The Brief

When Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill last month that would have supported sober homeless housing, his reason left many scratching their heads.

Newsom said Assembly Bill 255, which would have allowed cities to use up to 10% of their state funds to pay for “recovery housing,” was unnecessary. That’s because using state funds for sober housing is already allowed, the governor said. He said “recent guidance” makes that clear.

That was a big surprise to Assemblymember Matt Haney, who had spent the past two years working on the bill Newsom was now saying had been moot all along. Haney had been under the impression that California’s “housing first” rule — which dictates that homelessness programs offer housing to people regardless of their sobriety, mental health, employment, etc. — meant sober housing wasn’t eligible for state funds.

When CalMatters asked about the “recent guidance” that allows the state to fund sober housing, the governor’s office sent a link to a 20-page document. No one CalMatters spoke to had ever seen that document before. Neither had Haney, anyone in his office, or the other stakeholders involved in his bill, including the service providers trying to build more sober housing, he said.

While the document was dated July, 2025, it wasn’t published online until Oct. 2 — the day after Newsom’s veto.

“I think it’s a terrible bureaucratic failure,” Haney said of the lack of communication. Having the state and the Legislature work together, rather than on separate parallel policies, would have saved everyone time and resources, he said.

“Why didn’t anybody say anything over the course of two years,” Haney asked, “not just to me, but to the cities, counties and providers who desperately wanted to open these beds?”

The California Interagency Council on Homelessness, which has been working on the document since late 2024, put the blame on Haney’s office for not reaching out. A preliminary draft was publicly available earlier this year as part of a February council meeting, said Executive Officer Meghan Marshall.

The new sober housing guidelines come at a time when the state is facing political pressure from some facets to shift its approach to homeless housing – both to embrace drug-free housing and to turn at least some of its focus from permanent housing that accepts everyone to temporary shelter that may come with strings attached.

A group of legislators, city housing staffers and nonprofits recently took a trip to San Antonio, Texas to tour a massive homeless shelter there, and returned with ideas on how to beef up California’s shelter capacity — which some on the trip say has been neglected as a casualty of California’s strict preference for long-term housing. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s administration has signalled that it will shift federal money away from permanent housing and into temporary shelter, while also imposing conditions such as sobriety. California might have to get on board with that agenda, or risk losing federal funds.

While few California Democrats are supportive of anything Trump does, the continued prevalence of encampments on the streets has convinced some that the state should change its tactics.

“We need to break the logjam of the dogma that says that only permanent housing is acceptable,” said Sen. Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat from Encinitas. “Because what we’re de facto saying is that people are going to stay on the streets until we’ve built enough permanent housing or market-rate housing, and neither is on track to meet the need anywhere in the near term.”

But that push has some service providers worried that, in an environment where homelessness funding keeps getting cut, focusing on sober housing and temporary housing will mean less money for the permanent housing that ends people’s homelessness.

“The current trend shifts away from solving the actual lack of a home and focuses on some people’s associated issues,” said Jennifer Loving, CEO of Destination Home.

The debate over sober, temporary, or permanent housing doesn’t address the underlying income inequality that causes many Californians to lose housing in the first place and prevents their being able to afford housing afterward.

The deal with sober housing

California has required state-funded homeless housing be “housing first” since 2016, meaning it gets people into a permanent home as quickly as possible without forcing them to jump through additional hoops. The idea is that once someone is safely housed, it becomes much easier for them to get sober, find a job or take care of other issues.

Haney argues the model prevented the state from funding sober housing, which he said could be lifesaving for people who are overcoming an addiction and don’t want to live next to neighbors using drugs.

The new state guidance says sober housing can be housing first, if it’s done right. It must be the client’s choice to get sober and live in recovery housing, and they must have other local options that don’t require sobriety. In addition, sober housing providers can’t evict someone for relapsing. If a client decides they no longer want to live in sober housing, the provider must connect them to another housing option.

The guidance is more permissive than Haney’s bill. While the bill would have capped state funding on sober housing at 10%, the state guidance has no limit. But Haney worries it’s too strict in other ways. If housing providers can’t evict someone for using drugs or alcohol, they can’t run effective sober housing, Haney said.

