The Brief

The area around the North Hollywood Metro station will look very different in about a decade. Earlier this month, the L.A. City Council approved a nearly 16-acre project with close to 1,500 housing units, a renovated Metro station, and a new bus transit center. The development also plans to bring more open space, restaurants, and shops to the area.

The project, called “District NoHo”, is part of a Metro program where the agency works with private developers to build, maintain, and operate housing and mixed use developments near its transit stations. Metro’s contribution is its public land — it will not pay for any of the project.

The housing details

Marie Sullivan, the Metro project manager overseeing District NoHo, said the number of housing units to be constructed as part of the project has nearly doubled since the original proposal — including 100 more units for low income Angelenos than initially planned. In total, a quarter of the new units will now be set aside for affordable housing.

Some say that number is not enough, given L.A.’s housing crisis. But Shane Phillips, the Housing Initiative Manager at UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, said market rate units are needed to balance out the cost of affordable housing units.

“The value of [the affordable housing units] relative to what it’s costing to build them is a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit,” he said. “There is a real risk of, if you say, ‘It has to be 35%, 50%’ — the developer cannot earn a profit at those levels in most cases, or other things would have to be cut that people also want to see.”

What it will look like

A map of the plans for District NoHo, which will surround the North Hollywood Metro Station.

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Trammell Crow Company

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The project will center around the intersection of Lankershim Boulevard and Chandler Boulevard, spanning from Weddington Street to Cumpston Street and Tujunga Avenue to Fair Avenue. Much of the area is currently taken up by parking lots and vacant land. Sullivan said that there aren’t any plans to displace any of the existing businesses in the project area.

The plans will also consolidate the bus services that currently run on either side of Lankershim Boulevard into one expanded transit center, making it so bus riders never have to cross the street for transfers and freeing up the parking lots between Lankershim and Fair Avenue for what Metro is calling a “megablock.”

That megablock will include a majority of the new housing, retail and restaurant space as well as two acres of open space. It will be split by a new extension of Klump Avenue (which currently ends at Cumpston Street) and L.A.’s first “shared street”, District Way — modeled after the Dutch “Woonerf,” where cars are guests, and pedestrians and bicyclists can move freely.

A rendering of District Way, which will be LA’s first “shared street.”

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Trammell Crow Company

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The block south of the new transit center will add an office tower, and the block north of it will hold about 40% of the affordable housing units.

How it will affect the housing market

Phillips has been researching who moves into new market rate housing — and generally, in metropolitan areas around the country, he’s found that most of the people moving into new homes already live in the area.

“So they're going to be leaving behind some home somewhere else that is, in most cases, more affordable than the one they're moving into. People will move into those recently vacated homes, and they also are probably moving up into a nicer home when they're doing so, and they're leaving behind a slightly less expensive home, and so forth,” he said. “This migration chain happens every time you build a new market rate unit. By creating these new homes, you're sort of loosening the tightness in the housing market elsewhere.”

Why Metro is building housing

Metro executive Wells Lawson said the agency has been building housing projects like this for more than two decades. In 2021, Metro committed to building 10,000 housing units in L.A. County — half of which would be low income housing — over the following 10 years. The North Hollywood project, despite being in the works prior to that announcement, will contribute to that goal.

Phillips said that this kind of involvement is common for transit agencies in other countries. “If anything, we should be doing that a lot more here in Los Angeles, California, the whole country, really making the most of these investments,” he said.

And the location of a development is important in maximizing its impact. Phillips points to the E (Expo) Line, which stops in a lot of areas concentrated with single-family homes. “We’ve spent, I don't know, $2 billion on that rail line that is very useful for many people, but many of the stations are just surrounded by a few hundred homeowners whose homes are worth millions of dollars and who are very unlikely to take transit.”

A rendering of District NoHo's new bus transit center (right) from the intersection of Tujuna Ave. and North Chandler Boulevard.

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Trammell Crow Company

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The economic impact

Lawson said the project is estimated to create more than 15,000 jobs during construction and nearly 5,000 permanent jobs.

He also said Metro’s revenue from the project will be reinvested into this and other transit-oriented communities. “And we do expect that number to grow over time with all of our projects. We have four projects under construction right now — all 100% affordable projects. But even those projects deliver some amount of revenue to Metro that we’re able to reinvest.”

