The Brief

With federal agents conducting more immigration-related arrests throughout Southern California, residents have been active, too, capturing on camera those detentions in their communities — by real agents and potential impersonators.

Peter Eliasberg, chief counsel for First Amendment rights at the ACLU of Southern California, said community members have a constitutional right to record government officials engaging in public duties: “Doesn’t matter if it’s LAPD, the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, ICE or Border Patrol.”

But being a bystander also means navigating moments that can take very quick turns.

LAist cannot offer legal counsel, but we have turned to civil rights experts for guidance about how to document these detentions safely and effectively.

What can bystanders record?

The public has the right to capture agents’ faces and license plates, Eliasberg said.

WITNESS, a nonprofit devoted to using video evidence to expose injustice, recommends gathering images of any documents that agents present, including warrants. Community members can also record badges, weapons and uniforms. Video of the context in which detention takes place — including street signs, landmarks and any cameras that might be affixed to nearby buildings — can be used to authenticate the footage and corroborate community members’ experiences.

How close can you be to law enforcement?

How far away must witnesses be while recording interactions between agents and detainees?

“There's no tape measure rule,” Eliasberg said. “You have a right to record, and you have a right to be pretty close. You just can't get in the way so much that you're interfering with what the officer's trying to do.”

Eliasberg also noted that there may be public safety reasons for law enforcement to close off an area, including crime scenes and disaster zones.

After federal immigration agents shot and killed Minnesota residents Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti, the national ACLU held an information session to provide guidance for observers. More than 76,000 people tuned in.

“A good rule of thumb would be that you want to be enough steps away from the officer that they would have to affirmatively walk towards you to be in physical contact with you,” said Byul Yoon, a fellow at the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “That's going to reduce the chance that they claim that you were interfering.”

WITNESS encourages community members to “film openly and comply with any instructions agents give you.”

But “if the agents tell you to stop filming, you can tell them: ‘I am exercising my right to document this arrest,'” a WITNESS instructional video adds. And if agents ask you to step back, “document yourself complying.”

Can you ask agents to identify themselves?

Given that agents continue to cover their faces, use unmarked vehicles and sometimes wear plain clothes, community members have increasingly demanded that they identify themselves. This, too, is permissible, Eliasberg said.

“The public has a right to ask: ‘Who are you? What is your name?’” he added. “They may not get an answer, but they have an absolute right to ask that question.”

If witnesses don’t get answers, Eliasberg said, “trying to take a photograph of the badge to see the name is a perfectly appropriate response.”

Can you ask detainees questions?

In videos circulating across social media, community members have also taken to asking detainees three questions:

1. What is your full name?
2. What is your birthday and year?
3. Who can we call?

Eliasberg said this is “absolutely permissible.”

At the ACLU of Southern California, he added, “we are hearing stories all the time where people are saying: ‘I have no idea what happened to my family member.’ I mean, literally, they've been snatched off the street, or they don't even know. They just don't come home one night.”

Can you remind detainees about their rights?

The public also has the right to tell people who are being arrested that they have rights, Eliasberg said. This includes the right to remain silent and not to sign any documents.

“You're simply informing them what their constitutional rights are,” he said.

Is it OK to record ICE from inside my car?

In some parts of the country, federal agents have set up traffic stops, then proceeded to ask drivers for proof of citizenship. In such situations, drivers can “absolutely” record these interactions, said Gloria Leal, general counsel of League of United Latin American Citizens, a nonprofit that works to advance the economic condition, educational attainment and civil rights of Latinos in the U.S.

But, “whenever possible,” Leal recommends observing and filming immigration agent activity on foot. The courts and law enforcement “generally treat vehicles as potentially deadly weapons, even when no harm is intended [by the driver],” she said.

If you’re in a vehicle and are approached by an immigration agent, she added, “you should not inch forward or reposition your vehicle without instruction. Do not block lanes, driveways, or sidewalks.”

