The Brief

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is exploring the idea of giving struggling Americans cash aid instead of vouchers. That might seem like an unlikely, bold new move for the federal housing agency — except it turns out that back in the 1970s, HUD was already testing the idea.

Before the cash-aid results were even in, however, HUD launched its voucher program that now serves millions of people. A few years ago, a HUD employee came across the reports from its 1970s tests and wondered whether the idea was worth a new look.
“It’s taken us 50 years to come back to it and really experiment with it once again,” says Solomon Greene, who helps develop policy at HUD.

Why it matters

The housing voucher program has been a lifeline for millions of people, but there are real problems. There aren't nearly enough federal housing vouchers for everyone who qualifies, and many people wait years for them. What happens next can be even more frustrating.

When Elizabeth Alvandi finally got a voucher in 2022, she drove from North Carolina to Massachusetts to try and find an apartment near her aging dad. “I am sleeping in my car and doing the best I can to make the most of every moment that I'm there,” she recalled. But for three months she was rejected again and again, or told nothing was available.

“There were a couple conversations that just ended,” she says, “when they asked what my income was and how I'd be paying for it.”

No one said it was because of her housing voucher. In fact, discriminating like that is banned in some 20 states. And yet, Alvandi could not find a landlord to take it.

Why vouchers come with problems

“The underlying problem that we're facing is just because you get a voucher allocated to you does not mean you get to use it,” says Preston Prince, executive director of the Santa Clara County Housing Authority in Northern California.

Vouchers allow recipients to pay 30% of their income on rent, with the government covering the rest. But according to one analysis, 40% of all voucher holders were unable to sign a lease after looking for six months. A 2018 study by the Urban Institute found even higher rejection rates in some cities.

Landlords are put off by agency red tape and things like mandatory inspections to make sure a property is safe. That process can drag on for weeks or months, costing owners money as their rental properties sit empty and making vouchers an especially tough sell in a hot housing market.

Prince has been among a growing number of housing officials and advocates pushing for a different way, even though it can feel risky to tinker with a program that still helps 5 million very low-income Americans.

“I've dedicated 35 years of my career to housing,” Prince says. “Asking that question of, like, ‘Have we been doing it wrong?’ is a little scary.”

How we got here

The idea of using cash instead of vouchers has gotten a boost from successful pandemic aid programs, as well as from dozens of basic income experiments around the country. Philadelphia is already testing this, giving cash directly to 300 renters. The federal government is now exploring that on a far bigger scale.

This summer, HUD put out a formal request for more research on the impact of paying renters directly. The department has no new funding to do that itself, so it called on others to organize experiments, though HUD did offer a suggestion on how they could work.

“There are some tricky things that agencies will have to go through when they do this,” says Brian McCabe of Georgetown University, who worked on this issue during a recent stint at HUD.

He says a key goal of cash is getting people housed faster. So one big challenge will be how to carry out inspections without slowing down the lease process. One option could be a self-inspection.

“We might have a checklist and say 'these are the things I'm looking for.' It may be that I move in with cash and then after I've moved in, the agency comes and does an inspection,” McCabe says. And maybe that inspection is done remotely over video.

Another question is whether tenants would be able to spend their monthly cash aid on something other than rent. Advocates say trusting families with that kind of flexibility could help them better manage urgent, competing expenses, although it also opens up the possibility that more people may fall behind on rent. On the other hand, if the cash aid could only be spent on housing, how could that be enforced without re-creating too much red tape?

The potential benefits of cash

James Riccio, with the research group MDRC, has taken up HUD’s call to explore cash payments and will help design one pilot program. It needs more funding, but so far has signed up six housing agencies across the country, including the one headed by Preston Prince in Santa Clara County.

Riccio says they will evaluate whether having money on hand helps more people find a place to live. “Will the whole process of leasing up happen more quickly? Which could save time and money for the housing authority and certainly for tenants as well,” he says.

He also wonders if cash could make it easier for people to move to better neighborhoods.

That was a core aim when then-President Richard Nixon called for letting people make their own decisions about where to live. In a special message to Congress in 1973, he said traditional public housing had left people isolated in “monstrous, depressing places — run down, overcrowded, crime-ridden, falling apart.” But half a century later, Riccio says it’s still the case that “voucher recipients tend to concentrate in a smaller number of higher poverty communities.”

What's next

Solomon Greene of HUD says these new tests will take years. And if HUD ever did want to make a large-scale shift — from paying landlords to paying tenants directly — it would need congressional authority. For now, he says housing vouchers will continue to help the millions of people who depend on them.

“Your cost burden goes down. You are more likely to be able to stay in your unit longer,” he says. “There's a rich body of research showing that vouchers are the most effective way of preventing recidivism or returns to homelessness.”

Could giving renters cash do all that? Greene says emphatically that at this point, “we don’t know.” And HUD won’t make any changes until there’s evidence they work.
Copyright 2024 NPR

Community volunteers say one of the first lesson they learned during ICE raids is to make as much noise as possible.

