The Brief

For years, Liz Romero of Chula Vista would drive her kids to a library or a friends’ house to connect to the internet to study.

The mobile home park where they live had been a broadband “dead zone” for more than two decades, with little to no service options. That was until 2022, when a small private company called Kwikbit started serving the neighborhood.

“My kids grew up with no internet. It was just terrible,” Romero said. During the pandemic, they even tried using a school-issued mobile hotspot, but it never worked properly.

Now, Romero and her neighbors pay $50 a month for high-speed fixed wireless service through Kwikbit that allows her and her family to work from home and stream video on multiple devices at the same time. She also works as an ambassador for the company and helps enroll new customers at the park.

“For me, it’s perfect,” she said. “I'm very pleased. If it didn't work for me, I wouldn't tell [my neighbors] to get it."

Kwikbit has a unique business model: to bring internet service to trailer and mobile home parks. It recently won an $800,000 state grant to serve four parks in Southern California, including one in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

The funding will be used to connect 197 households to high-speed fixed wireless service for $50 a month. There’s no contract and prices are guaranteed for three years.

“Between 20 to 25 million people live in mobile parks. And in general, their internet is terrible,” said company CEO Joe Costello.

Kwikbit offers high-speed fixed wireless service for $50 a month.

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Courtesy Kwikbit

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He says providers tend to overlook mobile home parks because their residents are typically low-income and can’t pay as much as other neighborhoods. It can also be difficult to connect these communities because they are privately owned, and management tends to be skeptical of “outsiders” coming in to install equipment and speak with residents.

“The key is to get great internet [service] to as many people as possible, but in particular, get it to the people who have lousy internet. Those are the people who are suffering today,” he said, adding that reliable broadband access is “absolutely imperative” to modern life in the U.S.

Costello said Kwikbit has been working to expand its services to 15 parks in SoCal. That includes at least two locations in L.A. County, one in the Canoga Park neighborhood and one in Rowland Heights. The company offers a new fixed wireless technology that Costello says it’s as fast as fiber, but can be deployed more quickly and economically.

Here are the four mobile home parks that would be funded through the grant money Kwikbit just won from the state. Service could be available by the end of 2024.

Orange County: Buena Villa Mobile Home Estates is in Buena Park and contains 171 homes. Total project cost: $230,329.

L.A. County: Cherryfield Village is in Paramount and contains 119 homes. The property is a about 1,200 feet long and 300 feet wide, located on flat land north of Long Beach. Total project cost: $159,460.

San Bernardino County: Country Squires Estates is in Moreno Valley and contains 107 homes. Total project cost: $317,098.

San Diego County: Hide Away Lake Mobile Estates is in Valley Center and contains 130 homes. Total project cost: $182,196.

Topline:

The case: In September, the city settled a lawsuit brought forward by two brothers in their 70s who said they suffered serious injuries after an LAPD officer crashed into their car. Days before the $18 million settlement was reached, lawyers for the brothers said Feldstein Soto called an expert witness testifying for the plaintiffs and “attempted to ingratiate herself with him and asked him to make a contribution to her political campaign,” according to a sworn declaration to the court by the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Glassman.

The response: Feldstein Soto did not respond to an interview request. Her spokesperson said the settlement “had nothing to do” with the expert witness. Her campaign manager told LAist the city attorney had been making a routine fundraising call and did not know the person had a role in the case, nor that there were pending requests for her office to pay him fees.

What Jurado says: In a statement to LAist, Jurado said she wants to “make sure that the city’s legal leadership is guided by integrity and accountability, especially when their choices affect public trust, civic rights and the city’s limited resources."

What’s next: The motion needs to go through a few committees before reaching the full City Council. If it passes, the motion calls for the city attorney to “report to council in closed session within 45 days regarding the ethics breach violation and give updates to the City Council."

Every year in Santa Ana, Luis Cantabrana turns the front of his home into an elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe that draws hundreds of visitors.

Along the front of the house, the multi-colored altar is filled with lights, flowers and a stained-glass tapestry behind a sculpture of the Lady of Guadalupe. Cantabrana’s roof also is lit up with the green, white and red lights that spell out “Virgen de Guadalupe” and a cross.

