Home Care In Los Angeles, CA

As Southern California’s worst heat wave of the year intensifies and expands across the region Thursday, officials warn the next few days could bring record-breaking high — and low — temperatures.

Widespread heat advisories have been issued across California and the U.S. Southwest, even encompassing much of the often-spared coastline. While daytime temperatures in the high 90s and triple digits could set records that will exacerbate health and fire concerns, climate scientists warn it’s the limited overnight cooling that might be the biggest concern.

“The entire L.A. Basin, even downtown L.A., [is] not getting below the low 70s,” Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said in a briefing this week. Parts of the San Gabriel Valley will remain above 80 degrees at night, and much of the Palos Verdes peninsula won’t fall below 70, according to the National Weather Service.

Phoenix is not forecast to drop below 90 degrees.

“Those overnight minimum temperatures will set records,” Swain said. “We don’t talk about them as much, but they’re hugely consequential from a human health and, in particular, wildfire perspective.”

An extreme heat warning is in place for much of Los Angeles, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo, warning of “dangerously hot conditions” through at least Saturday. Temperatures Thursday are expected to hover in the mid- to high 90s inland from the coast, and somewhere between 100 and 109 degrees in the valleys, lower mountains and some high deserts. In the Mojave Desert and Coachella Valley, temperatures will climb above 110 degrees.

“This dangerous level of heat will pose a threat to anyone without effective cooling and adequate hydration,” the weather service’s Weather Prediction Center warned. “Highs into the 90s more broadly across the West will still pose a threat to anyone more sensitive to heat or engaging in strenuous outdoor activities.”

In Woodland Hills, a group of mothers on Thursday morning focused on finding a way to keep their toddlers occupied — and safe — in the intensifying heat, as temperatures climbed toward 100 degrees.

“The mixture of heat and toddlers is terrible,” said Celina Nelley, 30, as she sought refuge on a shaded bench at the Topanga Village. “It’s either stay home and do screen time or go outside.”

Her “moms group” had brought their young children to the mall’s outdoor water fountain and climbing gym, but Nelley worried there was not enough shade.

“We need misters and shade,” said Carolla Aguirre, 33, as she handed a crying boy a packet of fruit. Another mom, Natala Jones, 31, said she was noticing that the heat was causing a lot of acting out — both by adults and children.

“People get more aggressive when they drive,” Jones said. “I get more aggressive and in a bad mood. Everyone is in a bad mood!”

Even as some of their kids seemed unfazed by the heat, running around together, Nelley said she wouldn’t last long: “An hour and half tops, and I’m outta here.”

Though Thursday and Friday are expected to be the hottest days in the Southland, temperatures will remain elevated through early next week. Woodland Hills is forecast to top out at 107 on Thursday and downtown Los Angeles may hit 97. It’s forecast to hit 101 degrees in Pasadena.

“The multi-day period of extreme heat ... will also impact and worsen air quality, and smog will reach unsafe levels in many parts of the city,” L.A. emergency officials warned Thursday. “It’s very important to be proactive and make sure you and your community have a plan to stay safe during extreme heat.”

Compounding those safety concerns, officials have warned the heat wave could foster an environment ripe for fast-moving wildfires. A red flag warning is in effect for the Los Angeles and Ventura County mountains and foothills through Saturday night.

“If fire ignition occurs, conditions are favorable for extreme fire behavior and rapid fire growth, which could threaten life and property,” the red flag warnings said.

The dry, hot weather coupled with an unstable atmosphere — that could bring some weekend thunderstorms — is a recipe for dramatic fire growth, officials warn. It’s particularly a concern in Southern California, where back-to-back wet years increased vegetation growth before this year’s dismal rainy season.

“We have the legacy of this wet-to-dry whiplash event,” Swain said. “There’s literally more biomass, more potential fuel, for the fires to burn.”

The hot weather could be accompanied by some monsoonal thunderstorms in the mountains and deserts by the weekend, which could further elevate fire concerns given the chance for lightning. The storms, if they materialize, may also create localized flooding, destructive winds and debris flows, especially in recent burn scars.

They’re coming for you, California. And you aren’t gonna see them coming.

They’re the California Highway Patrol and they’re riding in spiffy new SUVs that don’t look like your daddy’s cop car.

The CHP deployed 100 new Dodge Durangos a little more than three months ago. They’re designed to escape easy detection. Gone is authoritarian black-and-white; replaced by a dreamy, civilian-style color palette. The SUVs also aren’t outfitted like standard patrol cars. There’s no push bumper, no giant antenna and no light bar mounted on the roof.

The highway patrol announced in early May that officers would begin cruising in the specially marked patrol vehicles “to crack down on what can only be described as ‘video game-style’ driving on our highways.” For good reason, more than a third of all traffic fatalities in California are speed-related, according to a 2023 UC Berkeley study.

We all know what the CHP is talking about. These are the drivers who cut in and out of lanes like they’re gunning for the pole position at Laguna Seca. They speed. They seem to delight in riding other people’s bumpers. But the long arm of the law just got stealthier, enabling CHPers to “observe the most reckless and dangerous behaviors without immediate detection.”