Maribel Hernández Rivera, the ACLU’s national director of immigrant community strategies, offered another piece of advice: “Don’t record while driving.”

Yoon added: “If you're recording ICE from behind the wheel while you're driving and holding your phone, you could be pulled over or cited for breaking that law."

What if an agent takes away my phone?

If an immigration agent takes an observer’s phone, deletes their recordings or coerces them into sharing a password, those actions are a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment, Leal said.

In such situations, she added, an observer “should not physically resist.”

“They should state that they do not consent to the seizure or search,” she said. “They should [also] try to document the officer's identity, then seek legal counsel.”

WITNESS and Eliasberg emphasized that agents cannot take your phone if you're simply trying to record what's happening. They also can’t force you to delete your footage. But they may try anyway.

To help create a barrier, WITNESS recommends that witnesses lock their phones with a passcode, which are protected under the Fifth Amendment. (Fingerprint IDs and facial recognition are not.)

If you feel that your civil rights have been violated, you can seek help from organizations like the ACLU, which offers free services.

“The problem,” Eliasberg said, “is we don't necessarily have the resources to help everybody.”

How should I share my footage?

Community members typically share their footage with trusted media outlets, attorneys at civil rights organizations, or on social media. The state has also moved to track potentially unlawful activity by federal agents. Recently, the California Department of Justice launched a portal where the public can submit videos and photos. The portal asks community members to indicate whether their footage depicts excessive force, unlawful searches or arrests, or other civil rights violations.

In its tip sheet for filming immigration enforcement activity, WITNESS recommends securing consent from the arrestee “and/or direct representatives,” including members of that person’s family or their lawyer. WITNESS also suggests keeping a copy of the video file in a secure location, in case your footage is removed from social media.

If you’d like to share your footage with LAist’s investigative reporting team, you can do so by contacting editor Jared Bennett on Signal. His username is jbennett.18. You can also share it with watchdog correspondent Jordan Rynning, whose username is jrynning.56. For instructions on getting started with Signal,visit the app's support page. Once you're in the app, you can type their usernames in the search bar after starting a new chat.

How footage can help community members

The morning of June 17, Oscar Preciado went to a Walmart in Pico Rivera to pick up merchandise for his work as an Instacart shopper.

That day, 20-year-old Adrian Martinez was detained and taken by Border Patrol — even though he’s a U.S. citizen.

Preciado was in the parking lot. When he saw the agents appear, he whipped out his phone.

In a conversation with LAist, Preciado said he and other community members were recording the agents’ vehicles and license plates when he noticed that “they were throwing someone to the ground.”

Preciado ran over to capture what was happening.

“It was horrifying to witness,” he added. “The kid weighs 110 pounds, maybe, and he was being thrown around by these big guys.”

The federal government later said that Martinez was detained for punching officers. But after watching video footage, a federal judge said he threw no punches.

Martinez has since been released from custody on bond. He also lost his job. But he's home with his family.

Learn from a bystander: What is the experience like?

Since detentions by the Department of Homeland Security intensified in southeastern L.A. County, local resident Eric Eztli has been monitoring Home Depot parking lots and car washes. He keeps an eye out for suspicious vehicles, as well as for people who, in his view, are racially profiling and unfairly detaining his community members.

Last summer, Eztli went to a Home Depot in Huntington Park, bearing witness as men in sage green uniforms, with Border Patrol patches affixed to their sleeves, chased a day laborer. The agents’ faces were covered.

Eztli ran toward them and started to record the interaction on his cellphone.

In his video, Eztli is heard demanding that the agents show a warrant for the man’s arrest. They do not.

One of the agents tackles the day laborer to the ground. Then, three agents hold down the day laborer and handcuff him. As they tie his arms behind his back, one agent pushes the day laborer’s face into the dirt, first with his hand, then with his knee. Eztli repeatedly asks the day laborer for his name. The man manages to say “Jorge” before agents drag him away. “Jorge what?” Eztli shouts after him, trying to get his last name.

As the agents’ unmarked vehicles pulled away from the parking lot, Eztli recorded their license plate numbers.

The scene hurt to watch, he told LAist, but he wanted to gather as many details as he could. Some of it might be of use to Jorge.

“I was going to get his birthday, too, but they just took him very quickly,” Eztli said.

Eztli also meant to get a contact number so he could reach out to Jorge’s family and let them know he’d been detained. Full names and birth dates are also required to search for people in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s inmate locator system.

“I think it's important for the community to exercise their right to record and make sure that [agents] are being held accountable,” Eztli added. “But it's hard because they are hiding behind anonymity, so they can do whatever they want — that's why it feels so scary.”

The first day of fall semester for a university freshman is often stressful. Not for Vanessa Menera, an 18-year-old who’s the first in her family to attend college.

Last year, she arrived 15 minutes early to her first fall class with an internship and campus job already in tow, plus a mental map of Cal State University Dominguez Hills, a sprawling, nearly 350-acre institution in the Los Angeles area’s South Bay.

The already confident student possessed even more motivation to make the most of her time on campus because of a program she took last summer: The First-Year Experience Summer Program.

“Everything was so easy to me, and I'm really grateful, because I know it was because of that First Year Experience that I was able to do that,” said Menera.

The summer program is one of several strategies Cal State Dominguez Hills seeks to expand as it combats a half-decade enrollment slide that’s unraveling its finances. But it’s not the only approach to fiscal right-sizing. Nor is Cal State Dominguez Hills alone in combatting large drops in its student population.

That’s because the money that the country’s largest public four-year university system needs to properly educate its students isn’t there. Now, California State University is embarking on a detailed, sweeping plan to enroll more students as part of an all-out push to bring much-needed cash to the workhorse system of 22 campuses that educates 471,000 students.

Ten campuses, including Dominguez Hills, saw double-digit enrollment declines in fall of 2025 compared to fall 2020, when the first full academic year of the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The loss of enrollment is a major driver of the financial struggles many of the system’s campuses face. The Cal State’s chancellor’s office says the system is facing a $2.3 billion budget gap in the current academic year. There’s a bright spot, though: Cal State officials say the system overall is on pace this year to beat state enrollment targets for the first time in four years.

People walk past the exterior of the Innovation & Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Still, a key state lawmaker admonished the system’s under-enrolled campuses for missing its enrollment targets.

“I'm concerned that these campuses may be overfunded,” said Assemblymember David Alvarez, a Democrat from Chula Vista, at a December legislative hearing about Cal State’s finances. He is chairperson of the Assembly’s budget subcommittee on education and a key player in deciding how much state money universities receive. His worry? Other campuses with rising enrollments need the money to educate their ever-growing student body by hiring more professors, tutors and other staff to support students.

The state funds campuses based on how many Californians they enroll; by educating fewer students than what the state pays per student, the campuses are technically collecting more revenue than their enrollment levels would permit. That’s because the state pays schools for the number of California students they’re supposed to enroll, not how many they actually enroll.

By that measure, San Francisco State last year collected close to $50 million more in state dollars than its enrollment levels indicate it should receive — the campus enrolled about 5,300 fewer Californians than state goals stipulated in 2024. Cal State Dominguez Hills was taking about $7 million more. Conversely, Cal Poly Pomona was down about $20 million, because they enrolled 2,500 more students than the state’s target.

California is also eyeing multi-billion-dollar budget deficits, putting even more pressure on lawmakers and school systems to use money wisely.

The Legislature last year required Cal State to submit a report by March 1 detailing how campuses with enrollment struggles plan to attract new students and meet their state targets. Campuses sent their turnaround plans to the system’s chancellor’s office by December.

CalMatters conducted a dozen interviews and issued six records requests for this story.

Spotlight on Cal State Dominguez

Cal State Dominguez Hills’ enrollment is down 20% compared to 2020 and its finances have suffered. As a result, campus officials laid off 38 non-faculty staff and managers in 2025.

The school projects it will lose an additional $8 million this year, cutting deeper into its reserves, which have dwindled from $46 million in 2022 to a projected $10 million this summer.

The campus’ graduation rates fall below the systemwide average. And the campus historically has posted lower retention rates, meaning more students quit after one or two years compared to other campuses in the system. Dominguez Hill’s retention rate has grown in the last year, however.

The school enrolls the highest share of undergraduate students in the system who receive the federal Pell grant for low-income students — 69% compared to a Cal State average of 51%. Systemwide, those Pell students graduate at lower levels than students who don’t receive the grant.

Dominguez Hills’ turnaround plan includes a campus goal of enrolling about 800 more students to hit its enrollment target by 2027-28. More students plus planned systemwide tuition hikes and a new student-approved campus fee are projected to generate $25 million in additional money.

To reach its enrollment goals, the campus will lean on approaches that have demonstrated success, including the First Year Experience summer program, which Dominguez Hills started in 2022. Through the program, about a quarter of the freshman class enrolls in up to two free college courses during the summer before fall term. These are all general education courses required for graduation, with an emphasis on teaching students how to study well. The program also engenders a sense of community among students and campus staff.

Other strategies include attracting new students and keeping more of its current students. Another is to re-enroll students who’ve previously dropped out. It’s an approach that’s top of mind for campuses across the state: California is home to about 3.5 million adults with some college credit but no degree. Even a miniscule bump in the students who return to school could eradicate a campus’ enrollment woes.
Another budget-stabilizing effort may mean additional job losses. Campus professors are now meeting regularly to find ways to combine courses and run fewer sections of the same course. This helps the school average more students per course, but it’ll likely mean fewer lecturers — instructors who lack the full-time benefits and job safety of tenured professors.

Systemwide, 63 degree programs were discontinued by the Board of Trustees in 2024.

A student walks up the stairs in the Innovation and Instruction building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters Dominguez Hills in February reversed course on terminating six majors, including art history and philosophy. Student advocacy spurred the restoration. The school also determined that cutting individual programs made less sense than reviewing all majors to find other ways to integrate academic programs, said Kim Costino, the school’s interim provost, in an interview.

“Everyone is hopeful that we are going to be able to create a more economically efficient curriculum that serves students better,” said Terry McGlynn during an interview. He is a biology professor at Dominguez Hills who is chair of the academic senate, a faculty group that shapes campus academics.

But “there's clearly going to be some pain involved,” he added.

Summer session to keep students longer

The school cited in its report to the system that expanding the The First Year Experience program is one way to increase enrollment.

The campus spends $635,000 annually to run it. Almost 84% of students in the program advanced to their second year of college in fall 2024 — well above the 66% for students who didn’t sign up for the First Year Experience, according to data the campus shared. For a school desperate to undo its enrollment slide, keeping the students it has — and their tuition dollars — is a key strategy.

Any incoming freshman can enroll in the First Year Experience.

One reason Menera knew the campus so well when fall classes began? An extra-credit assignment for her environmental studies course over the summer required her to identify every vending machine on campus.

Student Vanessa Menera, 18, in the Innovation and Instruction Building at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson on Feb. 19, 2026. Photo by Zin Chiang for CalMatters The First Year Experience also features activities that reinforce what students learn, such as a field trip to a museum for an English course led by a guest author whose book the professor assigned to students. For her environmental studies class, Menera said that she carried a trash bag for more than a week to visualize how much waste people accumulate.

The school also awards a $150 scholarship to students who complete a summer-experience course. But for students who work over the summer or help care for family members, that amount alone may not be enough to persuade them to attend the program, said Costino. She ran the summer program until December.

