The Brief

There’s a frenzy of madness and tangled limbs on the basketball court until someone shoots for a goal. Then it’s all eyes on the ball as everyone holds their breath, watching its graceful airborne arc in anticipation.

But this time, the ball narrowly misses and bounces off the rim, sending a dozen queer ballers scurrying to the opposite end of the court to play offense and defense. The heat is picking up on the courts of Highland Park Recreation Center.

Here, a group of queer basketball players in Northeast L.A., aptly named WNBGAY, meet up twice a week for a pickup basketball game. WNBGAY isn’t the only queer recreational sports group in Los Angeles — there are at least a dozen more scattered throughout the region — ranging from a dozen to a hundred attendees a week. Spaces like WNBGAY have become safe gatherings for gay men, lesbians, trans, non-binary and queer people alike to meet up and play sports, make friends and find community.

Cass Spillman, who runs an event staffing agency, says WNBGAY started two years ago informally as a group chat on Instagram amongst friends who wanted to play ball, until the desire for a queer space for ballers grew into something official. Spillman started helping to organize set locations and times for regular meetups.

Now they have official WNBGAY merch they use to raise money for equipment they need, like basketballs and more.

The most exciting part has been seeing real WNBA players sport their attire while playing.

“[There’s] joy that comes across my face when I just see somebody wearing WNBGAY merch in the wild,” Spillman says. “Because even though I don't know that person, they're repping us [and] they're proud of what we're doing here.”

Dream Team Society

Queer recreational sports groups like WNBGAY and Dyke Soccer LA reflect the large sapphic fanbase that supports many of the women’s professional leagues like the Women’s National Basketball Association and the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team.

But groups are carving out new spaces within other sports that aren’t typically friendly to queer and trans people.

Surfing, a sport often associated with a laidback counter-culture, can often be exclusionary to newcomers with unspoken rules around locals who claim certain beaches. When the World Surf League moved to include transgender people in competitions, famous surfers like Bethany Hamilton spoke up to boycott the WSL.

But Dream Team Society has been pushing to normalize queer bodies in the ocean. Freelance photographer and videographer Shelly Simon organizes monthly meetups for Dream Team Society. Back in March, they hosted an event at the beach for Trans Day of Visibility with over 100 attendees. More recently, Simon collaborated with San Diego Gay Surf to celebrate the end of Pride Month with a bonfire at Ocean Beach.

Members of San Diego Gay Surf and Dream Team society celebrate a bonfire with hamburgers and pets before heading out to the waves.

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Jireh Deng

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For Sergio Morales, who founded San Diego Gay Surf a year and a half ago, the effort started with simply reposting photos to connect with other queer and gay surfers. But Morales quickly wanted to have in-person meetups at the beach.

“There isn't a space for us out there. There's no representation for the queer community in surfing and most of the sports,” says Morales. “So why not start a space where we can bring the local community together and just build that?”

Queer recreational groups aren’t just for those who identify as LGBTQ. Allies of the spaces are similarly drawn to the welcoming atmosphere of inclusivity that allows them to show up fully as themselves. Like Valeria Diaz, who doesn’t identify as queer but comes from a racially mixed background. In other spaces, it feels like her heritages clash, but as a member of San Diego Gay Surf, she’s found acceptance beyond the binaries of identity.

Valeria Diaz (right) and Noah Fox (left), members of San Diego Gay Surf, practice their headstands on the grass.

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“There's a lot of people who work within boxes. Like you have to be Caucasian or you have to be Hispanic,” Diaz says. “This group really just encompasses the idea of love for all, no matter if you're gay, straight … we're all humans, and I think that's why I keep coming back to this group, because our values align.”

Queer Run Club

New queer recreational sports groups like Queer Run Club formed last August out of the need for a connection from the isolation experienced during the pandemic. From Silver Lake to Long Beach to Culver City, Jessi Baron and DJ Ki have made it their mandate to rotate their weekly runs throughout Los Angeles to make their events accessible throughout the county.

Members of the Queer Run Club run at Los Angeles Historic State Park on a Monday evening in June.