“There are some questions as to whether anyone is actually going to step up and do this under the guidelines as written,” he said.

The state guidelines come with no money to open new sober housing beds.

Without extra funding, as more money goes to sober housing, that means less money for low-barrier housing, said Loving, who worries that shift will move the state backward. Sober housing and drug testing were the norm in the 1980s and 1990s, but people still overdosed in those environments, she said.

“Drugs were always present, even in sober living environments,” Loving said. “And that did not increase our housing outcomes. What increased our housing outcomes was the availability of actual houses for people to transition into.”

Temporary or permanent housing?

Several dozen California legislators, city housing workers and nonprofit providers traveled to Texas last month to visit a massive homeless shelter in San Antonio. Haven for Hope fits about 1,500 people on one 22-acre campus — meaning that almost anyone in the city who wants to can sleep indoors. Most of those people are required to stay sober in order to keep their spot, and healthcare, counseling and other services are offered on site.

That program is a sharp contrast from the “discouraging results” of California’s homelessness strategy, said Sen. Dave Cortese, a Democrat from San Jose who went on the trip. He’s frustrated with what he sees as California’s neglect of temporary shelter. New programs such as Newsom’s Homekey only fund permanent housing. So did the Measure A affordable housing bond in Santa Clara County.

Long-term housing is the only way to resolve someone’s homelessness, which is why it has been the gold standard in the state. But it can take years to build, and voters aren’t always patient.

“If you push all your chips to the middle of the table on permanent supportive housing, you start to lose your constituency because constituents are coming by in their cars every day and seeing more tents and more illegal encampments,” Cortese said. “And their thought process is, ‘I thought we just put a billion dollars into eradicating homelessness. What’s going on? Why is it getting worse?’”

An illustration is displayed at The Salvation Army Silicon Valley groundbreaking ceremony for their HOPE Community Safe and Sober Overnight and Transitional Housing program in San Jose on Nov. 3, 2025.

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Land is scarce and expensive in California, which would make it hard to replicate a shelter as large as Haven for Hope. But city staff in San Jose are looking into whether some version of it can be done there, said Housing Director Erik Soliván, who was on the Texas trip.

While it may seem unusual for the Golden State to look to Texas in search of advice on social services, Californians have been awed by Haven for Hope for years. CalMatters wrote about the phenomenon in 2023.

The Texas shelter has made some changes since then. About 1,600 people slept in the shelter in 2023, and the facility served 85% of the city’s homeless population.

But even that giant facility couldn’t hold everyone. The space was overcrowded, with hundreds of people sleeping on the floor on mats inches apart. Haven for Hope had to pause enrollments and put new rules in place to limit who can come in. In the last fiscal year, the population was down to an average of 1,453 people per night. About 60% of those are in a program that regularly conducts drug and breathalyzer tests.

California will have to do more to embrace that style of shelter if it doesn’t want to get left behind by the federal administration, said Elizabeth Funk, founder and CEO of shelter provider DignityMoves, who went on the Texas trip.

The Trump administration appears poised to divert money away from permanent housing and into temporary housing that comes with sobriety and other requirements. But we won’t know the extent of that change until the government shutdown ends.

“The federal government is going to come down with a bunch of money for things that don’t allow drug use,” Funk said, “and that needs to fit in our system.”

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

Throne, the smart restroom company at dozens of Los Angeles Metro stations, reached a milestone of 1 million uses last week, the company said.

Metro has partnered with Throne to provide public restrooms since 2023, starting with high-tech toilets at three public stations.

In advance of the World Cup, Metro and Throne wanted to expand their presence in Los Angeles. The company completed those installations on June 4, days ahead of L.A.'s first World Cup match on June 12. Now, 64 locations are operating across the Metro system, according to Throne.

Before the partnership, Metro had just a few publicly accessible restrooms across its coverage area.

In a social post marking the occasion, Throne wrote, “Here’s to the next million.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R- S.C., died late Saturday night following a "brief and sudden illness," according to a statement released by his office. He was 71.

His office did not immediately reply to a request for information on his cause of death.

Graham served in the House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003, when he succeeded Strom Thurmond in the Senate. He was reelected three times and recently won a primary election as he sought a fifth term.

