The Brief

Raw milk is getting fresh scrutiny, as bird flu continues to infect dairy herds.

A highly pathogenic strain of flu, deadly to birds, has spread to at least 58 herds of dairy cattle in nine states, and to at least two people. Samples of unpasteurized milk have been found to contain the virus, according to USDA tests .

But while federal authorities have advised people not to drink raw milk, it is still on sale and easily accessible in many places across the country.

Even in Texas, where the bird flu in cows was first detected and where it has been found in more than a dozen herds , some farms selling unpasteurized raw milk to the public declined to have their supply examined, NPR found after reporters purchased raw milk and submitted it for testing on May 8.

The USDA-approved lab authorized to test the milk for the H5N1 bird flu virus called the farms to seek their permission to examine the milk, then also declined to test the milk for bird flu when the farmers did not grant it.

“[The farms] are aware of what a nonnegative test would do to their business,” said Brandon Dominguez, the Veterinary Services Section Head at the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic laboratory in College Station, Texas. “They asked that we do not run the test.”

After NPR reported that the USDA had confirmed the agency does not require labs to have permission from farms to test milk samples for bird flu, Amy Swinford, the director of the Texas A&M lab, added that another reason the lab could not perform the test is that reporters did not provide the premise identification numbers for each of the farms. Those numbers are not publicly available; reporters did include the license numbers of each of the farms when they submitted samples for testing.

The lab and the farms’ refusal to test samples of raw milk comes as scientists have criticized the federal government for being slow to collect and report information about the virus. There has been no widespread testing of dairy workers to understand how many may be infected, no mandate that dairy farms test their herds if they aren’t moving cattle between states, and no clear testing data to support federal authorities’ warnings of a potential threat of bird flu in raw milk that people drink.

Advocates and critics of unpasteurized milk square off

In the void of evidence, both sides of the raw milk debate are shoring up their traditional perspectives.

Public health officials and academics say the risks are currently heightened, and that precautions should be taken until there’s a clearer understanding of the scope of bird flu in dairy cows, and how it’s spreading between animals and humans.

“Pasteurization is effective at inactivating the virus,” said Don Prater, head of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, in a press call on May 1. “[We] strongly advise against the consumption of raw milk – milk that has not been pasteurized – and recommend that the industry does not manufacture or sell raw milk or raw milk products made with milk from cows showing symptoms of illness, any illness, including those infected with avian influenza virus,” Prater said.

Raw milk advocates say the theoretical risks are exaggerated and are the latest chapter in their long, contentious battle with the federal government, which banned the interstate sale of raw milk in the 1980s. “The FDA will take any excuse to blast us any way they can,” says Marc McAfee, a raw milk dairy farmer in California and founder of the Raw Milk Institute , an advocacy organization.

Raw milk for sale, but not recommended

It’s not hard to get raw milk in Texas. You can pick it up at a fitness center in Austin, or drive directly to the farmhouse stoops of dozens of raw milk dairies sprinkled throughout the state. There, if you drop some money in a lockbox, you can leave with a cold gallon of milk, straight from the cow, that’s never been heated to a temperature that would kill the bacteria and microorganisms that might be living in it.

Cheryl Masraum was unconcerned about bird flu as she bought raw milk from Stryk Jersey Farm in Schulenburg, Texas, between Houston and San Antonio.

“We were keeping up on that, but it didn't seem to be a threat here,” said Masraum, noting that the outbreaks in cows were reported in northwest Texas, near the New Mexico border. “I think the raw milk is typically a much better quality, and it just tastes better.”

Samples of raw milk from different Texas dairy farms that NPR collected for testing. <br>

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Lucio Vasquez

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Houston Public Media

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Masraum is part of the small but passionate group of raw milk consumers in America. Roughly 1.6% of U.S. adults frequently drink milk that’s never been pasteurized to kill germs, according to a survey from the Food and Drug Administration .

Now, the bird flu outbreak in dairy cattle has prompted federal health officials to renew their warnings to the public not to drink raw milk.

Public health officials say they’ve long recommended against drinking raw milk , because it can harbor disease-causing bacteria. Pasteurization, the brief heating of milk, can kill or inactivate microbes..

Still, the risk of contracting bird flu from raw milk is largely theoretical. “There's not a tremendous amount of studies showing the infectivity related to this virus and raw milk products,” FDA’s Prater said during the press briefing.