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Baron and Ki have made it their goal to reach a diverse range of queer runners, not just geographically, but across identities. They say it's important to note that Queer Run Club was started by two queer people of color.

“That was like an intentional move on our part to let people know, like, this isn't just going to be a white-only space,” says Ki. They point out that there are few sapphic bars beyond the newly established Honey’s at Star Love and Ruby Fruit. “This isn't only going to be like a gay man's space. It's for everyone. I feel like the turnout is so diverse as well. Not just ethnic and racial but like age groups.”

WeHo Dodgeball

One neighborhood is home to some of the most active queer sports groups. The West Hollywood Recreation Center is home to multiple queer sports that utilize its facilities. West Hollywood Aquatics brings together local swimmers and water polo players who compete internationally.

But WeHo Dodgeball’s Tuesday and Thursday games at the recreational center bring the friendly competition to another level. At any time during their evening tournaments, four games are happening simultaneously, with referees managing the organized chaos as people hurtle balls to knock the opposing team out of play.

Competing teams rush to grab dodgeballs after the referee’s whistle signals the start of a new match.

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For some, the connections forged in the heat of the sport go beyond friendly competition. It’s helped people find queer friends, partners and even chosen families. MJ Rios works as a high school choir teacher in East L.A. and has been part of WeHo Dodgeball since its inception over a decade ago in 2010 by local organizer Jake Mason. They’ve been grateful for how the space not only destigmatizes queer athletes but also female-identifying athletes who are allies to the LGBTQ community like herself.

“The group of people here, I will tell you that even at my own wedding, most of my invites were dodgeball people,” Rios says. “They've been my family for over a decade.”

Chris Witherspoon only joined WeHo Dodgeball a few months ago, but he’s already been sucked into the sport’s social orbit. He works as an audio engineer and commits to making the sometimes two-hour round trip from the San Fernando Valley, where he lives, to West Hollywood on Tuesdays to play dodgeball. For Witherspoon, it’s difficult trying to make LGBTQ friends in his neighborhood, so as someone who isn’t from Los Angeles, WeHo Dodgeball has helped him find a group of friends where he feels seen and included in his queerness.

“Because the LGBT community is smaller, you see a lot of the same people and the same faces,” Witherspoon says of WeHo Dodgeball. “These leagues tend to be more social. So every time we play a game, afterward, we go out to the bars.”

It’s hard to dismiss the fact that the whole reason why these queer recreational sports teams exist is because of the exclusion of queer athletes from sports. Val Horton, a league manager with WeHo Dodgeball, wants to center joy in queer recreational sports in light of all the contemporary challenges that queer and transgender people face in sports and beyond.

“We're living in a world where queer rights are being challenged every single day. And to have a place where we can come and not really have to think about that [and just be] with our people feels even more important now,” says Horton.

Trans Boxing

At Trans Boxing, over half a dozen attendees practice their fight stances, pivoting in circles while sharing grass space with their feathery neighbors at MacArthur Park on a Saturday morning (and avoiding duck poop).

As people pair up for pad work, they’re learning lifesaving skills for defense in the real world. Cal Xu has been training in martial arts long before they came out as queer. But since coming out as non-binary, Xu is uniquely aware that every time they step out into the world, they face a threat as a visibly queer person; training has helped them feel safer in their body.

“It's hard to exist as a queer person and just not hear what's going on politically,” Xu shares. “Dressing the way that I want to dress, presenting the way I want to present has felt so much more safe. Because I know that if push comes to shove and I really need to, I can defend myself.”

Trans Boxing members practice hand movements and mock sparring at MacArthur Park on a Saturday morning.

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Miles Enriquez-Morales founded Trans Boxing during the pandemic when the New York City-based organization ran classes online.

After recovering from top surgery, Enriquez-Morales started the Los Angeles chapter to offer a sanctuary for transgender and gender non-conforming people who want to participate in sports like martial arts without the toxic machismo and homophobia that can be prevalent in institutional spaces. Learning at the park is only temporary until they can find a place to call home.

