These higher-income LA neighborhoods saw a big jump in streetlight repair calls

The story first appeared on The LA Local.

For Los Angeles streetlight advocates, 2025 was another dark year, as calls to repair public lights remained nearly the same as the year before despite growing public and political scrutiny.

Malfunctioning streetlights are nothing new to Angelenos. For years, they have plagued neighborhoods and left residents to deal with darkened sidewalks, streets and parks — and the public safety challenges they pose.

An analysis by The LA Local of 311 calls for streetlight repairs showed that reports remained consistently high in 2025, with about 45,500 compared with 46,100 in 2024. That was an increase of roughly 10,000 calls from 2022 and 2023, when totals hovered around 35,000.

Downtown remained the neighborhood with the most streetlight calls: about 2,400 in 2025, an increase of about 200 from the year before.

While the total number remained relatively constant citywide, the locations of calls shifted. Some neighborhoods saw drops, while others saw surges – notably in some of LA’s higher-income neighborhoods.

Calls in Hollywood Hills tripled from about 300 to more than 1,000 in 2025. Silverlake calls similarly skyrocketed from 513 in 2024 to about 1,482 last year. Calls in Atwater Village and Los Feliz more than doubled.

Boyle Heights, once among the most affected neighborhoods, saw progress. The neighborhood had more than 1,900 calls for light repair in 2024 and about 1,100 in 2025.

Westlake saw a similar decrease, from 1,864 calls in 2024 to 1,042 in 2025. Calls in Pico Union and West Adams were cut in half.

According to the Los Angeles City Controller’s office, the LA Bureau of Street Lighting reported that copper wire theft has been trending down since last summer. Reported maintenance calls, however, doubled from about 2,000 in July 2025 to about 4,400 in January 2026.

The LA Bureau of Street Lighting, responsible for repairs and maintenance of the city’s 220,000 streetlights, saw a 5% budget cut in 2025. Its budget had long been among the smallest of public works departments.

Miguel Sangalang, the bureau’s director, told the City Council on March 4 that the department had a backlog of about 32,000 open service requests and that the average time to repair a light has grown to about a year. About a quarter of all installed lights were at the end stage of life, he said, and needed to be replaced.

“Theft and vandalism is our most glaring issue,” he told the city council. “This is the issue that takes out whole blocks and neighborhoods.”

The LA Local reported that the Los Angeles Police Department had disbanded a specialized unit — The Heavy Metal Task Force — investigating copper wire theft last July.

Sangalang said during the presentation that the department began fortifying streetlights, installing cages or shields to make the copper wiring more difficult to access. Installing battery- and solar-powered streetlights has helped, he added, because they use far less wire.

He noted that lights in areas that previously needed replacing multiple times per year had been replaced with solar-powered models and had remained intact for three years.

The bureau is expected to seek a tax increase to subsidize its budget, reduce the time it takes to repair lights and get back on track with its maintenance schedule.