The Brief

When it comes to plastic, architect Charles Wee has heard it all. Awful for the environment. Flammable. Flimsy.

But as Southern California tries to pull itself out of a homelessness crisis, Wee is bullish on plastic being part of the fix.

His company LifeArk is drawing attention for making 8-by-8-foot modules molded from 30% post-consumer recycled plastic that fit together like Legos – if the pieces were made out of a high-density polymer.

LifeArk built a "proof-of-concept" development serving 18 formerly unhoused people in El Monte.

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“Plastic is such a surprising material,” said Wee, who designed skyscrapers in Asia before making the sharp turn to affordable housing. “We’ve just been using it the wrong way.”

In a world where stick-built homes are the convention, houses made of plastic can be a hard sell. The mention of plastic — already ubiquitous in daily life, including in our bodies — may turn off some. But there’s nothing like an emergency to shift views.

The unhoused population in L.A. County has climbed to 69,000, a situation made worse by long waits for permanent housing affordable to people with low incomes.

The common area of LifeArk's El Monte development is intended to build community.

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To quickly move people from encampments to interim housing, cities and non-profits have turned to alternative types of housing like shed-like units made of aluminum or shipping containers stacked like building blocks.

But as concerns about cost and habitability with some of those structures emerge, companies like LifeArk are gaining a foothold in the pre-fabricated housing space.

Proof-of-concept in El Monte

The Duarte-based company has started to land contracts up and down California's Central Coast. Its modules are going to into a new interim housing project in Santa Maria and another one in Paso Robles. Next it plans to build a campus of 80 units of permanent and interim housing in San Luis Obispo for a project led by the homeless services division of San Luis Obispo County.

An overhead view of LifeArk's plastic housing development in El Monte which are the three beige buildings on a narrow lot.

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Brian Feinzimer

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Closer to home, possible collaborations are being discussed with the offices of L.A. city councilmembers and church leaders who are looking to develop unused land.

As a proof of concept, LifeArk used its own product to develop a narrow lot in El Monte last year, partly with a $1 million innovation grant it won from the county.

Workers stitched together dozens of modules to create three beige-gray, low-lying buildings that blend into a neighborhood that includes an ice cream supplier and faded stucco apartment complex. One of the 19 units is reserved for case managers offering homelessness support services through the Santa Ana-based Illumination Foundation, which is part owner of the El Monte property.

The inside of an individual’s living unit at LifeArk affordable plastic modular homes in El Monte.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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The inside of an individual’s living unit at LifeArk affordable plastic modular homes in El Monte.

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Brian Feinzimer

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LAist

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“It looks all brand-new, like a modern place,” said Sharon Downing, resident and on-site property manager, surveying her nearly 200-square-foot space that comes with its own bathroom and kitchenette.

Downing had stayed for 17 years in an encampment in the Azusa Canyon. Rocks and sticks she collected during her life in the mountains accent her unit. A carpeted tower for her cat Kiss Kiss stands near a neatly-made bed she's topped with teddy bears. Outside her window is a garden where she tends to raised beds of green onions and lettuce.

"You wouldn't even think that you're living in plastic," Downing said.

LifeArk resident and property manager Sharon Downing tends to blackberries in the garden.

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The price tag

The high cost of land and materials in California makes affordable housing, like all housing, expensive to build. Add to that the drawn-out and costly process of securing funding and government subsidies and meeting environmental and labor regulations.

But LifeArk says it managed to slash the cost of the El Monte development to $3.6 million by completing 90% of the construction at its factory in the Central Valley city of Madera.

LifeArk plastic components are stamped out of a rotational molding machine in a Madera facility.

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Site work was also minimal. There no trenching. And instead of hooking up individual units to utilities, all the rooms in a building access water, power and gas from the same lines.

A recent report prepared for the United Way of Greater L.A. showed LifeArk's $190,000 per-unit cost in El Monte was the lowest out of 28 permanent supportive housing projects studied by the authors.

