Elizabeth Chou

1 week ago | lapublicpress.org | Elizabeth Chou

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass says residents of RVs are frequently living in “unsafe and unlivable” conditions due to “vanlords” who buy RVs at tow yard auctions, then rent them to people who live on the streets. She’s now sponsoring a state bill that would allow the city to destroy more vehicles before going to auction in an effort to get them off the street.

2 weeks ago | lapublicpress.org | Elizabeth Chou

Broken street lights could take up to two years to get fixed. Tree-trimming that gets done every 17 years could become more infrequent. Beloved arts and culture programming could disappear. That’s the grim outlook for LA under a proposed spending plan released by LA Mayor Karen Bass last week. Department officials are sounding the alarm to LA leaders on the potential impacts of deep service cuts and layoffs as they weigh in on the budget over the next few weeks.

3 weeks ago | lapublicpress.org | Elizabeth Chou

In a big city, an apartment building can feel like a small village. On Mohawk Street in Echo Park, residents of one such village came together two years ago to fight off one landlord’s attempts to evict and displace them. And they did something that doesn’t happen very often. They ended up winning protections for themselves — and all renters in Los Angeles.

1 month ago | lapublicpress.org | Elizabeth Chou |Elizabeth ChouReporter

The Los Angeles County Sheriff Department’s budget would get a $9.5 million boost – but the Department of Health Services’s budget would shrink by about $165 million – under a $47.9 billion spending plan advanced Tuesday by the LA County Board of Supervisors. The county’s recommended budget reflects approximately $89 million in cuts and is moving forward as officials forecast major fiscal challenges in the next year.

1 month ago | lapublicpress.org | Elizabeth Chou

Los Angeles County voters decided in 2020 to put real dollars into shifting a punitive approach to criminal justice to a “care first, jails last” model. They did so by approving Measure J, which set aside 10% of the county’s budget to put back into the community. But now members of an advisory committee monitoring those funds say they’re worried those funds will get swept away into other uses, as top LA officials raise alarms about the county’s bad financial health this year.