The Brief

There are more than 46,000 people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles and every day volunteers hit the streets with mutual aid groups to provide them with whatever is needed — no strings attached.

Some give out bottles of water, others provide glass pipes, clean needles and antiseptic wipes to help drug users avoid infection and death. They also offer necessities like food in the shape of burritos, tents and socks to Narcan, batteries and phone charging stations.

These groups try to fill gaps in immediate-term services, while people wait for the promise of a long-term solution in the form of housing.

The philosophy behind mutual aid is the idea of community supporting community, but there’s a big question: Why is this work of providing life saving services often left to volunteers?

Of the city’s 2023-24 budget, $1.3 billion has been allocated to the homelessness crisis and getting people off the street. However, basic needs like water and overdose prevention aren’t being sufficiently met.

“Some of these services are like air, like oxygen,” said Ndindi Kitonga, founder of volunteer group Palms Unhoused Mutual Aid (PUMA), which provides harm reduction services like clean needles and Narcan to unhoused people in L.A. “Everyone should just have it. And so we very much push back and critique our local governments for not doing what they have to do.”

Mayor Karen Bass told LAist that she recognizes the homelessness crisis is multifaceted and sometimes unhoused folks aren’t accessing services they need.

"If I have learned anything this year, it’s how the ability to provide services of every type is woefully inadequate," she said. "People need water, they need the ability to have basic hygiene, they need food. They need all of that."

The Band-Aid

We know the city is taking action to help people living on the streets. Same for Los Angeles County. Same for LAHSA, the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, and same for other agencies. But it’s clear, based on LAist’s earlier reporting, that unhoused people have some very basic and immediate needs that are not being met by government services.

Volunteers are applying the Band-Aids, but the answer to that “why?” is complicated.

“Part of it gets into the philosophy of the role of government,” said LAist unhoused communities reporter Nick Gerda. “Does government have responsibility, and do taxpayers have a responsibility, to provide life-saving support for people living on the streets?”

Sade Kammen distributing water to Skid Row residents.

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Noé Montes

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When it comes to government structure, L.A. is a unique place. We have a lot of different government offices and agencies, each with different budgets.

“Unlike New York City where it's all one big entity under a giant city government, L.A. is really a total mishmash,” Gerda said.

There’s L.A. city, which includes the mayor’s office and 15 different city council districts; there’s L.A. County, which includes the Board of Supervisors and other county agencies, such as the Department of Mental Health; and there’s the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, whose outreach straddles both the city and the county.

This, said Gerda, can make it challenging to track who is responsible for what.

“There's a lot of overlap in responsibility, and the idea behind that, about a century ago, was to decentralize power,” he said. "The flip side is that you have all these different government entities, and it can get really confusing. And in the past, what we've seen is a lot of finger pointing."

Water

There is a big need for water in unhoused communities, but there isn’t one government entity that’s in charge of providing it, which is where mutual aid groups like WaterDrop LA come in.

The nonprofit was founded during the pandemic when volunteers on Skid Row realized there wasn’t a consistent supply of water available to people who live there. A recent study backs that up, finding that 30% of Skid Row residents had limited daytime access to drinking water — that number jumps to nearly 70% at night.

Every Sunday, WaterDrop brings several U-Hauls worth of bottled water to Skid Row and distributes the bottles to residents.

One of those residents is a former military veteran who goes by the name of Hawk. He operates a one-man barbershop from the sidewalk.

“With them bringing out water, it assists us in a way that you just can't explain,” Hawk said. “You need water for everything.”

Skid Row resident known as "Hawk."

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Noé Montes

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LAist

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Droped off water sits outside of a tent.

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Noé Montes

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One recent, positive development in the neighborhood is something called a Refresh Spot. It’s provided by the city in Skid Row and offers water 24/7 for all sorts of uses.

“They have showers and bathrooms and a water box,” said WaterDrop volunteer Sade Kammen. “That's probably one of the best resources that the city has installed.”

