The Brief

Deadra Walicki has lived in the same spot for more than a decade: a cracked patch of asphalt in L.A.'s San Fernando Valley, squeezed between a boarded-up grocery store and Amtrak tracks so close that passing trains shake the ground beneath her tent.

The air carries the scent of diesel fumes from busy Van Nuys Boulevard below and rotten food from the dozens of garbage bags piled up near her mattress, baking in the summer sun.

She stays put so that friends, family members and case workers can always locate her. But that consistency has also made Walicki, 51, a target for the police officers who patrol the area.

The Los Angeles Police Department cited Walicki for violating the city’s camping ordinance at least 34 times between August 2023 and December 2024.

“They drove through today and I waved at them,” said Walicki, her smile revealing cracked porcelain veneers. “The cops come here Monday through Friday and give tickets for being in the zone of the shelter. It's whatever they want to do.”

Deadra Walicki near the tent encampment where she lives in San Fernando Valley on June 21, 2025.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist/CalMatters

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It’s been 12 months since a groundbreaking U.S. Supreme Court decision rewrote the playbook on homelessness, allowing cities in California and beyond to make homeless encampments illegal, even when no shelter is available.

Before the justices ruled in Grants Pass v. Johnson, Los Angeles and other cities generally had to offer someone a shelter bed before punishing them for sleeping on the street. But that went out the window when the justices upheld an ordinance by the Oregon city of Grants Pass that banned camping on all public property.

Since the ruling, camping-related citations and arrests have soared in cities throughout California — everywhere from Sacramento to Los Angeles to San Diego and beyond.

In each of those three cities, police are citing many of the same people again and again. And while some have managed to move indoors, many others are still camping in the same places, racking up citations that ultimately make it more difficult to find housing.

We tracked down a few of those people. Here are their stories:

Los Angeles: 10 citations in six months

Walicki motions across the train tracks to what looks like a giant rubber bubble. It’s a transitional homeless shelter that opened in 2020.

While L.A. does not have a blanket ban on public camping, the city’s main anti-camping law allows enforcement in select sensitive locations chosen by council members, including near schools, parks and homeless shelters.

L.A. Municipal Code 41.18 says people camping within 1,000 feet of a shelter can be cited. That’s what the majority of Walicki’s citations are for, but she claims the shelter is about 2,000 feet away, as the crow flies.

Hope the Mission, which operates the shelter, did not dispute her distance assessment when contacted for comment, but the citations keep coming.

City-led cleaning and enforcement at homeless encampments makes outreach work harder, according to the nonprofit. Outreach teams build rapport with participants only to lose track of them.

“When they do this cleanup, we go back the next day, that same day,” said Hope the Mission outreach worker Armando Covarrubias. “Where can we find 'em? We can't contact them because they have no phones.”

In recent years, L.A. city leaders have used the ordinance to designate more and more areas for anti-camping enforcement, creating a patchwork of hard-to-follow rules for unsheltered Angelenos like Walicki.

Last March, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Agency released a report showing L.A.’s anti-camping law has not been effective at getting people into housing or keeping encampments away: It found 94% of people targeted for removal under the ordinance wanted shelter, but only 17% were able to get it.

Los Angeles hasn’t changed its enforcement as a result of Grants Pass, according to the City Attorney’s Office. But LAPD data show the department made 68% more camping and homelessness-related arrests in the second half of 2024 than the first. Those include non-custodial arrests, where the violator is released at the scene.

Walicki received 10 camping citations in the latter half of 2024, according to LAPD records obtained by CalMatters. She was even cited for camping two mornings in a row that October, at the same intersection.

“ People are being targeted every day in the city through enforcement, through resolutions to get them to move,” said Shayla Myers, senior attorney with Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, a nonprofit providing free legal services for poor Angelenos. “That’s the very definition of criminalization.”

When patrol cars arrive — usually in the morning, Walicki says — officers give people about 10 minutes to pack up. Anything left behind disappears into the back of sanitation trucks. Over the months, she's lost bags of recycling she'd collected for cash, sleeping bags, clothes, even dental tools for her veneers.

Walicki lives in the encampment with her partner Steve Maroulis, a 57-year-old man with mental disabilities. The two of them want to go at the same time into two separate gender-segregated shelters, but haven't had any luck.

"It would just be nice, for safety reasons," she said. “And I don’t want either of us to be alone out here.”

Deadra Walicki near the tent encampment where she lives in San Fernando Valley on June 21, 2025.

