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

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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.

This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.

It’s official: Eight Democrats and two Republicans say they have filed paperwork for the June 2 primary ballot in the California governor's race, setting up a wide-open contest in which two Republicans who have consistently led in polls could shut out all other Democrats.

Here are the 10 candidates:

• Xavier Becerra, Democrat, former U.S. Health and Human Services secretary and former California Attorney General
• Chad Bianco, Republican, Riverside County Sheriff
• Steve Hilton, Republican, Fox News contributor and former adviser to conservative British prime minister David Cameron
• Matt Mahan, Democrat, mayor of San Jose
• Katie Porter, Democrat, former U.S. representative representing Orange County
• Tom Steyer, Democrat, billionaire entrepreneur and former presidential candidate
• Eric Swalwell, Democrat, U.S. representative from the Bay Area
• Tony Thurmond, Democrat, state superintendent of public instruction
• Antonio Villaraigosa, Democrat, former mayor of Los Angeles and former Assembly Speaker
• Betty Yee, Democrat, former state Controller

Steyer became the last to officially file on Friday, the deadline for submitting candidacy paperwork.

Former Assembly Majority Leader Ian Calderon exited the race earlier this week, endorsing Swalwell instead.

What's next?

The secretary of state’s office says it will verify the paperwork their campaigns submitted and publish an official list of primary candidates by March 21.

The top two vote recipients in the primary, regardless of party, will advance to the general election. But the two Republican frontrunners enjoy more consolidated support from their base than their Democratic counterparts, who risk fragmenting the Democratic vote. At the February state Democratic Party convention, delegates were so split that no candidate earned enough votes for the party endorsement.

With the current field, there’s a 27% chance of a Republican faceoff in November, according to statistical modeling by Democratic strategist Paul Mitchell.

The prospect is worrisome for many Democratic leaders, including state party leader Rusty Hicks, who earlier this week penned an open letter calling for those without a “viable path” to victory to drop out before the Friday deadline to file paperwork. And for those who remained, he pleaded, drop out by April 15 at the very latest if they couldn’t make “meaningful progress.”

The call appeared to fall on deaf ears, as eight of the nine announced Democratic candidates stayed in. Even if someone drops out now, their name will still appear on the primary ballot as long as they qualify, risking siphoning votes away from other Democrats.

Discounting the risk

When asked about the risk of a November shutout at a Thursday gubernatorial forum, several Democratic candidates brushed it aside while insisting they each would be voters’ best choice.

Villaraigosa told CalMatters the GOP base will coalesce behind just one candidate when President Donald Trump makes an endorsement.

“When that happens, that person is going to surge up and the other (Republican is) going to go down, it’s as simple as that,” he said.

Of the Democratic attendees at the forum, only Porter acknowledged the risk of a crowded field of Democrats.

“I think it is terrifying to think about what Trump would do to Californians if we had a governor who at every turn cooperated with him rather than stood up for our California values,” she said. “So I don’t think it’s a certainty, but I do think it’s a risk, and I think the stakes are very, very, very high.”

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

James A. Garfield High School in East Los Angeles is headed to state after winning the Los Angeles Unified School District’s 45th annual Academic Decathlon.
The Eastside school claimed the top prize — the Superintendent’s Trophy — earning 44,336.10 points out of 60,000 points. Abraham Lincoln High in Lincoln Heights scored 40,181.70 and is among the eight LAUSD schools advancing to the state competition.

The LAUSD teams will compete at the California Academic Decathlon on March 19-22 in Santa Clara. 

Decathletes representing Garfield High are Derek Dominguez, Ana Santos, Davian Valladares, Joseph Villa, Liana Lopez, Julie Lopez, David Ventura, Kimberly Palacios, and Briana Zuniga.

Villa was among the top students who earned the highest district-wide scores, coming in third with 8,267.5 points out of 10,000 points.

Board member Rocío Rivas, who represents East LA, said Garfield’s win “reflects the real progress taking shape across our district and the momentum we’re

building as they represent our communities at the California Academic Decathlon.”

The district said it holds 23 state titles – more than any district in California – and 19 national titles. 

“At Los Angeles Unified, we are proud to represent one of the most diverse student communities in the nation,” said Academic Decathlon Regional Director Dr. Neena Agnihotri in a statement.

“Our Decathletes come from many cultures, languages, and life experiences, and that diversity is one of our greatest strengths,” Agnihotri said.

Also competing in the California Academic Decathlon are: Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, Van Nuys High School, John Marshall High School, Bell High School, The Science Academy STEM Magnet and Dr. Richard A. Vladovic Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy.

This story appeared first on LA Local.