But the service is not available everywhere and it’s sometimes not accessible — because of physical or mental needs — even to those who do live nearby.

“Some of these people are like me. I don't do groups of people well, and that mental thing can hold them back from many benefits,” explained Hawk, who lives across the street from Refresh.

Once a week, WaterDrop LA brings him two gallons of bottled water.

“And I'm fortunate enough and blessed enough to have a fire hydrant,” he said, pointing to a hydrant across the street that he cracks open with a utility wrench. "I'm fortunate enough and blessed enough to have a fire hydrant. That's how I survive."

“Skid Row is a very unique situation,” said Councilmember Kevin de León. “It was intentionally zoned to be the epicenter of homelessness, to be the catch-all of unhoused folks, from all over the city, from all over the county, from the state of California, and quite frankly other parts of the nation.”

De León represents Council District 14, which includes Skid Row. His office has been pressured by advocates to do more to help ease the immediate-term needs of those experiencing homelessness.

Since our first conversation with WaterDrop, one of the co-founders, Aria Cataño, said the group has had meetings with de Leon’s office to talk about water distribution.

“I will say that any organization or any entity or any group of individuals who are willing to go down to Skid Row or anywhere else … and provide bottles of water, is something that I've always welcomed,” De Leon said. “I would say, don't stop, you know, keep doing it until we get every person off the streets.”

Skid Row

The history of Skid Row is a long and complicated one. This 4-square-mile neighborhood — just southeast of downtown — goes back to the 1800s.

In the 1970s, as De León alluded to, city officials established an unofficial "containment" zone for homelessness that would allow shelters and other services.

These days, Skid Row is viewed as the national epicenter of the homelessness crisis.

Black and brown people are disproportionately represented in the neighborhood, accounting for about 80% of the total population. And many say they have been living on these streets for a long time without adequate services.

People say they get used to feeling forgotten.

Kevin Call, a volunteer with WaterDrop LA and a former unhoused Skid Row resident, says he volunteers because he wants to help people like him. However, he wishes it weren’t necessary.

“We shouldn't have to have a truck pull up here to get them water,” Call said. “The city should already had that in place.”

Sade Kammen distributing water to Skid Row resident.

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Noé Montes

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De León added that people using fire hydrants for drinking or bathing is a reflection of a broken system that’s afflicted the city historically.

Think about that “mishmash” that Gerda referred to earlier, where many government offices are responsible for different, sometimes overlapping, pieces of the problem.

De León said he’s been public about his “deep frustration” with L.A. County and the Department of Mental Health, which has traditionally overseen services for the unhoused while cities have been responsible for housing.

“We need intervention immediately to help folks who are suffering from clinical depression to bipolar [disorder] to schizophrenia,” de León said. “When you have someone who is screaming and yelling at the top of his or her lungs, running down the street naked with feces caked onto his or her skin … we know that's not normal, but what we've done in L.A. is we've normalized it. But it is abnormal and that's one of my biggest frustrations, because it's especially acute in Skid Row.”

When we shared de León’s statement with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, they agreed that they are responsible for mental health services for vulnerable populations, including people experiencing homelessness.

“These services include intensive outreach and engagement, street psychiatry, mobile medication dispensation, and other innovative field-based services, as well as funding supportive housing at every level throughout the County,” the department added.

The department also said they're currently working to expand staffing for “the ever-growing demand” in response to the county’s homelessness emergency declaration.

The housing solution

Since taking office last December, the primary goal for Bass as mayor has been to get people off the streets and into housing.

The Inside Safe program is at the center of this effort and, as of Oct. 27, 1,682 people have been moved into temporary housing, like hotels and motels. Of that group, 190 people have moved into permanent housing, according to LAist’s analysis of data provided by LAHSA.

But at least 153 other people have left the hotels and motels and returned to homelessness, and another 90 people left the program but are working with providers to find other options. Bass said her administration is focused on long term solutions but, she acknowledged, “housing without services, without food, without all of the things that people need is insufficient.”

But Bass said it’s also important to remember that L.A.’s homelessness crisis took decades to develop, and that it can’t be fixed overnight.

“I could have spent the first few months or the first year of my administration developing the world's best program, meeting with everybody under the sun and getting everybody's feedback and building a program,” she said. “But I thought that was inappropriate considering people die on these streets every single day.”

Much like Bass, housing is the main priority for many of L.A.’s city councilmembers.

Councilmember Nithya Raman said the limited availability of basic services like water is a “real indictment of the city,” but noted there are a lot of difficult choices a council district has to make based on its allotted budget.

“I also have a limited staff,” Raman said. “We had to choose between providing those services, and actually looking for housing for people where they could access those services … in the context of a motel or a hotel room or shelter site of some kind.”

Earlier this year, the mayor signed the L.A. City Council-approved budget for $13 billion. Of that, about $37 million has been allotted to all 15 city council members (roughly $2.5 million each), much of which is dedicated to salaries.  Raman, who represents Council District 4 and founded SELAH Homeless Coalition, said she’s also faced headwinds in the past from her colleagues on the council when it comes to getting support for services like sanitation near homeless encampments.

She said she hopes to work with other council districts and the mayor’s office to create a citywide response to provide interim services to unhoused communities as they continue to work on housing.

“We need a citywide response so that we can provide some of these interim services … to people so that they're not suffering when they are on the streets,” Raman said.

Angelenos took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles and Westwood on Saturday in response to the U.S.-Israeli military strikes in Iran.

• Read: What you should know about local protests, reaction and law enforcement actions

A coalition of organizations, including the National Iranian American Council, the ANSWER coalition and 50501, held protests nationwide in reaction.

Local demonstrations took place outside City Hall in downtown Los Angeles, as well as in Ventura and Orange counties.

In Westwood, Iranian Americans gathered to celebrate the strikes. More demonstrations are planned for today and tomorrow.

Here are photos from Saturday.

Westwood

Hundreds rally seeking regime change in Iran in Westwood on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, in Los Angeles. The rally was organized after word spread that the U.S. and Israel had bombed Iran overnight, Pacific time, killing Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, among others.

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Genaro Molina

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/Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

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Hundreds rally waving the historical Iranian Lion and Sun and American flags in Westwood on Saturday.

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Genaro Molina

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Los Angeles Times

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Hundreds rally in Westwood seeking regime change in Iran.

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Genaro Molina

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

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A man walks under the colors if Iran while joining hundreds in a rally seeking regime change in Iran in Westwood on Saturday.

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Genaro Molina

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Image

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Downtown Los Angeles

A protester holds a poster reading "drop the files not the bombs" during a demonstration against the war in Iran in front of City Hall in Los Angeles on Feb. 28, 2026.

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Etienne Laurent

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AFP via Getty Images

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A crowd gathered at Los Angeles City Hall to protest against United States and Israel bombing Iran on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026.

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Myung J. Chun

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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A protester holds a portrait of Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a flag of Iran during a demonstration against the war in Iran in front of City Hall.

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Etienne Laurent

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AFP via Getty Images

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Protesters hold placards reading "no new US war in the Middle East" during a demonstration against the war in Iran in front of City Hall.

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Etienne Laurent

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AFP via Getty Images

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A man holds a sign at Los Angeles City Hall to protest against United States and Israel bombing Iran.

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Myung J. Chun

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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Walk through cities around the world and it's easy to spot the trend: utility boxes painted and transformed into public art to spiff up neighborhoods.

In downtown Los Angeles, street artist S.C. Mero has taken the idea of the utility box as art in a different direction with one she’s installed in the Arts District.

“Would you like me to open it up and you can see?” she asked on a recent morning.

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary electrical cabinet — gray, about the size of a refrigerator, with slotted vents. But instead of the usual fire-resistant metal, this one is made of wood with a faux concrete base.

The box theater incognito.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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Mero spins two combination locks and pulls open the door.

A hidden theater

Inside, instead of a tangle of cables and cords, red crushed velvet covers the walls from top to bottom.

A gilded clock and gold-framed pictures of two other electrical boxes (“possibly its mother, and its great-grandfather”) adorn the tiny interior, inspired by one of downtown’s oldest and grandest movie palaces, the Los Angeles Theatre.

“The first time I went into that theater, the feeling that I had, I wanted people to have a similar feeling when they opened this up,” she said.

Like the theater, the box is meant to bring audiences together. Mero invites performers to step inside, and since its installation a few weeks ago, some 30 poets, magicians, puppeteers and clowns have reached out about using the space.

Many are female artists.

“Maybe it's because of the scale of it, they feel like they can actually have a chance to get inside,” Mero said.

A tradition of unexpected art

The box theater sits on the 800 block of Traction Avenue, across the street from the historic American Hotel, an early hub for artists in the neighborhood.

Jesse Easter, the hotel’s night manager, has a front-row seat to the box theater performances.

“The Arts District is still alive,” he proclaims.

Easter first arrived in the neighborhood in the 1980s, a blues and rock musician who also professionally installed art.

He said the Arts District has long been known for unconventional public art. Famously, in 1982, artist Dustin Shuler pinned a Cessna airplane to the side of the American Hotel with a 20-foot-long nail.

“I was one of the people that was in the hotel that saw the room that the nail came down into, went through the brick wall, into the floor and stopped,” Easter recalls.

Easter says Mero’s installations boldly continue that tradition of guerrilla street art in the neighborhood.

After graduating from USC in 2011, she started to make sculptural works with overlooked street fixtures, exploring issues such as addiction and homelessness.

Before the box theater, there was a giant mailbox.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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Before the theater box, Mero installed an oversized mailbox at the same corner, towering over passersby, symbolizing a housing market that remains out of reach for many Angelenos.

Elsewhere in the Arts District on Rose Street, she has installed a 13-foot-tall parking meter sculpture, commentary on the overwhelming nature of parking in the city.

Realizing a dream 

The box theater is perhaps the piece that has invited the most participation.

Jesse Easter, a musician and night manager at the American Hotel, prepares to perform at the box theater.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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Last week, Mero asked Easter and other local artists to perform there. He played a blues song he wrote more than 40 years ago when he first moved to the Arts District.

“It was sunset, and I was thinking, this kind of is the bookend,” he said.

Other participants performed spoken word poetry and played saxophone.

One performer, Mike Cuevas, discovered the theater by accident.

An Uber driver, Cuevas was waiting for his next delivery order by the box theater as it was being prepped ahead of the night’s performance.

Mero recalls him getting out of his car to look at what she was doing.

“He's like, what's going on here? This looks so cool,” Mero said. “He said as he's driving throughout the city, in between his rides, he writes poetry.”

Cuevas, who goes by the pen name Octane 543(12), left to make a delivery in East L.A., but he said “something in his heart” told him to return that evening.

After watching others perform, he stepped up to the box and read his poetry in public for the first time, a piece about Latino pride.

Mike Cuevas, aka Mike Octane 543-12, publicly reads his poetry for the first time.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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“Another generation will pass through,” he recited. “And they'll understand why we honor with proud delight, the continuous fight for the history of our brothers and sisters.”

Cuevas didn’t know Mero by name or anything about her work, but thanked her for giving him a venue.

“I just felt something beautiful with her art,” Cuevas said. “It's time for me to start expressing myself. She inspired me to do exactly what she's doing, but through poetry.”

He now plans to read again at an open mic in downtown L.A. next week.

An overture to look inside

Mero says the project has spoken to her personally, too. Growing up in Minnesota, she loved art as a child but later focused on playing lacrosse and hockey. At USC, she studied public relations.

“Once I started getting so into art, everyone was kind of shocked,” Mero said. “That's why I really want to encourage people to go inside themselves and see what's there, because you never know.”

Mero is hoping for a long run for the box theater. Its predecessor, the supersize mailbox, stayed up for five years, only toppled, she heard, after skateboarders accidentally ran into it.

In the meantime, the small theater sits unassumingly on the sidewalk waiting for its next performer, its exterior starting to collect graffiti like any other utility box.

It’s whale watching season, which always makes me think of the novel Moby-Dick.

In the book, Captain Ahab chased a whale for vengeance. I recently chased whales off the coast of Los Angeles, but in my case, it was in pursuit of the beauty and majesty of the natural world.

With warm — relative to Alaska — spring waters, migratory rest-stops and great feeding grounds, Los Angeles County’s coast is considered part of the “Blue Highway,” a crucial whale migration corridor and one of the best places to spot the gentle giants.

According to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium program director Jim DiPompei, many whales can be seen right in our backyard.

“There’s a little over 90 species of cetaceans (marine mammals) in the world, and we see about 30% of the species we could possibly see here in Southern California,” DiPompei told The LA Local.

Cetacean species you may spot in our waters include humpback whales, orcas, blue whales and dolphins. Your best chance, however, is spotting a gray whale. As school bus-sized gray whales migrate back and forth between Alaska and Baja, they consistently hug LA’s coastline.

But where should you go to actually get a good look at whales? Don’t worry — I got you. Here’s The LA Local guide to cruising the Blue Highway.

Top spots to watch whales from shore

Point Vicente Interpretive Center
31501 Palos Verdes Drive West, Rancho Palos Verdes
Free, laid-back, on the mountains!

At the Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, you’ll find an overlook dedicated to whale watching. While this is a great free spot for amateurs to come and look out for whales, this is no playground. Professionals conduct the annual whale census here, tracking the migration of whales.

This is a great place to bring a picnic basket and some binoculars to relax while scanning the ocean. Even if you don’t spot any whale action, you can visit the free natural history museum inside, which focuses on the region and its most famous inhabitants: whales. Afterward, step outside and chat with a museum docent accompanying the census watch.

If you want to see whales, stick to the coastal canyons. Canyons aren’t just massive structures above water — they are also mountains beneath the surface, offering depth, cold water and nutrients that attract food for whales. Gray whales tend to follow the canyons to stay away from the dangerous orcas.

Whale spotting 101

Whale watching season typically runs from December through May. It peaks from January to March.

When looking for a whale, try to spot their water mist blowing above the water. Gray whales typically surface for air every five minutes. When they do, they’ll blow out a water mist — that’s your chance to spot and track them until they surface again.

Get on a boat!

If you want to get eye-to-eye and really feel a cetacean’s scale, there are plenty of whale-watching cruises. They typically depart from Marina Del Rey, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, San Pedro, Dana Point and almost anywhere with a port.

Many cruises have a naturalist on board to answer questions and provide expert context to ocean wildlife.

On my tour departing from Long Beach, we saw five gray whales and a swarm of common dolphins feeding.

But be warned: If you get seasick easily, this trip might not be for you. On our two-and-half-hour trip, the boat rocked emphatically as we approached feeding sites. It’s fun if you can imagine yourself on a see-saw, but it might not be that enjoyable if that sounds nauseating.

While boat captains are not allowed to approach the whales too closely due to environmental protections, the whales can approach the boat if they choose. Sometimes the whales seem curious and watch us in return — it’s up to them and how they are feeling.

Get involved

Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
3720 Stephen M. White Drive, San Pedro

If you really catch the whale-watching bug, you’re in luck.

At the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, they offer a whale-watching naturalist program where you can volunteer and train to be a naturalist on board whale-watching cruises.

DiPompei said they train anyone over the age of 18 “who’s interested in learning about whales and volunteering their time to be on these whale-watching boats to talk to the general public and to talk to students.”

This program was started in the 1970s by John Olge, one of the founders of Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, with an emphasis on education and showing schoolchildren the beauty of our natural world.

The aquarium is also a great place to introduce whales to children. With kid-sized exhibits and educational programs throughout the year, it’s an ideal way to show young ones just how big and beautiful our oceans are.