to order custom tiles, windows and other parts in order to match historic photographs and documents.
A historic photograph shows the Jardinette in its original state.
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Courtesy Cameron Hassid
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“We were like archeologists, in a way,” he said. “There was a lot of peeling back. What do we think the paint color was? What do we think that wood detail was?
“Neutra didn't like angles. We needed to make sure, for example, the casing around the doors didn't meet at a mitered corner. There's just so many interesting things.”
Pulling permits for a protected landmark
The Jardinette has multiple historic designations. It’s in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And it’s protected as a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument. Those classifications limit what kinds of changes are allowed in a renovation. Getting all the necessary permits was a job in itself, one handled by Michael Norberg with Cali Planners.
“Everything you can think of that could come up did come up on this building,” Norberg said. “But I think the bones have been reinforced. The historic aspect has been retained. The entire nature and history and spirit of this building is still here.
“And I love the fact that the city was willing to work with us on maintaining that,” he said.
How the past informs future plans
Hassid said the renovation should be completed by this summer. He added that he’s not yet sure what the building’s future will be, but he won’t sell it to a typical real estate investor. He recently put it on the market with Neema Ahadian of Marcus & Millichap.
“We've sold some really beautiful buildings, but nothing that has the history that you can find here,” Ahadian said. The buyer will need to be someone who understands the value of preserving a piece of architectural history, he said.
“This building's been through a few ownerships that have not necessarily had the same vision,” Ahadian said.
Two windows join at a right angle and a door opens to a balcony in one corner of a Jardinette apartment.
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David Wagner
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LAist
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When he first took on the project, Hassid said, colleagues told him he was nuts. But he said ultimately the effort was worth it to preserve an L.A. architectural gem.
“I hope we made Richard Neutra proud, bringing his building back to life,” he said.
What does real luxury look like?
Neutra built the Jardinette at a time when movie studios were growing. The Paramount studio lot is just a few blocks away.
Barbara Lamprecht, an architectural historian with expertise in Neutra's work, consulted on the preservation of the Jardinette.
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David Wagner
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Lamprecht, the Neutra historian, said she’s looking forward to seeing how people occupy the apartments. She said Neutra designed the Jardinette to bring a new kind of luxury to occupants who might have included up-and-coming actors or below-the-line production workers.
“The luxuries in life are access to sunlight, to views,” Lamprecht said. “This was the raison d'être for this entire building: to provide graceful, expansive lives to people who weren’t in single-family dwellings in the Hollywood Hills.”
Whoever the next tenants will be, Lamprecht said, “I feel like, for the first time, this building is not invisible any longer.”
Payton Seda
is an associate producer for AirTalk and FilmWeek, hosted by Larry Mantle.
Published April 28, 2026 4:06 PM
Outside one of Don Benito Fundamental School's classrooms. It is one of a handful of elementary schools within PUSD that's been recommended to close.
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Mariana Dale
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LAist
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Topline:
Pasadena Unified is considering plans to close and consolidate several schools in the wake of declining enrollment and a budget shortfall.
What's happening: The district is hosting the in-person town hall from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Pasadena High School, 2925 E. Sierra Madre Blvd. The public will have the opportunity to comment on the School Consolidation Advisory Committee's recommendations for potential school closures.
Schools being considered: The advisory committee recommended a handful of schools be closed or consolidated including: Don Benito Fundamental School, Webster Elementary, Norma Coombs Elementary, McKinley, Eliot Arts Magnet, Thurgood Marshall and Blair High School.
What’s next: The advisory committee will present its recommendations to the Board of Education on May 28, setting the stage for a final vote in June.
Pasadena Unified will hear from the public Tuesday night as it considers plans to close and consolidate several schools within the district.
The campus closures are in response to declining enrollment that has left PUSD with a budget deficit that recent layoffs have not solved.
What’s happening
Parents and community members will hear from the School Consolidation Advisory Committee (SCAC) about its recommendations for which schools should be closed or consolidated.
It is the second of two town halls offered by the district. The first one was virtual.
There will be a public comment portion for attendees to give their input on the recommendations presented.
Which schools are in danger?
The advisory committee recommended a handful of schools be closed.
For TK through 8th grade, the recommended closures include Don Benito Fundamental School, Webster Elementary and Norma Coombs Elementary. The schools McKinley and Eliot Arts Magnet would merge, with the McKinley campus closing.
For high schools, the committee recommended consolidating Thurgood Marshall and Blair High School.