The summer courses are long. Most meet twice weekly for four hours, so a student in two courses is in class for about 16 hours a week. Menera worked anyway that summer, maintaining the job she had during high school at TJ Maxx in Anaheim, some 20 miles from campus. She continues to work now, logging 17 hours a week at a campus convenience store on top of a full academic load. The summer program mentally prepared her for long school and work days, she said.

Costino thinks the program’s growth won’t be in students enrolling the summer before freshman year, but instead in students who earned a D or F in a course their first year and need to make up the class the following summer. While students can presently retake classes, they have to pay for them. Providing free make-up courses that either replace or average out a previous low grade helps the school retain more students who are on academic probation or just lost academic confidence after a bad first year, Costino said.

Re-enrolling students who dropped out

Cal State Dominguez Hills is seeking to expand its efforts to re-enroll students who’ve dropped out. Since 2021 the school has re-enrolled nearly 1,100 such students for fall term through its “Once a Toro, Always a Toro” program, named after the campus mascot.

While these students represent a tiny portion of the campus’ annual enrollment, they lead to instant revenue for the school from tuition and fees. It’s a few extra million dollars for the school, and it costs about $300,000 to $600,000 annually to maintain the re-enrollment program.

Once these students return to Dominguez Hills, most graduate. Data the campus shared with CalMatters show that earlier cohorts of the re-enrolled students have graduation rates of around 50% three years after they return. The numbers grow to about 70% after six years.

The school is now targeting any student who dropped out in the last 15 years or so, said Sabrina Sanders, the program director of Once a Toro.

She maintains a list of 10,000 formerly enrolled students. Annually, about 1,000 apply, around three-quarters are admitted, and roughly 300 to 400 enroll. Some who were admitted don’t enroll for several reasons, including prior low GPAs that make them ineligible for financial aid.

One of the students who returned is Wynette Davis. The 27-year-old is four classes away from finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology after dropping out two years ago.

Davis transferred to the university from community college in 2022. She was on track to earn her bachelor’s in 2024 and even walked the stage during the spring graduation ceremony, needing just a few more classes that summer to finish her degree. But tragedy struck: Her daughter’s father died in spring 2024, and the shock derailed her academics. That spring and summer, she failed four classes. Davis left as a result.

She tried to re-enroll a year later, but learned she owed the university tuition money and couldn’t qualify for financial aid because her failing grades dropped her below the campus’ threshold for aid eligibility. Davis was ready to give up on earning a bachelor’s until an email from Once a Toro entered her inbox.

A staffer with the program helped Davis receive a waiver for her past-due account balance as long as she promised to pass her classes for the year, Davis said. The staffer also worked with the school financial aid office to reinstate her eligibility for financial aid for her spring classes after her grades improved.

Last fall Davis retook the classes she previously failed, passing them all this time. She’s in two classes this spring and will need two more next fall to earn her bachelor’s degree.

“If it wasn't for the Once a Toro, Always a Toro program, I probably would not have been back in school right now,” Davis said.

Another setback is the changing nature of academic requirements. Students who were gone for a decade may have pursued majors that don’t exist or were heavily altered, so the courses they took toward their majors might not satisfy new requirements. Sanders and the school’s advising teams collaborate with academic department deans to convert the re-enrolling students’ old coursework into the updated expectations for existing majors. Or re-enrolled students pursue an interdisciplinary major that combines old coursework with new.

“There's a sense of shame that comes with dropping out of college and having someone there to kind of put those thoughts and put that inner dialogue to rest” was key, said Stephanie Esquivel, a returning student who re-enrolled in 2022 after leaving the campus her freshman year in 2007.

She credited Sanders with helping her transfer her community college units to her university major. To Esquivel, a team like Once a Toro shows that the campus desires returning students and invests in the social infrastructure to help them, she said.

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

David West raised four kids in Los Angeles working as a Hollywood cinematographer — no mean feat in such a pricey city. But a few years ago, his life took a hard turn.