“I have options where I could move the gym into a space that's very queer but maybe it's not as boxing [focused] as I would want it to be. And then maybe I could move it to a place that's very boxing-oriented and it's not as LGBTQ-accepting as I would want it to be,” Enriquez-Morales says. “Feeling like those are my only two options is really disheartening because it feels like I have to compromise.”

For now, all the equipment they use is funded by Trans Boxing’s Patreon subscribership and paid out of Enriquez-Morales’s own pocket when there is further gear needed for classes.

LBians

But not all queer groups face the same constraints on physical space. Like the lesbian bike riding group, LBians, which meets monthly to ride throughout Long Beach’s LGBTQ neighborhood. Locals call the Broadway corridor and its rainbow crosswalks “the gayborhood,” with half a dozen gay bars within walking distance.

Every month, LBians meets at Hot Java Coffee on Broadway for some exercise, and a lot of socializing — the end of every ride usually ends with drinks and food at a local brewery or bar.

Vanessa Cisneros juggles organizing these meets alongside their full-time job as a fraud analyst and stacked courseload studying software engineering. It’s not easy, but Cisneros says seeing the joy on the faces of her peers makes it all more worth it.

LBians meet up at the Beach Garden Social House, a local queer bar on Broadway after their monthly bike ride.

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“I love after every single ride someone comes to me, hugs me and thanks me for creating this awesome space. There's people who made lifelong friends here,” Cisneros says.

“Seeing this community is just awesome … [you’re] making new friends with people you won’t meet anywhere else.”

Queer Racquet Society

Part of the inclusivity of queer sports is how organizers have prioritized athletes of all skill levels and sought to make queer recreational sports the genesis for genuine connections outside the bar.

Through Queer Racquet Society, Teline Guerra has shown up amongst her sapphic peers at Griffith Park Tennis Courts while reclaiming the sport she used to play in high school.

“No one's dating-focused. You're focusing on tennis. When you're working out, no one's dressed to impress here,” said Guerra. She also points out that relationships like these, built outside the queer clubs, create change for the LGBTQ community.

On the courts of Griffith Park Tennis, Queer Racquet Society play friendly rounds of doubles.

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“Community is not who you f**k … the community that gets laws passed, the community that protests, the community that stands up for others starts with this kind of thing.”

On water and land, queer people are reclaiming access to the physicality of their bodies in the sports they love and are learning. There are still moments of discomfort when a safe space is burst, like when members of the Queer Run Club notice a man catcalling them from the sidelines. But they're able to shrug off moments like this because they have safety in numbers. And perhaps a safe space in queer sports isn’t necessarily about where you are at, but who you are with.

MacArthur Park got an unexpected guest Tuesday: Justin Bieber, who joined several members of his band for an impromptu performance.

Social media videos show Bieber, 32, sitting on the grass, playing percussion and singing as people gather around. He performed several songs to a handful of people, including his 2025 hit “Yukon,” according to videos from the impromptu performance.

A source close to Bieber told E! News that he visited the park to distribute gift cards and other resources to unhoused people. A spokesperson for the singer could not be immediately reached for comment.

Bieber, who headlined Coachella earlier this year, played a stripped-down performance with his band. Some people in social media video walked by the set, while others recorded the set.

His surprise appearance adds a different kind of attention typically focused on MacArthur Park. In the last several months city officials, law enforcement and community groups have taken different approaches to addressing conditions at the park and activating the space.

For Brenda Aguilera, director of the Community Transformation Collective, the reaction to Bieber’s visit is part of a larger conversation about the changes at the park. 

Her organization has been working with a neighborhood volunteer group of about 60 MacArthur Park-area residents since March. The group includes parents, caregivers and vendors who meet regularly to identify neighborhood priorities and work with city agencies and community organizations.

Residents involved with the group have reported greater awareness of available services and said they feel safer in the park, Aguilera said. But she added that the people who live in and around the park should be at the center of any assessment of how conditions are changing.

“They’re not in the park. They don’t live in those neighborhoods, so they have to speak to the local community members to hear about their perspectives,” Aguilera said, referring to elected officials.

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli pointed to Bieber’s performance as a sign of progress at the park.