“But those are also six through 12 campuses, so the proposals being considered would split up those schools to nine through 12 and six through eight,” said David Wilson, a reporter for the Pasadena Star-News who spoke to Larry Mantle on LAist's daily news program AirTalk.
Listen
10:28
Pasadena Unified is considering school closures in the wake of declining enrollment
What’s next?
The advisory committee will present its recommendations to the Board of Education on May 28.
The board will then vote in June.
"PUSD remains committed to an unbiased process, guided at every step by Total School Solutions (TSS), the District’s independent consultant," a PUSD spokesperson said in a statement. "We remain committed to transparency and care for our community throughout this process."
How to attend the town hall
The district is hosting the in-person town hall from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday at Pasadena High School, 2925 E. Sierra Madre Blvd.
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An attempted shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner on Saturday has, again, highlighted the climate of political violence in the U.S. But there are still many questions about the motive.
The backstory: Cole Tomas Allen, a high school tutor with a background in mechanical engineering and computer science, allegedly attempted to storm the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner on Saturday night, where Trump and other high-level administration officials were gathered with the Washington press corps. He was stopped by federal law enforcement officers before getting close to his presumed targets.
More details:According to a White House official, Allen's sister told the Secret Service and local law enforcement that her brother was known to make "radical" statements. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and NPR has not confirmed this with Allen's family members. But this characterization has puzzled some experts who track extremism, who say that it does not align with writings and social media activity that are believed to link to the defendant.
Read on... for more on what experts are saying.
Monday's arraignment of 31-year old Cole Tomas Allen, a California man who is charged with attempting to assassinate President Donald Trump over the weekend, opened legal proceedings that many extremism experts will be watching closely.
Allen, a high school tutor with a background in mechanical engineering and computer science, allegedly attempted to storm the annual White House Correspondents Association Dinner on Saturday night, where Trump and other high-level administration officials were gathered with the Washington press corps. He was stopped by federal law enforcement officers before getting close to his presumed targets.
According to a White House official, Allen's sister told the Secret Service and local law enforcement that her brother was known to make "radical" statements. The official was not authorized to speak publicly and NPR has not confirmed this with Allen's family members. But this characterization has puzzled some experts who track extremism, who say that it does not align with writings and social media activity that are believed to link to the defendant.
"You look at the social media profiles that have been attributed to this suspect and they're really not that radical," said Jared Holt, senior researcher at Open Measures, a company that tracks online threats and narratives. "Oftentimes it's like quite centrist, pretty moderate left wing, if anything."
An affidavit filed by an FBI agent in support of the charges claims that Allen sent an email to members of his family moments before initiating the attack. The email specifies some grievances against Trump administration officials and policies.
"I'm not the person raped in a detention camp. I'm not the fisherman executed without trial. I'm not a schoolkid blown up or a child starved or a teenage girl abused by the many criminals in this administration," the letter states. The letter appears to reference a range of issues from immigration detentions under the Trump administration, U.S. strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean, the bombing of a girls' school in Iran and the Epstein scandal.
In an apparent reference to Trump, the letter also says "I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes."
But Holt and others say these views, however pointed some of the terminology may be, fall within a modern mainstream left. He and others say it is very unclear what may have tipped the individual from such widely held views into an alleged violent plot.
"That's part of what's troubling, is when you start to have people who are kind of seemingly normal, law-abiding members of society feeling like violence is the solution," said Cynthia Miller-Idriss, founding director and chief vision officer at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL, at American University.
"I think there's a little bit of nihilism reflected here," Miller-Idriss said. "This idea that there is no more solution, violence is the answer, nothing else is going to change, nothing else is going to be effective."
The alleged assassination attempt is the latest high-profile data point in a growing environment of political violence in the U.S. over the last decade. While most of that is attributed to the far right, there is alarm about rising violence from the left. Even amidst this backdrop, however, Holt and Miller-Idriss both note that the weekend incident at the Washington Hilton hotel stands out.
For starters, Holt said he's seen no indication that the defendant was steeped in conspiratorial thinking. He said that more typically, people behind acts of violent extremism are nursing grievances fed by false narratives.
"If you were to just kind of randomly bump into one of these people on the street, you might get the sense that something was a little off," Holt said. "Whereas this seems -- just looking at, you know, this BlueSky profile that's been attributed to the suspect and this document that's been attributed to the suspect – I'm not getting that same kind of read."