The timeline

Metro has been trying to develop this land since 2006, but that project fell through during the 2008 recession. “District NoHo” kicked off in 2015 with focus groups, open houses and surveys of what residents wanted to see in a new development.

Now, with City Council approval, Metro will finish negotiations with the project’s developer, Trammell Crow Company. Sullivan said they’re expecting to present the final agreement to Metro’s Board of Directors next summer — and that construction on the transit center and some of the affordable housing could start later in the year.

“The entire completion of all of the buildings in the project will take about 10 years from that point,” Sullivan said. The new transit center, however, is projected to be completed by 2027 or 2028.

Raul Malo, the leader of the country band The Mavericks and one of the most recognizable voices in roots music, died Monday night, according to a representative of the band. The guitarist and singer had been battling cancer.

He was hospitalized last week, forcing him to miss tribute shows staged in his honor at the Ryman Auditorium over the weekend. He was 60 years old.

"No one embodied life and love, joy and passion, family, friends, music and adventure the way our beloved Raul did," read a statement released by his family.

Malo's group, The Mavericks, mourned the loss of their leader in a social post.

"Anyone with the pleasure of being in Raul's orbit knew that he was a force of human nature, with an infectious energy," the statement read. "Over a career of more than three decades entertaining millions around the globe, his towering creative contributions and unrivaled, generational talent created the kind of multicultural American music reaching far beyond America itself."

Over a career that lasted four decades, The Mavericks lived up to the band's name, challenging expectations and following a roadmap crafted by Malo's expansive musical upbringing as the son of Cuban immigrants in Miami.

"I grew up in a very musical household. There was all kinds of music around always," he told WHYY's Fresh Air in 1995. "We listened to everything from Hank Williams to Celia Cruz to Sam Cooke to Bobby Darin. It didn't matter."

In 1992, Malo told NPR that his widespread influences weren't always understood or appreciated in his South Florida hometown, but he said that his struggle to fit in taught him to trust his instincts. Malo had become the guitarist and lead singer for The Mavericks in 1989, alongside co-founders Robert Reynolds and Paul Deakin, and his roaring, sentimental voice defined the band's sound and remained its constant as the group's catalog moved from slow, tender ballads to full-throttle rock songs. In 1995, the band released its biggest hit with "All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down," a swinging country song featuring an assist from Tex-Mex accordion legend Flaco Jimenez.

As the band grew in members and devoted listeners, The Mavericks continued to push the boundaries of American music, weaving a richly layered tapestry of textures and stories. With more than a dozen studio albums, The Mavericks collected praise and recognition from the Academy of Country Music, the Country Music Association and the Recording Academy. Although they took a hiatus for several years, Malo never stopped making music — and returned to his bandmates with renewed inspiration.

Following its 30th anniversary, the group released its first full-length Spanish album in 2020, aptly titled En Español. The record reimagined Latin standards and folklore-tinged popular tunes; it also made an implicit political statement about Latin music's contributions to American culture.

"In our own little way, if we could get somebody that perhaps is on the fence on issues and hears us singing in Spanish and perhaps reminds them of the beautiful cultures that make up what this country is trying to be and what it should be, so be it," Malo told NPR at the time. "Yeah, I'm OK with that."

The following year, the Americana Music Association recognized The Mavericks with the Trailblazer Award. In 2024, the band released its last studio album, Moon & Stars. The release coincided with news of Malo's cancer diagnosis, which he discussed openly with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe.

Before being hospitalized last week, Malo had been scheduled to perform with The Mavericks at a pair of tribute concerts held this past weekend at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Over 30 artists, including Patty Griffin, Jim Lauderdale and Steve Earle, still gathered to pay tribute to Malo, with some of the proceeds of the night going to the cancer prevention organization Stand Up To Cancer.

According to his spokesperson, though Malo was too ill to attend, the concert was streamed to his hospital room Friday night.

Copyright 2025 NPR

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has mostly blocked efforts to investigate misconduct within its ranks, according to the county inspector general, who announced his retirement Tuesday after 12 years on the job.

In an open letter, Max Huntsman cited examples of how the county has thwarted his efforts to watchdog the department, which in the past has been plagued with accusations that deputies use excessive force and lie on the job.