FIFA World Cup organizers expect more than 150,000 extra visitors to flood the Los Angeles area during eight World Cup games this summer, and all of them are going to need places to sleep.

AirBnB, the short-term rental giant, is kicking up its efforts to recruit more properties to the platform by offering a $750 bonus to first-time hosts in World Cup cities.

The company courted new hosts with lunch and a special workshop Thursday at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, where the games will be played. Other short-term rental companies — like Vrbo and Booking.com — are also promoting rentals near World Cup stadiums.

Renting out houses, apartments and rooms in Los Angeles and Inglewood is less of a cavalier process than it was a decade ago.

Lawmakers in many places have developed tighter short-term rental regulations in hopes of cracking down on neighborhood disruption, collecting more tax dollars and preventing scarce housing stock from being converted into full-time vacation rentals.

If you’re a local who is hoping to make a few extra bucks by renting out your place this summer, here are three tips to get you started, straight from active short-term rental hosts and property managers.

Get the ball rolling soon

It takes time to get a space properly listed for short-term rental.

Many local governments, including the city and county of L.A., as well as Inglewood, require hosts to apply for permits. Approvals can take two to four weeks in the city of L.A., said Lisa Giuntoli, whose company Nonpareil Stays manages 45 short-term rentals in the area.

Giuntoli said short-term rental listings perform better in web searches the longer they remain online, and for the World Cup, in particular, visitors are booking places well in advance.

“It takes a minute to get up to speed,” she said. “If you’re interested, do it now.”

Do your homework on local rules

Each local government sets its own guidelines for short-term rentals. Several have revamped their ordinances in recent years.

Hosts can bear some responsibility for how their rentals affect the neighborhood. Inglewood, along with the city and county of L.A., requires permitted hosts to keep their renters up to speed on noise regulations and other local rules.

Not everyone can get a permit. Inglewood requires permit applicants to have lived within the city for 10 consecutive years. In the city of L.A., secondary residences and rent-stabilized properties aren’t eligible to become short-term rentals.

Perrita King, a Leimert Park resident, said she has still been able to keep her extra space listed by renting to people looking to stay longer than a month, such as traveling nurses.

If you live in the city of LA, you can check here to see if your property falls under rent stabilization.

If the logistics seem daunting, consider a specialist

If you’re not interested in waking up at 1 a.m. to help out a renter who lost their key, there are a few different ways to hire a specialized short-term rental manager.

Companies like Nonpareil Stays manage portfolios of dozens of short-term rentals. King, the Leimert Park host, said she goes through a web-based company called Fairly.

You can also narrow your search through Airbnb’s co-host network, which allows you to filter prospective managers by location and other factors.

Longtime Republican Rep. Darrell Issa will not seek reelection, he announced Friday.

His decision comes four months after his San Diego-area congressional district was redrawn to favor Democrats and shortly after San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, a Republican, filed papers to run in the same district.

Issa, a longtime GOP stalwart, said he was endorsing Desmond in a statement announcing his decision to retire.

“This decision has been on my mind for a while, and I didn’t make it lightly,” he said. “But after a quarter-century in Congress — and before that, a quarter-century in business — it’s the right time for a new chapter and new challenges.”

A history of reshuffling

Issa represented the San Diego area in Congress for more than 20 years. He briefly retired in 2019 when his seat, now represented by Democrat Mike Levin, became more competitive. He returned to Congress in 2021 after winning a seat in the 50th District, which was redrawn after statewide redistricting later that year. He moved to his current seat in the 48th District in 2023.

The newly configured seat attracted a slew of Democratic challengers after it became more competitive when voters approved Proposition 50 last fall. The redistricting measure was designed to give Democrats up to five additional seats in the U.S. House and counter similar redistricting efforts in other states that favored Republicans.

Desmond had previously announced that he would run in the 49th District against Levin.

“They drew me into this district, but the truth is I’ve been serving this community for years,” Desmond said in a statement to CalMatters. Prior to Prop. 50, Desmond lived in the 49th District. He now lives in the 48th. “I’ll fight every single day to make life more affordable, more safe and more free.”

Crowded field of Democrats

In the 48th District, two Democratic candidates — Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former opponent of Issa's, and San Diego City Councilmember Marni von Wilpert — lead a crowded field eager to flip the district blue. No candidate garnered enough support for the party’s endorsement last month.

California Republicans have been reshuffling for months as their districts were redrawn.

Republican Rep. Ken Calvert, one of the longest-serving members in Congress, is now running in the 40th District against Republican incumbent Young Kim of Orange County. His present district, the neighboring 41st, was moved entirely out of conservative pockets of Riverside County to Los Angeles County.

Issa briefly contemplated a congressional run in Texas in December after the new districts were created but decided against it.