The Brief

Pasadena City College is opening its first housing unit near its campus for transitional-age foster youth.

The six studio units will be for PCC students who are aging out of foster care in an effort to support students toward graduation, said Thomas Lee, CEO of First Place for Youth, a youth services agency that’s partnering with the college.

Foster youth who are exiting the system often face a lack of transportation, stable housing, and economic resources that can make it difficult for them to graduate, Lee said. A report about transitional age youth in California found that among students who attended college, less than 10% completed a degree.

“As we call in the world of child welfare, they always have the 'cliff' staring at them when all the services and supports kind of fall away, and they have to be able to do it on their own,” he said.

Lee said in addition to providing free housing, he said the hope is to also to create a dorm-like experience for foster youth, as community colleges can be an isolating experience.

“When people are going to community colleges, they are not able to enjoy the community that you find almost naturally embedded at a four-year institution,” he said. “By having youth living in close proximity to the college campus, it gives them greater access to be able to leverage that community, to leverage the support of their professors, as well as all of the campus support services, without having to travel an inordinate amount of space and time in order to receive that.”

Lee said the goal over the next two years is to turn an adjacent property into another 16-unit complex to serve more transitional age youth.

David Sigala Gomez, an educational advisor for foster youth at PCC, called having stable housing for students nearby a “gamechanger.” He said 200 to 250 students on campus have identified themselves as current or former foster youth.

“When they don’t have stable housing, they don’t succeed, whether in academics or life in general,” Sigala Gomez said.

The students will be moving into the six studio units next week.

Mia Angulo, who is pregnant and due in May, is living in a tent with her boyfriend in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Boyle Heights.

Lingering pain from a car crash two months ago, on top of an already hardscrabble life, has Angulo worried about her pregnancy. So, she was relieved when a mobile street medicine van from St. John’s Community Health pulled up near her encampment last month.

“Thank God that we have them,” she said.

St. John’s, which operates 28 clinics, mostly in L.A. County, is part of the nation’s network of nonprofit community clinics that care for the poorest Americans. Around 80% of its 144,000 patients, including Angulo, have Medi-Cal, California’s version of the Medicaid program for people with low incomes or disabilities.

But federal cuts to Medicaid spending under the Republican-passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, compounded by fiscal belt-tightening in Sacramento, could cost St. John’s up to one-third of its $240 million annual revenue, requiring cuts to services that might include street medicine, said Jim Mangia, the president and CEO.

Smaller, more cash-strapped clinics in L.A. County could face harsher consequences, including closure, if the lost funding is not replaced.

That’s why Mangia, along with a coalition of community clinics, health care workers, and advocates, is pushing for a five-year, half-cent sales tax in the nation’s most populous county to help backfill the projected loss of federal and state dollars. St. John’s has contributed at least $2 million to the campaign so far.

Mia Angulo, who is pregnant and due in May, sought medical attention from a street medicine team run by St. John’s Community Health. Her lingering pain from a car crash, as well as concerns about the hardships of homelessness, have her worried about the pregnancy.

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Bernard J. Wolfson

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KFF Health News

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Louise McCarthy, president and CEO of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County, said there aren’t a lot of options to save the health care system from disaster.

“Our backs are up against the wall,” she said. “This has the potential to be a game changer. It will be an absolutely significant offset to the losses.”

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors approved the proposal last month for inclusion on the June 2 primary ballot, over the objection of some cities within the county. Their leaders argued the tax would put a strain on consumers and business owners. Most of an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue generated would be used to protect safety-net health care at community clinics, hospitals, and schools.

One of the two street medicine teams that St. John’s Community Health sends out five days a week to provide care at homeless encampments and shelters around Los Angeles (from left): Brenda Barrales, Walter Lopez, Edgardo Marroquin, Bukola Olusanya, Grace Calderon, and Luis Perez.

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Bernard J. Wolfson

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KFF Health News

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Scrambling To Stay Afloat

Nationally, the GOP budget law is expected to cut federal Medicaid spending by $911 billion over 10 years, and it could lead to an increase of over 14 million in the number of people left uninsured. The L.A. ballot proposal is among many local and state initiatives nationwide, as clinics, hospitals, health care workers, advocates, and legislators scramble for new money to help offset the spending cuts.

