The Brief

The city of Los Angeles received 43% more street light complaints last year than it did the previous year, according to an LAist review of city data.

The neighborhoods with the highest number of complaints were downtown L.A. and Boyle Heights.

It’s part of a trend in which complaints about street lights in the city have increased significantly over nearly a decade — reaching a peak last year of nearly 46,000 complaints from people reporting outages. Around 40% of those complaints remain unresolved.

“If you don’t have a well-lit pathway ... it can make your walk really challenging,” said Cassy Horton, a cofounder of the Downtown Los Angeles Residents Association. “It almost segregates parts of our community from each other because it just is less easy to navigate to where you need to go.”

According to the city, there are several reasons for the backlog: people stealing copper wire from the street lights to sell or recycle, aging infrastructure, city budget shortages and a lack of maintenance staff.

Multiple complaints from residents reporting the same issues have also added to the problem, city authorities said.

“Data suggests this increase is largely due to constituents submitting multiple requests for the same issue to speed up resolution, combined with ongoing staffing and resource constraints that have added to the backlog,” L.A.’s Bureau of Street Lighting said in a statement.

LAist asked how many complaints were duplicates. The city has not yet responded to that request.

What do the data show?

The number of complaints to the city’s 311 system has ballooned over nearly 10 years, according to the data. In 2016, the city recorded about 15,600 complaints — that’s two-thirds fewer complaints than last year.

During that time, the largest relative spike in complaints occurred between 2021 and 2022, jumping 55% to 35,000, from approximately 23,000.

Since 2016, the numbers have gone down in three years, but the decreases were relatively small. The most recent reduction in complaints was between 2022 and 2023, when they fell by 8%.

More than 19,000 complaints made last year — 41% — remain open, meaning they haven’t yet been resolved, and 13,000 requests remain open from the previous year.

The data doesn’t include more granular details about each complaint. So it’s not immediately clear from the data alone how many complaints made from the same address are about a single issue, one of the reasons the bureau cited for the backlog.

But an LAist analysis estimates that 73% of the 27,000 complaints made last year that have been closed are likely for separate issues. LAist’s analysis found that proportion hovered around 90% most years since 2019.

In 2022, the year with the second-highest number of 311 complaints about streetlights, at least 76% of closed complaints were likely for separate issues, not duplicates.

In its explanation for the backlog, the bureau cited safety concerns when its teams were sent to repair street lights that have been “severely impacted by copper wire theft, particularly in areas obstructed by homeless and RV encampments.”

“These conditions not only delay repairs but also require coordination with the [Cleaning and Rapid Engagement, or CARE] team and LAPD to ensure safe access for our crews,” the bureau said.

The 311 data doesn’t include the suspected cause of each outage that prompted a complaint, but the bureau said around 40% of street light outages are because of people stealing copper wire and power. That’s up 10% to 15% from the bureau’s estimate in June 2024.

The bureau said reported incidents of copper wire and power theft have increased twelvefold in less than a decade.

Most outages are because of routine maintenance issues, like burned out bulbs or rusted materials, according to a report the bureau made to the City Council last year. In the report, the bureau also said “many” parts used to operate L.A.’s 223,000 street lights have been in service for nearly a century.

Property owners pay an annual fee that funds regular maintenance of street lights. The fee hasn’t increased since the late 1990s, so the bureau has collected $44 million a year for the last two and a half decades.

The budget for the current fiscal year eliminated 17% of positions in the bureau compared with the previous year. Those positions were all vacant at the time of the cuts but included some jobs focused on copper wire fortification and replacement, and regular maintenance.

“They don’t have the people power to work at their full capacity,” Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, whose district reports more street light issues than most other council districts, said to LAist.

To that end, Soto-Martinez is using $200,000 in discretionary funds from his office to fund overtime maintenance teams from the bureau to fix darkened streetlights over the weekends.

Downtown is the hardest hit

Gabriel Yeager, who works on improving public space for the DTLA Alliance, a business improvement district in downtown Los Angeles, said the work to restore working lights downtown is ongoing.

Yeager said that last year, DTLA Alliance worked with the Bureau of Street Lighting and then-councilmember Kevin de León’s office to fix 12 blocks of faulty street lights and string lights on 30 trees on 7th street.

“All of that calls attention [to] the importance of well-lit streets,” Yeager said. “They’re more inviting; they’re more welcoming; they’re more walkable. It’s easier to promote business.”

But there’s more to be done.

The Downtown L.A. Residents Association sent a letter to the bureau, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and Mayor Karen Bass in early February asking the city “take action to address the lack of adequate lighting in downtown.”

More than 180 downtown residents added testimonies, saying a more illuminated city could attract families to live downtown and help pedestrians navigate uneven surfaces and other hazards on the sidewalks.

In a statement to LAist, Jurado confirmed she received the letter.

“Making sure Angelenos have well-lit public spaces has broad implications on quality of life, sense of safety and economic development,” she wrote.

In December, at her first City Council meeting, Jurado filed a motion directing the bureau to analyze street lighting issues in downtown L.A. and assess which areas might be suitable for alternative technologies, like solar-powered lights.

The City Council passed the motion unanimously. A report is expected in the next couple of weeks.

A woman was arrested for allegedly trafficking arms on behalf of the Iranian government at LAX on Saturday night, according to authorities.

Shamim Mafi of Woodland Hills is charged with helping the regime sell drones, bombs and millions of rounds of ammunition to Sudan.

Bill Essayli, First Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California, made the arrest announcement Sunday morning on social media.

The 44-year-old Mafi is expected to appear in court for a bond hearing Monday afternoon in downtown L.A.

According to the criminal complaint filed by the Department of Justice and obtained by LAist, Mafi allegedly brokered weapons deals on behalf of Iran through Atlas International, a business in Oman she co-owns, including facilitating a contract valued at more than €60 million (or some US $70 million) for the sale of Iranian-made armed drones to Sudan.

She is also being accused of brokering the sale of 55,000 bomb fuses, AK-47 machine guns and other weapons to the Sudanese Ministry of Defense.

Mafi faces up to 20 years in federal prison if convicted.

Essayli said Mafi is an Iranian national who became a permanent resident of the U.S. in 2016.

After weeks of waiting to hear how — or whether — the U.S. government might refund the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, Monday is the day it finally begins.

Imagine tens of thousands of business owners with their fingers hovering over laptops, ready to enter America's hottest new queue: the U.S. tariff-refund portal.

U.S. Customs is launching just the first phase of payouts, so not all the goods imported under the illegal tariffs will immediately qualify. And the latest federal guidance says that after refund requests are approved, it could take 60 to 90 days to return the money to the importer.

Still, this marks a turning point for U.S. importers, who've waited for clarity for exactly two months since the U.S. Supreme Court declared most of President Trump's tariffs unconstitutional. The high court did not opine on the process of refunds, and government officials at first suggested the process could prove unwieldy.

"Small businesses organized, spoke out, and won a major victory," said Main Street Alliance, which advocates for U.S. small businesses, in a statement. "Now, the federal government must follow through with a refund process that truly works for Main Street."

U.S. Customs has estimated that it owes a total of $166 billion in tariff refunds, and the agency's legal filings suggest that the initial phase would tackle the majority of affected imports. On Tuesday, a Customs official told a judge that the vast majority of eligible importers signed up for electronic payments, as the agency is requiring, and that group is owed about $127 billion.

Will consumers see any of that money land in their pockets? Probably not, economics and legal experts say.

The cost of tariffs has been woven into the prices of many products in a way that can make it hard to separate out what customers ultimately paid. Often, manufacturers, suppliers, importers, retailers and shoppers all absorb costs along the way. And with tariffs landing on the heels of historic inflation, companies big and small have argued that they ate much of the cost to avoid spooking shoppers with higher prices.

In fact, many retailers find themselves in a similar quandary because tariff refunds will go to whoever paid the actual customs bill. It's unclear how, or if, the refunds might trickle down to store owners who paid tariff surcharges to their suppliers.

"As a retailer, I didn't pay tariffs directly. However, I did pay them indirectly in the form of higher wholesale prices," says Joe Kimray, owner of B & W Hardware in North Carolina. Most of his products are either made abroad or use imported parts.

"I plan to have conversations with a number of manufacturers and hope that they will do the right thing and share some of the tariff refund money with us," he says. "I don't expect to get a direct refund check from anyone, but it could be even as simple as offering discounts on the wholesale cost of future product purchases."

Shoppers hoping to recoup their own tariff expenses have launched class-action lawsuits against several companies, including Costco and FedEx. The shipping giant has pledged to pass down any refunds it receives. Costco's CEO last month told investors the company would return shoppers' money through "lower prices and better values" and would be transparent about its plans.

U.S. Customs' initial phase of refunds will focus on tariff payments that haven't been finalized because they technically are still under federal review. (Companies typically pay import duties as soon as their goods arrive at the border, but the complete customs review that follows can take nearly a year.) The government will continue to set up its new system, called CAPE, so that it can later on refund older, finalized tariff payments.

NPR asked U.S. Customs and Border Protection about the scale of tariff refunds it expects to handle in the first phase, including the volume of claims the agency's new tool is prepared to handle on Monday. A CBP spokesperson in response said that CAPE was developed "to efficiently process refunds" and referred importers and brokers to the agency's updated tariff-refund guidance.

NPR's Scott Horsley contributed to this report.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Monopoly lovers can now buy up the Queen Mary, collect rent on Belmont Shore and park their token at a storied tattoo shop, Outer Limits.

The Long Beach landmarks line the spaces of a new Monopoly edition themed around L.A. County’s second biggest city, released just this month.

The Long Beach edition is part of an expanding series of Monopoly games featuring dozens of American cities, which Hasbro licensee Top Trumps started to produce about five years ago when interest in board games surged during the pandemic.

What it takes to make the cut

How does a city land on one of the world's most popular board games? Turns out, it’s not just a roll of the dice.