How much bird flu virus is in milk?

The FDA found bird flu virus fragments in 20% of pasteurized, grocery store samples the agency collected and tested, according to a recent survey . Those virus fragments were not capable of causing infection, according to FDA tests.

According to the federal government, the virus appears to be spreading between herds through the movement of infected cows. In the current working theory, H5N1 jumped from birds to dairy cows in Texas towards the tail end of 2023. Then, “the transportation of cattle from Texas to a number of other states basically created problems in those states,” U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack told reporters May 10. Vilsack said that the USDA’s current strategy – of requiring cows to test negative before they move across state lines – is aimed at “trying to contain the spread and eventually allowing for specific herds to have the virus peter out.”

Raw milk advocates say their farms are small, and their herds are relatively isolated. Raw milk can only be legally purchased in the state it’s produced in. “There’s been no exposure of our cows with cows that are positive from other states. We don’t buy cows from other states. So why would [our cows] be positive?” McAfee, in California, says. No cows or milk samples from California have tested positive.

Virus researchers counter that there’s not enough ongoing surveillance to establish the limits of the outbreak. “I don't know that we have the information because we haven't been systematically testing,” says Dr. Helen Chu , an infectious diseases specialist at University of Washington in Seattle. “This is a virus that mutates very quickly, that goes from humans to birds to pigs to cows – to all of these different species.” Given that avian influenza is carried by wild waterfowl and migratory birds “who are flying all over the place and defecating into the feed of farms everywhere… I don't know that we've been looking [enough] to know for sure that this is the one event,” Chu says.

One way to determine if there’s H5N1 virus in raw milk, intended for humans to drink, is to test for it. Chu’s colleague Lea Starita , who leads a genomic testing lab at the University of Washington, has tested dozens of milk samples, raw and pasteurized, purchased from local farmer’s markets and grocery stores. She has found probable viral fragments in about 5% of the samples, though the raw milk samples have tested negative.

But testing raw milk for bird flu is not happening regularly, and farms have declined requests to have their raw milk tested, NPR and others have found.

“They're frankly afraid of what's going to happen to their farms, their families. It isn't just strictly a public health issue. It's an issue of economics and frankly, survival,” said Swinford, the director of the Texas A&M lab that declined to test the milk NPR submitted for analysis.

On May 21, an employee of the Texas A&M lab confirmed that the lab could ship the samples to another laboratory for NPR, and that shipping was a service the lab provided to clients. But on May 22, Swinford called a reporter to say that she would not allow that for the raw milk that NPR purchased and submitted for testing of bird flu.

“I’m not going to facilitate that…because these dairies told us not to test them,” Swinford said.

Could consuming avian influenza in raw milk infect people?

The federal government’s warnings against raw milk consumption are based on known dangers. Raw milk has been implicated in food poisoning of more than 2,500 people food poisoning over the past 20 years, with bacteria such as Campylobacter and Cryptosporidium. But whether unpasteurized milk can give people bird flu is unclear.

Farm cats that drank unpasteurized milk from infected cows became seriously ill – some cats went blind, experienced serious neurological effects and died after drinking it, according to a recent report in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases . And mice that were fed samples of infected, unpasteurized milk from cows in New Mexico got sick very quickly and had high virus loads in their respiratory tracts, according to a May 24 report in the New England Journal of Medicine , co-authored by Swinford at Texas A&M.

So far, there are no confirmed cases of humans getting bird flu from drinking raw milk. Two dairy workers – one in Texas and one in Michigan – got sick with avian influenza after working closely with infected cows. In both cases, the workers developed eye infections and have since recovered.

On May 1, the CDC said health authorities had monitored over 100 exposed workers without finding any bird flu infections. But a veterinarian in Texas told the publication Bovine Veterinarian of sick farm workers that have not been tested.

As far as consumers go, McAfee and other raw milk advocates see the lack of cases to be reassuring. If nobody has caught bird flu from drinking raw milk yet, it may not happen at all.

But public health officials maintain that bird flu in dairy cattle remains a new, evolving situation. “There are a lot of unanswered questions, and much more to learn,” says Lori Freeman , head of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. “Until we learn more about this particular pathogen spreading among animals and to people, we should be taking an abundance of precaution.”