In Michigan, where the federal law is projected to cost the state $32 billion over 10 years, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s office has proposed new or increased taxes on tobacco, vape products, online gambling, sports betting, and digital advertising, which it projects would raise hundreds of millions of dollars annually.

In Rhode Island, a group of state legislators hopes to ease some of the pain caused by the federal cuts with a package of bills that includes a tax on digital ads and a 3% surcharge on taxable incomes above roughly $640,000.

“The goal is not to replace the revenue; it’s to mitigate the damage,” said Democratic state Rep. Brandon Potter, one of the legislators involved.

In Washington, Democratic state Rep. Shaun Scott recently introduced legislation to address the loss of federal dollars with a 5% payroll tax on large companies, applied to employee salaries exceeding $125,000 a year.

In California, the GOP law will slash the federal contribution to Medi-Cal by an estimated $30 billion a year, or 25%. Enrollment in Medi-Cal could drop by 3 million by 2028 as a result of the federal and state spending cuts, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the University of California-Berkeley Labor Center.

In July, California will slash Medi-Cal payments that community clinics receive for certain services provided to patients with “unsatisfactory” immigration status by about $1 billion a year. Those patients include permanent residents in the country for less than five years, refugees, asylees, and other lawfully present people.

Bracing for a ‘New Reality’?

Advocates and health care experts say finding new revenue is the only way to avoid a crisis in California’s health care system.

“Are we going to let the gaps created by federal policies and state budget cuts leave millions of people uninsured?” said Laurel Lucia, deputy executive director of programs at the UC Berkeley Labor Center. “I think a lot of that question comes down to revenues.”

Some medical professionals say that new revenue is needed in the short term but that the country needs to address its notoriously expensive health care system.

“This new reality is that we have to do our work with less money going into the future,” said Hector Flores, president-elect of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. “So, this is an opportunity for us to look at how we can do things better.”

In the meantime, efforts to raise taxes for health care abound.

Voters in Santa Clara County, home to Silicon Valley, last November approved a five-year 0.625% sales tax increase to offset federal Medicaid cuts. A similar measure will be on the June ballot in Contra Costa County.

The best-known initiative, and a hotly contested one, is a union-sponsored ballot proposal in California for a one-time 5% tax on the state’s more than 200 billionaires. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom strongly opposes it; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) stumped for it in California recently and has promised to introduce a national version in Congress.

Proponents of the temporary wealth tax say it would raise $100 billion, which would mostly be used to backfill lost federal and state dollars in Medi-Cal and other safety-net programs. Proponents are trying to collect nearly 875,000 signatures needed to get it on the November ballot.

“We are on the precipice of a collapse of our health care system. So the most fortunate among us pay a modest tax that will hold us over and allow us to figure out a long-term solution,” said Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff for Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, the measure’s chief sponsor. “They would still be incredibly wealthy after that.”

Billionaires Push Back

The plan has stirred considerable controversy, not just in the Golden State but nationwide, and has generated strong resistance from billionaires and others.

Critics argue the measure could prompt billionaires to leave California, putting a damper on innovation, jobs, and tax receipts. And, some warn, the measure could end up in a legal quagmire, as those deemed liable to pony up challenge it on multiple fronts.

“If this passed, you would expect it to be tied up in court for some time,” said Jared Walczak, a visiting fellow at the California Tax Foundation. “It is fairly plausible that no revenue could come in for a number of years, if there’s ever any revenue at all.”

The prospect of such complications has led some health care advocates to focus instead on local initiatives that could start generating revenue more quickly, such as the proposed sales tax in L.A. County.

That one has critics too, including leaders of multiple cities within the county who pleaded with supervisors to reject a proposal they argued would add to the affordability worries of consumers and put a strain on businesses.

Kathryn Barger, a Republican and the only L.A. County supervisor to oppose putting the measure on the June ballot, said in a statement that the proposed tax would make the county “less affordable for families and less appealing for consumers to shop and businesses to operate.”