When they see people being detained by ICE, they use their voices, megaphones and, most effectively, whistles to signal danger.

One workshop being held in Downtown L.A. today will teach people how to use this tool.

Make some noise

Rain Skau is an organizer with the L.A. chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, he said the idea to hand out whistles came from community organizers in Chicago where they’ve been using them to alert neighborhoods of ICE presence.

Skau said his group had already been doing outreach to businesses across the city on how to better protect their workers from immigration raids, but they wanted to do more.

They plan to give out these kits in their future outreach.

The back and front of hotline cards included in the whistle kits.

The cards details what to do and who to call when a person has been detained or is being detained by ICE.

A hotline card with information on who to call when a person has been detained by ICE.

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Rain Skau

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DSA-LA

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A hotline card with instructions on what to do when encountering a person being detained by ICE.

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Rain Skay

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“This wasn't something that we were doing previously. We want to make sure that people have whistles and they have the hotline information,” said Skau.

The whistles are 3D printed and come with a phone number to advocacy group Unión del Barrio’s community hotline to report ICE sightings and those who might have been detained.

Amplify

Skau says there are two specific whistle patterns — one to alert people if ICE is nearby. The other to signify when someone is being detained.

In that event whistle-blowers are also instructed to “form a crowd, stay loud, and stay nonviolent.” 

But Skau said they’ve mostly been telling people to whistle as loud as possible, no matter the pattern, to raise awareness.

Jack Bohlka organizes Home Depot Patrols for DSA-LA, he said the whistles are tiny but mighty.

Jack Bohlka (center) poses with other members of DSA-LA during a recent "Know Your Rights" business walk.

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“It's a whole lot better than trying to yell. It's instantly recognizable, they're very effective,” Bohlka said.

Jack Bohlka's personal whistle he uses for Home Depot patrols.

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Jack Bohlka

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Spreading the sound

Some 300 people signed up for today's workshop, more than Skau and Bohlka anticipated. They had to end RSVPs early to keep attendance manageable. But Skau says more workshops are in the works (check their Instagram for new events).

Participants today will assemble and take home whistle kits with instructions on how to use them, what to note if someone is being detained, and who to call during a raid.

DSA-LA said lately immigration enforcement agents have changed their tactics, targeting specific areas, striking quickly and leaving. It’s part of why Skau thinks getting whistle kits to as many people as possible is critical.

“So that if you just happen to be walking down the street," Skau said. "And you see something happening right in front of you, you're not just standing there shocked and aghast, and unsure of how to respond."

In Los Angeles, volunteers have been painting their own crosswalks, reasoning that safer streets shouldn’t be held up by red tape.

Now, a group of them is channeling that same DIY energy to another everyday need: public seating.

“We just want to build a bunch of benches and hopefully people have some cool places to sit,” said Jonathan Hale, founder of People’s Vision Zero.

Hale, a Sawtelle resident and UCLA law school student, is leading a session next weekend to build public benches. The plan is to bypass the permitting process , set out the seats and create more third spaces.

“There’s not that many places where you can go that aren’t work or home,” Hale said. “Benches, parks [and] open, inviting public spaces are a way that we can rebuild that in L.A.”

For Hale, the gathering is just as important as the finished product.

“The point of the labor is that we form stronger bonds with our neighbors and we have a healthy discussion about the use of public space," he said.

A growing bench movement

That conversation is part of a larger one across the country, where residents are making small but impactful changes to improve public space — from pop-up bike lanes to guerrilla gardens in what's described as "tactical urbanism."

Unpermitted public benches have been popping up in cities from Chattanooga, Tenn. to Kansas City, Mo. and San Francisco.

Over the last couple years, the San Francisco Bay Area Bench Collective has installed more than 100 benches at bus stops that draw the most riders.

“Bus riders deserve to be treated with respect and to have a place to rest as they wait for the bus,” said Mingwei Samuel, an Oakland-based programmer who founded the group.

Samuel, who learned woodworking from his father, built and installed his first public bench in San Francisco in 2023.

The San Francisco Bay Area Bench Collective has placed more than 100 benches in the last couple years.

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Bench locations chosen by the collective are usually located near bus stops.

“It’s sort of a revolt against the trend of hostile architecture,” he said. “Cities trying to remove benches just because they don’t want people to gather in public spaces.”

The Bay Area collective is seeing real change. More than 100 benches now dot the region, from Berkeley to Petaluma.

Last year, the city of Richmond approved a permit program allowing residents to add their own benches.  

Sawtelle resident Johnathan Hale is expanding the work of People's Vision Zero to include bench building.

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From crosswalks to benches 

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Hale’s group had already been gaining traction with its crosswalk projects.

Volunteers with People’s Vision Zero last year painted more than a dozen DIY crosswalks, taking a page from another volunteer group The Crosswalk Collective.

Most of the crosswalks have been left intact by the city. But in December, while volunteers were striping a street in Westwood, Hale was arrested and cited in an incident that went viral on social media.