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Aaron Schrank

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LAist/CalMatters

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Police records capture the chaos of tracking someone arrested so frequently. Her name appears as Deadra, Dedra, and Debra. Her last name is spelled five different ways across case files.

Each citation adds to a growing pile of legal paperwork she largely ignores. She hasn't paid any fines because she doesn't have the money, she said. Court dates blur together. Walicki said she's tried to show up to court for some of her infractions, but she's never gone on the right day.

Others have dealt with more serious consequences for camping. David Cerritos, 46, has lived in Skid Row for five years, his tattered tent on a sidewalk flanked by wholesale smoke shops in the shadow of downtown L.A.’s skyline.

Cerritos was cited at least 12 times last year, including six times after the Supreme Court decision.

Unlike Walicki, with her repeated citations, Cerritos has been handcuffed and temporarily detained for violating the ordinance several times, he said.

“If you don't comply, you'll just be arrested," he said. “And then even if you get cited out, hours later or whatever, by the time you get back, you've lost everything.”

If someone resists, refuses to comply with or obstructs camping ban enforcement, LAPD can submit the case to be charged as a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in jail. Otherwise, LAPD will designate it an infraction punishable by a $250 fine, according to the department’s guidelines.

Several of Cerritos’ arrest records include mention of disorderly conduct. For him, these arrests usually mean spending 6 to 12 hours in jail while everything he owns disappears. Cerritos said he’s lost barbering clippers, tattoo equipment, bicycles, tools, laptops and more.

LAPD submits misdemeanor cases to the L.A. City Attorney’s office for prosecution consideration, and that office ultimately decides whether to file misdemeanor charges or knock them down to infractions.

The office said it filed charges in 87 camping violation cases in 2024 — 8% of the 1,034 enforcement actions LAPD made under the ordinance last year.

For Cerritos and Walicki, the citations and fines don’t mean all that much. For them, any interaction with police or city workers feels like enforcement, whether a charge is issued or not.

Cerritos feels like he’s getting harassed more than usual recently, but he’s not interested in moving. Like Walicki, he has a case manager but no phone.

 ”Now if they were forcing me to move away from here, and I went even just a block over, you might never find me,” Cerritos said.

After years of frequent arrests and citations for camping, neither Cerritos nor Walicki are any closer to leaving their spots, for permanent housing or anywhere else.

Sacramento: Go to jail, or go to a tiny home

Over the past three years, Jerry Carter could often be seen biking around Sacramento’s Midtown neighborhood, his brindle bull terrier, Zaddy, riding in style behind him on a homemade trailer he built special for the beloved pup.

Music followed him as he zipped past trendy bars and restaurants, playing R&B, jazz or reggae (never rap) from a small speaker. Sometimes he played his all-time favorite: Prince, who he saw perform at Arco Arena in 1997.

Local businesses and other homeless people who slept nearby knew him by sight, if not by name.

The police knew Carter, too.

Over the past year, they gave him at least seven citations for camping, storing his belongings on public property and blocking the sidewalk.

Jerry Carter at the Safe Stay tiny home community in Sacramento on June 13, 2025. Carter has been cited multiple times by law enforcement in Sacramento for street camping.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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Each encounter with police followed a similar playbook, Carter said. Officers showed up and told him he had 10 minutes to pack up all his belongings. Anything he couldn’t pack in time, he had to abandon.

Carter said he lost a lot of possessions that way: bicycles, clothes, tents and more. Losing bikes stung the most: Getting hit by a car a few years ago left Carter in constant pain, making it hard to walk. But biking is easier.

Sacramento bans camping or “using camping paraphernalia” on public property. Police can cite or arrest someone if they are using a sleeping bag, or even a piece of cardboard as a mattress and a tarp as a blanket — but not if they are sleeping on a bench with no camping materials, according to a police training bulletin.

Enforcement of that ban, as well as related ordinances, spiked after the Grants Pass decision. The number of arrests made and citations issued nearly tripled, from 96 in the first half of last year, to 283 in the second half. From January through May of this year, that number jumped to 844.

In most of those cases, the person was cited and released, not taken to jail. Violations led to an arrest 199 times in 2025.

Despite the frequent tickets and attempts to push him out of the bustling shopping and dining district, Carter never moved far from his preferred spot, around 21st and K streets. All of his citations over the past year were issued within about a two-and-a-half-block radius. He felt he had to stay central if he wanted to eat: That’s where his friends were, and where passersby would stop and give him money or food.

“I could survive there,” he said.