"Everything went south. Divorce. My brother died," he said. "My dog died."

On top of that, a string of clients who'd hired him for decades also passed away.

Before long, he'd burned through cash and damaged his credit. He moved to Fresno, and now, at 72, West is in a situation he never imagined at this stage of life but one that more and more older people are facing: renting a room in the home of a complete stranger.

"I tried to move, like, an apartment's worth of stuff into a room," he said with a laugh at how impossible it seemed. "You know, how do you do that? I still haven't figured it out."

West looked into a housing subsidy, but his income is just over the limit, so he's grateful for the cost savings of a house share. His roommate, also an older man, covers Wi-Fi, utilities and cable. West volunteers his photography skills at the church where the man is involved and shares his Costco membership.

"It's that give-and-take thing," he said. "It's trying to help each other out as much as possible."

Roommates are skewing older

The high cost of housing means more people are being priced out of not only owning a home but also renting alone. The share of adults 65 and over looking to rent with a roommate has tripled in the past decade, according to the listings site SpareRoom.

"They're not the biggest group of roommates, but they're by far the fastest growing," said the site's communications director, Matt Hutchinson.

SpareRoom finds that roommates in general are skewing older. Young people are living with their parents longer, unable to afford moving out or simply trying to save up. Meanwhile, more people in their 50s, 60s and older are unable to make it on their own.

"Maybe 10 years ago they'd have looked at a one-bed or a studio and thought, 'Well, I'll rent that,'" Hutchinson said. Now "they're looking at prices and going, 'There's no way I could afford that.'"

Baby boomers have been aging as housing costs across the U.S. have spiked. In 2023, more than a third of households headed by adults 65 and over struggled to pay housing costs, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, and the share is even bigger for women living alone.

"Older adults are more likely to be housing-cost burdened than working-age adults, and that gets more severe with age," said Jennifer Molinsky, who researches aging and housing at the center. "It's climbed up the income scale. So more and more, you know, middle-income people are struggling with housing costs than ever before."

Older adults are also more likely to face major life events that can lead to financial strain. Caezilia Loibl, chair of the Consumer Sciences Program at Ohio State University, has researched the financial toll of chronic disease and the loss of a spouse at an older age.

"The shock is enormous," she said, "and we see it very clearly in our data how the debt burden goes up and financial vulnerability goes up." People were more likely to fall behind in debt payments, for example, see their credit score drop, file for bankruptcy and face foreclosure.

The upside of learning to live with less

Saving money may be the top reason that more older people are house-sharing. But some see other benefits.

"Oh, I think it's wonderful. Maybe more of the way people used to live," said Darla Desautel, who's 74 and has rented with roommates for years, though she's currently house-sitting in Minnesota.

She loves the flexibility of not being tied down and being able to move where she wants, and she thinks not living alone is healthier. She got along especially well with one roommate who also was an older woman.

"We had a lot in common, and that's pretty special when that works out," she said.

To be sure, there can be annoyances. One place was kept too cold in winter and too hot in summer. There can be smelly cat litter boxes or a roommate who talks on speakerphone in a common area. "Noise is huge. A lot of people think they're quiet when they're really not," she said.

If she could afford it, Desautel said, she would rent solo, though "with a short-term lease." But that would eat up more than half her income. In addition to receiving Social Security, she still works occasionally as a leadership consultant and coach, and she is a licensed secondhand dealer selling "other people's junk."

Desautel is proud that she has learned to whittle down possessions and live with less. "Right now I can move across country with 10 boxes shipped USPS and take a plane," she said.

For now, that's her plan, driving this time, to continue her house-sitting gig in Arizona for the summer. And when that ends, she'll find her next roommate.

In Los Angeles, the soundtrack is familiar. Car horns, the whine of leaf blowers.

But in the middle of Chinatown, another sound cuts through the din: the rhythmic hum of washers and dryers from a trailer parked outside the Alpine Recreation Center.

