The Brief

District Attorney George Gascón came under withering criticism during a debate in downtown Los Angeles Thursday night that featured 10 of the 12 candidates vying to be the county’s top prosecutor.

Gascón instituted a sweeping set of reforms after he was elected in 2020. Many of them focused on reducing penalties for people convicted of crimes. He said it was an effort to reduce mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal justice system.

“What I will continue to do if I were to be honored with being reelected is continue (with a policy) that cares for the victims of our community and does so in a thoughtful and intelligent way,” Gascón said at the debate.

But his opponents argued that the incumbent’s reforms had made Angelenos less safe. One — Nathan Hochman, a criminal defense attorney and a former Republican candidate for California attorney general — said the changes had heralded a “golden age of criminals,” because they were spending less time behind bars.

Other candidates agreed.

“The social experiment that Mr. Gascón has been engaging with is not working,” said Eric Siddall, a deputy district attorney and one of four of Gascón’s own prosecutors running to unseat him. Siddall said serious offenders are being treated too leniently.

Superior Court Judge Debra Archuleta, a former prosecutor, said Gascón’s policies have eroded public safety.

“The question, ladies and gentlemen, is: Are we safer than we were three years ago? Unequivocally we are not,” she said.

Fears about safety are up, violent crime is down

According to a Gallup poll released in November, fear for personal safety is at a three-decade high around the country. The poll found 40% of Americans said they would be afraid to walk alone at night within a mile of their home. Gallup has been asking that question since 1963.

Gallup’s annual crime poll also found 77% of Americans believe there is more crime in the U.S. than a year ago.

“We have a society right now in Los Angeles who feels really unsafe,” said Jon Hatami, one of Gascón’s deputy district attorneys. He promised to prosecute people “to the fullest extent of the law.”

But crime is trending downward, according to criminologist Jeff Asher. FBI third-quarter national data last year found violent crime fell 8% while property crime fell 6.3% in 2023 compared to 2022, according to Asher. Violent crime nationally has trended downward for at least 30 years according to FBI data.

Los Angeles Police Department data show violent crime is down 10.8% and property crime is down 18% year to date from two years ago.

At the debate, Gascón pointed to this as evidence his policies work.

“We have seen crime coming down not only in our community but we’re seeing crime going down nationwide, at the same time we have continued with the reform effort,” said Gascón, a former LAPD assistant chief who was also district attorney in San Francisco.

Challengers said his more lenient approach to crime has created an atmosphere of impunity in L.A. County as evidenced in part by “smash and grab” robberies by groups of people caught on videotape. There have also been several high-profile cases where people who committed serious crimes received relatively light sentences.

“We have to restore the public’s trust that we are doing the job that we have to do to keep them safe,” said Deputy District Attorney Maria Ramirez. She called Gascón’s policies “pro-criminal.”

Gascón said his office is prosecuting violent crimes, including violent misdemeanors, “at the same rate” as previous district attorneys.

“We are dealing with organized retail theft, we are dealing with fentanyl,” he said. “The reality is that all of that work is being done and will continue to be done if I were to be reelected.”

Prosecuting misdemeanors

One of Gascón’s policies is aimed at misdemeanor crimes. His office declines to file charges involving 13 categories of low-level misdemeanors, including driving on a suspended license, drug and paraphernalia possession, and public intoxication. The policy calls for misdemeanor charges only when there are extenuating circumstances, like repeat offenses.

Gascón has said many people accused of misdemeanors are unhoused, drug-addicted and/or mentally ill, and that prosecuting them is unfair and has minimal effect on public safety.

Craig Mitchell, a Superior Court judge and former prosecutor and high school teacher, said he would prosecute misdemeanors. “Police are turning a blind eye to so many crimes because they know nothing is going to happen even if they bring the case to the district attorney,” he said.

“We need to figure out how to get people who are engaged in low-level crimes into the criminal justice system so that those who are crying out for mental health treatment, for addiction treatment, can actually be encouraged to obtain such treatment,” he said.

Many of the other candidates echoed a similar sentiment, saying the D.A.’s office should use the prosecutions of unhoused people who commit crimes to steer them into social services in exchange for dropping criminal charges.

Almost all of the candidates said they would generally seek tougher penalties than Gascon.

“I will repeal any vestige and replace any vestige of the original directives issued by George Gascón,” said John McKinney, a deputy district attorney. “Much of what he imposed upon us … were a set of one-size-fits-all blanket policies.”