Bieber performing an impromptu set at the park is “a testament to the progress we are achieving to take back the park from drug dealers and enliven it for families,” Hochman wrote on X.

Essayli wrote: “Bieber in MacArthur Park. That’s progress. Amazing what can happen when criminals and drug dealers are removed from public spaces.”

Over the summer, the Los Angeles Police Department and federal agents carried out a multi-phase operation targeting drug activity in and around the park, including a June operation that resulted in 13 arrests. Hochman also held a picnic at the park over Labor Day weekend after saying he would return with his family if he believed it was safe enough.

Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez’s office, however, pointed to a longer history of work at the park in response to Bieber’s visit.

“We’re excited to see Justin Bieber enjoying MacArthur Park, just as countless other Angelenos do every day, experiencing what nearly four years of sustained investment and community partnership have made possible,” said Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez.

The councilmember has invested more than $27 million in the park, including Peace Ambassadors, round-the-clock clean teams, overdose response, street medicine, youth programming, arts and culture and infrastructure improvements, according to Hernandez’s office.

“MacArthur Park’s progress belongs to the residents, workers, promotoras, outreach teams, and community organizations who do this critical, lifesaving work every single day,” Roochnik said.

Community Transformation Collective’s promotoras are among those working directly with residents, Aguilera said, helping connect them with services and providing what she described as “warm handoffs” to organizations that can offer support.

For Aguilera, that community perspective matters when officials assess what is happening at the park.

“It’s not up to us or these elected officials that are in these government bodies to just speak on behalf of our communities,” she said. “They could speak about their efforts, but they can’t speak about the entire perspective. It’s really those that live there that could share that perspective.”

The post You better Beliebe it. Justin Bieber played a set at MacArthur Park appeared first on LA Local.

Michael Angel Alvarez made headlines earlier this year when he was arrested while working as a peace ambassador for the nonprofit Healing Urban Barrios in MacArthur Park. Federal prosecutors alleged Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City.”

But they didn’t charge him for violent or gang-related crimes.

He spent three months in custody under a different charge: illegally possessing body armor. He pleaded not guilty, and a trial date was set.

Alvarez was released from custody this month, nearly a week after a federal judge dismissed his case on Sept. 9, ruling that a juvenile court finding that Alvarez killed a man while a minor could not be counted as a violent felony conviction that would make owning body armor illegal.

Alvarez spoke with LAist after his recent release, saying he believes the case against him was politically motivated and shows a lack of understanding about what it takes to intervene with gang members to reduce violence in communities. He acknowledged gang affiliation, but said he was not a gang leader and had not committed any crimes since being released from prison in 2024.

Federal prosecutors told LAist in a statement they are looking into options to appeal a federal judge’s decision to dismiss the recent indictment against Alvarez. No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. has responded to LAist’s requests for comment about Alvarez’s assertion that the case was politically motivated.

Before the federal prosecutors filed their case against Alvarez, the L.A. County District Attorney’s office filed a separate case against him on May 20 in Los Angeles Superior Court also based on possessing body armor. A preliminary hearing in that case is set for Oct. 27. He pleaded not guilty. A spokesperson for the District Attorney’s office did not comment on whether they intend to continue pursuing the case now that the federal case has been dismissed.

Why the federal case was dismissed

Alvarez was a minor when he was found guilty of a gang-related murder in 2002. At 15 years old he was charged and tried as an adult. He was convicted of first-degree murder for shooting and killing a man in Pico-Union. He was sentenced to 50 years to life. But after a change in state law increased the age at which minors could be sentenced as adults to 16, Alvarez’s case was sent back to juvenile court and he was released in 2024. At that point, he had served about 24 years.

On Sept. 9, U.S. District Judge Anne Hwang found that same law that led to Alvarez’s release also bars the court from considering him to have been convicted of the killing, because juvenile court determinations are not criminal convictions. Without a violent felony conviction, Alvarez is not prevented from owning body armor by state or federal law. She dismissed the federal prosecutors’ case against him.

What Alvarez is saying following his release

In an interview with LAist last week after his release, Alvarez said he thinks federal prosecutors wanted to score political points by targeting community violence intervention work, not because he posed any risk to public safety.

