The Brief

The L.A. City Council has taken a step toward reactivating a zoning code that could prohibit the construction and operation of private detention centers for unaccompanied children.

The ordinance is meant to prevent private facilities from contracting with federal law enforcement agencies like ICE, according to Councilmember Tim McOsker, who introduced the motion last Wednesday.

The zoning ordinance was first introduced in 2019 in response to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies during his first term. The file was drafted in 2021, but was never officially adopted, and therefore it expired in 2024.

The City Council last week voted to revive the file and update the drafted zoning code in response to immigration raids.

“The concern, of course, was the worry that profiteers, private entities working with the federal government, were creating detention centers across the country,” McOsker said during the council meeting. “Those were creating human rights violations and poor living conditions, disease, death and harms that were unconstitutional to residents of the United States.”

Why it matters 

The Department of Homeland Security reported it has detained more than 10,000 people in Los Angeles since raids started in June.

The raids have mostly upended immigrant, working-class communities and negatively hit the local economy, according to a recent L.A. County report.

In response to the raids, the city has limited power, but McOsker said it has authority over land use and he's asking the city to consider wielding that power.

“Do we want to prohibit private detention centers in every zone in the city of Los Angeles?” McOsker said.

He added that L.A. has an opportunity now to update its zoning laws to regulate private detention centers. McOsker said he doesn’t know of any proposed private detention centers in L.A., but that the facilities have been reported in at least eight states.

“Those states are blue, and those states are red, and what is uniform across is that local residents do not want to have private detention centers in their communities,” McOsker said.

What’s next? 

The city attorney and the city’s planning commission will review the 2021 draft ordinance. It’s unclear when it will come back to the City Council for consideration.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, an American civil rights leader, minister, and politician, who was a protégé of Martin Luther King Jr. and in the 1980s reshaped Democratic politics with two galvanizing presidential campaigns, died Tuesday at the age of 84.

"Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world," the Jackson family said in a statement. "We shared him with the world, and in return, the world became part of our extended family."

According to the Jackson family, public commemorations will take place in Chicago.

Jackson was born Oct. 8, 1941, in a tiny house in Greenville, S.C., where he began his lifelong work fighting for civil rights.

While visiting home for Christmas break during his freshman year at the University of Illinois, Jackson needed to borrow a book but couldn't get it from the town's white-only library. Six months later, on July 16, 1960, he and seven other students held a sit-in at the library and were arrested for protesting. After his experience as a member of the "Greenville Eight," Jackson transferred to North Carolina Agricultural & Technical College, a historically Black school in Greensboro, N.C.

His burgeoning activism would bring him in 1965 to march alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and others in Selma, Ala., answering King's call for supporters of a local voting rights campaign. Jackson became a close ally of King — eventually leaving his graduate studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary to join King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He became the Chicago coordinator and a year later, in 1967, the national leader of the SCLC's Operation Breadbasket, which was dedicated to improving the economic conditions of Black communities in the U.S.

In April 1968, Jackson traveled with King to Memphis, Tenn., where he witnessed the civil rights leader's assassination.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. stands with other civil rights leaders on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., on April 3, 1968, a day before he was assassinated. From left are Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, King and Ralph Abernathy.

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King's death marked the beginning of the end for Jackson's association with the SCLC. By 1971, he split with the group and formed his own organization, called Operation PUSH. The group continued Jackson's work to increase Black Americans' political strength and political opportunities.

Jackson later merged Operation PUSH with his National Rainbow Coalition to form the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, which became a prominent civil rights organization.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Jackson, who became an ordained Baptist minister in 1968, increasingly became an influential player on the national stage.

In 1983, Jackson organized a voter registration drive in Chicago that is credited as being the key factor for the election of the city's first Black mayor, Harold Washington.

Presidential bids

In November 1983, he announced his first bid for president, becoming the second Black person to seek a major party's nomination after Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm in 1972. His rousing speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention in San Francisco appealed to a "Rainbow Coalition" of disenfranchised Americans and people of color.

"This is not a perfect party. We're not a perfect people," Jackson said. "Yet, we are called to a perfect mission. Our mission to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to teach the illiterate, to provide jobs for the jobless, and to choose the human race over the nuclear race."