The median per unit cost was $470,000 — 2.5 times more than what LifeArk spent.

From the Amazon to L.A. 

The original plan hadn’t been to house L.A.’s unhoused population.

Wee, who studied architecture at UCLA, said he had grown “jaded” designing high-rises for corporations, which included the much-discussed “invisible skyscraper” in South Korea.

About eight years ago, he decided to accept a long-standing invite to visit his cousin who had left South Korea to be a missionary in the Amazon. Wee was struck by how locals living along the river had to move whenever waters rose.

Foam insulation fills the plastic shell of LifeArk modular unit. The foam not only lowers energy costs but provides the buoyancy that architect Charles Wee wanted in a home that could float.

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“I decided, ‘Let me actually see if I can come up with housing that can float on the water,” Wee said. Hence the name LifeArk.

Around the same time, Paul Cho was trying to find the most affordable way to build homes for Illumination Foundation, the homelessness services provider he had co-founded in Orange County.

A co-worker, who happened to be Wee’s cousin, had told him about the architect's quest to build floatable plastic housing. Cho visited Wee’s studio, then located in South Pasadena, highly skeptical.

“But the more I learned about it, I thought, actually, this concept would have applications for the homeless right here in our backyard,” Cho recalled.

Charles Wee (l.) and Paul Cho (r.) left lucrative careers in architecture and finance, respectively, before entering the world of affordable housing.

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The two men decided to join forces. Cho left his post as chief financial officer at Illumination Foundation to become LifeArk’s CFO but still advises the nonprofit, bringing it onto provide support services at the El Monte property.

The pair, both Korean Americans who emigrated to the U.S. with their families as pre-teens, became a rare executive team of color in a home manufacturing industry dominated by white men.

They found other commonalities. Both are in their early 60's. Both had mid-life crises that led to job changes. When he was in his early 40's, Cho quit being an investment banker for firms like Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. He attended graduate school at the University of California, Irvine to start a new career in human services.

Both are also devout Christians. Wee's fellow church-goers, in fact, manage the El Monte property through a non-profit, and have an ownership stake.

Architect Charles Wee points to a single 8x8 plastic module used to build homes.

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LifeArk's faith-driven mission was apparent to the Rev. Paige Eaves, a leader in the California-Pacific Conference of The United Methodist Church who met Cho at a summit on homelessness convened for religious organizations.

Eaves and her colleagues have been in discussions with LifeArk about developing church-owned land in the region.

"It definitely helps that we have partners with a common heart because there's a common language and it makes it easy for us to understand what motivates us," Eaves said.

Fireballs and earthquakes

Word-of-mouth about the El Monte location has led to regular requests for visits by those active in L.A.’s housing circles.

Cho and Wee recently gave a tour to a group of real estate agents and community leaders, including Jackie Dupont-Walker, who works on affordable housing as a Metro board director and president of Ward Economic Development Corp. in South L.A.

The LifeArk duo answered questions they knew were coming. How fast can you build? Cho said a 3,600-square-foot building with 12 bedrooms took 55 days to assemble.

What about flammability? Wee explained that the company spent five years formulating a polymer with a non-toxic retardant.

“We're able to get what's called a Class A roof, which means I can actually throw a fireball on my roof and it will self-extinguish,” Wee said.

Then there’s the little problem of earthquakes. Wee said the moldability of plastic allowed him to shape modular parts to withstand cracks and heavy loads. Testing showed it could survive a 9.0 magnitude quake, he said. (For reference, the Northridge quake measured 6.7.)

Metro board member and founding president of Ward Economic Development Corporation Jackie Dupont-Walker (l.) toured the LifeArk development in El Monte along with Lori Gay, CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County. (r.)

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Those on the tour marveled at the speed with which the development was constructed and how it offered both privacy and common space where residents could play games and share meals.

