Topline:
Succulents are very popular in Southern California, and clubs dedicated to the plants are thriving.
Why now: We hear from folks running these clubs why they've surged in popularity in recent years. Climate awareness and the pandemic have a lot to do with it.
Read on ... to find out more about one club in the area — the Los Angeles Succulent and Cactus Society, which got its start in the 1930s.
Palm trees might line the boulevards of Los Angeles. But when it comes to style and functionality — perhaps no other plant represents our city better than succulents.
They are great for our arid climate, almost impossible to kill and as trendy as they are commonsensical. Where once they were a rarity among the manicured lawns of Southern California, now they are a staple in yards and office cubicles.
And for the super fans, whose itch can not be scratched by cruising the succulent aisle at Home Depot, there are clubs built specifically around their botanical obsession.
"This is what we're talking about, people who go cross-eyed with lust when they see something that they would love to have as part of their collection," said Debra Lee Baldwin, a succulent expert in San Diego who runs a popular YouTube channel dedicated to the plants.
"We're talking about a whole different mindset here with these people appreciating the plants for different reasons from the stampede of the general public," she said.
Those are the folks who show up at the many local affiliates of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America. Perhaps unsurprisingly, according to Baldwin, Southern California is home to many of these meetups.
Artie Chavez is a former president of the Los Angeles Cactus and Succulent Society, which meets the first Thursday of every month (except December) in Reseda. The L.A. affiliate has around 250 members, but anyone can attend their monthly meetups, which bring in more than 50 people each time.
These gatherings are where people talk shop, get plant care tips and earn bragging rights. " Each month we pick a certain genus or a certain type of plant, and people bring in their plants and show them off and it's judged," Chavez said.
One highlight of the evening is the invited speaker. This month, the talk focused on the botanical diversity of Baja California Norte. In March, it was about the cacti and succulents in the Bolivian Highlands.
The club also holds workshops, plant swaps and plant sales — the next one is happening in mid-May.
Baldwin, who's been writing about succulents for more than two decades, says a variety of factors contributed to the spike in the plants' popularity.
"From the practical standpoint, you've got the drought," Baldwin said. "So people are, 'Let's get rid of the lawn,' but then nothing like that would've lasted if there wasn't a strong aesthetic appeal."
Then there is the cool factor. Baldwin said she knew succulents were going mainstream when she started spotting the plants at weddings.
" Brides like to have anything fresh, new and different. They want their wedding to stand out," Baldwin said. " So they're incorporating them in bouquets, and they're sitting on tabletops, and they're the things that people take home."
Third is the pipeline. "The rise in more varieties becoming more available out of South Africa, out of parts of Europe, and of course the local growers," said Baldwin, who lives in northern San Diego county, where the concentration of growers have made the area into an epicenter of the boom.
And as with so many things, the COVID-19 pandemic pushed the plants’ profile into another league.
"Before it was mostly people growing for landscaping or a collection that they kept outside," said Chavez with Los Angeles Cactus and Succulent Society. During the pandemic, "many more people in apartments started collecting plants, and cactus and succulents blew up during that time."
Our love affair with succulents may feel like a recent phenomenon, but the L.A. club dates to 1935.
The group was first called the Southwest Cactus Growers, before changing its name to Los Angeles Cactus and Succulent Society in 1947. The nucleus of the gathering started shifting north over the next few decades, said Chavez.
"When more people started to live in the Valley that were collecting plants and having nurseries, they started to meet in the San Fernando Valley," Chavez said.
The society was hobbyist in nature, but members were primarily in the nursery business. " There were people that were collectors and decided, 'Hey, we have all these plants. Let's start selling them,'" he said.
Chavez joined the club more than four decades ago, at age 14, after he landed a part-time gig after school at a nursery called Singers Growing Things near Cal State Northridge.
That business was hallowed ground for early succulent and cactus fans like Roxie Esterle. She and her husband were developing an interest in the plants when they walked into Singers one day.
" We fell in love with these crazy caudiciform plants, which we still really love. The other one was a Ficus palmeri," Esterle said.
Some 40 years later, she still has the receipt for the $7.50 they paid for one of the plants.
" That was like a lot," Esterle said of the purchase. "That was all we were willing to put out, you know."
But there was no turning back. Today, Esterle is the secretary of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America and a member of the L.A. affiliate.
This week, she's been in San Diego, hanging out with her compatriots for the national convention that is held every two years for its estimated 2,000 members.
"People have a collector gene and they genetically go to details and appreciate the minute differences between things. They like to classify, they like to organize," she said of the folks drawn to collecting succulents. "Another characteristic is I know a number of us like to take something that looks really scraggly and make it beautiful by cleaning it up and bringing it back to good health."
Like so many veteran collectors, Esterle has her “want list” to add to an already impressive collection of some 2,000 species at her home.
Plants aside, the one thing she really wants is for the succulent community to keep growing.
"One of my concerns is that it's hard to get younger people to join a group. They're used to everything being online," she said, even though younger succulent fans abound.
" Sharing information is really critical, and some of the senior members – I'm talking about 45-, 50-year members — have a tremendous amount of wisdom. So I would like to find a way to engage those people more."
Monthly club meeting
Date: Thursday, May 1
Time: Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
Location: ONEgeneration Senior Enrichment Center at 18255 Victory Blvd., Reseda
Spring cactus sale
Date: Saturday and Sunday, May 17 and May 18
Time: 9 a.m. to 3p.m.
Location: Tarzana Community & Cultural Center at 19130 Ventura Blvd., Tarzana
its big summer sale is the weekend of June 7 and June 8
The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency missed a Tuesday deadline to submit a federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.
The agency's interim CEO blamed the blown deadline on leadership turnover and competing demands on the finance team.
LAHSA officials say the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — or HUD — seems understanding. LAist reached out to HUD for comment but hasn't received any.
How we got here: An outside auditor said LAHSA was supposed to turn over its financial statements around December but didn't submit them until March. The auditor's draft report also flags a "significant deficiency" in how LAHSA detects accounting errors — a finding LAHSA may contest.
What's next: On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit would be filed within the next few weeks.
LAHSA also said it has tapped accounting firm KPMG to overhaul its financial systems. The agency's interim CEO acknowledged that the current system "is not working at all."
The Los Angeles region’s homelessness agency will miss a Tuesday deadline for submitting its federally required annual audit of the agency’s financial records, which could jeopardize its federal funding.
LAHSA executives blamed the delay on a “perfect storm” of leadership changes and competing priorities within LAHSA’s finance department, including an L.A. County review of LAHSA’s delayed payments to contractors.
“Our staff made a good-faith effort to meet the deadline,” interim CEO Gita O’Neill said at a LAHSA Commission meeting Tuesday. “However, over the past year, we've experienced several transitions. As a result, we could not get all the required materials to the auditors as quickly as needed.”
Each year, LAHSA, like all non-federal agencies and organizations that get substantial federal dollars, is required to hire an outside auditor to determine whether it’s properly tracking and reporting the taxpayer funds it manages.
LAHSA’s single audit report for last fiscal year was due March 31, nine months after fiscal year 2024-2025 ended. Earlier this month, LAHSA officials said they were on track to meet the March 31 deadline.
Justin Measley, lead auditor for the firm CliftonLarsonAllen, had warned that LAHSA was months behind schedule turning over records.
At a meeting Tuesday, Measley explained that because of LAHSA’s earlier delays, the firm would need at least an additional week to complete a quality-control review process.
“We’re moving at the fastest pace we possibly can,” Measley said.
On Tuesday, LAHSA officials said the single audit will be filed “at the earliest possible opportunity,” within the next few weeks.
LAHSA manages hundreds of millions of federal dollars each year, through grants from the U.S. Office of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.
O’Neill said the agency has been communicating with HUD officials regularly about the missed audit deadline and is “hoping for understanding.”
Janine Lim, LAHSA’s deputy chief financial officer, said she’s also been talking with HUD.
“They seem amenable to our situation and to our stated timelines,” Lim said. “So, we are hopeful that this will be a good outcome, despite having missed the deadline.”
HUD did not immediately respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday.
Measley said LAHSA’s financial statements should have been turned over around last December, but LAHSA only submitted them this month, after blowing through multiple extended deadlines.
Measley said he contacted LAHSA’s governing commission about the overdue documents March 3.
He said he also previewed his firm’s findings, noting one “significant deficiency” in its draft report, related to LAHSA’s timeliness in detecting accounting errors.
LAHSA could contest those findings, officials said. That would add additional back-and-forth between the homelessness agency and accounting firm before the audit report is ready to file.
Justin Szlasa, a LAHSA commissioner who chairs the audit subcommittee, told LAHSA’s CEO he’s concerned that there was no time provided for LAHSA’s governing body to review the audit report.
“Next year, we will absolutely do that,” O’Neill responded. “I think this year, we were under the gun, and so we felt it was the most important thing was to get it uploaded on time.”
O’Neill said the agency hired accounting firm KPMG to help modernize LAHSA’s financial systems, with a focus on its contractor payments.
“We have an outside, trusted voice to help us create a system that works going forward because the system we have is not working at all, in finance,” O’Neill said.
Topline:
President Donald Trump has escalated his efforts to influence American elections, signing an executive order that the White House says seeks to create a list of confirmed U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state and use the U.S. Postal Service to "verify" mail ballots are for voters.
Why it matters: Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and mail voting fraud. The executive order comes as Trump's Justice Department is seeking sensitive voter data from states, and is engaged in more than two dozen lawsuits for that data. The administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. The order also comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements. That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.
What's next: Trump said he believes the order is "foolproof." But election experts have already said the order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — would face immediate legal challenges.
Updated March 31, 2026 at 20:44 PM ET
President Trump on Tuesday escalated his efforts to reshape American elections, signing an executive order that seeks to create lists of U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote in each state, and instructing the U.S. Postal Service to send mail ballots only to verified voters.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he believes the order is legally "foolproof." But election experts said the order was unconstitutional, and voting rights advocates and Democratic state officials quickly pledged to sue to block the order from going into effect.
A previous executive order on elections, signed about a year ago, has been blocked by federal judges who said the president lacked the constitutional authority to set voting policy.
The Constitution says the "Times, Places and Manner" of federal elections are determined by individual states, with Congress able to enact changes.
"This Executive Order is a disgusting overreach from the federal government and shows how little the Trump Administration understands about election administration," Adrian Fontes, the Democratic secretary of state of Arizona, said in a statement Tuesday. "We will not let this order stand without a fight and will meet the federal government in court," he added.
Arizona is among more than two dozen states Trump's Department of Justice has sued over access to sensitive voter data.
The Trump administration claims it needs the data to enforce states' voter list maintenance. Federal judges in three states have dismissed the Justice Department's lawsuits in those states.
In another case, a DOJ official admitted in court last week that the department plans to share that voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, to run it through the so-called SAVE system to search for noncitizens.
NPR has reported that some U.S. citizens have also been inaccurately flagged by SAVE.
Trump has long railed — baselessly — about widespread illegal voting by noncitizens and fraud associated with mail ballots.
The new executive order — which was first reported by The Daily Caller — takes aim at both.
It instructs the Department of Homeland Security, working in conjunction with the Social Security Administration, to "compile and transmit to the chief election official of each State a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State."
The order then "requires the USPS to transmit ballots only to individuals enrolled on a State-specific Mail-in and Absentee Participation List, ensuring that only eligible absentee or mail-in voters receive absentee or mail-in ballots," according to a White House fact sheet.
Trump's executive order claims that "additional measures are necessary" to secure voting by mail, a form of voting he has used himself — including last week — but also falsely maligned for years. In the 2024 general election, nearly a third of all voters cast mail ballots.
The Postal Service should also review the design of mail ballot envelopes to protect "the integrity of Federal elections," the order says.
Collectively, the provisions would be a significant change to how mail ballot programs are currently administered in American elections, which are largely carried out by state and local officials.
"Our government's citizenship lists are incomplete and inaccurate. The United States Postal Service is overburdened and inadequate. This combines a car crash with a train wreck," the Brennan Center for Justice, which advocates for expanded voting access and sued to block Trump's 2025 election executive order, said in a statement.
Rick Hasen, an election law expert at UCLA, wrote on his blog that the order is likely unconstitutional. And regardless, he added, "the timing here makes this virtually impossible to implement in time for November's elections. … It seems highly unlikely any of this could be implemented for 2026, even if it were not blocked by courts."
The order comes as Trump pressures Republicans in Congress to pass the SAVE America Act, a sweeping election overhaul that would impose new voter identification and documentation requirements.
That bill is stalled in the Senate due to Democratic opposition and the legislative filibuster.
The Supreme Court is also expected to rule this year on whether Mississippi should be allowed to count mail ballots that are postmarked by Election Day but received by election officials after Election Day.
The legal challenge, which could have sweeping implications for mail voting nationwide, was filed by the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.
What’s new: In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.
Why it matters: Federal officials have highlighted the arrests of the “worst of the worst” in the immigration raids that began in June, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but haven’t published the details of the number of people who had criminal records.
Federal immigration officials arrested more than 14,000 people in the greater Los Angeles area in 2025 — the majority of whom had no criminal record, according to an LAist analysis of new data from the Deportation Data Project.
The data project, an initiative between UCLA and UC Berkeley, publishes federal data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
In 2025, federal officials arrested 14,394 people, up from 4,681 the year prior. Forty-six percent of people arrested had criminal convictions, 15% had pending charges, and 39% had no criminal charges or convictions.
In a December news release, the Department of Homeland Security said it had arrested more than 10,000 people in the L.A. area since immigration raids began in June of last year, including "murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and armed carjackers,” but did not publish details of the number of people who had criminal records.
The data from the Deportation Data Project shows that arrests in L.A. spiked in June, and about two-thirds of people arrested that month had no criminal convictions.
More than 313,000 people were arrested by ICE nationwide in 2025, according to an LAist analysis.
In a statement, a DHS spokesperson said the agency has not “verified the accuracy, methodology or analysis of the project and its results” and said “this only reveals how data is manipulated to peddle the false narrative that DHS is not targeting the worst of the worst.” The spokesperson said 61% of people ICE arrested across the country either had criminal convictions or pending charges.
The agency has regularly published press releases identifying people they have arrested and who they have called “the worst of the worst,” including from the raids in L.A. in June. But an LAist investigation and reporting from other outlets has found that some of the people on those lists already has been in custody and were serving lengthy sentences.
Topline:
Small businesses struggling financially in the neighborhoods of the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park could qualify for to help pay the bills.
About the grants: Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open. Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.
Who is eligible: To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out.
Read on . . . for information on how to apply.
Small businesses struggling financially have another program they could qualify for to help pay the bills.
The program is for businesses in Council District 1, which includes the neighborhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union, Westlake, MacArthur Park and Highland Park.
Individual brick-and-mortar businesses can qualify for grants ranging from $5,000 to $10,000, while street vendors can receive about $3,000, according to city officials. A total of $400,000 is available through the program, and applications are now open.
Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez announced the program’s goal, describing it as a way to support locally owned businesses navigating rising operating costs, shifting customer patterns, and the impacts of recent wide-scale events, like the ongoing immigration raids, along with wildfires, and broader economic uncertainty.
The program is open to independently owned businesses and street vendors located within District 1.
To qualify, businesses must have a valid Los Angeles business license and have been operating in Council District 1 since December 2020, with some flexibility for street vendors. They also need to show they’ve been financially impacted by any largescale events, like the COVID pandemic, immigration enforcement, or the broader economy. Businesses that changed owners can also apply if they’re essentially running the same operation.
Grants can be used for daily operational expenses, including rent, payroll, utilities, overhead and other business costs. Roochnik said the funding could also help businesses cover missed rent payments.
The grants will be distributed in partnership with the PACE Business Development Center and New Economics for Women. The two organizations provide support to small and immigrant-owned businesses across Los Angeles.
Funding will be distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, with applications remaining open until funds run out, Roochnik said.
Hernandez said the program is meant to help stabilize neighborhoods that have been affected by immigration enforcement and economic hardships.
“These small businesses are the backbone of our neighborhoods,” she said, adding the funding is meant to help them “stay open, keep workers employed, and continue serving our communities.”
Naomi Villagomez Roochnik, CD1 communications director, said the announcement was made during a press conference at Delicias Bakery and Some, a longtime Latina-owned business in Highland Park. The neighborhood has experienced significant rising rents due to gentrification and the location was meant to highlight the kinds of businesses the program is meant to support.
To apply, small businesses and vendors can complete the application at bit.ly/cd1smallbizsupport.
The grant is part of a pilot program, with the possibility of it expanding depending on demand and outcomes. The council office has launched similar aid efforts in the past, Roochnik said, such as food distribution and rental assistance.
Businesses that may not qualify for this specific grant can be connected to other resources, according to Roochnik, including the city’s legacy business program, which is for businesses operating for at least 20 years.
The post Small businesses, vendors struggling against ICE raids, economic uncertainty eligible for up to $10,000 in grants appeared first on LA Local.