Leadership in the district attorney's office

The policies have outraged many in the district attorney's office, where individual prosecutors have far less discretion and morale is said to be at an all-time low.

“The office is in crisis,” said Siddall, who presented himself as part of “a new generation of prosecutors” who neither embraces Gascón’s more liberal policies nor wants to “to turn back the clock” to policies that fuel mass incarceration. He said he would focus his attention on the small percentage of people who commit violent crimes, if elected.

Some candidates at the debate argued they would be tougher on crime than the rest.

“I’m law and order. I’m conservative,” said retired Superior Court Judge David Milton, the only registered Republican running in the non-partisan race. Milton said Gascon is part of a national movement of liberal prosecutors.

“Their aim is to destroy our constitutional democratic republic,” he said. “Gascon is moving in the direction of socialism and communism.”

Former federal prosecutor Jeff Chemerinsky focused less on Gascón and instead promised to increase cooperation between the district attorney’s office and local law enforcement.

“I’d collaborate with law enforcement and restore the sense of partnership that I think right now is lacking,” Chemerinsky said.

He was the only challenger to agree with Gascón that Proposition 47 need not be amended. The 2014 voter-approved measure reduced six crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, including simple drug possession petty theft under $950.

Gascón was a co-author of the measure.

Two candidates — criminal defense attorney Dan Kapelovitz and San Bernardino Deputy District Attorney Lloyd Bobcat Masson — did not attend the debate. Kapelovitz said he was not invited. The sponsor, LA Magazine, did not provide a reason why.

The Newport Beach City Council is considering demolishing part of its quirky, beloved sculpture garden in Civic Center Park to make way for a new police station.

The city has been trying to figure out how to replace its aging police headquarters for years. It bought a property in 2022 with that intent. But an ad hoc City Council committee decided, controversially, it might be better to instead build a new station on the parkland next to city hall.

What’s so great about the sculpture garden?

The sculpture garden is a “museum without walls” treasured by art and nature lovers alike. It houses the quirky and once-controversial “Bunnyhenge,” included on the popular Atlas Obscura travel guide. Opponents of putting a new police headquarters on park grounds say it would compromise the environment, and decimate the sculpture garden.

What do supporters of the new station idea say?

Supporters say the current police station, built in 1973, is long overdue for an upgrade, and that the police force needs more space for things like servers to store digital evidence. The council ad hoc committee that studied the issue says the Civic Center parkland makes the most sense for a new building because the city already owns the land, and it would consolidate the city’s main services in one place.

Is it a done deal?

Far from it. The City Council is holding a study session Tuesday to present the plan publicly and gather input. If the council decides to go forward, the next step would be to hire a consultant to design the building and get started on an environmental impact report.

Here’s how to learn more and weigh in:

A new exhibit in L.A. — Vehicles of Expression: The Craft of the Skateboard — arrives this weekend, highlighting the cultural impact, history and artistry of handmade skateboards.

It’s the latest exhibit at Craft in America Center, a museum and library that highlights handcrafted artwork.

Todd Huber, skateboard historian and founder of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame, said before 1962, it wasn’t possible to buy a skateboard in a store.

“Skateboarding started as a craft,” Huber said on AirTalk, LAst 89.3’s daily news program. “Somewhere in the 50s until 1962, if you wanted to sidewalk surf, as they called it, you had to make your own out of roller skates.”

What to expect

Emily Zaiden, the director and lead curator of the Craft in America Center based in Los Angeles, told LAist’s AirTalk the exhibit was tricky to curate.

“What we wanted to do was focus on both the history and then expand into how this has been an object that people have interpreted in so many different ways since the very beginning,” Zaiden said.

Artists who craft skateboards not only think of design, but also of the features that give riders the ability to do tricks, such as wheelies and kickflips.

“The ways that people have constructed boards, engineered boards, design boards … people are really renegade, which I think is really the spirit of skateboarding overall,” Zaiden said. “This very independent, out-of-the-box approach and making boards that allow them to do all kinds of wacky tricks and do all kinds of things that no one imagined possible physically with their body, but through the object of the board.”

Know before you go

The exhibit at Craft in America Center opens to the public on Saturday. Admission is free. The museum is open from noon to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Plans to redesign a stretch of Pico Boulevard with protected bike lanes are moving forward, with construction expected to begin later this year. The lanes are slated to open in spring 2027, just in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics. 

The project would reconfigure about 3.4 miles of Pico between Crenshaw Boulevard and Figueroa Street, adding protected bike lanes, new crosswalks and other street improvements along a major east-west corridor through central Los Angeles.