Chinatown hasn’t had a laundromat for as long as anyone around can remember. This mobile setup – run by the nonprofit The Laundry Truck LA – has become the neighborhood’s de facto laundromat, offering the service for free to locals, twice a week.

For 70-year-old Sam Ma, it’s been a relief.

Ma, a retired construction worker, picked up freshly-laundered items — two pairs of pants, a hat, and some socks, bundled in a white garbage bag for the bus ride home.

He usually washes his clothes by hand. But about two weeks ago, he was hit by a car. Bruises and cuts cover his hands, making it difficult to scrub heavier items.

“The things I can wash, I wash,” he said in Mandarin. “But these are too thick. It’s too hard.”

Rebel Fox of The Laundry Truck L.A. hands a garbage bag filled with newly-laundered sheets to a local.

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Nearby, Laundry Truck employee Rebel Fox checked him out with a clipboard after handing him his load.

“We help a lot of seniors out here,” Fox said. “And we offer folding services, too. It really helps people who don’t have the dexterity in their hands.”

The Laundry Truck started out in 2019 providing laundry services to people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles and has expanded to high-need communities, like Eaton Fire survivors.

In February, the nonprofit started operating in Chinatown under a year-long contract with Council District 1, showing up every Wednesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.

A sink or bathtub

Chinatown advocates say the lack of a laundromat is especially hard on low-income tenants living in older, neglected buildings.

“These landlords aren’t doing much to keep it updated,” said Sissy Trinh, executive director of the Southeast Asian Community Alliance.

Maintaining laundry rooms may require major plumbing upgrades and hookups that many landlords avoid.

Newly-constructed residential buildings are typically being constructed with in-unit laundry.

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Advocates say in buildings that do have shared coin-operated machines, they may be broken or in constant use. Many residents decide to launder clothes by hand — in sinks or bathtubs.

“In one building, the sinks were so small, people had to cut their sheets in half just to wash them,” Trinh said. “They’d wash one half, then the other.”

A reversal of access

Those who could benefit from a laundromat include seniors on fixed incomes, and workers living paycheck to paycheck, including garment workers and home health aides.

“You’re talking about low-income, financially-stressed households,” Paul Ong said.

Ong, who studies urban inequality at UCLA, says Chinatown reflects a broader pattern: as neighborhoods change, basic services can disappear.

Each pile of dirty clothes is labeled with customers' names.

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The neighborhood’s last full-service grocery store closed in 2019 after the property was sold to a developer. Meanwhile, new market-rate housing has gone up, catering to higher-income residents with amenities like parking and in-unit laundry.

“The irony is that historically, laundry was bread and butter for the Chinese community,” Ong said.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Chinese immigrants built livelihoods around laundry work — one of the few industries open to them at the time.

Nowadays, laundry options have become hard to come by.

Seeking a lasting fix

Residents without access to machines have to leave the neighborhood entirely to find a laundromat in Lincoln Heights or Echo Park, which has seen its own laundromats disappear.

Laundry can be spotted drying on balconies across Chinatown.

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“The long-term, permanent solution is that a laundry service opens up,” in the neighborhood, said Council member Eunisses Hernandez, who represents Chinatown.

Hernandez says constituents have asked for a laundromat from the time she was knocking on doors as a City Council candidate.

Hernandez, who is up for re-election this year, says the neighborhood could benefit from a community-run laundromat offering affordable services.

“If private industry is not making that investment in Chinatown then perhaps it’s up to the city – and the people of that neighborhood – to build something for them,” she said.

In the meantime, Hernandez has directed about $250,000 from her district — using TFAR payments from developers building larger projects — to cover a year of mobile laundry services.

The contract with the Laundry Truck runs through next February.

After that?

“We’ll keep filling the gap until we get to a permanent solution,” Hernandez said.

Could that solution be combined with housing?

