The Brief

USC’s annual food study found that although there have been some improvements, food insecurity in L.A. County is still “unacceptably high” as more higher-income residents struggle to afford enough groceries.

Researchers at USC Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research found that, consistent with last year, 1 in 4 L.A. County households in 2025 experienced food insecurity. About 35% of low-income households reported being food insecure, a slight decrease from 2024.

“These findings show both encouraging progress and emerging pressures,” Kayla de la Haye, director of USC’s Food Systems Institute and lead author of the study, said in a statement. “Even as food insecurity decreases among low-income households, the burden is shifting. Many Angelenos outside the safety net are struggling to keep up with rising costs.”

Here’s what the report found 

Low-income residents, women and Latinos are among the most affected.

• 75% are low-income
• 60% are women
• 57% are Latino
• 54% are younger adults

Food insecurity still largely affects low-income residents, but more higher-income Angelenos are now food insecure. The report found that 25% of those with food insecurity make more than 300% the federal poverty level.

“These are families who often don’t qualify for safety net programs like CalFresh,” de la Haye said. “They’re earning above eligibility thresholds, but still struggling to meet the cost of living in L.A.”

How can leaders use this information?

Researchers said county investments — including $20 million in Food Equity fund grants and the creation of the L.A. County Office of Food Systems — helped more people access healthier food.

At least 1.5 million people in L.A. County are enrolled in CalFresh, but 44% of recipients were food insecure. With the latest government shutdown, rising costs and benefit reductions under the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” researchers expect those rates to increase.

Experts say local, state and federal governments should be proactive in addressing hunger by, for example, expanding CalFresh enrollment, setting policies that help residents with affordability and strengthening food banks.

You can read the full USC study here.

It might be December, but today and tomorrow will feel like early summer.

Sunny skies and some windy conditions are in store for today. The Santa Ana wind-prone corridors could see gusts up to 40 mph, but otherwise wind speeds will mostly be in the 15 to 30 mph range.

Temperatures in L.A. and Orange County beaches will range from the mid 70s to low 80s.

San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys will hit the mid-80s, while O.C. inland areas will see highs ranging from 80 to 86 degrees.

Over in the Inland Empire, temperatures will range from 77 to 84 degrees.

Meanwhile, the Coachella Valley will see highs from 76 to 81 degrees. And the Antelope Valley will be cooler, with highs only reaching the low 70s.

All 4-year-olds in California can now go to school for free in a grade called transitional kindergarten, or TK.

There’s a lot riding on the success of California’s TK program. Supporters hope that a year of learning through play will give a boost to children who may not otherwise have access to preschool. Districts facing declining enrollment hope that a surge of new students will improve their financial outlook.

Whether TK works at such a large scale depends on whether there are enough teachers qualified to work with children who have unique needs. Researchers estimate that California schools will need nearly 12,000 teachers to make good on the expansion of TK into every school district, as is required beginning this school year.

The state does offers multiple paths toward teaching in a TK classroom, including a new teaching credential introduced in May 2024 that lets educators teach TK through third grade, "designed and intended to help meet the demand for qualified teachers," the state said.

Thus far, uptake has been slow. Just over 400 educators have earned this credential, according to data provided to LAist by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing. About 200 more people are working toward fulfilling this requirement.

Many educators have said the process to get credentialed for TK can be frustrating, especially for preschool teachers without experience in the public school system. The state said it doesn’t have data on how many teachers are coming over from the private preschool sector or from upper grades in public school.

In conversation with LAist, educators who have made their way into TK classrooms say they're glad they did.

In search of more structure 

At Price Elementary School in the city of Downey, Samantha Elliott is teaching TK for the first time this year.

However, because she’s taught preschool in the past, she runs her classroom with ease — and with the help of a state-mandated aide.

Elliott earned a credential and bachelor’s degree in early childhood development at Cal State Fullerton. This made it possible to move into TK without having to take on more coursework.

“Preschool was great,” she said, “but [at that level, students are] still learning [the] fundamentals of how to be a human, in a sense. [In] TK, we’re focusing a little bit more on academics, and I really was excited to teach the kids and get an early influence on their educational lives.”

Elliot keeps her students engaged throughout the day with music. She uses songs to help them learn their ABCs, colors, shapes — even their sense of time.

Often, Elliot has her students get up and dance. This helps the students get the wiggles out — it’s also part of learning through play.

Samantha Elliott made the switch to TK after teaching preschool for two years.

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Julia Barajas

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LAist

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At Smith Elementary in Lawndale, teacher Lauren Bush lets parents know that while it may look like kids are just having fun, they’re experiencing a lesson that she’s crafted carefully.

“You see kids playing with dinosaurs,” she said. “I see kids sorting by color, doing eye-hand coordination and visual discrimination. I see them using their fine motor skills.”

Bush has over two decades of classroom experience and has been teaching TK for three years, but she still spends a lot of time making sure her lessons are just right. When people see her working nights and weekends, they’re often perplexed. “Why work so much?” they wonder aloud, she said. “You're just babysitting.”

Bush gently corrects them: “I'm, like, ‘Oh my gosh, no! You have to have a special degree to teach TK.’”

In search of something less rigid 

Over at Marguerita Elementary School in Alhambra, teacher Lisa Vuong is working toward earning that special credential. On top of working full time, she’s fulfilling her required coursework at Pasadena City College. (Statewide, 13 institutions, including Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Dominguez Hills offer the new credential.)