Afterward, Hale met with the office of Mayor Karen Bass. In a statement to LAist, the mayor’s office said Bass was once a former community activist like Hale and wants to “explore solutions that are innovative and will expedite crosswalk installations across Los Angeles.”

The office did not respond to follow-up questions about what those solutions may look like or when they would be rolled out.

For now, Hale said he’s taking a hiatus from painting crosswalks “in the interest of working with them in good faith.”

That’s opened the door for more bench projects. Hale did a test run of sorts last summer in Sawtelle.

Drawing from skills learned as an Eagle Scout, he built four benches that he placed at the West Los Angeles Civic Center and Stoner Park, using the same design as those made by the Bay Area collective. All but one of the benches at the civic center are still there.

“When I’m just walking along and there’s people sitting on my bench, and they don’t even know that I built it, I get to feel like Batman or something,” Hale said. “It’s my little secret.”

Now he’s ready to scale up – and artists and woodworkers are answering the call. So many people have RSVP’d to the upcoming bench build next weekend that capacity has already been reached. Hale anticipates hosting more events.

He says Los Angeles should become a national leader in grassroots urban problem-solving or — as he puts it — “getting stuff done.”

In just four days, the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade will take over South L.A.

The LA Local recently spoke with Sabra Wady, the parade’s lead organizer, who said this year’s parade will look much the same as recent years.

So, whether you’re attending the parade or watching it on TV, here’s everything you need to know about Monday’s parade:

The procession will begin at 10 a.m., with ABC7 set to begin a broadcast at 11 a.m.

What time does the parade start? How can I watch? Is anything happening after?

Wady said the best place to catch the parade in person is the intersection of Crenshaw Boulevard and Martin Luther King Jr. King Boulevard, or “camera corner,” where the parade will culminate and organizers are planning a live preshow. Bleacher seats, though, will be limited.

The Metro K Line runs directly to the intersection, dropping people off at the Martin Luther King Jr. Metro station.

Onlookers can also post up along the parade route with folding chairs and other self-arranged seating, Wady said.

The parade broadcast will run until 1 p.m., but Wady said the procession is expected to keep going until mid-afternoon.

“After the cameras stop rolling, it’s the people’s parade,” Wady said.

LA City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson and Councilmembers Curren Price and Heather Hutt – who represent council districts 8, 9 and 10, respectively — will organize the annual MLK Freedom Festival in the Leimert Park Plaza from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

What route will the parade take?

The route will remain the same, running down King Boulevard from Western Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard before turning south down Crenshaw and heading to Leimert Park. Much of the route will be closed to traffic overnight before the parade.

More than 150 groups, including bands, floats, horseback riders and marchers, will trek down the boulevard. Wady said organizers cut off new sign-ups weeks ago in order to keep the parade manageable.

What will road closures look like?

Colin Sweeney, a spokesperson for the LA Department of Transportation, said in an email that the department will close off traffic down the main parade route overnight.

Here are the roads that will be closed to all vehicles for the duration of the parade and festival.

• King Boulevard from Vermont Avenue to Crenshaw Boulevard 
• Crenshaw Boulevard from King Boulevard to 48th Street
• Leimert Boulevard from 8th Avenue to Leimert Park 
• Degnan Avenue between 43rd Street and Leimert Park

Sweeney said only residents will be allowed to drive into the band of neighborhoods directly along the length of the parade route. That includes the blocks from 39th Street to 42nd Street along King Boulevard and the blocks between McClung Drive and Victoria Avenue along the Crenshaw closure.

The transportation department will allow traffic to cross the parade route at major intersections — including Western Avenue, Arlington Avenue and Stocker Street — but those crossings will be shut down at 10 a.m. All closed roads will stay blocked off until the parade and festival wrap up and transportation officials determine crowds have sufficiently dispersed, Sweeney said.

Wady said the parade is expected to peter out around mid-afternoon. The festival at Leimert Park Plaza is scheduled to end at 5 p.m.

Vehicles parked in the parade assembly area, parade route and disbanding area will be subject to impound or tickets, Sweeney wrote.

Topline:

By the numbers: Film and television shoot days totaled 4,625 in the final three months of 2025, up 5.1% in that timeframe. But overall last year, there were 19,694 shoot days, which is down 16.1% from 2024's total of 23.480.

Why it matters: Production in Los Angeles has been slow to rebound since the COVID-19 pandemic and the Hollywood writers and actors strikes in 2023. There is also increased competition from other states that offer appealing film tax credits and other incentives for productions that decide to take their shoot outside of California. This summer, Gov. Gavin Newsom expanded California's Film and TV Tax Credit Program in an effort to lure productions back to the Golden State.

What's next: Film L.A.'s Phil Sokoloski says that many of the productions approved under the expanded tax credit program are just now getting underway, and he hopes the industry will start to see the effects of not only the tax incentive expansion in 2026, but also L.A. Mayor Karen Bass' directives to streamline the permitting and shooting process in the city.