The Brief

Los Angeles County residents living in unstable housing conditions were almost twice as likely as their securely housed counterparts to open their doors to friends and family members who were displaced during January’s wildfires.

That’s according to results released Thursday from the LABarometer survey, a project of the University of Southern California’s Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research.

During February and March, the researchers put a series of fire-related questions to a panel of 1,360 county households. The respondents represented a diverse cross-section of L.A. County in terms of race, income, geography and housing stability, researchers said.

Among the respondents who said they personally knew someone who lost a home in the fires, those identified as “unstably housed” were more likely to say they let an evacuee stay with them (16%) than those who had stable housing (9%).

Kyla Thomas, a USC sociologist and director of LABarometer, called that finding ”striking.”

“If you think about people who are in housing-insecure situations, those households are more likely to be overcrowded already,” Thomas said. “What you're seeing is the most vulnerable residents taking on additional housing burdens to support those more severely impacted.”

Some evacuees are still living in unstable homes

The researchers found that across the survey’s questions, responses from people who said they were stably housed often differed significantly from the responses of unstably housed people, defined as those who said they worried about losing their housing “often” or “very often.”

Some of those doubled-up living arrangements were only temporary, according to the survey. But it found that unstably housed respondents were more likely to still be housing evacuees (6%) months after the fires were put out compared with stably housed respondents (2%).

The survey also found unstably housed respondents were more likely to say they lost income or savings because of the fires (14%) than stably housed respondents (5%).

Thomas said the responses point toward increased struggles for people who were already more likely to have missed past rent payments and be spending a high percentage of their income on housing.

Will post-fire eviction protections keep people housed? 

State and local eviction protections were put in place for renters affected by the fires.

Shortly after the fires broke out, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order providing temporary safeguards against eviction to tenants who took in roommates not authorized under a lease, if those new occupants were displaced by the fires.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors also gave tenants a legal defense against eviction if they can’t pay rent on time because of financial impacts of the wildfires. Landlords could still file an eviction, but the county protection would allow tenants who notified their landlords about post-fire hardships to fight it in court.

Thomas said it will take time to know whether those protections have succeeded at stabilizing Angelenos in an already expensive housing market turbocharged by the fires.

LABarometer has been running since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic sent similar shockwaves through L.A.’s rental housing market.

“We saw during COVID that those eviction protections made a big difference, but then once they were lifted, we started to see an uptick in evictions,” Thomas said.

She added that future LABarometer surveys will continue to examine the effects of the fires.

“People are maybe protected now,” Thomas said. “But when those protections go away, is that when they finally experience the full impact the wildfires have had on them?”

L.A. County had its worst year on record for flea-borne typhus cases, reporting 220 cases in 2025. Experts say the disease is difficult to eradicate because humans, animals and vectors all play a part in transmission.

The department investigated outbreaks in central L.A., Santa Monica and Willowbrook. This year, there are 17 reported cases of typhus.

Typhus is a bacterial disease spread by infected fleas, which are most commonly found on rats, free-roaming cats and opossums.

How did we get here? 

L.A. County has seen an increase in flea-borne typhus cases year-over-year, Aiman Halai, medical epidemiologist at the L.A. County Department of Public Health, told LAist.

“These fleas live on reservoir animals, which in L.A. County are primarily rats, free-roaming cats and opossums,” Halai said. “Any factor that increases the interaction between these animals and humans will increase the risk of flea-borne typhus.”

There is an indirect link between weather and typhus, Halai said, because weather affects animal movement and human behavior, like how much time people spend outside.

Halai said diseases like typhus are difficult to eradicate.

“It's hard to control diseases that involve humans, animals and vectors, because there are so many different factors that play a part in transmission,” Halai added.

As for hospitalizations associated with typhus, Halai said the disease is relatively mild but can progress to serious illness.

“What we're finding is that nine out of 10 cases that we have identified have been hospitalized, and there may be many more cases that are undiagnosed and have not resulted in severe disease,” Halai added.

Is this happening anywhere else? 

Other parts of the U.S. are seeing increases in typhus cases, including Texas, Halai said.

Closer to home, the city of Long Beach issued a health alert warning residents about an uptick in typhus cases last year. The city, which has its own health department, reported 39 cases of typhus in 2025, of which 72% were hospitalized.

Jennifer Ann Gonzalez, public affairs officer for the Long Beach Health Department, said following last year’s increase, the department upped its mitigation efforts, including public education and vector control.