Though Jackson had significant support for his bid, with his campaign registering more than a million new voters and winning 3.5 million votes, his run for president was not without controversy. Jackson drew heated criticism for making a disparaging remark about New York's Jewish community and for his relationship with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has said the Jewish community is to blame for Black oppression.

The 1984 Democratic presidential candidates pose for photographers prior to the Democratic debate at Dartmouth College. (From left to right) John Glenn, Alan Cranston, Ernest Hollings, George McGovern, Gary Hart, Walter Mondale, Jesse Jackson and Reubin Askew.

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Jackson would apologize for his comments and distance himself from Farrakhan, but those efforts were not enough to clinch the Democratic nomination. He placed third in the Democratic primary behind former Vice President Walter Mondale and Sen. Gary Hart. Still, it was a landmark achievement for Jackson and a growing Black political movement.

In 1988, he ran again, expanding his outreach to more white Americans, and reached an emotional crescendo during an impassioned speech at that year's Democratic convention. Although Jackson won major presidential primaries, the first African American to do so, he came in second to the Democratic Party nominee, Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. Until Barack Obama's election in 2008, Jackson was the most successful Black U.S. presidential candidate.

Though Jackson never ran for the presidency again, he remained a powerful player in the Democratic Party, pushing for the leaders to adopt a platform that recognized issues important to Black voters.

Later life

Jackson traveled around the globe throughout his life using his voice to expose international problems and highlight civil rights abuses. In several instances, he negotiated and secured the release of American hostages held captive abroad — most notably from Syria, Cuba and Serbia. From 1992 to 2000, he also hosted a weekly discussion show on CNN, Both Sides with Jesse Jackson, where he addressed current social and political issues.

In 2000, Jackson received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest honor a civilian in the U.S. can receive. But controversy was not far behind. A year later, news that Jackson fathered a daughter with a former member of his staff became public.

President Bill Clinton embraces the Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, after awarding him the Presidential Medal of Freedom during ceremonies in the East Room of the White House on Aug. 9, 2000, in Washington, D.C.

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When the scandal broke, he said, "This is no time for evasions, denials or alibis. I fully accept responsibility and I am truly sorry for my actions."

Jackson found himself apologizing again in 2008, this time to Obama, for crass remarks he made about the presidential candidate in an aside to a reporter on a Fox News program. Obama accepted the apology. And despite other comments critical of the tone of some of Obama's campaign speeches, Jackson was present at his victory party at Grant Park in Chicago and wept.

"I knew that people in the villages of Kenya and Haiti, and mansions and palaces in Europe and China, were all watching this young African American male assume the leadership to take our nation out of a pit to a higher place," Jackson told NPR after Obama's election night.

Jackson saw the rise and painful fall of the promising political career of his oldest son, Jesse Jackson Jr., who was elected to Congress from Illinois in 1995 and resigned in 2012 citing health issues. After leaving office, he was investigated for misuse of campaign funds and pleaded guilty in 2013 to spending $750,000 in campaign funds for personal use. He was sentenced to 30 months in prison.

"I speak really today as a father," Jackson Sr. said at the courthouse the day of the sentencing. "Most of my career has been spent outgoing — helping someone else on something I really understood socially and politically. But this one, of course, is home."

In 2017, Jackson announced he had Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disorder that affects movement. In November, his organization revealed Jackson was diagnosed in April with progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare neurological disease similar but different from Parkinson's disease. Despite his illness, Jackson often showed up at protests against police brutality, calling for justice for victims of police shootings.

In August 2020, Jackson spoke at a news conference in Kenosha, Wis., where police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, several times.

"Today, there's a moral desert, top-down. The acid rain is coming, top-down," he said. "That kind of moral desert hurts all of America."

The Rev. Jesse Jackson speaks during a community gathering at the site of Jacob Blake's shooting on Sept. 1, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis.

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He compared the demonstrations that summer to those that occurred during the Civil Rights Era, comments that echoed earlier remarks he made to NPR that June about the nationwide protests that erupted after another Black man, George Floyd, was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis.

The marches were "hopeful signs," Jackson said. "The marchers are full of hope. They believe something can happen. On the move, we're not going backwards."