Carter became homeless about three years ago, after he says a property manager stole cash from his apartment while he was in the hospital. Carter moved out to avoid a physical confrontation. After that, Carter admits he “gave up a little bit.” He didn’t have the money to get a new apartment, and, focused every day on survival, he didn’t have the energy to start the process of getting back on his feet.

Initially, when the cops showed up wherever Carter was sleeping, an outreach worker would come too and put Carter on a waitlist for shelter. But nothing ever came of that, Carter said.

Then, at the very end of December, Sacramento County opened a new tiny home community for homeless residents. The Stockton Boulevard site, which was part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2023 promise to build tiny homes throughout California, has 155 small cabins with room for a bed (or two beds if it’s for a couple) and a few belongings. Residents share communal bathrooms with plumbing and showers. Case managers meet regularly with residents to try and help them find permanent housing.

As the tiny homes gradually filled, one police officer started urging Carter to move in. Carter said no multiple times. He’d spent a few days in a different tiny home site last year. He hated it, he said.

Finally, the officer gave Carter an ultimatum: Go to jail, or go to a tiny home. Carter knew getting locked up meant he might lose his dog. And he’d heard the new tiny homes were actually kind of nice. So he said OK.

“I guess he was actually a caring officer,” Carter said. “It didn't seem like he was a caring officer, because he kept on writing tickets and everything. But he kept on just pushing me.”

Carter moved into his tiny home about two months ago, where, when he finally got to shower for the first time, it felt like he stood under the hot water for hours. He no longer has to worry about police waking him up at 6:30 a.m. and demanding that he move, sometimes only minutes after he’d finally managed to fall asleep amidst the noise and chaos of the street.

“That’s wonderful,” Carter said. “I can actually sleep in. I can take naps.”

But the police actions that got him there also took a toll. Each time officers wrote Carter up, they gave him a piece of paper that said when he had to appear in court. But Carter invariably lost the papers. It would rain and they’d get wet and ruined. Or they’d get mixed in with the items the police tossed out the next time they told him to move.

He didn’t think it was a big deal. After all, camping is a misdemeanor. There’s no way the court would issue a warrant for such a small offense, Carter thought.

He was wrong. Now, at 53 years old, he has warrants out for his arrest for failing to appear at multiple court dates. It makes him worried that he could be biking down the street one day, minding his own business, and get arrested and taken to jail.

“I’m just too old to have any type of trouble like that,” he said.

Jerry Carter at the Safe Stay tiny home community in Sacramento on June 13, 2025. Carter has been cited multiple times by law enforcement in Sacramento for street camping.

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Miguel Gutierrez Jr.

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CalMatters

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Carter’s hardly the only one in that position, said Terra Hennefer, the case manager supervisor for the tiny home site where Carter lives.

“We see a lot of people that end up with the tickets,” she said. “Then it makes more work for us trying to clear their warrants and stuff before we get them into housing.”

Landlords often conduct background checks and won’t take someone with a warrant, Hennefer said. The county also runs background checks on people applying for subsidized housing vouchers.

Hennefer’s team works with the probation office to help residents resolve outstanding warrants. The first step is to set a new court date, and make sure the resident doesn’t miss it.

Then a judge will decide on a penalty, which could be a fine. Her organization, a shelter and interim housing provider named First Step Communities, can help cover the cost. But it’s frustrating, she said, as that money could instead go toward helping more people get off the street. And it adds yet another hurdle to what for many is a seemingly endless list of tasks on the way to housing.

Carter has just started that process. His case manager, Matthew Burbridge, is working on getting his Social Security benefits restarted and finding him permanent housing through CalAIM, the state’s expanded Medi-Cal program.

The problem is, neither Burbridge, nor anyone else, knows how long that may take.

“They’re working on it,” he said. “It might be quick, it might be long. We don’t know. But we’ll be ready when the time comes.”

San Diego: Moving into a swamp 

Micah Huff for a time lost touch with a San Diego case manager who was trying to help him move to a city-backed homeless campsite as he sought to avoid police and encampment clean-ups.

Huff, 45, moved to a boggy area near Ocean Beach bordered by brush, mud and city streets because it’s harder for the authorities to find him there. He had to hike in and out and said he’s already moved his belongings across the wetland once. Earlier this month, he said he expected to move again soon, as he’s done every couple weeks since the city stepped up enforcement.

Since May 2024, records show police cited Huff seven times for offenses tied to his unsheltered status and arrested him twice.