It never feels like it, when you’re the one sweating, as the citation pad comes out, but the CHP insists: “Our goal remains the same: reduce injuries, prevent fatalities, and restore a sense of safety on California’s roadways.”

When I rode along with a couple of CHP officers last week, the low-profile approach seemed like a winner. Or a loser, if you are prone to applying mascara while changing lanes or reading text messages while rocketing down the diamond lane.

Since Californians live long chapters of their lives on the road, the CHP’s new tactic hasn’t gone unnoticed. “When I’m in public, it’s one of the number one questions right now,” said Officer Katherine Hendry. “People want to know, how many of these cars do you have? And what colors should I be looking for?”

Answer: Vapor Gray, Destroyer Gray, Triple Nickel, Red Oxide and Night Moves. That is carmaker Dodge-speak. Triple Nickel is another shade of gray. Night Moves is a very deep blue. And Red Oxide, the color Hendry drove, is a plummy red.

In not much more than an hour, Hendry and Officer Luis Quintero filled me in on the sub-rosa SUVs, while our Red Oxide-colored ride sneaked up on half a dozen unsuspecting drivers, all of them doing at least 80 mph.

Most got verbal warnings, but not the 30-something tearing down the 2 Freeway in Eagle Rock toward Interstate 5. Wearing scrubs, the young woman explained that she was late for work, again. She feared she would lose her job. Hendry had to gun the Durango to 103 mph to catch up. At that speed, you don’t get off with a warning.

Hendry and Quintero have heard all the excuses: I needed a bathroom break, bad. I missed my coffee stop. I was only shaving (face fully engulfed in white lather) when traffic slowed. One 20-year-old doing 100-mph-plus in Diamond Bar once told Quintero that he was speeding to be with his lady as she delivered their baby. The officer asked the suspect if he would voluntarily hand over his phone, where Quintero quickly found the suspect’s last text: “Just tell him you’re having a baby.” Holy evaporating alibi!

Genuine contrition seems like a better response. That was the approach taken by Susan, a middle-aged woman caught speeding up the 210 by the SUV I rode in. Susan was a bit teary-eyed as she admitted to speeding. Hendry’s computer check showed no offenses on her record for many years.

Susan conceded she never noticed the rusty Red Oxide SUV until it flashed its emergency lights. Yes, she said, the CHP seems to be onto something.

“You don’t want to be too obvious if you’re them, do you?” said Susan, who declined to give her last name. “I know people probably don’t love it if they’re real speeders. But people are getting away with too much.”

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A question for you: What are your favorite places to eat and drink in the San Fernando Valley?

Karen Kungie-Torres writes, “It’s gotta be DogHaus. My son had a religious experience trying the Holiday Aoli burger, and now it’s his go-to order. For me, it’s the Sooo-Cali Dog, which feels a little healthier due to a healthy dose of arugula on top.”

Jocelyn Harrison writes, “H.O.P.E. cafe in Studio City.”

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And finally ... your photo of the day

Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Christina House at an East Los Angeles event hall where immigrants were reunited with their families after being separated by a border for decades.

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Los Angeles faces two land use crises. On one hand, L.A. is beset by a desperate housing shortage in the hundreds of thousands of units, born mostly by beleaguered low-income and moderate-income Angelenos for whom renting and homeownership is increasingly out of reach.

Meanwhile, our downtown is afflicted by increasing emptiness, with 28% of office space sitting vacant due to pandemic-era changes in the structure of work, and flight to Culver City and Century City. Angelenos may want to come home to downtown, but too few want to work there.

These twin challenges may dovetail, conveniently, into one solution: convert those empty towers into housing. Indeed, a makes the case that vacant offices should be redeveloped to create a new generation of apartments and condos.

The conditions are particularly ripe for these in conversions in L.A. The city already has a nation-leading “adaptive reuse” ordinance that smooths the path for conversions like these, state and local leaders are eagerly other regulatory changes to further support these conversions, and a growing fiscal crisis could be ameliorated by breathing life into downtown.

Not so fast. While authors from Downtown Works LA — a nonprofit that aims to expand the city’s economic opportunities and “uplift its reputation as a dynamic, inclusive and welcoming urban center” — correctly point out the considerable fiscal benefits of stabilizing property values and bringing new foot traffic to the area, they don’t fully understand the cost. Without public subsidy, “conversion projects are largely financially infeasible,” the group , calling for additional research into the size of subsidy needed.

It’s likely that a sizable share of the steep costs would come from the city and state to ultimately make these projects pencil, raising the question of whether they’re the best use of finite public funds. And in an odd twist, prices for the higher-end and luxury units that these conversions would most often produce have actually by 15% downtown since the onset of the pandemic, undermining the private investment case as well.