Graham served in the U.S. military for more than three decades. After graduating from the University of South Carolina's law school, he served as an active duty Air Force lawyer for six years. Graham later served in both the South Carolina Air National Guard and Air Force Reserves and retired from the military in 2015 at the rank of colonel.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune called Graham "a strong advocate for the United States and a strong ally to freedom-loving countries across the globe," in a statement posted on X. "Lindsey fought passionately for the Palmetto State. He was a trusted adviser and colleague to me and many others, and numerous presidents and heads of state have relied on his counsel."

President Trump shared a remembrance on his Truth Social platform: "Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the greatest people and Senators I have ever known, is dead! He was always working, and was a true American Patriot."

His death comes at a difficult moment for the Senate Republican conference, which has struggled with a narrow majority that includes a handful of outgoing members who occasionally break ranks to oppose the president.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, has missed votes during an apparently ongoing hospitalization for an undisclosed health issue, further narrowing the margins for Thune to pass legislation and confirm executive and judicial branch nominees.

Legislative legacy

During his near-quarter century in the Senate, Graham served as chair of two key committees and was instrumental in enacting Trump's policy and staffing priorities.

As chair of the Judiciary Committee during much of Trump's first term, Graham oversaw the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court and of scores of federal judges.

Last year as head of the budget committee, Graham shepherded the president's landmark tax package, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, to passage despite unanimous Democratic opposition and thorny negotiations with his Republican colleagues.

An adaptable and sometimes controversial deal-maker, Graham was the last surviving member of an influential group of Senate defense hawks known as "the three amigos," alongside the late Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat-turned-Independent. The group was a fixture of congressional delegations to conflict zones.

Graham was among the most vocal supporters of the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran.

"Israel has lost one of its greatest friends. America has lost a great patriot. I have lost a beloved friend," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement posted to X. "Our hearts are with Lindsey's family and with the American people at this difficult time."

Graham also sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2016 and staked a lane as a fierce critic of Donald Trump. In a 2015 CNN interview, Graham referred to then-candidate Trump as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot" who doesn't represent the views of the Republican Party.

In the decade since Trump's victory, though, Graham has become one of the president's staunchest advocates. A longtime friend and ally of McCain, Graham attributed his transformation to a sense of patriotic duty.

"I am not going to give up on the idea of working with this president. The best way I can honor John McCain is help my country," he told CBS News in 2018.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (left) gestures as President Trump speaks with reporters while in flight on Air Force One as they were returning to Joint Base Andrews, Md., on Jan. 4.

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A frequent Trump golf companion, Graham hewed closely to the president in his recent Senate primary election — his campaign website touts the president's "Complete and Total Endorsement."

Graham was born in Central, S.C., in 1955 and lived with his family in a single room behind their liquor store, restaurant and pool hall, according to his campaign biography. His parents died while Graham was still in school. After their death, Graham became the primary caretaker of his younger sister, Darline, whom he eventually legally adopted.

In a statement on the social media platform X, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster described Graham as "irreplaceable," adding, "We shall not see his likes again."

McMaster, a Republican, will appoint a successor to serve the remainder of Graham's term. A replacement Republican nominee for this fall's general election race will be determined by a special election in August.

NPR's Brian Mann and Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 NPR

A program that helps connect schools and libraries to the internet at discounted rates is under review by the Federal Communications Commission. Educators and advocates are bracing for the funding to shrink or be eliminated.

The so-called E-Rate program, created in the 1990s, has considerable bipartisan support. The agency's recent focus on the program has left educators, including David Thurston, on edge.

Thurston oversees technology for the 33 school districts nested inside San Bernardino County. The area covers more than 20,000 square miles of Southern California: "We have mountain regions, far-flung desert regions, and then our urban and suburban areas. We're a really diverse county," Thurston says.

The county already built the infrastructure to get internet access from the edge of Los Angeles all the way to the state's eastern border, but the spending doesn't end once the fiber-optic cables are installed. Internet access bills come monthly.

"There's no doing without," he says. School districts "are gonna have to pick up the costs."

For San Bernardino districts, that's tens of thousands of dollars every month.

"Those are ongoing, essentially, utility costs," he says. "That's what E-Rate pays for."

