The Brief

As Southern California continues to broil under yet another heatwave, researchers have been looking at how extreme heat affects vulnerable populations, including people incarcerated in California prisons.

Hidden Hazards, a recent report from the Ella Baker Center and UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, surveyed hundreds of incarcerated people throughout California to see how extreme heat was affecting them. To learn more, LAist spoke with the report's co-author Abhilasha Bhola.

The conversation in July with LAist 89.3's Julia Paskin has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What prisons are like in the heat

LAist: What does it look like in a California prison when the heat gets upwards of 110 degrees?

Abhilasha Bhola: So in our report, we surveyed almost 600 incarcerated people across the state of California and a huge majority of them, about 66% of them, all said that extreme heat was one of the main climate hazards that they actually experienced.

Oftentimes, prisons in California don't have air conditioning, they don't have ventilation, and they don't have adequate shade structures. And I know this sounds serious, but we have to consider the particularities of incarcerated people. A lot of them are on medications, or they're older, which makes them even more vulnerable to extreme heat, heat exhaustion and heat stroke than even we would be.

Why climate change overall is a concern

LAist: What about other threats from climate change? We do expect a lot more wildfires and floods in the state.

AB: Yeah, so as we saw in our mapping, there's going to be an increase in temperature as climate change accelerates across the state. And in addition to that, a lot of incarcerated individuals have experienced wildfires close to their facilities, as well as significant flood risk.

So in our report, we actually found 18 state prisons that were particularly vulnerable to extreme temperatures, wildfires, and floods.

LAist: Are there particular facilities of concern that you'd like to flag, especially in Southern California?

AB: In Southern California, we need to look at California State Prison here in Los Angeles County, Chuckawalla State Prison, Ironwood State Prison, Richard J. Donovan [Correctional Facility]. And what we really need to think about are the prisons that are in desert areas, close to the Arizona and Nevada borders, as well as prisons that are very far south in California, close to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Those are the prisons that are going to be facing some of the worst effects of extreme heat in our region. But I want to point out that climate change is really accelerating, so just because these are the prisons that are experiencing some of the worst harms doesn't mean that folks in other prisons in traditionally cooler regions may not also be facing these harms because of lack of ventilation, air conditioning and inadequate infrastructure.

Safety during extreme weather events

LAist: What options do incarcerated people have, if any, if they feel like they're not safe during extreme weather events?

AB: Oftentimes, they are at the mercy of the administration of their facilities. California does require that there is an extreme heat plan in facilities where people have increased access to shade, ventilation, and more showers.

But in our survey, we found that [for] a lot of folks, even though they are told that they are able to access these things, [they] don't actually get access. So there isn't much that they can do because oftentimes if there's a disaster, we had folks reporting that they felt like they would just be locked in their cell and there was nothing that they could do.

Recommendations for what's next

LAist: What else would you recommend state corrections start to do to better prepare for extreme weather?

AB: There are a few things. The first is that as we see extreme weather events, and we know which prisons are most vulnerable, we need to really focus on decarceration strategies and making sure that people can get out of prison so they can have agency over themselves, their lives, and [can] take care of themselves.

In addition, we would like to see that as we close state prisons, that money that's saved from closing state prisons is reinvested in the facilities that still exist. [We also want] to make sure that there's better infrastructure and access to air conditioning. [And we want to see funds] reinvested in the communities that incarcerated people come from, which are oftentimes the same communities that face disproportionate harms of climate change, because they don't have the infrastructure to deal with extreme weather events. Or they don't have adequate shade or trees in their neighborhood. So it's really a strategy of reinvestment that is both in the prisons that still exist and also in folks' home communities.

An appeals court issued a ruling Friday that strikes down a federal government effort to block a lower court’s order requiring the construction of 2,550 new housing units on the Veterans Affairs campus in West Los Angeles.

The long-running case, brought forward by disabled veterans struggling with homelessness in the L.A. area, has centered on the use of the sprawling 400-acre VA campus.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter had previously scrutinized leases for the private Brentwood School’s athletic facilities, a parking lot company, an oil drilling enterprise and UCLA’s baseball stadium.

Ruling that the campus was meant to aid veterans, Carter ordered the VA to not renew the leases and quickly build 750 units of temporary housing and 1,800 units of permanent housing.

But Carter’s September 2024 order has been on hold ever since the defendants asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review his decision.