Vuong is already credentialed to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. She also has 22 years of classroom experience and a master's in education. “But this is a whole different beast,” she said.

She means that in the best way. Even though she comes in with a lesson plan, she said, being a TK teacher often means having to improvise.

“You have kind of a platform that you launch off from, and the kids go in 18 million different directions,” she said.

When Vuong taught upper grades, she spent a lot of time making photocopies and stressing out about her students’ performance on standardized tests. TK — which is not graded or subject to those assessments — gives her a sense of freedom.

“I always say it doesn't even feel like a job,” she said. “ I don't wanna discredit the whole program or anything, but it's just so much fun.”

Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Los Angeles educators have said the increase in immigration enforcement actions contributed to more somber graduation ceremonies, lower attendance and fewer students enrolled in school this year.

Now, a new report from UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access finds similar scenarios are playing out on campuses across the country.

“There can sometimes be a sense that, well, we're facing a set of conditions that are unique to Los Angeles,” said UCLA education professor and report co-author John Rogers. “But every state in the nation, almost every community in the nation has high schools where young people are experiencing fear and concern for themselves and for their family members.”

UCLA researchers based the report on a nationally representative online survey of 606 high school principals and follow-up interviews with about four dozen administrators who said students from immigration families experienced:

• Heightened concern: 70% said students from immigrant families were concerned about the well-being of themselves and their families because of policies and political rhetoric related to immigrants. 
• More absences: 64% said students from immigrant families missed school. 
• Loss of family members: 58% said immigrant parents and guardians left during the school year, sometimes without their children. 
• Bullying and harassment: 36% said students from immigrant families have been bullied or harassed at their school, in part because of a “political climate that has normalized attacks on immigrant communities.

LAist has reached out to the Trump administration for comment, but has not yet heard back.

Students’ right to an education

The Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that undocumented immigrants have a constitutional right to attend public schools — there are an estimated 39,000 such students enrolled in Los Angeles County.

The number of students with at least one immigrant family member is much greater. For example, almost half of California children have at least one immigrant parent, according to a Public Policy Institute of California analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.

Maria Nichols leads the union that represents Los Angeles Unified School District principals and said that there’s widespread uncertainty among students, families and educators. She is also the daughter of an immigrant from South America who was undocumented for part of her childhood.

“Are we experiencing a crisis now with immigration? Absolutely,” Nichols said. “It's extremely traumatic. It's extremely triggering for people that, you know, lived the immigrant existence. And many of us in education in Los Angeles have lived that.”

In January, the Trump administration reversed a policy that made schools and other "sensitive" locations off limits to immigration enforcement actions. In early June, widespread immigration raids started across Southern California. Most arrested in L.A. and nationwide have no criminal record.

“I think a purpose of the federal immigration enforcement policies is to create a level of stress and uncertainty and fear,” Rogers said. “And precisely those dynamics make it hard to sustain student enrollment and student attendance at high levels.”

Rogers said the current climate can disrupt learning for students who do make it to school.

“The extent to which young people are concerned about their wellbeing and the wellbeing of their families while they're at the school means there's less attention, less focus, less learning going on,” Rogers said.

Normally, if tenants fall short on monthly rent, even by just a few dollars, they can quickly face eviction. But in the past few years, a handful of cities in Southern California have passed rules barring landlords from evicting tenants if they owe one month’s rent or less.

The Southeast L.A. city of Huntington Park could be the next city to pass such a rule. On Tuesday night, the City Council is expected to vote on a proposal that would give tenants protections from eviction if they’ve failed to pay up to one month’s worth of rent.

Mateo Gil, an organizer with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, said renter protections are urgently needed following federal immigration sweeps in Southeast L.A.

“There's a lot of renters now who are at risk of not being able to pay their rent because their family members were kidnapped, or are having to fundraise because of the fear around going to work,” Gil said. “This is a protection that would give renters more time if they recently lost income."

Will the rules lead to tighter tenant screening?

But landlord advocates said the proposed rule would mean rental housing owners couldn’t count on timely payment as required by the lease terms signed by tenants.

“This idea will ultimately harm the very people it aims to help,” Fred Sutton, spokesperson for the California Apartment Association, said in an email to LAist. “Out of concern about not being compensated, housing providers may tighten screening criteria, making it harder for people to find a home.”

L.A. was the first local city to pass a threshold for eviction over non-payment of rent in 2023. The city pegs the limit to one month of the area’s “fair market rent” as determined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Under those rules, if an L.A. tenant renting a two-bedroom apartment is behind on rent by less than $2,601, they have local protections from eviction.

A push to expand non-payment protections

The city of Cudahy, which borders Huntington Park, passed a similar non-payment eviction threshold in October.

About 75% of Huntington Park households are renters, and nearly 97% of residents are Latino.

ICE raids have targeted the city, which also saw an instance of someone allegedly impersonating a federal immigration agent earlier this summer.

Gil said organizers are now fighting for similar changes in Bell Gardens. He said a one-month threshold could give tenants time to apply for rent relief programs. But he acknowledged that for some, the buffer period won’t be enough to stave off eviction.

“We're advocating at the county level as well for there to be a much larger threshold,” Gil said. “Some of the impacts of the ICE raids are going to be months long.”