A 'healthy' program 

E-Rate has had a notable impact since its founding. It was created by Congress in 1996, when only 14% of schools and libraries could access the internet. That number is now near 100%. The FCC has overseen the program through both Democratic and Republican administrations, so when the agency announced a full review of the program in late June, some were confused.

"By its own data and its own measurement, the program is healthy," Thurston says. "The program is doing what it needs to and is important."

Others saw this coming. The Project 2025 blueprint singled out federal broadband policy as a target for cutting agency spending.

Current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr helped write that chapter of the document, compiled by the conservative Heritage Foundation, which was meant to guide the second Trump administration.

Less predictable was the chairman's reasoning for reviewing the program: kids getting too much screen time. In the now-approved notice of proposed rulemaking, the FCC calls for a review "to better protect children when using E-Rate-funded networks, including to limit screen time."

His prepared statement at the commission's June hearing focused heavily on the dangers of screen time for kids and the growing body of research around it.

Since January, states including Alabama, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia have passed some form of legislation that calls for reevaluating technology's role in teaching and testing, and more than 10 other states are considering similar restrictions. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest in the country, recently approved a policy to limit screen time for its students.

Some advocates for limiting screen time at school say gutting E-Rate funding isn't the way to reduce how much time kids are spending on devices.

"We believe there are ways of strengthening school policies to promote more limited and privacy-protecting use of EdTech without taking away critical E-Rate funding," said Josh Golin, executive director at Fairplay, a nonprofit focused on digital safety for kids, in a statement to NPR.

Although states and districts are searching for ways to limit screen time, few — if any — are looking to operate without the internet altogether. Many schools rely on internet-based systems to track attendance, monitor school bus routes and give tests required by their state. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 48 states now have some kind of online component with exams.

Bob Bocher, a senior fellow with the American Library Association (ALA), says that because the program is written into the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC likely cannot fully eliminate it. And last year, the Supreme Court ruled that the Universal Service Fund, which collects the money that schools and libraries in turn use to lower internet costs, is constitutional.

But the FCC could change the way the E-Rate program is run to make it more complicated, so the ALA is still worried.

Bocher, who helped work on the original law back in the '90s, worries the program could become so onerous it drives schools and libraries away by design.

"It's like death by a thousand cuts," he says, "death by a thousand rules and regulations."

Keeping up with the rest of the world

While internet access has expanded significantly since 1996, internet pricing and options haven't changed the way Bocher or his contemporaries expected.

"A common assumption that a lot of people had [was] … competition will evolve," he says. "And then drive down the price."

In cities, this may be true, but for many rural and remote areas, competition for internet service providers, or ISPs, is nonexistent.

"In rural Alaska, we don't have numerous options," says Patrick Mayer, superintendent for the remote Alaska Gateway School District. "We have one provider."

His district, where some students rely on planes to get to school in the winter months, has just under 400 students. Still, the district spends more than half a million dollars per year to ensure it has internet access at its six schools. The price tag is high, but the connection is what allows them to keep up with the rest of the world.

"It means the difference between having a school in the 21st century," Mayer says, "or a school in the 20th century."

The expansion of connectivity in his district allows students to take dual-enrollment courses online with a local college and access virtual speech and occupational therapy.

"To backfill that funding," he says, "would be very, very difficult."

He imagines there would be no way around cutting down on staff and student services to find money to pay the district's entire internet bill. For now, he's focused on making some noise.

Once the FCC officially publishes notice of its planned review, the public can comment for 60 days. After that, there will be a reply comment period of 30 days, followed by a full review of all of that input by the agency. The process can take a long time, but Mayer and other advocates are already working to draw attention to the issue.

He spent a few days this month in Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators about the importance of keeping Alaska's students connected.

A park is a city’s heart and soul. At its highest calling, it’s a community’s conscience.

Such is the case with Ascot Hills Park, 93 acres of hiking paths and native habitats built 20 years ago in the Eastside neighborhood of El Sereno, thanks to a retired civil engineer and residents who wanted the land to return to nature — and to the community.

"There was nothing there," said Val Marquez, one of those residents, who's lived in El Sereno for more than 50 years. "It was just hillsides, fenced off for the most part."

Ascot Hills Park took 20 years to build.

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Ascot Hills Park.

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Today, dirt trails are molded into the hills. Some dip down to a lush canyon of native trees and shrubs fed by a small stream.

Others take you higher — way higher.

“On a foggy morning, you can go to the east ridge and you're above the clouds,” said Raymond Rios, another early resident behind the efforts. “Or you can go on a beautiful evening to the west ridge and look at what the Lord painted in the sky.”

View of downtown L.A. from Ascot Hills Park.

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Back to nature

The idea of a park came up as early as 1930 but never came to pass.

In the 1990s, Jerry Schneider was getting a master's degree in landscape architecture, a passion of his after retiring as a civil engineer. His thesis fieldwork took him to El Sereno. He and his colleague saw an ideal site in its dormant hillsides — a place to turn natural landscapes into hands-on classrooms for students from two nearby high schools.

"The area was the subject of a lot of political ideas and proposals that did not resonate with me or a lot of the community," Schneider said. Those ideas included a sports complex, proposed in 2000, that would have leveled the hills.

Jerry Schneider at Ascot Hills Park, with the amphitheater in the background.

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Jerry Schneider at Ascot Hills.

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At a community hearing attended by Antonio Villaraigosa — who went on to represent District 14 on the City Council and later became mayor — Schneider remembered, "We lined up all the students and science teachers and others and we all basically told Antonio the neighborhood wants an open space. In fact, nature — it could be the main theme of the park."

How to build a park

Ascot Hills Park.

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Money came through Proposition 40, a 2002 parks bond, and a lease was hammered out between LADWP — which has owned the site for over a century for water storage — and the Department of Recreation and Parks.

"Nothing happens by itself,” said Schneider, who lives in Mount Washington, of importance of Villaraigosa's buy-in.  "He was key because we needed political support."

The park opened in 2006 with little more than a gravel driveway and a few rocks to sit on — what old-timers call Phase 1.

Raymond Rios helped build Ascot Hills Park.

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Val Marquez helped build Ascot Hills Park. Later, he built the El Sereno Arroyo Playground, where he is at.

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"We were ready to have a ribbon-cutting and we were just waiting for the state to pay for the bill, basically," Marquez said. "And they came back and said, 'Where's the bathroom? You forgot the bathroom.'"

The full park — amphitheater, benches, picnic tables, a restored stream, new trails — didn't open until 2011, delayed three years by the Great Recession.

"Jerry [Schneider] made sure that it stayed as a natural habitat," Marquez said. "If it wasn't for him, that could've been a development. That could've been a regular park with soccer fields."

Slow, steady work

Today, the 86-year-old Schneider runs the park's monthly volunteering program and can still be found at Ascot a few times each week, pulling out weeds and checking in on the native plants and trees planted by volunteers over the last two decades. Students from Wilson High drop in to help out routinely for class credit.

Demian Willette chairs the park's volunteer advisory board. He is also conducting research on urban habitat restoration at Ascot.

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Since 2024, an experiment to grow a micro-forest of California natives has been underway over a 10,000-square-foot plot. It's thriving, despite minimal watering and upkeep, proving there's a cost-efficient way to restore habitat anywhere in this city.

"After two years, it's self-sufficient," said Demian Willette, a Loyola Marymount University biology professor who is leading the research. "You plant it, you let it go. You let nature take over."

Willette also chairs Ascot's volunteer-run Park Advisory Board, part of a new generation of stewards that include Lluvia Arras, who remembered what Schneider said when she first started to volunteer.

"He reminded me that it's slow, steady work," Arras said. "He's like, 'One day you're gonna look back and you're gonna see the progress and feel proud.'"

Lluvia Arras is among a new generation of volunteer park leaders at Ascot.

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Their advocacy didn't stop at Ascot. Marquez, an original Park Advisory Board member, went on to build the El Sereno Arroyo Playground in 2012, informed by his experience at Ascot.

Rios, the current secretary, is active at neighboring Hazard Park. In the mid-2010s he worked with residents to beat back a USC proposal to improve its Health Sciences campus that would take away parkland.

"Not only are we park advocates," Rios said. "We're community advocates."

They are one and the same thing.