“The localized typhus outbreak reported in summer 2025 was controlled, and no additional cases associated with the outbreak have been reported,” Gonzalez said in an email. “To date, no outbreaks have been identified in 2026.”

How to protect yourself and your neighbors

The disease is not spread from person to person and is treatable with antibiotics. Symptoms can include high fever, nausea, muscle aches, rash and cough. People who think they have it should talk to their healthcare provider.

Infection occurs when feces from infected fleas are rubbed into cuts or scrapes, including flea bites, or rubbed into the eyes.

“Our cases have been as young as one year of age or to over 80 years of age. It's really a disease that can affect anyone at any time in L.A. County,” Halai said.

Pets don’t show symptoms, Halai added, but they act as a vehicle to carry infected fleas from reservoir animals to humans.

To protect yourself and your pets:

• Use flea control products for pets.
• Store trash and other food in secure bins to avoid attracting animals.
• Close crawl spaces and attics to discourage animals from nesting around your home.
• Avoid petting or feeding free-roaming animals, including cat colonies.
• When outside, use a bug repellent that protects from fleas. 

What to look out for

Typhus symptoms can start within two weeks after contact with an infected flea and can include fever, headache, muscle pain, nausea and rash.

L.A. County residents can find more information here.

It’s spring, and that means coyote mating season, not just in Southern California wildlands, but also in the urban landscape. While it’s hard to say whether there are more coyotes roaming the region, the fact that it's mating season means you are more likely to see one.

“Animals are sort of out and about. They're vocalizing. They’re scent marking. They're grooming, they're moving around, they're looking for mates,” said Ted Stankowich, a professor of biological sciences at California State University, Long Beach.

He hasn’t studied the effects of the Palisades and Eaton fires on coyotes, but said fires often destroy coyote dens and disrupt their territories.

“Where one pack might have dominated one sort of larger territory, that territory might be split up. And now you have two packs in there, and you might have two breeding females and more pups,” he said, which can lead to more interactions with humans.

Most coyotes are afraid of people, Stankowich said, but packs may include an aggressive member. Here are his suggestions when encountering coyotes:

• Carry a noisemaker, like a whistle or cowbell to scare them
• Throw a rock to make their encounter with you unpleasant
• Carry bear spray
• At home, keep small and large pets inside — a coyote pack can overtake larger dogs, like German shepherds

After a warm weekend, Southern California will see cooler temperatures this week and even some rain over the weekend.

L.A. and Orange County beaches will see temperatures in the mid 60s to around 70 degrees, though some Orange County coastal areas could reach 76 degrees.

Meanwhile, daytime highs for the valleys and Inland Empire will reach into the low 80s, with the warmest areas expected to reach 84 degrees. Coachella Valley will see temperatures in the 90s.

Looking ahead, weekend rain is in the forecast starting Friday through Saturday. We could get anywhere between a quarter to a full inch of rain, with the higher amounts of rainfall more likely for higher elevations. There's also a chance of thunderstorms that could produce heavy downpours. For anyone going to Coachella, it looks like rain is likely for Saturday.

It’s been four years since James Oreste started Ubefest, a festival meant to highlight the purple yam that’s become beloved not just in the Filipino diaspora but across the country. In that time, the food festival has grown in the number of vendors and become a broader appreciation of Filipino cuisine.

The restaurant:

This year's event is happening Saturday April 11 and Sunday April 12 in Cerritos. One of the festival’s vendors, Emerson Baja, owner of Long Beach Lumpia, has been involved with the event for years, and he came into the studio to talk to host Austin Cross.

The food:

Baja’s pop-up menu was inspired by a variety of things, with the traditional aspects of his menu coming from his family and other aspects by food he experimented with while attending Long Beach State. He became a probation officer after he graduated college, but his heart was always with food, specifically lumpia, which he served at a potluck.

“People were like ‘you’re in the wrong business,’” Baja said.

For the segment, Baja brought in a variety of lumpias: traditional Shanghai; pork chile verde; veggie pancit pizza; and ube cheesecake turon.

The verdict: 

When Emerson mentioned the Shanghai lumpia being a homemade recipe, Cross added, “Home is delicious! You have a home like this?”

“It’s finger-licking good over here,” Cross said after his first bite of the ube cheesecake turon lumpia. He added: “It’s really special because it has an aftertaste of a very heartwarming pastry…feels very homey.”

Listen to the full conversation here: