The Brief

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The Baldwin Hills Branch of Los Angeles Public Library is now home to a nearly 100-year-old Black history collection containing thousands of historical records and items.

The Dorothy Vena Johnson Black History Collection is named after the poet, educator and co-founder of the League of Allied Arts and contains 2,300 items including newspaper clippings, magazines, photographs, biographies, autobiographies, nonfiction, scholarly texts, multi-volume sets and about 25 rare items found only at the Baldwin Hills Branch, according to Jené D. Brown, the director of the library’s emerging technologies and collections division. 

The library held a ceremony Saturday where they unveiled the collection, whose origins date back to 1927 when Miriam Matthews, the first Black librarian employed by the LA Public Library, began documenting and archiving California’s Black history to ensure its preservation, according to the library. 

“I’m glad it’s still being recognized and acknowledged,” Danielle Durkee, Matthews’ great niece said after attending the ceremony. “She always bought us books, she always had us involved in everything the library had to offer. So that’s what I was exposed to growing up.” 

Baldwin Hills is considered a part of LA’s Black cultural hub and the collection will be more visible and accessible at this location, library officials said during the ceremony. But it’s not just about changing locations, it’s about protecting the legacy of Black stories and placing the collection within a community that will honor it the most. 

“We have insisted that Black history is not a footnote but an essential and enduring part of the American story. This is why this collection matters,” said guest speaker Lura Daniels-Ball, president of the Our Author Study Club of Los Angeles. 

The Los Angeles Public Library displays a timeline at the Baldwin Hills Branch Library outlining how the Dorothy Vena Johnson Black History Collection began nearly 100 years ago.

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LaMonica Peters

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The LA Local

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The collection moving to Baldwin Hills was also an opportunity for the library system to recognize the people who were determined to preserve LA’s Black history for future generations. 

“(Matthews) recognized that our shelves did not represent the communities she was serving,” City Librarian John F. Szabo told The LA Local. “She saw it as such an important thing to develop a collection not only of books and ephemera, but of photographs that told not only the history of African Americans in Los Angeles but of Black history from everywhere.” 

The collection was renamed in 1971 and, until 2025, it was housed at the Vernon Branch Library on Central Avenue where Matthews once worked,  according to Brown, the library’s emerging technologies and collections director.  

Heather Hutt, LA City Council District 10 councilmember, was also in attendance at Saturday’s ceremony. She told the crowd she used to work in the downtown library and that her family loves books. 

“If you get a chance to really look at the collection, share that with other folks so they know what’s happening right here at the Baldwin Hills library,” Hutt said.

Embarking on a treasure hunt for the art and artifacts held by the Los Angeles Unified School District is no small feat.

The nation’s second-largest school district is home to 389,000 students and roughly 100,000 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, maps and murals.

The art can be found in schools and district buildings across the district’s over 700-square-mile terrain. It is part of its Art & Artifact Collection, which began sometime in the 1850s and morphed into a multi-million-dollar collection today.

Sure, the collection holds school records — classroom materials, photos, yearbooks. But it also has ancient Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets dating back to 2100 BCE. Sculptures of “Don Quixote” by Salvador Dalí from 1979. A 1931 “Bugs Bunny & Friends” by the animator Chuck Jones shows Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, Daffy Duck and The Road Runner reading a book entitled “History of the 9th St. School.”

The collection predates the official formation of LAUSD in 1961. The city was served by the Los Angeles City School District and the Los Angeles City High School District, which later merged. Most of LAUSD’s notable pieces are donations from alumni, former administrators and members of the larger Los Angeles community. A 2008 appraisal estimated the value was more than $12 million, according to a 2022 district document obtained by EdSource.

“LAUSD history is Los Angeles history,” said Cintia Romero, the archive and museum’s curator and archivist. “We have all the people here; we have all kinds of buildings; we have all kinds of architecture; we have all kinds of cultures.”

It is rare for school districts to hold on to such artifacts, says Brenda Gunn, the president-elect of the Society of American Archivists.

“I don’t think it’s very common at all,” Gunn said. “I think what typically happens is that the school districts don’t really invest in any sort of preservation. It’s not often that a school district has an archivist, and if they do have any preservation efforts, it’s usually by a nonprofessional.”

Treasures at school sites 

School officials also collect items unearthed at school sites during renovations — such as old fire alarms — as well as yearbooks and photographs that document LAUSD history. Los Angeles Unified says it maintains “professional standards for archival care and are intended to ensure that important pieces of the district’s history are maintained for future generations.”

“School district records are like a continuous public diary of shifts in neighborhoods, how the school district has approached its curriculum, how did it manage desegregation or any big social and cultural events,” Gunn said. She added that some might also be interested in viewing them for something more personal, like understanding family genealogy.

There’s little the LAUSD archive turns down. The main criteria is whether the art can serve in an educational capacity or as a teaching aide, Romero said. While LAUSD does sometimes loan pieces out to other institutions, it is “not in the business of buying or selling artwork.” And sometimes, she said, selling wouldn’t be in the “spirit of the donors,” some of whom were the original artists.

“It doesn’t necessarily have to be valuable to be accepted. It can be a teaching aid,” Romero said. “So, everything kind of has value, really. Everything can be somewhere.”

And it is.

The “X” on LAUSD’s treasure map sits in a warehouse at the school police headquarters in rows of boxes that house a large portion of the collection. That includes the district’s antiquity collection donated by Venice High School’s historic Latin Museum, which operated from 1932 to 1997, and is now defunct.

In a small museum at the LAUSD headquarters on S. Boundary Avenue, there is a display mimicking a late 19th-century classroom.

In the “classroom” are wooden phonics teaching tools with scrolling letters, antique maps and silver-colored vessels once used during home economics classes.

The classroom has a list of “Rules for Teachers 1872” that sits on the front desk: bring “a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session,” take “one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.”

Preservation at schools 

But it is among the modern-day classrooms with digital tablets and smart boards where the rest of the treasure lies:

Typically, in most school districts, items just end up sitting idly by for years, succumbing to what archivists call “benign neglect,” Gunn said.

“There are all kinds of places that this archival material will end up,” Gunn said. “And staff are like, ‘Oh, I don’t want to throw this away, but it can’t be in my office, so I’m going to store it somewhere,’ and then it stays there until the next person.”

For Gunn, the hope is that school officials may take the extra step to preserve art, documents and history. Leaving something in a storage closet or in a box and walking away is not enough, she says.

“You’re not hurting anything. You’re certainly not throwing things away, but you’re not helping this; you’re not improving the situation of the records,” Gunn said. “But, what you hope is that someone down the road will see them, open that door and say, ‘Oh, these are valuable. And, if we can’t keep them here, then maybe there is another archive that will take them.’”

In the case of the LAUSD archive, there have been several thefts, including a painting at Dorsey High School. Romero said that while there aren’t many details of the painting, the president of the school’s alumni association has since found it, and traded $25,000 worth of posters and plans to leave it to LAUSD.

Today, the district maintains that school security procedures, including key access, protect the pieces.

Ensuring public access

While LAUSD students might enjoy little treasures displayed on their school walls and in hallway display cases, it’s more challenging for members of the public to view items in the collection.

In the 1980s, a formal inventory of art was curated. And in 2004, the collection was digitized, Romero said.

So, since 2018, Romero and her small staff — made up of a volunteer and a small cohort of interns from Cal State Northridge and LAUSD’s Downtown Business Magnet school — continued to digitize items and add them to a public database, which can be viewed for free.

This process of digitizing the archive is largely made possible by donations and grants, though Romero’s position is funded through LAUSD’s general fund, according to the district.

But curating the collection isn’t just about LAUSD’s or Los Angeles’s past. It’s also about the future.

Romero and her team also keep tabs on ongoing renovation projects at school sites that could reveal new additions.

“We have so many schools, and each school has something,” Romero said. “Every school has some kind of history.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

More than half the money set aside by the city of Los Angeles for programs and services for unhoused people was not spent last fiscal year, according to an analysis by the city controller.

Los Angeles allocates more than $1 billion to agencies and initiatives responsible for helping the city’s unhoused population, which, at about 72,000 people, is among the largest in the nation.

In fiscal year 2025, the city left $473 million unspent.

These funds are intended to go to a variety of programs like emergency assistance for people facing eviction, substance abuse treatment and housing assistance, including shelter that can accommodate pets.

The controller provided several recommendations on how the city can better account for its homelessness budget, including spending housing grants in the same year they are reported, better communicating timelines to the public for when affordable housing will be available, and to analyze the budgets monthly to identify issues faster.

Most of the unspent money comes from special funds that roll over into the next year. But the discrepancy between budgeting in one year and spending another muddies the public’s ability to track how money is being spent on one of the city’s most pressing problems.

“The large homelessness budget leads the public to believe that the city is spending much more on homelessness than it actually is, increasing the public’s expectations and causing frustration when results inevitably do not align with the budget,” Controller Kenneth Mejia said in a prepared statement.

The city’s unhoused population has decreased slightly over the last two years even as it has increased about 18% nationally over that same time period. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has taken credit for recent drops in the city, one of the primary issues she’s focused on during her tenure.

Bass released a statement supporting the controller’s recommendations on how to better account for the funds.

“We are committed to transparency so Angelenos will have a clear picture and understanding of how much is being spent in one year and what funding is supporting programs over multiple years,” Bass said. “It’s important that we strategically spend funding over multiple years to ensure we can sustain progress despite state and federal changes.”

A spokesperson for her office told The LA Local that Bass has been committed to identifying ways the city can better address homelessness and supported the controller’s recommendations. But stopped short of providing concrete steps for what will be done next.

“She’s been cutting red tape in City Hall from day one and will back any serious proposal to ensure every dollar the City spends is clear, accountable, and effective,” the mayor’s press office wrote by email.

The L.A. controller’s analysis, released Monday, found that the largest share of unspent money came from a state housing grant. More than $223 million in Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) grants, which are issued by the California’s Department of Housing & Community Development, have yet to be used. 

A spokesperson for the state’s housing department told The LA Local that the HHAP grants are provided in multiyear rounds providing two-year windows for when they need to be used. That flexibility is part of what accounts for the delayed spending.

The second-largest amount was a little more than $99 million of unspent funds from Measure ULA, the city’s so-called “mansion tax” on property sales above $5 million. Those funds can also be retained and spent at a later date.

2025 was the second year in a row that the controller found a pattern of underspending homelessness funds. About $513 million went unspent in 2024, of the approximately $1.3 billion in funds set aside. This spending is particularly difficult to track because it comes from an array of sources and is distributed across a variety of agencies.

Mejia explained to The LA Local that tracking this spending was one of his priorities when he took office. His team created accounting codes, which hadn’t been done before, to better account for the money in various departments over several budget cycles.

“Once we started tracking homelessness spending, we were able to find out that the city wasn’t actually spending anything close to what it was budgeting for homelessness – for two years in a row,” Mejia said.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who represents District 4 and is running for mayor, said the budget included money set aside for a homelessness oversight bureau she helped create, but has not yet been staffed.

“Nearly a year later, not one staff member has been hired,” Raman said in statement attached to Mejia’s report. “Unless we are able to move with greater urgency to provide accountability to the public, Angelenos will lose faith that the city is spending these desperately needed dollars well.”

A Los Angeles jury on Wednesday found that Meta and Google were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $3 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis.

The jurors concluded that Meta and Google should pay the woman $3 million in compensatory damages, with Meta on the hook for 70% of that amount.

The jury also decided that Meta and Google's actions should trigger punitive damages, which means there will be a separate phase of the trial where the jury will decide what amount of damages are appropriate to punish the multi-trillion-dollar companies for their conduct.

As the verdict was read, the plaintiff, known only as Kaley, looked straight ahead stony-faced, while her lawyers shook their heads in approval. The lawyers for Meta and Google did not react to the jury's decision.

Joseph VanZandt, the co-lead lawyer for families and others suing social media companies, said Wednesday's judgement is a step toward holding Silicon Valley giants accountable. 

"But this verdict is bigger than one case. For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features. Today's verdict is a referendum — from a jury, to an entire industry — that accountability has arrived," he said in a joint statement with the plaintiff's legal team. 

A Meta spokesperson said the company disagrees with the verdict and is evaluating its legal options. Google did not immediately respond to the verdict. 

The verdict from a Los Angeles jury over the harms of social media comes a day after a separate jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million in damages for failing to protect young users from child predators on Instagram and Facebook. The New Mexico jury found Meta responsible for misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms, declaring that the tech company had flouted state consumer protection laws.

The blockbuster verdicts land against the backdrop of school districts and state lawmakers around the country limiting or banning phone use in schools. This week's verdicts mark the first time juries have decided that tech companies are at least partially liable for online and off-line dangers kids and teenagers encounter after incessantly using social media.

Over a more than month-long trial in Los Angeles, the jury of five men and seven women heard competing narratives about what role social media platforms played in the mental health struggles of a woman identified as KGM, or Kaley, a now-20-year-old from Chico, Calif., who said she first started using YouTube at 6 years old and Instagram when she was 11.

Lawyers for KGM argued that Instagram and YouTube were deliberately designed to be addictive and the companies knew the platforms were harming young people, while the tech companies countered that its services cannot be blamed for complex mental health issues.

KGM's legal team showed the jury internal documents from Meta in which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other executives described its efforts to attract and keep kids and teens on its platforms. One document said: "If we wanna win big with teens, we must bring them in as tweens," and another internal memo showed that 11-year-olds were four times as likely to keep coming back to Instagram, compared to competing apps, despite the platform requiring users to be at least 13 years old.

Under questioning about these documents, Zuckerberg told the jury that keeping young users safe has always been a company priority. "If people feel like they're not having a good experience, why would they keep using the product?" Zuckerberg said.

The trial is a test case, known as a bellwether, tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits brought by parents and school districts arguing that social media giants should be considered manufacturers of defective products for hooking a generation of young people to social media feeds.

Google and Meta are expected to appeal.

Throughout the case, the companies insisted that there is no scientific proof that social media causes mental health issues, suggesting that they are being used as a scapegoat for the multi-faceted emotional issues children face that can have many root causes.

Snap and TikTok were also defendants in the case, but both companies settled before the trial began.

This is a developing story and will be updated.
Copyright 2026 NPR

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved a plan that would allow mid-sized apartment buildings of up to four stories near train lines in certain areas zoned for single-family homes.

The move is a delay tactic meant to help the city put off full implementation of a state law that would allow much larger apartment buildings — some of them up to nine stories tall. The law, known as Senate Bill 79, is expected to take effect July 1.

Since before it was signed into law last year, SB 79 has drawn opposition from several members of the council, as well as L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, in keeping with a long-standing preference among many city leaders to leave untouched the three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land zoned for single-family homes.

On Tuesday, the council voted 13 to 0 (two council members were not present) to move forward with a plan that would encourage development of four- to 16-unit residential buildings in 55 areas of the city within a half-mile of transit stops.

The most affected areas include Central L.A., West L.A., the Eastside and parts of the San Fernando Valley, according to city officials.

Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, chair of the council’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee, described SB 79 as a “sledgehammer,” even though he said its goals — providing more housing options and reducing residents’ reliance on cars — were legitimate.

He said the option approved Tuesday is an alternative that focuses on local needs.

“Really, we want to see those alternatives, those thoughtful alternatives put in place as soon as we can,” he added. “Because ultimately that’s the way that we can meet the goals of SB 79 but do so in a less sledgehammer-y, less ham-handed way.”

How we got here

A provision in SB 79 allows cities to delay the law’s broadest effects until 2030, as long as those cities agree to allow more housing development in certain neighborhoods in the interim.

Last month, the city’s Planning Department produced a report containing three options (each with several sub-options) for consideration.

Blumenfield and Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky came up with a version of one of those options, which the council approved.

Yaroslavsky said SB 79 has flaws that have yet to be worked out, but the option considered Tuesday would allow construction of low-density apartments in single-family neighborhoods “for the first time in decades and some for the very first time ever.”

“We need more housing,” Yaroslavsky said. “What we decide today will shape what actually gets built across the city if we do it right.”

Other options would have reduced the number of affected areas or allowed taller builds.

Next steps

Yaroslavsky said the plan the City Council adopted Tuesday expands the Corridor Transition Program — a provision of the Citywide Housing Incentive Program — launched a little more than a year ago.

Although the program provides incentives for developers to build small, multi-family housing along transit corridors, no applications were submitted within its first year.

“Not because there’s no demand for this type of housing, but because the math doesn’t work,” Yaroslavsky said.

The new plan fixes some of the program’s problems, but not all of them, she said. For example, the Corridor Transition Program could be changed to increase allowable floor areas and update rules for three- and four-bedroom apartments, which are hard to find in L.A.

“If we expand this program today without fixing it, we’ll get additional zoning on paper and not necessarily housing in reality,” Yaroslavsky said.

She introduced a motion that she said focuses on making sure the homes “actually get built.” The motion was sent to the city’s Planning and Land Use Management Committee.