“We’re looking for places with strong community pride, places where people will really love seeing their city on a Monopoly board,” said Jennifer Tripsea, a partnership sales executive with Top Trumps.

Long Beach fit the bill and got to join a list of SoCal cities on Monopoly boards including Huntington Beach, Riverside and Palm Springs.

Tripsea said in some instances, a city will pitch themselves to the company — she didn’t disclose which have — but not every place makes the cut.

There has to be enough population — or local enthusiasm — to support a run of thousands of games.

Top Trumps sells the games online and through local businesses, sometimes the same ones featured on the board. That creates a built-in customer base: residents, tourists and collectors hunting for their next addition.

And while some businesses may offer to sponsor their way into consideration, their inclusion isn’t a given.

Tripsea said when deciding who earns a spot, the company weighs cultural relevance, brand standards and community input.

The community gets a turn

Once a city is selected, residents are invited to help shape the board.

That means emailing suggested landmarks and drafting potential Chance and Community Chest cards. For Long Beach, one Community Chest card directs players to collect $100 if they "attend a beach cleanup at Alamitos Beach."

Hundreds of submissions flooded in over the last year, many pointing to the same top attractions, Tripsea said. The Queen Mary and Aquarium of the Pacific take up the same spots on the board that are occupied by Park Place and Boardwalk in the original game.

Of course the Queen Mary historic ocean liner landed a plum spot on the Long Beach version of Monopoly.

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Patrick T. Fallon

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Others featured on the board are lesser known to outsiders, like Rosie’s Dog Beach and the Arts Council for Long Beach.

The arts nonprofit was “surprised and excited” to hear from Top Trumps last year that they were being included in a version all about Long Beach, said interim executive director Lisa DeSmidt.

“I describe Long Beach as a big city that's run like a small town, and that everybody kind of knows each other to some degree,” DeSmidt said. “Long Beach has a sense of community in that Long Beach takes care of Long Beach people.”

An intern for the Arts Council for Long Beach designed its space on the Monopoly board.

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Arts Council for Long Beach

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An intern for the arts council, Peyton Smith, designed its space on the board, featuring small, intricate renderings of landmarks like the Long Beach Airport and the pyramid arena at Cal State Long Beach.

For DeSmidt, the game serves as a kind of cultural snapshot highlighting the city’s mix of arts, neighborhoods and institutions. It’s reminiscent of the council’s own project mapping the city’s cultural assets.

“This ties into uplifting what makes Long Beach unique and what people love about it,” DeSmidt said.

Monopoly's lasting pull

Outer Limits Tattoo was also invited to be part of the game, where it now appears next to VIP Records on the board.

Recognized as the country’s oldest continuously working tattoo shop, Outer Limits’ history dates back to 1927, when it opened in the waterfront amusement district known as The Pike, now home to the Pike Outlets.

Outer Limits' general manager Matt Hand said once word got out that the shop was stocking the game, customers started showing up just to buy it.

“It’s just a cool thing,” Hand said. “Especially when it’s like, ‘The business where I get tattooed’ is on the board.”

A big reason Hand thinks these editions are catching on is nostalgia. Seeing your own city in a board game that you played as a kid — and may be now playing with your own kids — is thrilling.

“You're basically like a part of the game now,” Hand said.

You might have noticed a little more purple on your commute in Los Angeles recently. Turns out the jacarandas are putting on their annual show of blooms a little early this year.

Originally from the tropics, jacarandas respond to changes in temperature. They typically flower in our region from late April to mid-June.

But remember that sweltering heat wave we got in March?

“They got the clear sign: ‘It’s over 90 [degrees], it’s hot out. Even though you weren’t quite prepared, it’s time to put out some flowers,'” Loral Hall, community forestry senior program manager at environmental nonprofit TreePeople, told LAist.

Hall said not only do jacarandas grace us every year with thick canopies and carpets of purple, they’re relatively drought tolerant, pest resistant and able to grow in urban areas (like in a small square patch of dirt surrounded by concrete).

“They’re attention-grabbers here in Southern California,” said Hall, who grew up in Hollywood and has childhood memories of playing with the fallen purple blooms at a local park. “In a place where we don’t have really obvious seasons, [jacaranda blooms] are a sign that warmer weather is on the way.”

Hall also shared a lesser-known fact about jacarandas: There’s a white cultivar, too. The white version is much more rare in L.A., though with some of the trees rumored to be in a non-public area of the L.A. County Arboretum, Hall said.

A jacaranda at the LA Arboretum.

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Katherine Garrova

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How’d they get here? 

The jacaranda is native to the tropical and subtropical regions of Argentina and Brazil.

While we don’t know exactly when the jacaranda first arrived in our area, we do know they were brought to Southern California in the late 19th century and proliferated thanks to a local horticulturist named Kate Sessions.

Where are the purple hot spots? 

A couple years ago, a local data graphics editor even created an interactive map so you can find the purple hot spots.

They’re... everywhere, so it shouldn’t be too hard to stumble upon a jacaranda show.