“ I almost got killed as a result of trying to change the community for the best,” said Alvarez, who showed photos to LAist of what he described as stab wounds in his abdomen and arms that were taken in February 2025. He said that assault took place while he was working in MacArthur Park. “ And for whatever reason you had the individuals who are part of the Republican Party who went after me because of the Democrats, the people that I worked for.”

Alvarez’s former employer, Healing Urban Barrios, has not responded to LAist’s requests for comment since the case was dismissed. Christina Navarro, the nonprofit’s founder and executive director, said in a statement to LAist back in May of this year that Alvarez was innocent until proven guilty and that the organization was continuing its work despite the allegations against him.

“We are not stepping back,” Navarro wrote in the statement. “We are doubling down.”

Healing Urban Barrios was contracted to work at the park by Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America’s L.A. chapter. Her office says community violence intervention workers have been effective for decades in interrupting cycles of violence in ways traditional law enforcement cannot.

Naomi Roochnik, a spokesperson for Hernandez, told LAist in May they were not aware of allegations against Alvarez before his arrest and that peace ambassadors are employed and supervised by community-based organizations.

Alvarez was removed from the peace ambassador program earlier that same month, she said.

“We will always take misconduct seriously and hold our partners to high standards, but we will not allow an individual case, or efforts to politicize it, to undermine proven community-based public safety work,” Roochnik said Friday in an emailed statement.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, who heads the office that brought the case, has been critical of the city’s gang intervention program.

Federal prosecutor Bill Essayli heads the U.S. Attorney's office in L.A.

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Allen J. Schaben

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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“The hardworking tax payers of Los Angeles deserve better than to see their money shelled out to a convicted gang murderer,” Essayli wrote on social media on May 29, the day his office announced the charge against Alvarez.

Essayli was appointed by the Trump administration to lead the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. and was previously a Republican member of the California State Assembly, where he represented part of Riverside County.

Spokespersons for the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. have continued to speak out against Alvarez since the body armor case was dismissed. In statements sent to LAist via email by spokespeople Ciaran McEvoy and Shawn Lewis, the department called Alvarez ”a convicted murderer and a documented member of the 18th Street gang” who was indicted by grand jury on the body armor charges.

“These facts are not in dispute. It is unfortunate that he now benefits from a California law that effectively allows him to erase his murder conviction, something his victim cannot do.”

Adding: “He has no legitimate role serving as a ‘peace ambassador’ in a public park or receiving taxpayer-funded compensation.”

The department said they are currently considering their options to appeal what they called “a narrow technical legal issue.”

About the case

Most people can legally own and wear body armor in the United States — it’s typically worn as a vest, either made of durable fibers like Kevlar or with steel or ceramic inserts designed to stop bullets. It becomes illegal to own or possess body armor under federal and state law if a person has been convicted of a violent felony.

But U.S. District Judge Hwang agreed with Alvarez that he did not have a violent felony conviction on his record.

Alvarez admits he shot and killed 22-year-old Mauricio Miguel Masis on Aug. 17, 2000.

He told LAist he was 15 and in a gang when he and a 13-year-old friend, who was not gang-affiliated, were approached by what he described as three older gang members. Masis was one of the men, he said.

“ They're already in their mid-20s and tried to kill both of us,” Alvarez said. He told LAist he shot Masis, but claims it was to defend his friend and himself.

Convicted as an adult in 2002, he could have spent his entire life in prison after being found guilty.

“ I was 17 years old when I was walking Supermax,” he told LAist, “level four maximum security prison.”

In 2018, Senate Bill 1391 passed in the California legislature, to only allow minors 16 years and older to be considered for adult court.

The new law gave Alvarez a way out of prison, allowing his case to be resentenced in 2024.

By then he’d served about 24 years. Because of his age at the time of the killing, under the change in the law his case was sent back to juvenile court where his adult conviction was set aside and he was declared a ward of the court — or under its supervision and control.

Alvarez was released from prison and put on probation for two years.

The following year he was also sentenced to two years of probation for a separate felony offense in November 2023 that was considered non-violent — possessing a weapon while in custody.