Raw milk farmers say they’re following the developments closely, and working to ensure that their cows are healthy and their milk is safe. And that these arguments are unlikely to sway many of their committed customers. “People that follow us – if FDA says it's bad, they'll run [towards] it,” McAfee says, “In my opinion, here in California with our raw milk, it's much ado about zero.”

A California federal judge ruled today that President Donald Trump cannot demand that UCLA pay a $1.2 billion settlement that would have imposed severe limits on the campus’ academic freedoms and efforts to enroll an economically and culturally diverse student body or risk continued funding freezes on grants the system relies on for research

The decision by Judge Rita Lin is a preliminary injunction and represents a significant victory for University of California scientists, professors, graduate students and other researchers. They and a national professors association sued Trump in September, claiming that his settlement demand — the most sweeping to date in his war on exclusive universities — represents an “unlawful threat” of funding cuts to coerce the university system into “suppressing free speech and academic freedom rights.”

Lin agreed with that assessment, calling Trump’s actions toward the university “coercive and retaliatory.” Her ruling doesn’t just apply to UCLA. It largely ties the hands of the Trump administration to target the rest of the UC system for current and future research grants.

“Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune,” Lin wrote in her ruling.

Lin wrote that this same playbook is occurring at the UC.

“With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratchetting up Defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how [the Trump administration’s] actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”

Lawyers for the federal government had argued that a federal court cannot block a federal agency from making a decision that hasn’t occurred yet, such as whether to approve new funding for a pending grant.

“Notably, plaintiffs’ fears about future grant suspensions and their claims about the likelihood of constitutional violations are entirely based on speculation about an opening settlement offer between the federal government and UC,” U.S. Department of Justice attorneys wrote to Lin .

The legal documents in the case spanned 700 pages and included written testimony from more than 70 UC professors, staff workers and graduate students.

The settlement demand and lawsuit

Trump’s settlement demand is a 27-page document sent to UCLA in early August that would have required the top-ranked public university to hire a senior administrator to review diversity, equity and inclusion efforts; limit campus protest; bar the campus medical center from performing gender-affirming surgeries or hormone therapy on minors; deny admissions to foreign students with “anti-Western” sentiment and other restrictions.

The public was first able to see the document in late October after some scholars filed a separate lawsuit in state court to force UC officials to disclose the settlement demand.

The settlement demand emerged a few days after the Trump administration froze more than $500 million in health and science research funding to UCLA over allegations that the campus tolerated antisemitism and enrolled students using racial preferences. Had UC agreed to its terms, the Trump administration would have released the frozen funds back to UCLA.

However, months before Trump sought the settlement, UCLA had already taken steps to address antisemitism on campus after its leaders commissioned a task force to recommend ways to create a more welcoming environment for Jewish students.

Lin faulted the administration for disregarding UCLA’s efforts. The agencies did not “mention the remedial steps UCLA had already taken to address the issues described,” Lin wrote.

UCLA is legally barred by state and federal law from admitting students using racial preferences. Trump’s demands would have also blocked UCLA from a practice the U.S. Supreme Court condoned: allowing students to discuss their racial identity in their personal essays.

But almost all of that funding that Trump froze in July had since been restored after a separate wave of legal filings prompted Lin to temporarily undo Trump’s cuts in August and September .

Lin has emerged as a key bulwark for UC researchers as she’s ordered the Trump administration several times to undo hundreds of millions of dollars in science funding cuts to the University of California, including roughly $500 million in science and health grant funding suspensions to UCLA alone. Between June and today, she’s sided with UC researchers and staff four times in rebuffing the Trump administration’s efforts to halt funding to scholars. Her initial ruling that has served as a basis for other preliminary injunctions against Trump was upheld by a panel of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

UC faculty associations, among the plaintiffs in the case, wrote to Lin that some of its members who don’t have tenure and are international scholars now hesitate to teach issues related to Israel and Palestine or lead lessons on the health effects of climate change. Other scholars say they fear taking part in protests or other free speech activity due to fears about the government’s reprisals.

“I am a mother, and the threat of jail time or federal involvement or oversight in campus policing would give me new fear” about protesting, wrote Hannah Appel, an anthropology professor at UC Santa Cruz, in a court document .