Some community advisors to a new affordable housing project being developed on the northwestern edge of Chinatown have been pushing for a self-service laundry that would be open to other neighborhood residents, says Eugene Moy who sits on the advisory board of New High Village.

But any fix will take time. That project, Moy said, could be two years out from even breaking ground.

Taking a load off 

Back at the truck, the machines continue to spin. By mid-afternoon, nearly 18 loads of laundry are done.

The trailer for the LA Laundry Truck is set up outside the Alpine Recreation Center, across from Castelar Elementary School.

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Two months in, there are kinks to work out. How to get more residents to take advantage of the unit's capacity? Its machines can churn out 40 loads per shift.

There is also the question of whether some seniors are physically able to transport their laundry even a few blocks.

But the service is starting to get regulars. One woman on her second visit stood by the trailer, cradling just-washed clothes in her arms while clutching her daughter's teddy bear, now a sparkling white.

"If it keeps going, I'll keep coming," said the woman who gave her last name as Mo. "It's very convenient."

Her apartment building doesn’t have a laundry room. Sometimes she asks a friend next door if she can use theirs. With three children, the cost adds up quickly.

Thinking aloud, she calculated how much she saved that day.

About $8, she estimated — money she said could now spend on her kids.

There’s a fair amount of recreational activities Angelenos can do in and around the Los Angeles River like biking, walking, even kayaking, but did you know you can also dance in the dry river bed of a Los Angeles icon?

Adam Weiss, founder of the Gratitude Group leans over and DJs a set at his Los Angeles River dance party.

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Michael Marshall

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Michael Marshall

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Dancing in the sun

Adam Weiss is the founder of the Gratitude Group, a club that hosts various events across Los Angeles like dance parties at the River, a screen-free reading club at the Central Library and meditative sound baths at Elysian Park. That’s just this weekend alone.

Weiss has been hosting the free dance parties for about two years now. The locations vary. Previously he’s held them at the Elysian Park helipad.

“Everybody wants to dance, they're just waiting to be invited to dance, and then if you're a good DJ, you just keep the floor packed,” said Weiss, who also deejays these events. Lately it's been a lot of disco, funk and soul. Weiss also likes to keep the gatherings dry, meaning no drugs or alcohol. He thinks it makes people engage with each other more.

“So the focus really is on connection and dancing,” Weiss said.

Attendees of the Los Angeles River dance party move to the music.

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Michael Marshall

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Michael Marshall

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Ariana Valencia lives in Burbank and attended last month's dance party, also at the L.A. River. She says dancing in the middle of the concrete riverbed made the city feel like a playground that she could explore.

“I’d never been to the L.A. River prior to that. You think it’s just a little swampy little pond, but it was actually really full,” said Valencia. “I would have never thought that was in the middle of the city.”

Uniquely Los Angeles

Weiss says part of the appeal is not just getting people outside but to get them to experience Los Angeles differently.

At the last event, people walking or biking along the river path joined on a whim — some even brought their kids. Weiss says that’s exactly the kind of reaction he hopes for.

“ I want it to be family friendly. I want it to feel welcoming. I want it to be inclusive,” Weiss said. “My main thing is I just want people to actually dance. I think it feels good to dance.”

A woman and two children join in on the dance party.

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Michael Marshall

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Michael Marshall

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For Valencia that inclusiveness is part of the draw. She says she’ll be joining again this Sunday.

“Even though it wasn’t advertised as a dry event I think the fact that it was a family friendly kind of thing was appealing to me,” said Valencia.

Join the party

After the last dance party went viral, Weiss says more than 1,500 people have RSVP-ed for tomorrow's event. This compelled him to close reservations.

Weiss plans to hold the event every other week this Spring and Summer — taking place either at the River or the Elysian Field Helipad with its amazing view of the city.

Weiss wants to start branching out too, and is eyeing the Culver City Stairs as a possible location.

“ I just wanna bring people to cool interesting places to dance,” Weiss said.