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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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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Droped off water sits outside of a tent.

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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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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.

Topline:

Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.

Here are some of the topics they covered:

• Extreme heat
• Emergency preparedness and recovery
• Protecting communities from pollution
• Water
• Public transit

About the organizers: The event is organized by a coalition of local environmental and environmental justice groups including: Los Angeles League of Conservation Voters, SCOPE-LA, Sierra Club, Clean and Healthy California, Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance and Communities for a Better Environment

LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.

The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.

Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.

The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.

The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.

The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."

The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.

"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."

The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.

The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.

The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.

Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.

"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."

Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.

The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.

The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.

Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.

This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare. 

Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."

NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. 
Copyright 2026 NPR

A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.

The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.

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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.

“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.

It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”

The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.

Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.

State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.

“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.

“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”

In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”

Since the news of the deal broke late last week, it has sparked condemnation from a number of Democratic state leaders, including Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, as well as Attorney General Rob Bonta and Bonta’s predecessor, Xavier Becerra, who leads the race for California governor.

“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”

The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs, staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.

Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”

The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”

Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”

“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”

Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.

Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.

“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”

This story first appeared on Long Beach Post.

Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.

The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.

Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.

Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.

To qualify, a business must:

• Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
• Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
• Be currently open and active for business
• Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
• Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships

The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.

It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.

His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.

Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.

The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.

“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.

In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”

Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.

He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.

“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.