In addition, Miller-Idriss said the defendant's presumed writings suggest that he felt personally responsible for not having taken action sooner against the administration. She said they do not appear intended to incite others to take similar action, or to spread a particular ideological message. The tone is one of "defeatism," Miller-Idriss said, which contrasts with a more typical pattern of political violence, particularly from the far right.
"I don't think you usually see the defeatism on the far right, [which is] more of a mobilization of martyrdom, of wanting attention, of wanting to launch a movement, to be a firestarter, that kind of thing," she said. "This is like a much more hopeless kind of language and rhetoric being used."
Holt said this tone is troubling, not simply because of how it may connect to the violence that Allen is alleged to have been planning. But also because it may signal that on the left, there may be a growing perception that the levers of democracy can no longer work to effect change.
"That is a bleak point for an individual to get to," Holt said. "But I also think that people are getting to that point now should be cause for reflection for people who work in politics or who work in advocacy, or whatever it may be, that [with] the many problems that we're up against today, there is a subset of the American population that's losing hope and is having a hard time imagining a way out of it."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Mariana Dale
explores and explains the forces that shape how and what kids learn from kindergarten to high school.
Published April 28, 2026 2:51 PM
An artificial turf field at Laguna Beach High School. Los Angeles Unified is studying whether to continue to install similar fields at its high schools. Generally, turf fields are made up of fibers attached to a mat over a layer of plastic, rubber or natural pellets.
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Juliana Yamada
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The Los Angeles Unified School District is weighing the future of its turf and natural grass athletic fields. The district is in the midst of a study and collecting feedback from parents, students, staff and other stakeholders.
Why it matters: The outcome of the study will inform the immediate replacement of seven deteriorated high school athletic fields and future projects. Currently, about 20% of the district’s athletic fields are synthetic turf and about 80% are natural grass. The concentration rises in high schools’ combination soccer/football fields, which are 40% synthetic. Researchers have raised concerns about the artificial turf’s impact on children’s health and the environment— for example, artificial turf can get hot enough to burn skin.
Why now: The study is the result of a unanimously adopted November 2025 board resolution that also prohibited the installation of artificial turf at early education centers, elementary and middle schools.
Read on … to learn more about how LAUSD is evaluating its athletic fields.
The Los Angeles Unified School District is weighing the future of its artificial turf and natural grass athletic fields. The district is in the midst of a study and collecting feedback from parents, students, staff and other stakeholders.
The outcome of the study, expected this summer, will inform the immediate replacement of seven deteriorated high school athletic fields and future projects.
The vast majority of the district’s turf, from front lawns to baseball fields, is natural grass, Krisztina Tokes, LAUSD’s chief of facilities, told LAist.
The percentage of synthetic turf increases if you isolate the district’s athletic fields — about 20% of the district’s athletic fields are synthetic turf and about 80% are natural grass. The concentration is highest in high schools’ combination soccer/football fields, 40% of which are synthetic.
“Synthetic turf was used at many of those school sites where we anticipated there would be very high use,” Tokes said. For some, the district shared the fields with city and youth sports programs.
Synthetic turf has a higher upfront cost than natural grass but requires less maintenance and water.
The LAUSD high schools up for field replacement
Downtown L.A.:
Roybal Learning Center— downtown L.A.
Northeast L.A.:
Sonia Sotomayor Art & Sciences Magnet
San Fernando Valley:
Cesar E. Chavez Academies — San Fernando Valley
South L.A.:
Fremont High School
Marquez High School
Maya Angelou Community High School
West L.A.:
University High School Charter
Together these schools enroll about 10,000 students.
The study is the result of a unanimously adopted November 2025 board resolution that also prohibited the installation of artificial turf at early education centers, elementary and middle schools.
“No 4-year-old, no elementary student should be playing on surfaces hot enough to burn their skin or expose our children to chemicals,” said Rocío Rivas, the board’s vice president, during the meeting.
Student board member Jerry Yang said his peers wrote to him with concerns about artificial turf.
“In a dense, urban city like Los Angeles, where the amount of green space is often a reflection of a community's income level, it is all the more important that we switch away from artificial turf,” Yang said.
Speakers during public comment also called on the district to move away from synthetic turf.
The study will consider four key topics: playability, health and safety, environmental impact and cost and maintenance. The district has also brought on consultants LPA and Core America to help evaluate the fields’ environmental impact, health and safety.
LAUSD isn't the only district weighing the future of its athletic fields.