Alvarez acknowledged having the weapon while he was in prison, and told LAist that most people had hidden weapons there, often as a deterrent from being attacked.

“Of course I had a weapon,” he said. “You would have one too if you were there. You're trying to do everything in your power to survive.”

In early 2025, Alvarez began working for Healing Urban Barrios as a peace ambassador.

“ They wanted individuals who had the respect, I suppose, of the streets [and] in prison,” he told LAist.

Alvarez said gang members are more willing to talk with someone from their own background than with police officers or city officials, and he said he was able to speak to them to avoid violence and other safety issues around MacArthur Park.

“There's hundreds — if not thousands — of gang members who flow through that area due to the fact that a lot of them are addicts now,“ Alvarez said.

He told LAist he believed the peace ambassadors in the area had made a difference in reducing the number of people using drugs, fighting and lighting fires in the park since he started working there in 2025.

“ There used to be a lot of fights,” he said. “ We're able to talk to the guys right there and be like, ‘Look, work something out with each other.’"

Alvarez showed LAist photos of people he said he had given CPR while on the job to prevent them from dying of drug overdoses and a woman he said he identified to authorities as a missing person and helped get to safety.

Federal agents arrested Alvarez in May, after LAPD officers found two body armor plates in his car during a traffic stop earlier that month.

Alvarez told law enforcement officers after his arrest that the plates were for an art project, court documents show, and his lawyer argued in court that Alvarez did not have a vest to wear the armor in.

Prosecutors argued in court documents that he could have used the armor plates without a vest, and that he may have had a vest for the plates elsewhere.

Alvarez told LAist he was planning to use his laser engravers to write poetry on the plates and his cousin was going to paint them with graffiti to get the attention of the youth he served.

“With youth, especially youth that are in gangs, you gotta show them some different type of art,” he said. “  It would've hit them hard, you know?”

The U.S. Attorney’s office charged Alvarez with possessing body armor. But they made additional allegations against him apart from the charges, which they have not proven in court.

For instance, prosecutors claimed in court documents that Alvarez was “leading a violent street gang, while claiming to be a gang interventionist for the City,” and that they were investigating him for additional crimes that would carry “great sentencing exposure.”

Prosecutors alleged in court documents that members of the 18th Street gang described him as a leader of the gang in recorded jailhouse phone calls. Alvarez claimed the way the prosecutors described the conversations wasn’t accurate. He told LAist he was never a gang leader and, instead, was using the respect he had with the 18th Street gang to prevent further violence.

No one from the U.S. Attorney’s office in L.A. responded to LAist’s questions about whether they intend to pursue other charges.

LAist asked Alvarez to clarify whether he was an active member during our interview last week.

“ When you're a gang member, for the most part, you're always a gang member, you know?” He said, “There's two types of ‘actives.’ There's active where you're actively involved in the violence and all that stuff, but there's also being active when you're actively involved in your community, and that's what I've been doing.”

Alvarez said he hopes to continue working in gang violence reduction programs now that the federal case against him has been dismissed.

“I know that what we did was good,” he said, recalling how parents of children he had worked with around MacArthur Park reached out to thank him while he was in federal custody as his recent case was ongoing.

“It'd be nice to have the support all the way around and not have, especially, people who are pushing politics,” Alvarez told LAist.

Councilmember Hernandez’ office and Healing Urban Barrios have not responded to questions about whether they would consider allowing Alvarez to return to his position as a peace ambassador.

After the Palisades and Eaton firestorms in January 2025, one story captured how Los Angeles County’s emergency management system seemed to have failed. Anthony Mitchell Sr., an 80-year-old man who used both a prosthetic and a wheelchair, and his 35-year-old son, Justin, who had cerebral palsy, died in their Altadena home waiting for evacuation assistance.

Anthony Mitchell had called 911 twice, identifying himself and his son as disabled, and was assured help was coming.

Of the 31 people killed in the fires, 27 were over 65, and at least six had mobility issues, according to news reports.