Faculty groups also argued that a $1.2 billion hit to UCLA would affect the whole system, as UC leaders would likely pull funding from other campuses to help UCLA absorb the loss. UCLA’s budget is around $13 billion , including its medical and hospital programs, while the UC system’s is more than $50 billion — and a third of that comes from federal sources.

UC President James Milliken called the situation “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”

The ruling and evidence in detail

Lin’s written ruling mirrors the comments she made during a 90-minute hearing last week, in which she said that the Trump administration has told universities, including the UC, that “if you want the funding restored, then agree to change what you teach, change how you handle student protests [and] endorse the administration’s preferred views on gender.”

“Defendants have submitted nothing to refute this,” she said then..

Twenty-one labor unions and faculty associations sued Trump and 15 agencies, including the top providers of science research funding — the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NASA and the Department of Education that together award the UC more than $4 billion annually . The UC system itself is not part of this suit but has received sustained pressure from students, staff and faculty — including hundreds of Jewish ones — to reject Trump’s settlement.

“This agreement violates the very foundations of higher education,” the UC undergraduate student association wrote to Gov. Gavin Newsom, UC’s president and campus chancellors in November.

Faculty and staff wanted a return of all terminated grants and a block on denying funding to any pending grants that were preliminarily approved by science panels but were stalled for seemingly political reasons.

Other faculty, staff impact

The UC has cut the hours or laid off more than 250 lecturers and librarians since Trump began his term this year, said Katie Rodger, the president of UC-AFT, the union of lecturers and librarians at the UC. Lecturers are a core part of the instructional staff at UC but generally lack guarantees of continuous employment that other professors enjoy.

The federal fiscal picture is a reason why at least some lecturers have received pink slips. The “School of Humanities has incurred budget reductions over the last four years, which have been compounded this year by national and state level budgetary impacts and planning projections indicate substantial future budget shortfalls,” said a termination letter at UC Irvine this past spring.

And while lecturers do not lead labs that receive federal grant funding, they work in them. The loss of grant funding “already has and it will continue to impact us going forward,” Rodger said of lecturers during an interview. The union in August wrote a letter to UC’s director of labor relations leadership demanding that the system cease negotiations with Trump over the settlement.

Meanwhile, the dean of the largest college at the UC — the College of Letters and Science at UC Davis — wrote to faculty last month that it’s dealing with a $20 million budget shortfall across this year and next, after absorbing a loss of $6.7 million the past five years. “Budgets for faculty and graduate student employment will reflect these reductions,” the dean, Estella Atekwana, wrote. That would affect most lecturers.

Several scholars and staffers wrote to Lin that the administration was freezing funding on pending grants that UCLA researchers would have likely received if Trump didn’t target the campus. One of those projects was supposed to go to Marcus Roper, a mathematics and computational medicine professor who submitted a grant to research how to better  predict vision loss in adults with diabetes.

The proposal also included a program to teach K-12 students how to apply algebra to analyze eye health. Roper showed in court filings that two grants he submitted won the recommendations of the agency’s program directors, but those were pulled when the Trump administration suspended all of UCLA’s existing NSF and National Institutes of Health grants. Even after Lin ordered Trump to restore the existing grants the agency suspended at UCLA, NSF personnel told Roper they were ordered to pause approval of funding for new grants .

Also at UCLA, the NSF preliminarily approved the renewal grant for a math research program that’s been funded for 25 years, but also pulled it in July . If the program isn’t reupped again, Richard Bartlebaugh, a video producer, will lose his job months before he’s eligible for his pension and the program will close in May of 2026, he wrote to Lin . “In this scenario, my time at (the institute) will have represented a four-year and eleven-month career misstep.”

Trump didn’t follow rules, lawsuit said

Catherine Lhamon, formerly the top official during the Obama and Biden administrations at the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education, wrote to Lin that the way the Trump administration pulled funds was illegal.

“What (the office) cannot do under the law — and what we never did — is move to immediate fund termination.”

But that’s what the administration did. And as Lin noted in her ruling and comments during last week’s hearing, Trump officials bragged about it.

“We’re going to bankrupt these universities, we’re going to take away every single federal dollar,” said Leo Terrell on a FOX News program in March . Terrell heads the Trump administration’s multi-agency Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism . His interview was submitted by lawyers for the UC workers as evidence. “The academic system in this country has been hijacked by the left, has been hijacked by the Marxists” he also said.