Huntsman said one example is former Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s misuse of criminal enforcement powers to discredit critics, such as opening an investigation into former County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl.

Villanueva was sheriff from 2018 to 2022.

“My requests for investigation were rejected,” Huntsman’s letter reads. “Even after receiving an official subpoena, the Sheriff’s Department has failed to turn over records regarding the improper surveillance.”

He added: “Sometimes members of the public wonder if frightening new surveillance techniques will be used for improper purposes under the guise of criminal investigation. Sadly, the answer is yes.”

Before becoming inspector general in 2013, Huntsman, 60, was a deputy district attorney who specialized in public corruption. He told LAist on Tuesday that the inspector general job wasn’t something he wanted initially.

“I didn’t want to go work for politicians,” he said. “But the need to provide some kind of independent reporting and analysis was significant.”

The Sheriff’s Department issued a statement saying it valued the Office of the Inspector General and all county oversight bodies and that it wished Huntsman and his family well in his retirement.

The department said it “continues to make great strides in advancing the department in a transparent manner.”

LAist also reached out to the county CEO and county counsel for comment, but they declined.

After George Floyd

In the letter, Huntsman says the state of California has come a long way in strengthening the power of local law enforcement oversight bodies, in part because of the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis.

After widespread protests — and lobbying by Huntsman — the state provided authority to inspectors general to enforce subpoenas requiring law enforcement agencies to hand over documents and authorized external investigation of police misconduct, including deputy gang conduct.

The Sheriff’s Department — backed by county lawyers — has resisted.

“Los Angeles County may not follow those laws, but it will not be able to avoid them forever,” Huntsman wrote. “The county refuses to require the photographing of suspected gang tattoos in secretive groups that the undersheriff has identified as violating state law.”

“Just a few weeks ago, we requested some information regarding an investigation, and a pair of commanders refused to give it to us,” Huntsman said in an interview with LAist.

Origin of the office 

The Inspector General’s Office was created by the county Board of Supervisors in 2013 in response to a scandal that included former Sheriff Lee Baca covering up the abuses of jail inmates.

Baca went to federal prison.

Since then, the office has issued dozens of reports with recommendations for improving living conditions inside jails that some have described as “filthy,” stopping abuses of juveniles inside juvenile halls and providing shower privacy for inmates as part of the requirements under the Prison Rape Elimination Act.

“All of these abuses were reported by the Office of Inspector General and recommendations were ignored,” Huntsman wrote. Often, it took court orders to enact change.

“When we first blew the whistle on the torturous chaining of mentally ill prisoners to benches for 36 hours at a time, it was only a court order that ended the practice,” he wrote. “Time and time again, this pattern repeated itself.”

Huntsman wrote the county has permitted the Sheriff’s Department to block oversight and defunded the Office of Inspector General by removing a third of its staff.

“It's not surprising the county has driven out two successive chairs of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission,” he wrote.

“Government always claims to value transparency and accountability, but shooting the messenger is still the most common response to criticism,” Huntsman wrote.

Despite setbacks, Huntsman values work 

Huntsman told LAist on Tuesday that he was proud of his career as a public servant.

“I’ve really enjoyed the work and I’m sad to have it end,” he said.

It’s a sentiment he echoed in his letter, adding that despite the setbacks and roadblocks, he was proud of the people with whom he shared the office.

“It has been my honor to work with a talented, brave and tireless group of public servants to ensure that the public knows what its government is doing,” he wrote.

He noted the inspector general’s reports are fact-checked by the office and public.

“When government abuses occur, they are sometimes kept secret, but that is no longer the case for much of what is happening in Los Angeles County,” Huntsman wrote. “What you do about it is up to you.,”

Huntsman’s last day is Friday.

Topline:

The backstory: Last month, the council's Transportation Committee voted to bring a proposal forward to implement a policy change that allows the city to impound and immediately destroy abandoned or inoperable RVs worth less than $4,000. The change is inspired by new state law AB 630, which was created to prevent previously impounded RVs from ending back up on the street.

The motion, authored by Councilmember Traci Park, reports that abandoned RVs pose as public and safety hazards.

What's next: Councilmember Nithya Raman requested that an implementation plan be presented to the council's public safety and housing and homelessness committees.

Go deeper: L.A. pushes policy to make it easier to remove RVs from city streets.