But supporters say safety-net health care is already feeling the impact of diminished funding. Last month, for example, L.A. County’s Department of Public Health announced it was closing seven clinics due to $50 million in federal, state, and local funding cuts.

Medi-Cal enrollees are worried, too. “We get a lot of calls from panicked patients afraid they’re going to lose their Medi-Cal. Dozens of calls a day, hundreds of calls a week,” said St. John’s Mangia.

“We tell them that we’re working on a solution and hopefully we’ll have that solution come June.”

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.Subscribe to KFF Health News' free Morning Briefing.

This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Calbright College seemed doomed from the start. Just months after enrolling its first students in 2019, the online community college was under fire from faculty groups, and the state Assembly had agreed to shut it down. It had “poor management,” “ineffective and inappropriate hiring,” and “inadequate” support for students, a 2021 state audit found.

Yet Calbright College managed not only to soldier on but to grow.

Now it may be California’s fastest-growing community college, based on tentative enrollment data comparing fall 2024 to fall 2025.

By the end of its first academic year in October 2020, just 12 students had finished their course of study out of more than 900 who had enrolled, the audit said. Now, Calbright has over 6,000 students and a much higher rate of completion, according to the most recent data.

About 13% of students finish their studies in a reasonable amount of time, which for Calbright’s short-term certificate programs is usually about a year or less, according to Binh Thuy Do, the school’s vice president of research and development. Those statistics put Calbright College roughly on par with the completion rates at the state's other 115 community colleges.

But comparing Calbright, which is completely online, to any traditional brick-and-mortar school is challenging not only because it lacks a physical campus but also because it uses a significantly different education model.

Based on what is known as competency-based education, Calbright courses are designed so that students can pass whenever they prove they know the material, whether that takes weeks or years. Calbright students can enroll at any time and study whenever they want by watching pre-recorded lectures or setting up meetings with professors. The college charges no tuition and uses only free online textbooks — a key difference from traditional community colleges, which usually operate on a semester basis and are only free for low-income students.

“The way that it’s approaching higher ed and the students they serve, it’s the model of the future,” said Su Jin Jez, the CEO of the research organization California Competes. Western Governors University, Arizona State University and Southern New Hampshire University — which also offer similar kinds of flexible, online courses — have grown rapidly in recent years to become some of the largest universities in the country.

In his initial budget proposal for the 2026–27 fiscal year, Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed more than tripling Calbright’s annual budget from $15 million per year to $53 million. Faculty groups say California's community colleges are already offering similar courses to Calbright’s and that the money could be better spent on existing initiatives.

How different is Calbright?

When Gov. Jerry Brown formed Calbright in 2018, it was explicitly designed to be different from existing community colleges. It only offers short-term, career-oriented certificate programs, rather than associate degrees. The idea was to attract students who don’t usually access traditional higher education, often because of its cost. Calbright is specifically tasked with serving the millions of adults over 25 who don’t already have a college degree. Early on, the college decided to be completely free, though its statute allows it to charge tuition like the rest of California’s community colleges.

In some sense, Calbright has already succeeded in its mandate. Almost all of Calbright’s more than 6,000 students are over the age of 25, and 44% are over the age of 40.

Deb Hemingway is 61 and a Calbright College student. Two years ago she was searching online for programs that could help her advance in her career or get a new job, when she saw a sponsored ad on Google for Calbright. “I thought it was a scam,” she said. “I thought, ‘This can’t be free.’”

Hemingway enrolled in the data analysis program, one of the most popular courses. She kept her day job in retail merchandising, helping stores stay up-to-date on their inventory, and worked on the course primarily on weekends. She got her certificate in 10 months and is now enrolled in another program focused on human resources.

Although students can complete their courses on their own schedule for up to three years, Calbright says many of its programs can be finished in less than a year. In reality, most students drop out, and those that remain often struggle to manage school along with the demands of a full- or part-time job and family obligations, such as kids or aging parents.

“My children are grown. There’s no kids around, so it’s just me,” Hemingway said. “But just because it’s just me doesn’t mean I don’t have stressors in my life.” The rising price of food, gas, and other daily expenses — plus the pressures of her full-time job — made it difficult to study each week, she said.