Llamon, who’s now a faculty member at UC Berkeley, wrote that federal law requires the agency to go through a lengthy process of warning a campus of any civil rights violations, such as ones dealing with antisemitism, and allow the campus to come to a settlement with an action plan. Sometimes the Office for Civil Rights leads an investigation at the school and encourages campus leaders to undertake policy changes. All of that occurs before the federal government pulls funding from a school.

While in charge, her office struck deals to combat allegations of antisemitism at numerous universities, including the UC.

“Termination of funds was, as is required in statute and regulation, a last resort, and in the thousands of complaints my office received, we never needed to take this step,” she wrote.

An unusually strong storm system has reached Southern California, raising fears that the rain could unleash a threat that has been lingering in the burn scars of wildfires that ravaged Los Angeles communities in recent years.

Called debris flows, these fast-moving slurries of floodwater and sediment can hurtle down slopes carrying cars, trees and even boulders with them.

They’re like “a flood on steroids,” said Jason Kean, a research hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s landslide hazards program. “It’s really hard to stop these things. The best thing to do is get out of the way.”

Forecasters expect the heaviest rain Friday into Saturday night; predictions are for wet days through next week. Storms may stretch from Santa Barbara County south to Los Angeles County, and could spread inland to parts of Orange County and the Inland Empire.

Burn scars — slicked by fire and stripped of plants — are especially vulnerable. A storm after the Thomas Fire in 2018 spurred debris flows in Montecito that killed 23 people. And in February, a debris flow in the Palisades Fire burn zone swept a Los Angeles Fire Department member and his SUV into the Pacific Ocean .

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Works warns that there’s a risk of moderate debris and mudflows capable of blocking roadways and endangering some structures in the burn scars of almost a dozen fires — including January’s Eaton, Hurst and Palisades fires.

The county has issued evacuation warnings, as well as some targeted evacuation orders for specific properties “at higher risk for mud and debris flows impacts.”

The public works department says that most burned properties have been cleared of fire debris, and the rest have been shored up with gravel bags and other materials to keep debris in place.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced today that more than 400 personnel and resources including fire engines, helicopters and search and rescue teams have been pre-deployed to Southern California counties.

“It’s a pretty serious situation,” said National Weather Service meteorologist David Gomberg.

By Friday morning, the storm had already unleashed up to 5 inches of rain in parts of Santa Barbara County, Gomberg said, and Southern California is bracing for more.

There’s also the possibility of thunderstorms, small tornadoes, and a worrying amount of rain hitting the Eaton and Palisades burn scars. Even just a half-an-inch to 0.6 inches of rain could trigger a debris flow in these areas, said Gomberg, who added that his office is forecasting between half an inch to one inch per hour in these areas.

“And the more you exceed the threshold, the probability of a more damaging debris flow increases,” he said.

We spoke with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Kean, an expert on debris flows after wildfires, about what to expect. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

As this storm really takes hold in LA and Southern California, I'm hearing a lot of concern about it hitting areas that burned this past year, including in the Eaton and Palisades fires. Why is this such a big concern? What could happen?

Last January those fires removed much of the vegetation on really steep slopes, and that made those slopes really vulnerable to erosion during intense rainfall. That protective blanket of vegetation is gone, and heavy rain can rapidly make a flash flood. And that flood, in some cases, can pick up material and turn into what we call a debris flow — which is like a flood on steroids.

Damage along Tanoble Drive near Mendocino Street is visible after heavy rainfall triggered multiple mudslides in the Eaton Fire burn scar area in Altadena on Feb. 14, 2025. Photo by Joel Angel Juarez for CalMatters These burn areas are still vulnerable, even though it's now many months after the fire and there have been flows already. There's still plenty of material that could be mobilized. So the threat’s still there. And so we know they're bad actors, and we’re concerned they could be bad actors again.

I’m hearing a lot of different terms: mudslide, debris flows, landslide. What are the differences, and which ones are the burn scars at risk for? 

Landslide is an umbrella term that captures all kinds of mass movements, from rock falls to debris flows — these floods on steroids — to big, slow movers. The type of flow that we're most concerned about in a recent burn area is a debris flow. It's also called a mudslide. But geologists don't like to use the word mudslide as much because it sounds like there's some mud on your driveway — not a big issue, not something that could kill you. And these things, if you're in the wrong spot at the wrong time, they can cause serious damage.