The visitors also envisioned uses for the modules beyond interim housing, such as senior living centers and backyard houses.

“If we have to tweak it a little bit to be back in South Central L.A., that's what we'll do,” Dupont-Walker said. “This absolutely is visionary."

The use of plastic didn't seem to bother anyone. The group's members pointed out plastic is everywhere in homes — in vinyl siding, patio furniture. Why not entire houses?

The other kids on the block

As cities look to pre-fab structures as homelessness solutions, other companies have already gotten in the door.

The Washington-based company Pallet emerged as a market leader in L.A. during the pandemic. City officials, under legal pressure to create more beds, saw in the stand-alone units a fast way to get people into their own space and avoid the coronavirus.

Since 2021, the city and county have bought hundreds of 64-square-foot Pallet units made of aluminum and composite to build "tiny home villages." The expansion of these communities, however, have come with criticism that the units resemble jail cells and that the city overspends on site work to accommodate housing with a limited life span and questionable resistance to fires.

The same time Pallet shelters were proliferating, shipping containers also entered the spotlight. Interim housing projects unveiled during the pandemic had repurposed containers into modular units at the Hilda L. Solis Care First Village near downtown L.A. and “bridge” housing opened by the city of L.A. in Westlake.

But the pandemic exposed how wildly the cost of shipping containers can fluctuate. Container prices surged alongside the demand for imported goods from people sequestered at home, according to Ross Zelen, who wrote a recent white paper on homeless housing for the Urban Land Institute.

“All of the builders who were thinking about using shipping containers were like, ‘Stick-building is now the better option because it's more expensive to think about this innovative shipping container model,’” Zelen said. “It's like, ‘Okay, well, what comes next?”

Finding new spaces for building

LifeArk may be the new kid in town but it already has influential supporters such as Lewis Horne, a top executive at CBRE, the country’s largest commercial real estate services company.

Horne said as part of CBRE’s commitment to social responsibility, he is trying to help locate properties to site LifeArk units. He said LifeArk stands out because of its ability to mass-produce durable and "dignified" homes that can be configured to fit on odd-shaped parcels, of which there are many in L.A.

“We're not going to solve this problem by putting large communities on large land parcels,” Horne said. “We’re going to be dealing with smaller sites, so the idea is to get better density."

LifeArk’s ability to scale up helped to win over the Nonprofit Finance Fund, which provides loans and other financial services to nonprofits.

Resident Sharon Downing works closely with Rebecca Wee, who runs programming for LifeArk and is also the daughter of founder Charles Wee.

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The fund lent LifeArk $2.1 million to build its El Monte location at a time when traditional banks didn’t want to take the underwriting risk on an untested building technology.

“Why we entered into this was to demonstrate to others that it is a worthwhile investment,” said Kristin Giantris, the fund’s chief of client services. "Not fundable by philanthropy but investable."

Wee, for his part, is still set on his original dream of getting plastic modules to disaster-prone places like the Amazon. But the housing crunch in his backyard is the focus now and he said he is “eternally grateful” that he met Cho, which put them on a challenging but clear path together.

“If you're really looking at solving not only the homeless crisis, but the affordable housing crisis, you got to be able to pump out houses. Literally,” Wee said.

USC’s annual food study found that although there have been some improvements, food insecurity in L.A. County is still “unacceptably high” as more higher-income residents struggle to afford enough groceries.

Researchers at USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research found that, consistent with last year, 1 in 4 L.A. County households in 2025 experienced food insecurity. About 35% of low-income households reported being food insecure, a slight decrease from 2024.

“These findings show both encouraging progress and emerging pressures,” Kayla de la Haye, director of USC’s Food Systems Institute and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Even as food insecurity decreases among low-income households, the burden is shifting. Many Angelenos outside the safety net are struggling to keep up with rising costs.”

Here’s what the report found 

Low-income residents, women and Latinos are among the most affected.