Case returns to lower court

On Friday, more than two-thirds of the court’s 29 judges ruled against the VA’s petition for a rehearing.

“It's a historic day for veterans,” said Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel representing the plaintiffs.

“The government has been fighting their veterans, who went to fight on behalf of the nation,” he added. “They've been fighting them like they are the enemy. They went to the district court to fight. They lost.”

Rosenbaum said he’s pleased to see the case return to Carter’s courtroom after a long appeals process. Carter, himself a Marine Corps veteran who served in the Vietnam War, took an active role in pushing the VA to address a homelessness crisis that has thousands of former service members experiencing homelessness on any given night in L.A. County.

Could the VA pursue further appeals? 

Carter has also ordered the VA to stop using veterans' disability payment benefits as a reason to make them ineligible for supportive housing programs due to income restrictions.

But Rob Reynolds, an Iraq War veteran who advocates for L.A.’s veteran community, said the federal government’s attempts to win an appeal could continue.

“The government can still appeal this to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Reynolds said.

When veterans involved in the case first heard today’s news on the 9th Circuit ruling, he said they immediately asked about the potential for further appeals.

“All of us are really hoping that the government stops this fight, and that we can get housing built for our veterans and end this madness once and for all,” Reynolds said.

A spokesperson for the VA declined to comment on the ruling, saying the department does not discuss pending litigation.

Jenny Yang, a comedian from L.A., has been traveling across the country turning immigrant grocery stores into comedy hubs. Now she’s back in L.A. getting ready to start a mini-residency in Highland Park, tape her first one-hour special and share moments from the tour.

Yang kicked off her Good Egg Immigrant Grocery Store Standup Comedy Tour in June in L.A., then took it to 15 cities across the country. She told LAist the decision came as a way to cope with the grief from her dad’s death, 10 failed in vitro fertilization treatments between 2020 and 2025 and seeing the news of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids spread across the country.

She said the idea to tour grocery stores was a way to reclaim those spaces, after immigration enforcement left many afraid to go out and do simple tasks like buying groceries.

“If we cannot laugh in front of a wall of instant ramen around our bok choy," Yang said, "then what is the American dream for?"

Her routine wove in stories about her fertility struggles and the challenges of having to be a “good egg” growing up as the child of immigrant parents from Taiwan. Her hope for the tour was to connect with people, to make jokes and help people feel lighter after.

The tour proceeds went to local nonprofits serving immigrant communities, and Yang said those organizations helped recruit the grocery stores. She said some stores said no at first — they felt overwhelmed by ICE activity in their city, had lost staff or worried about drawing attention.

“That's part of the story of the tour is it's one thing to want to imagine this beautiful world where you can tell jokes inside of immigrant grocery stores," Yang said. "It's another thing to know what those obstacles are, and I think that's still very telling for where we are as a country.”

One moment stood out to Yang: performing at Shuang Hur Supermarket in Minneapolis. It’s near the memorial for Alex Pretti, the nurse that a U.S. Border Patrol agent shot and killed in January as federal agents carried out immigration enforcement in the city.

“I was able to talk to Henry, the owner who’s a Chinese American uncle. [He] was so proud of being able to help his regular patrons, who for the most part even though it was an Asian centered grocery store, were majority Latino,” Yang said. “I was able to bear witness to their resilience as a community, what they did to take care of each other.”

Now she’s back in L.A. and is doing a mini-residency at the Outside In Theater at 5317 York Blvd. in Highland Park. Her first show is 6 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 12, followed by shows on Sept. 19 and 26 at the same time. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, and you can find them at Outside In's website.

In February 2027, Yang will be taping her first one-hour special at Rancho Meat Market #1 in Lincoln Heights. She describes it as a love letter to Los Angeles that’s endured so much, from the ICE raids to the January fires.

You can follow Jenny Yang’s work here.

When you wanna keep it simple for lunch — go with a sandwich.

Take N’ Taste — a sandwich business based in Burbank — offers a variety of options, including classics like melts and dips, and delivers to locals from a home kitchen.

What goes into running a MEHKO business?

A Microenterprise Home Kitchen Operation (MEHKO) is a type of permit available through the L.A. County Department of Public Health, which allows folks to run a food service business from their home. Although it has more limitations than a brick-and-mortar restaurant, it also provides an avenue to build small business.