In 2021, Jackson contracted COVID-19. He was hospitalized and spent several weeks in a rehabilitation facility. He stepped down as president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition in 2023.

On Nov. 12, the coalition announced Jackson was hospitalized for PSP, which affects body movements, balance, vision, speech and swallowing.

Jackson is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, and six children.
Copyright 2026 NPR

In order to comply with the terms of a major court settlement, the city of Los Angeles will need to cut annual spending on homelessness programs by $181 million. At least that’s the conclusion outlined in a city report released earlier this month.

The recommended cuts have alarmed some homeless service providers — and the clients they serve. Programs potentially on the chopping block include street medicine programs that serve unhoused people in poor health, hygiene programs that place showers and restrooms near encampments and safe parking lots for people living in their cars.

Matthew Tecle, executive director of Safe Parking LA, said when he saw the recommendation to potentially eliminate his organization’s funding, “It was a total gut punch.”

How we got here

According to the City Administrative Officer’s report, citywide homelessness spending reductions of up to 15% are needed in order to divert money toward creating 12,915 new shelter beds or housing units. This requirement is the linchpin of the city’s settlement in a 2020 lawsuit brought by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group that alleged the city was systematically failing to address its homelessness crisis.

Tecle said the city now appears to be pitting the need for new shelter beds against services that don’t count toward the terms of the settlement.

“Safe parking is not a strategy that fits into traditional boxes of homelessness services,” Tecle said. “We're not a shelter in a traditional sense.”

But with more than 11,000 people in L.A. living in vehicles, the city should be trying to expand the number of designated parking lots that provide bathrooms, security and case management to people trying to find their way back into housing, Tecle said.

Until the first safe parking site in L.A. launched in 2018, Tecle said, “there was no program that was serving people directly that were experiencing vehicular homelessness.” He said his organization now oversees 143 parking spots across the city.

“It was this understanding of a systemic gap that needed to be filled,” he said. “We feel like we've shown that value to this point, and we want to continue to do so into the future.”

Report lays out a zero-sum funding game

Advocates for unhoused people disagreed with the framing of the city spending report. They argued the court has never required the city to cut vital programs for people living on the streets.

“The city's CAO is recommending cutting essential services for unhoused folks to meet that [settlement] obligation,” said Shayla Myers, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles who represented the interests of unhoused people in the case. “But that's not the result of this litigation. That is the result of city planning.”

Myers said the city could instead divert funds from expensive encampment sweeps or look toward lower cost ways to help Angelenos get housed. The CAO report identified motel rooms through Mayor Karen Bass’ signature program Inside Safe as particularly expensive, costing $225 per night on average. Other interim housing units cost about $86 per night.

City Council members sounded frustrated with the report’s recommendations in a Feb. 4 meeting of the council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee.

“We are faced with an extraordinarily strange set of recommendations here,” said committee chair Nithya Raman. “Recommendations that, to me, seem to fly in the face of what this council has said we’ve wanted, which is to expand the number of people that we are serving.”

Raman sought to reassure homeless services providers that none of the proposed cuts were imminent.

“Nothing in this report is a certain action that this council is going to take,” she said.

In a statement to LAist, Raman, who is running for mayor against incumbent Karen Bass, a former ally, said there would be time for further debate before the city adopts its next annual budget in June.

“Between now and then, my focus is on protecting effective frontline services, meeting our legal obligations, and making sure any changes actually help us house more people — not fewer,” Raman said.

What’s on the potential chopping block

The report said the city could save about $15.7 million by cutting street hygiene programs, $3.6 million by defunding 11 safe parking sites, and nearly $5 million by cutting support for USC’s Street Medicine program.

Leaders of the USC program declined to comment for this story.

Participants at one Safe Parking LA site in West L.A. said shutting down the program would put them further from securing stable housing.

Daya Baran sits behind the wheel of his Mercedes Benz where he has stayed following a divorce and job loss.

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Daya Baran — a former investment banker who took to living in his Mercedes Benz following a divorce, job loss and eviction — said he rarely got enough sleep before coming to this site.

“There are always people who actually try to steal, try to rob you while you're in your car,” Baran said. “It's safer here. You know the people. There's security here. There's restrooms.”