• 75% are low-income
• 60% are women
• 57% are Latino
• 54% are younger adults

Food insecurity still largely affects low-income residents, but more higher-income Angelenos are now food insecure. The report found that 25% of those with food insecurity make more than 300% the federal poverty level.

“These are families who often don’t qualify for safety net programs like CalFresh,” de la Haye said. “They’re earning above eligibility thresholds, but still struggling to meet the cost of living in L.A.”

How can leaders use this information?

Researchers said county investments — including $20 million in Food Equity fund grants and the creation of the L.A. County Office of Food Systems — helped more people access healthier food.

At least 1.5 million people in L.A. County are enrolled in CalFresh, but 44% of recipients were food insecure. With the latest government shutdown, rising costs and benefit reductions under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” researchers expect those rates to increase.

Experts say local, state and federal governments should be proactive in addressing hunger by, for example, expanding CalFresh enrollment, setting policies that help residents with affordability and strengthening food banks.

You can read the full USC study here.

It might be December, but today and tomorrow will feel like early summer.

Sunny skies and some windy conditions are in store for today. The Santa Ana wind-prone corridors could see gusts up to 40 mph, but otherwise wind speeds will mostly be in the 15 to 30 mph range.

Temperatures in L.A. and Orange County beaches will range from the mid 70s to low 80s.

San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys will hit the mid-80s, while O.C. inland areas will see highs ranging from 80 to 86 degrees.

Over in the Inland Empire, temperatures will range from 77 to 84 degrees.

Meanwhile, the Coachella Valley will see highs from 76 to 81 degrees. And the Antelope Valley will be cooler, with highs only reaching the low 70s.

All 4-year-olds in California can now go to school for free in a grade called transitional kindergarten, or TK.

There’s a lot riding on the success of California’s TK program. Supporters hope that a year of learning through play will give a boost to children who may not otherwise have access to preschool. Districts facing declining enrollment hope that a surge of new students will improve their financial outlook.

Whether TK works at such a large scale depends on whether there are enough teachers qualified to work with children who have unique needs. Researchers estimate that California schools will need nearly 12,000 teachers to make good on the expansion of TK into every school district, as is required beginning this school year.

The state does offers multiple paths toward teaching in a TK classroom, including a new teaching credential introduced in May 2024 that lets educators teach TK through third grade, "designed and intended to help meet the demand for qualified teachers," the state said.

Thus far, uptake has been slow. Just over 400 educators have earned this credential, according to data provided to LAist by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. About 200 more people are working toward fulfilling this requirement.

Many educators have said the process to get credentialed for TK can be frustrating, especially for preschool teachers without experience in the public school system. The state said it doesn’t have data on how many teachers are coming over from the private preschool sector or from upper grades in public school.

In conversation with LAist, educators who have made their way into TK classrooms say they're glad they did.

In search of more structure 

At Price Elementary School in the city of Downey, Samantha Elliott is teaching TK for the first time this year.

However, because she’s taught preschool in the past, she runs her classroom with ease — and with the help of a state-mandated aide.

Elliott earned a credential and bachelor’s degree in early childhood development at Cal State Fullerton. This made it possible to move into TK without having to take on more coursework.

“Preschool was great,” she said, “but [at that level, students are] still learning [the] fundamentals of how to be a human, in a sense. [In] TK, we’re focusing a little bit more on academics, and I really was excited to teach the kids and get an early influence on their educational lives.”

Elliot keeps her students engaged throughout the day with music. She uses songs to help them learn their ABCs, colors, shapes — even their sense of time.

Often, Elliot has her students get up and dance. This helps the students get the wiggles out — it’s also part of learning through play.

Samantha Elliott made the switch to TK after teaching preschool for two years.

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At Smith Elementary in Lawndale, teacher Lauren Bush lets parents know that while it may look like kids are just having fun, they’re experiencing a lesson that she’s crafted carefully.