According to the L.A. County Department of Public Health's website, it allows MEHKO businesses to sell up to 30 meals per day with a limit of 90 meals per week. For businesses that are approved for the county's compact mobile food operations permit, that number jumps up to 80 meals per day and 200 meals per week.

The permit doesn't allow third-party food delivery app use, meaning they deliver directly to you or you schedule a pickup with the business.

About the owners

Ashley Childs' local culinary background runs pretty deep — she's worked at places like Tony’s Darts Away, a gastropub in Burbank, as well as the vegan hole-in-the-wall restaurant Doomie's Home Cookin' on Melrose. As the chef-and-owner of Take N' Taste, she's carried those experiences into her current work, which serves as a side hustle while she pursues a master's degree in nutritional science.

It's also a side hustle of sorts for co-owner James Schroeder, who works primarily as a storyboard artist. He previously worked managing the East Hollywood Farmers Market, which helped him connect with local farmers and learn the best ways to source ingredients.

Restaurant details

• Since Childs was previously vegan, she developed vegan alternatives for many of the menu items.

Menu items we tried

Take N' Taste smoked BBQ chicken sandwich.

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Courtesy Ashley Childs

)

• Roast Beef Dip (roast beef, Swiss cheese, grilled onions and horseradish garlic mayo on a rustic French baguette)
• Smoked BBQ Jackfruit Sandwich (organic smoked barbecue jackfruit on a ciabatta roll with jalapeño slaw and homemade dill pickles)
• Blackened Chicken Sandwich (organic blackened chicken, jalapeño slaw and garlic mayo on a Japanese milk bun)

What should we try next?

In 2017, only about 400 public schools in the state offered bilingual education.

But in the 10 years since voters approved Prop 58 overturning the ban on bilingual teaching, that number has now grown to more than 1,000.

It's still not enough to meet the demand from parents and caregivers who want their kids to have the advantages of bilingualism, as well as academic support for Spanish and other languages spoken at home.

California officials now want to increase the number of public schools to 1,600 by 2030.

“These programs have expanded quickly, but these schools continue to really struggle to find and retain the teachers to teach in them,” said Cati de los Rios, an associate professor of language, literacy, and culture at UC Berkeley.

She said the lag in the teacher pipeline is the main problem. The bilingual education ban, approved by voters in 1998 through Prop. 227, also shriveled up university training programs for bilingual teachers.

There are signs of recovery. The number of teachers trained in bilingual education in California has grown to a record of nearly 1,400 in the 2023-2024 school year.

Educators feel the momentum is growing. On Saturday, some of them are set to gather at California State University, Dominguez Hills for a yearly Bilingual Teacher Conference to take advantage of that energy.

“It's a celebration … to highlight the importance and the beauty of being bilingual and supporting our students and our families and our communities to really embrace bilingualism,” said Elexia Reyes-McGovern, a professor of teacher education at the campus.

The keynote speaker, she said, will talk about how teachers can nurture students’ thinking about mathematics in English and a second language.

Other languages

A report out this year signaled that the vast majority of the bilingual education teacher graduates received training to teach Spanish and English, but the number of graduates across the state authorized to teach other languages, such as Mandarin, Vietnamese and Armenian also grew.

Leslie Cortes Sanchez, a 2023 - 2024 bilingual education teacher trainee in UC Berkeley’s Teacher Education program, in a California classroom.

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Manny Herrera

/

Courtesy Cati de los Rios

)

“[I taught] two sisters and they were twins, and they came from Guatemala,” said Cristal Guadarrama, who teaches fifth grade Spanish-English dual language in South L.A.

She crafted a lesson one day, she says, around those students’ indigenous language, in particular the word for table, which was similar to the Spanish word.

“That was showing the other kids, like, ‘oh wow, there's so many similarities within the language. It's just like a change of letters.’ So then they started wanting to learn,” she said.

Research shows students in bilingual programs attend school more regularly and help recent immigrants enter all-English classes faster than without bilingual support.

California’s been engaged in a policy back and forth with bilingualism and multilingualism for over 150 years. For now, the anniversary of Prop. 58’s approval suggests a future that’s more embracing of non-English languages as an asset to learning, rather than a liability.

“We've changed the mindset of this kind of linguistic supremacy of English-only monolingualism being the present and the future,” de los Rios said.