The tragedy led California and L.A. County to consider adopting “disaster registries,” an emergency management strategy used around the country for assisting people who might require additional help in emergencies due to their age, disability or other health conditions.

The California Commission on Aging issued a report in November that noted evacuation centers lacked data on older and disabled residents who would need assistance. That led to a shortage of equipment and expertise to address the specialized needs of those residents. The commission recommended that the state consider implementing a statewide registry.

Even before the commission’s recommendation, Los Angeles County supervisors had directed its Aging and Disabilities Department to study the feasibility of a registry.

But neither initiative has moved forward.

“We have not seen much movement on exploring a disaster registry,” said Patrick Smith, the state Commission on Aging’s legislative director.

The Los Angeles feasibility study was “paused” last year while the county reviewed its emergency operations with the McChrystal Group, said Liz Odendahl, a spokesperson for Supervisor Janice Hahn, who co-sponsored the resolution authorizing the study.

The arguments against registries

Some advocacy groups in California and the state Office of Emergency Services have argued against registries, Smith said. In fact, OES’ official guidance on registries is that “jurisdictions should not use them.”

Registries typically are voluntary, and registrants are responsible for keeping their information up to date. Because of that, they are unreliable sources of information, which is one reason some emergency managers and many advocates for older and disabled people oppose them.

They also point out that registries could give a false sense of security to people, who may assume assistance is guaranteed when it is not.

“This false assumption is dangerous and can lead to an overall decrease in personal disaster preparedness,” the California Office of Emergency Services says on its website.

Registries are hard to keep current, the office notes, and the personal information people provide may be challenging to safeguard.

Why some places have registries anyway

With data showing older people far more likely to die in natural disasters — and climate change making disasters more frequent and severe — several states have taken the opposite approach, establishing registries to better assist older adults and people with disabilities in emergencies.

Florida’s statewide Special Needs Registry is often cited as a model because it connects the state’s Health Department with emergency management in all 67 counties. Florida also requires its counties to establish shelters for people with special medical needs.

Delaware, New Jersey, North Dakota, Rhode Island, Texas and Utah also have statewide registries, as do many municipal emergency offices across the country.

In California, three of 58 counties have registries — Mono, Siskiyou and Butte.

Butte County’s registry was in place in 2018, when the Camp Fire killed 85 people, 67 of whom were seniors. Emergency managers can’t say how many or if any of the older adults who died in that fire were on the registry.

But they say the registry remains a useful tool.

“If we didn’t have the list, we wouldn’t have had any idea at all who needed extra assistance evacuating,” said Butte County Emergency Manager Angie Mannel, who was a 911 dispatcher during the Camp Fire.

Older adults, like many Americans, are not prepared for disasters. A 2023 AARP survey found that under one-third of older adults have a comprehensive plan for natural disasters, and only 10% have opted into apps or text notifications that alert people to emergencies.

“You can’t just throw a bunch of information out there and expect everyone to be able to act on it,” said Lindsay Peterson, a gerontology researcher at the University of South Florida. “Some people just can’t.”

Her research has shown that technology can be a barrier for older adults, especially those living independently but with limited technological skills and income.

While acknowledging that “registries are controversial,” Peterson said state and local governments must find ways to ensure the most vulnerable older adults will be protected.

Florida’s Special Needs Registry

That’s what Florida set out to do with its Special Needs Registry. But it does not guarantee emergency assistance, which the Health Department notes when people register. Still, the Florida Division of Emergency Management advises older adults needing this assistance to register, because registries can be useful planning tools and may save lives, even if they are incomplete.

Each of Florida’s county emergency management offices decides how it will use the registries to provide assistance. Seminole County, in eastern Florida, offers transportation assistance to registrants who request it. Three days before a tropical storm or hurricane is expected, the county Office of Emergency Management calls registrants about the approaching storm and advises them to evacuate. They must agree to leave at that time in order to receive transportation, said Steven Lerner, division manager.

“We’re like Enterprise; we’ll pick you up,” he said. The county uses a fleet that includes school buses and ADA-compliant vans.

Lerner’s main concern about Seminole’s registry of 1,700 people is who is not on it. He focuses his outreach efforts on new residents who may never have experienced a hurricane season, and those aging at home who may overestimate their ability to evacuate themselves.