Hemingway already has a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree, which is typical for many Calbright students but rare for most community college students.

Calbright under scrutiny, again and again

In the early years, Calbright always seemed on the brink of getting shut down or defunded by the Legislature. In 2020, the Assembly passed a budget that stripped the school of its funding. In 2021 and 2022, the Assembly passed bills to eliminate it, only for the Senate or the governor to quash the efforts. Legislative opposition has waned in recent years, though faculty groups still speak out against it.

“Our argument is the same that it’s been since 2018 — this just isn’t a necessary college,” said Stephanie Goldman, executive director of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges. The association, along with a group representing independent faculty unions, has asked the Legislature to oppose increased funding for Calbright.

A March 5 report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office found that Calbright is still falling short of its original purpose. “The evidence is mixed as to how well the college is reaching its target population of working adults not already accessing higher education,” states the report, which assesses the governor’s budget requests. “While the college is primarily enrolling working‑age students, many of these students already have bachelor’s degrees. Furthermore, it is difficult to assess student outcomes. Although Calbright collects data on completion rates, employment, and earnings, its metrics are not comparable to those reported by other community colleges.”

The office recommended significant changes to the governor’s proposal for Calbright, including policies that would likely result in less funding. Anticipating that the governor’s full proposal may not happen, Calbright already plans to lay off 93 employees.

For Jez, with California Competes, the Legislative Analyst’s Office is thinking too narrowly about Calbright. “Are we meeting a state need? That’s what we need to be focused on,” she said. “What do Californians need and how do we deliver it?”

A multimillion-dollar experiment

As K-12 enrollment declines and broader questions emerge about the purpose of college degrees, California’s other community colleges are increasingly targeting the same population of working adults that Calbright was designed to serve.

Almost half of all community college classes are online now, and despite pushback from some faculty, a few brick-and-mortar community colleges are beginning to offer a limited number of flexible, competency-based classes.

But Calbright is costly, spending more per student than the average community college.

“Questions also remain around Calbright’s cost‑effectiveness,” the Legislative Analyst’s Office recent report stated. “In 2024–25, we estimate that Calbright spent about $53,000 per award completed, compared to about $35,000 across other community colleges.”

The annual operating budget of Calbright is about $50 million, said Sarah Jimenez, a spokesperson for the college, which is roughly the same as the budget of Gavilan Joint Community College District in Gilroy. For comparison, the Gavilan district had nearly 500 faculty and staff in the fall, serving about 7,200 students, plus the costs of maintaining all of its buildings. Calbright has fewer than 200 faculty and staff for its roughly 6,000 online students.

As the college grows, Calbright “continues to explore” charging tuition at a similar rate to other local community colleges, said Jimenez. But she added that “moving to a fee model too swiftly” could create “barriers for many of our learners.”

Do, the college’s research and development vice president, said the high annual budget stems from technology demands and startup costs, which are inherent in any new college. “The $50 million annual budget is not just the operating costs. It is the administrative and infrastructure build that we’ve had to do.” In addition to supporting its own students, Do said Calbright also conducts research and development on behalf of the entire community college system.

Hemingway said her education was well worth the state’s investment. Her data analysis certificate has been helpful, she said, even if it hasn’t led to a new job or a promotion just yet. A friend recently asked her to do some consulting on the side; at work, she said she’s been able to give her boss more input about how the company can grow.

One of her salary goals is to make at least $150,000 annually, she said, but later revised her answer. “The sky is the limit.”

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

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Like many vendors along the El Salvador Corridor in Pico Union, Maria Godoy sells goods alongside others on the sidewalk of Vermont Avenue between 11th and 12th streets. Being together offers some sense of solidarity, she said, but fear still lingers.

“With the other vendors, I feel more supported because we’re all together, but there’s also fear that at any moment ICE could come bother us,” Godoy said. “They might come back, so we’re always on alert.”

Some vendors have their papers — permanent resident cards — while others are undocumented. Whatever their status, the vendors are worried about the next immigration sweep that could come through their corner of the world.