Drivers and pedestrian would notice some important changes to the street when the project is complete. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation’s changes will allow cyclists to ride in lanes separated from traffic by barriers or curbs. LADOT will also install new traffic signals at Manhattan Place and New Hampshire Avenue, while also shortening the distance pedestrians need to travel to cross Pico Boulevard.

Additionally, sidewalks and curb ramps that are in poor condition will undergo repairs.

City officials say the changes are aimed at improving safety along the corridor.

Between 2014 and 2023, authorities reported 75 crashes on Pico Boulevard that resulted in severe injuries or deaths, according to city data. Pedestrians were involved in 52 of those crashes, and all 11 fatalities along the corridor during that period were pedestrians.

Plans to redesign a stretch of Pico Boulevard with protected bike lanes are moving forward, with construction expected to begin later this year.

About 12% of injury crashes involved cyclists, according to the latest data.

The bicycle lane proposal would also bring changes to parking along the corridor.

About 270 of the roughly 480 existing street parking spaces along Pico Boulevard would be removed to make room for the protected bike lanes, most of them on the north side of the street. LADOT officials plan to add some parking on nearby side streets where possible and extend parking hours for about 95 existing spaces along the street.

Drivers could see slightly longer travel times, according to officials. LADOT spokesperson Colin Sweeney said the new configuration could add roughly one to two minutes of travel time per mile during peak traffic periods. 

“The department does not expect significant spill-over as a result of these changes but will evaluate the corridor following the project and can respond to such activity with signal timing adjustments and turn restrictions to prevent cut through activity,” he said in a statement.

The transportation department conducted outreach last year with an online survey that received more than 1,100 responses. According to the department, 74% of respondents said they preferred a protected bike lane over a standard painted lane.

The department said an updated project fact sheet and a feedback form in English, Spanish and Korean will be posted on its website later this month. 

The post A dangerous stretch of Pico Boulevard is getting a major redesign appeared first on LA Local.

The apartment building planned on East Morris Avenue in Modesto is exactly the kind of thing that California’s political leaders want to see a whole lot more of: The project promises 44 units of affordable housing — half reserved for people without homes. It’s received zoning approval, weathered public feedback, earned the support of local elected officials and sits beside a busy bus line. Once built, the project promises on-site mental health services, job training and Zumba classes.

What the project lacks is money.

Having quilted together a financial patchwork of local government and corporate grants, private debt, and a plot of land donated by a foundation, it remains just shy of the total needed to break ground.

Six years and 13 funding applications after it was first proposed, the Morris Village project sits ready, but waiting.

An estimated 39,880 affordable units across California are stuck in financial purgatory, according to a new report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national nonprofit that funds, consults and advocates for affordable housing. That’s 461 “shovel-ready developments” that, like the one on East Morris, are fully designed, legally green-lit and backed with a significant — but still insufficient — amount of money.

Many have “been sitting for a year or two waiting for funding,” said Justine Marcus, policy director for Enterprise’s Northern California office and one of the report’s co-authors. “There’s no exit route right now. It’s a bottleneck.”

For many developers and affordable housing advocates, that bottleneck represents an especially frustrating inconsistency of California public policy. Lawmakers are desperate to see the state build more homes — of all kinds, but especially for people with the least ability to pay the state’s exorbitant rents. State housing regulators have ordered local governments to plan for the construction of an additional 2.5 million units by the end of the decade. One million of those are supposed to be for people making less than 80% of each region’s median income.

As a general rule, that’s a population of hard-up renters that the private market has been unable to profitably serve at scale. To fill that gap, non-profit low-income housing developers typically turn to taxpayer-funded support. At the moment, according to the report, there isn’t enough of that to go around.

Enterprise took publicly available but hard-to-parse applicant lists from seven subsidy programs administered by various wings of California’s state government going back three years. With a combination of number crunching and a little inference, the report estimates that clearing the current backlog would require an extra $4.1 billion, split between state administered grants, low-cost loans and tax write-offs.

Once awarded, this final layer of state subsidy has to be spent in relatively short order. That means this list of 39,880 units comprise a group of affordable housing projects that are all but ready to go, said Marcus. “They kinda have to have their (stuff) together.”

Case in point: Two-thirds of the projects on the list have already received support from at least one other state program. Those dollars aren't awarded to just any developer, said Betsy McGovern-Garcia, vice president of Self-Help Enterprises, one of two non-profits behind Morris Village.

