LA has a backlog of complaints about streetlight outages. Why haven't they been fixed?

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.