Still, Baran said, there are moments when he craves a real mattress instead of his car’s back seat. At the gym, he’ll sometimes take a breather from working out and lie down on a yoga mat.

“I stretch out,” he said. “And that's when I realize, I wish I was in a bed.”

Providers say LAHSA’s evaluation is flawed

Gita O'Neill, interim CEO of the regional Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, said in a November memo that safe parking programs should be defunded because “they are ineffective compared to other strategies.”

When LAist asked what went into that determination, Christopher Yee, a LAHSA spokesperson, said only 44% of safe parking spots were occupied in the last fiscal year.

“In this time of constrained budgets, it is critical to invest in solutions that have demonstrated the most consistent success,” Yee said in an email.

But Safe Parking L.A. leaders said 86% of their spots are currently filled. In an email, Tecle said safe parking spots cost the city about $40 per night, much less than other shelter programs.

“Aggregating all providers together and labeling the model ‘ineffective’ ignores performance differences and avoids a serious evaluation of what is actually working,” Tecle wrote. “If the City wants efficiency, the answer is precision — not using an axe to eliminate one of the most cost-effective early interventions we have.”

George Robert Pratt III, another participant at the West L.A. site, said he’d been spending nights at the lot for about a year. At 72, he lives on Social Security payments of about $1,300 per month, not enough to afford an apartment of his own.

“This place needs more housing, especially affordable housing,” said Pratt, who grew up in L.A. “There's a lot of old people on the streets, out here living on the sidewalks, and I feel for them.”

For now, Pratt said he feels fortunate to have his 2002 Ford Explorer, which he has outfitted with a mattress. If this site were to be shut down, he said, he could always go back to parking on various city streets, out of the way and hidden from public view.

“This thing's pretty incognito, and I didn’t stay in one spot long enough to get anybody's attention,” Pratt said. "I know better than that."

The Los Angeles mayor's race is shaping up to be a doozy, with the late announcement by City Councilmember Nithya Raman that she’ll challenge her longtime ally incumbent Karen Bass.

The next mayor will face enormous challenges, including the continuing rebuilding efforts from the Palisades Fire, the ongoing homelessness crisis and preparations for the 2028 Olympics.

There are 40 candidates in all. The list does not include former L.A. schools superintendent and businessman Austin Beutner, who dropped out at the last minute because of the death of his daughter.

Nor does it include billionaire developer Rick Caruso, who declined to stage a rematch against Bass. He lost to her in 2022, despite spending more than $100 million of his own money.

And L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath opted not to run at the Friday night before the Saturday deadline for filing.

The primary election is in June. If nobody gets a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will face off in a November runoff.

Here is the list of candidates:

Karen Bass, incumbent mayor

Karen Bass, 72, is the incumbent. She’s a native of South L.A. who previously served in the state Legislature as speaker of the Assembly and as a member of Congress.

Karen Bass

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She has several early endorsements and a campaign war chest topping $2.4 million raised so far. None of the other candidates are listed in the latest Ethics Commission report as having raised any money.

Nine members of the 15-member City Council back Bass, as do a number of labor unions and business groups.

She touts a drop in homelessness and the lowest crime rate in 60 years as among her accomplishments. But she’s been criticized for her handling of the Palisades Fire. Bass was out of town when it broke out and there have been reports that she urged the city Fire Department to water down a report assessing the agency’s response to the fire.

For more information her campaign, go to: karenbass.com

Nithya Raman, LA council member

Nithya Raman, 44, is in her second term on the L.A. City Council, representing District 4, which stretches from Silver Lake to Sherman Oaks in the San Fernando Valley She was born in India and moved to the U.S. with her family when she was 6 years old.

Councilmember Nithya Raman photographed in her home.

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She was the first person in nearly two decades to oust an incumbent council member when she was first elected in 2020. Raman, an urban planner, was also the first in a wave of progressives elected to the council with the backing of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is also aligned with YIMBY groups that want more housing density in the city.

Housing is a top issue for Raman, who has helped lead the fight for stricter rent control measures. She founded a nonprofit in L.A. called SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition that provided direct aid like meals and showers as well as case management.