“These are all projects that are close to amenities,” she said. “These are all projects providing resident services. These are all projects that are financially feasible...They are all meeting the bar for what we want to see as a state out of our affordable housing community.”

In February, McGovern-Garcia and her colleagues applied for a final round of financial support from the state “to close the gap” and finally start construction.

“We are optimistic this might be our round,” she said in an interview, her fingers crossed.

A moving bottleneck

California has seen gridlock in affordable housing production before, but the precise location of the traffic jam has changed over time.

When Nevada Merriman was leading a team of affordable developers in Silicon Valley a decade ago, she said local approval was the major hold-up. Getting the legal okay to build low-income housing on a particular site in a particular town required developers to run a gauntlet of planning department and city council meetings, win over hostile neighbors with costly concessions, community meetings and design revisions and to fend off the ever-present possibility of litigation. Because relatively few projects survived that ordeal, the competition for funding on the other side wasn’t especially stiff, said Merriman, who is now policy advocate for MidPen Housing, an affordable developer in San Mateo County.

That began to change earlier this decade. California lawmakers began passing laws overriding these local impediments — especially for affordable projects. All of a sudden more projects were clearing those early regulatory hurdles and competing for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, the federal government’s signature affordable housing construction subsidy. The bottleneck moved further up the road.

But then that too began to change late last year. Buried in President Donald Trump’s signature tax bill from 2025 was a significant boost to the tax credit program. (Specifically, the law increased the total supply of one type of credit while allowing another kind to be spread out over twice as many projects).

Which brings us to the latest bottleneck.

Now projects can get through local approval. They can more easily acquire the final and most important layer of federal financing. But project sponsors typically can’t apply for that until all other financial holes are plugged.

“We’re looking for state sources to fill that gap,” said Merriman. “We want to make sure we don’t leave those federal sources on the table.”

MidPen currently has 1,198 units spread across seven developments waiting for that last bit of funding, she said. “Should there be a source…there’s a pipeline that is ready to go.”

“There’s no exit route right now. It’s a bottleneck.”Justine Marcus, Northern California policy director, Enterprise Community PartnersCalifornia’s last major infusion of public affordable housing dollars came in the form of a voter-approved bond in 2018. That well has run dry. A hodgepodge of funding streams remain.

Adding together funding that has already been approved by legislators but not yet spent and a variety of other state and federal sources, California’s Housing and Community Development department says at least $1.8 billion should be available for affordable developer applicants this year. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal for the coming fiscal year doesn’t include any new discretionary spending beyond that.

Boosters of more funding have reasons to be optimistic. Newsom has taken such an austere posture in early budget negotiations before only to have the Legislature successfully pour hundreds of millions of dollars of affordable housing subsidies back into the final budget agreement.

California lawmakers are also considering a record-breaking $10 billion affordable housing bond for the 2026 ballot. If a majority of voters go for that, “we’d be off to the races,” said Merriman.

Cutting costs

One way to get more affordable housing built is by spending more money. The other is trying to make the existing money go further by cutting costs.

The cost of affordable housing construction is notoriously high in California: A 2025 study estimated that tax credit-financed projects here cost two- to four-times the amount of comparable projects in Colorado and Texas. There is no single reason for this disparity. Land costs in California are significantly higher. So too, often, is the cost of labor. Regulatory barriers like restrictive zoning, slow permitting and stiff impact fees are frequently named as culprits. Sometimes old-fashioned construction methods and materials get blamed.

But there’s also the cost of just waiting around.

A typical affordable development in California will have two or three public funding sources, with some drawing on six or more. Many of these sources are awarded on their own timelines. Each has its own program-specific requirements that can take time to meet. Some are conditional on the receipt of another. As time goes by, developers still have to make payroll, pay interest on pre-construction loans and watch as inflation drives construction costs up further. As delays compound, funding sources that have already been secured might expire, setting things back further.

Each additional funding source delays the start of construction on a project by an average of four months, adding an extra $20,460 per unit, according to an analysis by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley.

The Newsom administration is currently tinkering under the hood of California’s affordable housing finance system in an effort to speed things up.

Last year, the governor proposed the creation of the state’s first ever cabinet-level housing agency. The California Housing and Homelessness Agency is scheduled to take over the state’s disparate housing loan and grant programs. The governor’s office also proposed legislative language that would force the new agency and the Treasurer’s Office to operate in tandem, giving affordable housing developers a single place to apply for the state’s various funding programs — and to cut out some of the time they spend stuck in line.

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