Godoy said vendors have relied on a WhatsApp group text maintained by the Koreatown chapter of the LA Tenants Union’s Koreatown and the rapid response group Union del Barrio. The messaging services comes alive when there is ICE activity to warn people in the community.

The corridor, especially the sidewalk along Vermont Avenue where most vendors set up tents, serves a mix of local residents and visitors who come specifically for lunch, drawn by pupusas, raspados, fruit, and other goods.

In early November, federal agents carried out a major immigration raid, detaining several vendors and prompting others to quickly pack up and flee. Videos shared on social media showed people abandoning their stands as officers moved through the streets.

The disruption, vendors say, continues to hang over the street and hurts business.

Street vendor Beatriz arrived in Los Angeles from El Salvador. She sells a variety of fruits and vegetables, including strawberries, mangoes, and pineapples, along 12th street and Vermont Avenue also known as the El Salvador Corridor.

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Marina Peña

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The LA Local

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For more than a decade, Godoy has sold vitamins, cold medicines and arthritis creams along the corridor, many of them products from Mexico and Central America that are hard to find elsewhere in Los Angeles.

But the 52‑year‑old vendor said business has sharply declined in recent months. Her sales, she estimates, have dropped about 60 percent since August.

“The situation is really bad. The economy has gone down a lot and for those of us who run small businesses, sales have dropped just too much. We used to have a lot of tourists who would come, but not anymore,” Godoy said. “This is all we have to survive. We have to pay rent, bills, we always pay taxes, and now we’re not making enough to pay those taxes. Now we’re working and just able to cover the rent.”

The cost of buying items has also increased, Godoy said, but in the current economy she can’t pass those additional costs on to customers.

“People get used to the prices and they notice when something goes up, so we can’t always charge them more because they won’t buy it,” she said.

The only products for which her sales have remained steady are cold and flu medicines.

Another woman, who The LA Local is not naming because she is undocumented, arrived in Los Angeles about a year and a half ago from El Salvador. The single mother began selling fruit along the corridor in December and the possibility of an immigration raid affects her daily work, she said.

She explained how vendors have organized themselves to protect one another.

“Among ourselves, vendors, we are taking care of each other. We have made ways to protect ourselves. If we see something, we warn each other. If something happens, we’re ready to  get together and link arms so that if they take one, they take all of us. If they see a van, someone already warns,” she said.

She sells mangoes, strawberries, pineapples, oranges, mandarins, coconuts, tomatoes and honey — items locals continue to seek out, especially in warm weather — but like Godoy, she said that “sales are slow because people are afraid to go out.”

Lorena Lopez, another vendor, sells ceviche made with clams, shrimp, and octopus along the corridor. Before that, the 45-year-old sold pupusas and yuca. She has been working there since 2013 and said that having many vendors around has both upsides and drawbacks.

The El Salvador Corridor along Vermont Ave. in the Pico Union neighborhood on Monday, Nov. 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.

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Gary Coronado

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The LA Local

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“If I feel like people are looking out for me, I really feel at ease. It helps a lot and makes me feel safer,” Lopez said. “When there aren’t many vendors here, there are fewer customers. It feels better when more vendors are around, watching out for each other. But at the same time, with more of us here, there’s more competition for customers.”

To help small businesses recover from the economic impact, Los Angeles County started the Small Business Resiliency Fund. The program, run by the Department of Economic Opportunity, gives up to $5,000 in direct financial help to businesses affected by immigration enforcement, covering rent, payroll, and other expenses.

They have already distributed more than $5.1 million in grants to 1,239 small businesses affected by immigration enforcement. The businesses range from storefronts to home-based businesses and sidewalk vendors.

The vendors The LA Local spoke to said they haven’t yet applied for these funds.

Still, with sales down, Godoy said many vendors like her are hoping for support that matches their needs on the ground.

“We would need help with direct resources because right now we’re stuck in the same place with no sales,” she said. “We can’t get a storefront because there aren’t enough sales, so we’re out here on the street. I think people lack empathy and at the same time they’re afraid, and the economy is also bad. When gas goes up, everything goes up.”