Visitors are welcomed with music and the smell of roses as they celebrate the saint, but this year’s gathering comes after a dark year for immigrant communities.

Luis Cantabrana stands in front of the stunning altar he built in front of his home in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe. Every year, his display draws hundreds of visitors.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Why do they celebrate? 

In 1513, the Virgin Mary appeared before St. Juan Diego between Dec. 9 and Dec. 12, asking him to build a church in her honor. Her image — a brown-skinned woman wearing a green veil with her hands together in prayer and an angel at her feet — miraculously appeared on his cloak.

To celebrate in Santa Ana, worshippers gathered late-night Wednesday and in the very early hours Dec. 12 to pray the rosary, sing hymns and celebrate the saint.

Cantabrana has hosted worshippers at his home for 27 years — 17 in Santa Ana.

The altar started out small, he said, and over the years, he added a fabric background, more lights and flowers (lots and lots of flowers).

“It started with me making a promise to la Virgen de Guadalupe that while I had life and a home to build an altar, that I would do it,” Cantabrana said. “Everything you see in photos and videos is pretty, but when you come and see it live, it's more than pretty. It's beautiful.”

The Santa Ana home's elaborate altar in honor of La Virgen de Guadalupe draws hundreds of visitors each year.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Gathering in a time of turmoil 

Many also look to the Lady of Guadalupe for protection, especially at a time when federal enforcement has rattled immigrant communities.

“People don’t want to go to work, they don’t want to take their kids to school, but the love we have for our Virgen de Guadalupe,” Cantabrana said. “We see that la Virgen de Guadalupe has a lot of power, and so we know immigration [enforcement] won’t come here.”

Margarita Lopez of Garden Grove has been visiting the altar for three years with her husband. She’s been celebrating the Virgencita since she was a young girl. Honoring the saint is as important now as ever, she said.

“We ask, and she performs miracles,” Lopez said.

Claudia Tapia, a lifelong Santa Ana resident, said the Virgin Mary represents strength.

“Right now, with everything going on, a lot of our families [have] turned and prayed to the Virgen for strength during these times,” Tapia said. “She's a very strong symbol of Mexican culture, of unity, of faith and of resilience.”

See it for yourself

The shrine will stay up into the new year on the corner of Broadway and Camile Street.

California’s unemployment agency kept paying cellphone bills for 4 1/2 years without checking whether its workers actually were using the devices.

That’s how it racked up $4.6 million in fees for mobile devices its workers were not using, according to a new state audit detailing wasteful spending at several government agencies.

The Employment Development Department’s excessive cellphone bills date to the COVID-19 pandemic, when it shifted call center employees to remote work and faced pressure to release benefits to millions of suddenly unemployed Californians.

It acquired 7,224 cellphones and wireless hotspots by December 2020. State auditors analyzed 54 months of invoices since then and found half the devices were unused for at least two years, 25% were unused for three years and 99 of them were never used at all.

The investigation, which auditors opened after receiving a tip, identified 6,285 devices that were unused for at least four consecutive months, and said the department spent $4.6 million on monthly service fees for them.

From the beginning, the department had about 2,000 more cellphones than call center employees, according to the audit. The gap widened over time after the pandemic ended and the department’s staffing returned to its normal headcount.

As of April, the audit said the department had 1,787 unemployment call center employees, but was paying monthly service fees for 5,097 mobile devices.

“Although obtaining the mobile devices during COVID-19 may have been a good idea to serve the public, continuing to pay the monthly service fees for so many unused devices, especially post-COVID-19, was wasteful,” the audit said.

Department officials told auditors they were unaware of the spending, but auditors pointed to regular invoices from Verizon that showed which phones were not being used.

“We would have expected EDD management to have reconsidered the need to pay the monthly service fees for so many devices that had no voice, message, or data usage,” the audit said.

The unemployment department began acting on the auditors’ findings in April, when it canceled service plans for 2,825 devices. It has since implemented a policy to terminate service plans for devices that go unused for 90 days.

The California state auditor highlighted the mobile devices in its regular report on “improper activities by state agencies and employees.” The audit also showed that the California Air Resources Board overpaid an employee who was on extended leave as he prepared to retire by $171,000.

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