You called it a flood on steroids. What happens in a debris flow? 

Flash floods are bad, and they can cause lots of problems, too. They can get even worse if they pick up enough sediment to turn into the consistency of wet concrete. But it's worse than just concrete, because it can contain boulders the size of cars. And, very close to the mountain front, it can move very quickly — faster than you can run. And when it gets all bulked up with debris, the rocks, the gravel, the mud, trees, the flow can be a lot bigger. It just turns into a different animal.

Now, debris flows pack a bigger punch than floods, but thankfully, they don't have as long of reach. So usually, the debris flows are confined really close to the mountain fronts. That's where they put those debris basins to catch them. But if there isn't one protection like that, then they can travel downslope and impact neighborhoods, and then flooding can extend even further down.

Is there something about Southern California that makes it higher risk?

Southern California's kind of the world capital for these kinds of events. It's got this combination of very steep topography, like the San Gabriel Mountains that just shoot right up, Santa Monica mountains, Santa Ynez — very steep topography. It burns fairly frequently. And then there are a lot of people living very close to the mountain front, so that's what puts the risk up.

The thing about a burn area is it takes much less rainfall to cause a problem than it would in unburned conditions. So we've now made the slopes really vulnerable. They're extra steep. There's a lot of people there. That's why the risk is so high.

We've seen debris flows in Northern California burn areas as well. It's not just a Southern California problem, and it's not just a California problem.

Is there anything that could have been done to reduce this risk? Anything that should be done now? 

Not long after the fires, in particular the Palisades Fire, (there were) a number of fairly widespread debris flows that disrupted the roads. There were also, in the Eaton fire, floods and debris flows there. Thankfully there's a dense network of LA County debris basins, which are designed to catch the material before it enters neighborhoods, and those largely saved the day.

Planners have planned ahead and put in these debris basins — these big, giant holes in the ground — designed to catch the material. That's the best defense against these. They're not everywhere, but there is a good network of protection. Other than that, it's really hard to stop these things.

What should people who live near the recent burn scars know? What should they do now, as the rain starts? 

The best thing you could do is, if you're really close to a drainage in one of these burn areas, is to get out of the way. You're going to get a heads up from the National Weather Service, who's closely monitoring the rainstorms. They know how much rain it's going to take to cause a problem, and they'll get out warnings, and local authorities will reach out to get people out of the way. So there's a lot of eyes on the situation. And so at this point, the best thing to do is listen to the weather service, listen to local authorities.

If they ask you to get out of the way, take their advice. These things can happen really fast if there is an intense burst of rain, a flash flood, where debris flow can start within minutes.

So there is no escaping a debris flow once it starts? 

It's pretty difficult. If you have a two-story home and you happen to be there at the wrong time, get up to that second floor for sure. Fight like heck if you get trapped in one. But best to be out of the way.

This story was originally published by  CalMatters , a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that explains California policies and politics and makes its government more transparent and accountable

Los Angeles homeless services providers say new funding shifts from the Trump administration are coming at a time when efforts to lower the number of people experiencing homelessness in the region are already facing difficult cuts.

Under the changes rolled out this week , federal funding through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — known as HUD — will be shifted away from “housing-first” strategies that aim to get unhoused people into permanent housing and moved toward efforts that will first require participants to undergo drug treatment or seek work.

Rowan Vansleve, president of Hope The Mission, said L.A.’s homeless numbers could spike as current funding runs out and providers await the result of new funding applications.

“It could leave the most vulnerable — like people with disabilities or serious health issues, mental health issues — left out, which is really scary,” he said.

Ryan Smith, president and CEO of the St Joseph Center, said the federal cuts come amid “tectonic” shifts for L.A.’s homeless services system. Funding from voter-approved Measure A is replacing previous county funding, and the region’s lead homeless services agency is being wound down in favor of a new county homelessness department.

“This is a perfect storm of real challenges we're seeing,” Smith said. “Increased need for housing, for mutual aid, for the types of services that we get to do every day, but a lack of resources to make that happen.”

At last count , more than 72,000 people are experiencing homelessness across L.A. County. Resources for many, including families , have been stretched thin or exhausted, threatening to reverse what officials describe as progress toward reducing those numbers.