“You see kids playing with dinosaurs,” she said. “I see kids sorting by color, doing eye-hand coordination and visual discrimination. I see them using their fine motor skills.”

Bush has over two decades of classroom experience and has been teaching TK for three years, but she still spends a lot of time making sure her lessons are just right. When people see her working nights and weekends, they’re often perplexed. “Why work so much?” they wonder aloud, she said. “You're just babysitting.”

Bush gently corrects them: “I'm, like, ‘Oh my gosh, no! You have to have a special degree to teach TK.’”

In search of something less rigid 

Over at Marguerita Elementary School in Alhambra, teacher Lisa Vuong is working toward earning that special credential. On top of working full time, she’s fulfilling her required coursework at Pasadena City College. (Statewide, 13 institutions, including Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Dominguez Hills offer the new credential.)

Vuong is already credentialed to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. She also has 22 years of classroom experience and a master's in education. “But this is a whole different beast,” she said.

She means that in the best way. Even though she comes in with a lesson plan, she said, being a TK teacher often means having to improvise.

“You have kind of a platform that you launch off from, and the kids go in 18 million different directions,” she said.

When Vuong taught upper grades, she spent a lot of time making photocopies and stressing out about her students’ performance on standardized tests. TK — which is not graded or subject to those assessments — gives her a sense of freedom.

“I always say it doesn't even feel like a job,” she said. “ I don't wanna discredit the whole program or anything, but it's just so much fun.”

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Los Angeles educators have said the increase in immigration enforcement actions contributed to more somber graduation ceremonies, lower attendance and fewer students enrolled in school this year.

Now, a new report from UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access finds similar scenarios are playing out on campuses across the country.

“There can sometimes be a sense that, well, we're facing a set of conditions that are unique to Los Angeles,” said UCLA education professor and report co-author John Rogers. “But every state in the nation, almost every community in the nation has high schools where young people are experiencing fear and concern for themselves and for their family members.”

UCLA researchers based the report on a nationally representative online survey of 606 high school principals and follow-up interviews with about four dozen administrators who said students from immigration families experienced:

• Heightened concern: 70% said students from immigrant families were concerned about the well-being of themselves and their families because of policies and political rhetoric related to immigrants. 
• More absences: 64% said students from immigrant families missed school. 
• Loss of family members: 58% said immigrant parents and guardians left during the school year, sometimes without their children. 
• Bullying and harassment: 36% said students from immigrant families have been bullied or harassed at their school, in part because of a “political climate that has normalized attacks on immigrant communities.

LAist has reached out to the Trump administration for comment, but has not yet heard back.

Students’ right to an education

The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that undocumented immigrants have a constitutional right to attend public schools — there are an estimated 39,000 such students enrolled in Los Angeles County.

The number of students with at least one immigrant family member is much greater. For example, almost half of California children have at least one immigrant parent, according to a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Maria Nichols leads the union that represents Los Angeles Unified School District principals and said that there’s widespread uncertainty among students, families and educators. She is also the daughter of an immigrant from South America who was undocumented for part of her childhood.

“Are we experiencing a crisis now with immigration? Absolutely,” Nichols said. “It's extremely traumatic. It's extremely triggering for people that, you know, lived the immigrant existence. And many of us in education in Los Angeles have lived that.”

In January, the Trump administration reversed a policy that made schools and other "sensitive" locations off limits to immigration enforcement actions. In early June, widespread immigration raids started across Southern California. Most arrested in L.A. and nationwide have no criminal record.

“I think a purpose of the federal immigration enforcement policies is to create a level of stress and uncertainty and fear,” Rogers said. “And precisely those dynamics make it hard to sustain student enrollment and student attendance at high levels.”

Rogers said the current climate can disrupt learning for students who do make it to school.

“The extent to which young people are concerned about their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families while they're at the school means there's less attention, less focus, less learning going on,” Rogers said.