In Lee County on Florida’s western coast, the Office of Emergency Management used public transportation to help evacuate people when Hurricane Ian hit in 2022. More than half of Lee County’s 800,000 residents were ordered to evacuate a day before the hurricane made landfall. Many were forced to weather the storm at home or in shelters, as 10 inches of rain inundated areas, winds gusted up to 140 mph and storm surge reached 15 feet. The storm killed 149 Floridians, including 72 Lee County residents. Most of the fatalities were people over 65.

County spokesperson Betsy Clayton wouldn’t say how many registrants emergency crews helped to evacuate during Hurricane Ian. But she said the county has assisted about 1,000 registrants in each major storm Florida has experienced in the past two decades, providing paratransit and ambulance services.

A California example

In California’s Butte County, emergency managers believe the registry will save lives if a disaster on par with the Camp Fire strikes again.

After igniting on Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire grew rapidly, overwhelming the county’s emergency management plans and destroying its communication systems. It incinerated Paradise, a town of 27,000 people, in four hours.

The California auditor’s 2019 after-action review of the county’s emergency plans recommended Butte use registry data in evacuation planning, so emergency responders know who will need help before a disaster.

Tiffany Rowe manages Butte’s Special Needs Awareness Program, which notifies registered people of emergencies and evacuation orders and assists in evacuating them if needed.

The voluntary registry pinpoints who will require assistance in particular evacuation zones and what they’ll need. Most warnings are automated, but if the emergency is expected to affect 10 or fewer registrants, Rowe calls them herself.

After the pandemic and the busy fire seasons of 2022 and 2024, the number of Butte County registrants increased by over 50%. Today, around 2,200 older adults and people with disabilities are registered.

“Being a disaster-prone county,” said Mannel, Butte’s emergency manager, “our perspective is always focused on the safety of our citizens.”

Timothy Lane is a writer with the Investigative Reporting Program at the UC Berkeley Journalism School and covered this story through a grant from The SCAN Foundation.

Insurance companies are starting to write new policies in California again after years of holding back as wildfire risk climbed higher.

The state Insurance Department says that means outgoing Commissioner Ricardo Lara’s new regulations, intended to boost insurance availability, are working. Each time a company declares its plans to sell policies again, the department touts it as a win. But the state has not released the number of new policies the companies have written so far.

Enter Consumer Watchdog, the advocacy group that often butts heads with the department. It released an estimate of new policy commitments: 12,189 since January 2025, when Lara’s so-called sustainable insurance strategy went into effect. The strategy allows insurers to use catastrophe modeling, which they say more adequately takes risk into account because it includes forward-looking models, and to factor in reinsurance costs when setting their rates.

Consumer Watchdog, whose numbers come from combing through insurance companies’ rate filings, says that number is low, considering insurers have requested or secured $571 million in rate increases under the new regulations.

The insurance department disagrees with the group’s analysis, saying it intends to release its own data and analysis, and discounting the group’s numbers as “incomplete and premature.”

Ben Armstrong, Consumer Watchdog’s actuary, is tracking voluminous but publicly available rate filings. He looked at insurers’ statements about the number of new policies they promise to write, and compared the new filings with each company’s previous rate filings. Armstrong told CalMatters it’s “not an exact science” because the filings mention commitments, not actual sales, and in some cases don’t include an exact timeline.

The new rules allow insurers to factor in catastrophe models and their reinsurance costs as long as they commit to increasing sales in high-risk areas. Of the 10 companies that requested rate increases under the new rules, only five have committed to selling more policies, the group’s analysis shows.

The regulations call for insurance companies to choose one of these options: Write 85% of their market share in high-risk areas; grow their policies 5% in such areas; or increase their number of policies 5% by taking customers out of the FAIR Plan. Some of the companies that have requested or secured rate increases claim they already meet the 85% threshold.

“What we’re looking at is the reality right now for Californians who have been saddled with rate hikes for the promise of more policies in the future,” said Carmen Balber, executive director of Consumer Watchdog.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.