It does not appear that there is a website for Raman's mayoral campaign. Her page on the city website can be found here.

Adam Miller, tech entrepreneur

Adam Miller, 56, is a tech entrepreneur from West Los Angeles who co-founded Better Angels, a nonprofit focused on preventing homelessness and building affordable housing. He made his fortune developing education software.

Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

Miller’s company was called Cornerstone OnDemand. The publicly traded company was sold in 2021 to a private equity firm for $5.2 billion, according to the Los Angeles Times. According to his website, Miller grew up in New Jersey and went to graduate school at UCLA.

He said L.A. is not short on resources, compassion or talent but on leadership — and that he can provide that leadership. He has said he’ll spend some of his own money on his campaign but that he’ll also raise money from contributors.

For more information on Miller's campaign go to: votemiller.com/

Spencer Pratt, reality TV star and influencer

Spencer Pratt, 42, is a former star of the MTV reality series The Hills, which aired from 2006 to 2010 and The Hills: New Beginnings, which ran from 2019 to 2021. He is a social media influencer with more than one million followers on Instagram. He grew up in L.A. and earned a political science degree from USC.

Reality T.V. star Spencer Pratt is running for mayor of Los Angeles.

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Pratt lost his home in the Palisades Fire and has been an outspoken critic of Bass’ handling of the fire. He told NBC News his house was “stolen by criminal negligence.”

Pratt has said he would direct the Police Department to cooperate with federal immigration authorities to catch criminal unauthorized immigrants. He is endorsed by Richard Grenell, the former director of national intelligence in the Trump Administration.

For more information on Pratt's campaign go to: mayorpratt.com

Rae Huang, minister and organizer

The Rev. Rae Huang, 43, is a Presbyterian minister and community organizer who is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is the daughter of Taiwanese immigrants and grew up on the East Coast.

Rae Huang is among those running for mayor of Los Angeles

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As deputy director of Housing Now! California, Huang directed statewide campaigns to make housing affordable and end the displacement of working class communities, according to her website. She is also an organizer with Clergy for Black Lives, a collective of Southern California faith leaders who advocate for racial justice, police accountability and support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

She touts how she led efforts to expand tenant protections under SB 567, which closed loopholes in “no-fault” just cause evictions and imposed stricter penalties on landlords for violations. Huang also points out that she supported the passage of a social housing study bill SB 555, which requires the state to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the opportunities for the creation of social housing.

Huang has said she wants to expand public housing in the city of L.A., provide free bus service and reduce spending on the Police Department investing instead in more unarmed crisis responders.

For more information on Huang's campaign, go to: www.raeforla.com/

Other candidates

These are the other candidates for mayor, as they are listed on the City Clerk’s website.

Misael Ortega, painting contractor

Cassandra Faye Floyd, minister

Jeffrey Carmichael, software systems architect

Tish Hyman, musician/entrepreneur

Juanita Lopez, political scientist

Stevie Maceo Milan, sales representative

Asaad Alnajjar, engineering manager, City of Los Angeles

Griselda Diaz, administrative manager/activist

Keeldar Shawn Hamilton, transportation coordinator

Nick Harron, writer

Alyxandria-Jamil Carter, professional artist

Robert “Goody” Goodman, entrepreneur/financial advisor

Joseph Garcia, gardener/advocate/naturalist

Andrew K. Kim, attorney-at-law

Franziska Von Fischer, real estate investor

Vincent Wali, nurse

Nelson Cheng, streamer/behavioral interventionist

Andreja A. Selivra, enterprise technical architect

Bryant Acosta, chief creative officer

Suzy Kim, mental health professional

Jeanne Moller Fontana, mental health activist

Preston James Miller

Ernesto G. Castelli, writer

Caremenlina Minasova, human rights activist

Jerry R. Tyler, businessman

Katya Forsyth, compost industry professional

Erik Daniel Garcia, entrepreneur

Alyssa Ball, science education advocate

Laura Garza, union rail worker

Victor Montes, community services professional

Douglas Nichols, chief executive officer

Debra “Jerri” Duggan, housing developer

Benji Guerrero, artist/health educator

Eoin Richard Connolly, journalist

John Logsdon, neighborhood council board member