Police data obtained by Voice of San Diego shows arrests and citations for violations tied to homelessness more than doubled in the six months after the Grants Pass ruling. Rather than the ruling, police attribute the increase to the new police chief assigning more officers to engage with community members and enforce crimes tied to homelessness.

A year before the Grants Pass decision, the San Diego City Council approved a camping ban that police began enforcing in summer 2023, while also continuing to enforce older ordinances, such as those that prohibit encroaching on the public right of way.

Micah Huff, a client of PATH case manager Dawn Contreras, in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

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Ariana Drehsler

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Voice of San Diego

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The city’s street homeless population fell last year, and Mayor Todd Gloria credits that reduction to approaches such as the camping ban, continued enforcement of existing laws and increased shelter offerings and more outreach.

Arrests can be traumatic: One of Huff’s arrests, which police records suggest may have occurred last September, has made a lasting impression on him.

Huff was meeting a friend he hadn’t seen in a while at a dog beach in Ocean Beach. The two fell asleep near a public restroom, Huff said, and were startled awake by police. Police arrested Huff for encroachment and possession of drug paraphernalia, though Huff says the supplies weren’t his.

Huff said his heart raced during his encounter with police. He heard an officer talk about a backpack with drug supplies. Huff’s blood pressure surged, a reaction that Huff said put him at risk of a heart attack or stroke due to a blood pressure condition.

Then he passed out.

Huff said police took him to Scripps Mercy Hospital in Hillcrest. Huff estimates the officers waited six or seven hours before finally giving up on booking him and leaving.

He left the hospital with medications that were stolen within a few days of his return outdoors.

Superior Court records show that Huff has yet to be charged for these offenses or other alleged homelessness-related violations over the past couple years.

The outcome of the city crackdowns, according to Huff, has simply been that he’s been pushed “further and further away” into remote areas — currently a literal swamp — to avoid enforcement or clean-ups.

But increasing enforcement in recent weeks and months at nearby Ocean Beach hasn’t convinced 38-year-old Ryan Taylor to move elsewhere. Taylor, who has been cited nine times and arrested five times for offenses tied to homelessness, continues to set up an umbrella and blankets at the beach.

One recent arrest came on Memorial Day, when Taylor was picked up on a warrant for failing to appear in court to address homelessness-related charges. He was relieved to find most of his belongings still at the beach when he returned the next morning.

More recently, Taylor’s case manager has been helping him work on addressing his criminal cases in court. He is set to appear at a July 24 hearing to start the process.

Taylor hasn’t left the Ocean Beach area he’s settled in for most of the four years he’s been homeless in San Diego despite the repeated arrests and citations, he said, because he’s “just accepted that’s the way that it is.”

Taylor also said he’s repeatedly accepted offers of shelter when police show up next to him at the beach, but said shelter has never been available when he agreed to it.

“To me, it seems like the people that need help or whatever don't have money, giving them more tickets doesn't help them, propel them to get them financially out of the hole or help them,” Taylor said.

Micah Huff, a client of PATH case manager Dawn Contreras, in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

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Ariana Drehsler

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Voice of San Diego

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Empty bottles in a shopping cart in Ocean Beach on June 17, 2025.

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Ariana Drehsler

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Voice of San Diego

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San Diego police Capt. Steve Shebloski, who oversees the division focused on homelessness-related enforcement, and Denny Knox, executive director of business group OB MainStreet Association, argue that increased enforcement is having a positive effect, though both also said there’s more work to do.

Shebloski noted recent homeless census results showing a 4% drop in unsheltered homelessness in the city and less visible homelessness in communities including San Diego’s downtown.

But Dawn Contreras, a case manager for nonprofit PATH working with both Huff and Taylor, said the increased enforcement only makes homeless service workers’ jobs more difficult.

One day this spring, Contreras said she was picking up an unsheltered client for a required webinar to obtain housing when a beat officer — not assigned to the Neighborhood Policing Division that Shebloski oversees — ordered her client to clear his camp. Contreras said she implored the officer to allow the man to clean the camp later so he could head to his meeting.

“You’re not willing to bend for just one hour?” Contreras said.

The officer refused. With Contreras’ help, the unsheltered man later signed onto his meeting a few minutes late. Rescheduling it would have added another logistical hurdle for both Contreras and her client as they prepared to move him off the street.

Note: Aaron Schrank reported this story for LAist in collaboration with CalMatters' reporter Marisa Kendall and Voice of San Diego's Lisa Halverstadt.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”