There’s a better way, one that offers significantly greater bang for the city’s buck. According to a by the architecture firm Gensler and Pew Charitable Trusts, “co-living” conversions can outcompete with apartments and condos by about a third of the cost per square foot while producing about three times as many units. These co-living spaces, sometimes referred to as “dorms for adults,” are made up of small studio apartments featuring single beds, desks and closets, with tenants sharing communal kitchens and bathrooms. That means they’re significantly more affordable to the renter. Under Pew’s design, dwellings would clock in at just $1,000 per month, putting them within reach for any Angeleno making at least $40,000 annually.

Under this plan, the public and private sector would split a more modest cost of about $225,000 per unit, a steal compared to the average affordable studio.

These savings originate from some boring but fairly consistent facts about tall office buildings. The bathrooms and kitchens of these towers tend to be concentrated in the center of each floor; extending plumbing to the dozens of new bathrooms and kitchens needed across each floor of the building is increasingly expensive. Additionally, the depth of these buildings’ floor plates (in other words, the distance from the elevator to the window) makes them awkward to divvy up into apartments, further driving up costs. Co-living solves both problems, keeping plumbing in the middle of the floor and using deep floor plates to create common space.

These new homes would be small, with little to no frills. Each floor would be designed to host up to 48 beds, and each would include four kitchens, two central bathrooms with six toilets and four showers each, and two shared community rooms for lounging and entertainment. But they offer something precious: an affordable, private resting space in the heart of our city’s walkable, jobs-rich center. And the low sticker price even includes some amenities, like multiple laundry rooms on each floor, a gym, utilities and basic furnishings.

Especially for recent immigrants, college students or young grads, service workers, and those who have fallen on hard times — often, unfortunately, including veterans and seniors — these homes could be a valuable stepping stone or safety net. In fact, the eradication of such cheap and small options, starting in the 1970s, is speculated to have contributed to the rise of modern homelessness.

To be sure, these types of conversion projects aren’t without challenges. Relative to the residential alternatives, they’re less tested and can be expensive to manage — developers prefer to take on lower-risk, cookie-cutter projects. Converting just a few floors thus might be a good start to prove the model. But leaders across the city should step in to help and broaden the horizons of our ambition; philanthropy, universities, nonprofits and city government can all help make these projects less risky, whether by facilitating property purchase, serving as anchor tenants or offering loan guarantees. Indeed, this could be a reenergizing moment for L.A.’s civic life in a painful and deflating year.

Of course, the tens of thousands of new homes that could be unlocked by this work, while life-changing for many of their tenants, will still be a drop in the bucket of what’s needed. Wonky reforms on whether city building codes still must follow, as must difficult conversations around the strictness of L.A.’s residential zoning. But at the present juncture, downtown’s moment of land use crisis calls for a straightforward and potentially unifying answer: co-living over condos.

Joshua Seawell is the head of policy at the Inclusive Abundance Initiative and lives in Los Feliz.

Early last year, vandals breached fencing, climbed dozens of flights of stairs and painted bold, colorful graffiti on the exterior of three unfinished high-rises that make up the abandoned Oceanwide Plaza development.

The so-called Graffiti Towers — visible from great distances on the 110 Freeway and looming over thousands of visitors attending events across the street at Crypto.com Arena — were expected to be sold in a bankruptcy auction a year ago.

But the long-running bankruptcy sale of downtown Los Angeles’ most spectacular eyesore drags on with no clear end in sight. Experts blame a confluence of factors, including high interest rates, rising construction costs and delays in attracting viable bidders.

Construction on what would have been one of the city’s most notable landmarks, with high-rise housing, a hotel and a shopping center, halted in 2019 when Beijing-based conglomerate Oceanwide Holdings ran out of money to pay contractors after spending $1.2 billion on the complex that fills a large city block on Figueroa Street.

Business leaders have expressed alarm that the graffiti some find artistic will prove embarrassing when global attention is focused on the World Cup next year and the Summer Olympics in 2028.

Resolution of the Oceanwide Plaza saga also can’t come soon enough for many downtown stakeholders who see the graffitied towers — rising as high as 49 stories — as a dark presence besmirching the city and sending a negative message about the neighborhood.

“The Graffiti Towers have worldwide infamy at this point,” said Cassy Horton, co-founder of the DTLA Residents Assn. “It’s like this beacon that shines and says, ‘Come create mischief down here and you won’t get in trouble. This is the spot to do it.’”

The graffiti is likely to remain until a new owner takes on the painstaking task of removing it.

More than a year ago, a federal judge set a Sept. 17 auction of the property, saying there were several potential bidders. The winner of the auction ultimately wasn’t able to come up with the promised purchase price and negotiations commenced with other bidders.

The real estate broker managing the sale, Mark Tarczynski of Colliers, declined to comment on the status of the sale but told real estate publication the Real Deal recently that two real estate development companies, one from the U.S. and one from abroad, are now competing as bidders. He said he anticipates closing the deal by the end of the year.

The purchase price, which would be used to pay creditors including general contractor Lendlease and EB-5 visa investors, would just be the beginning of expenses for the new owner. Estimates to complete the project reach $1 billion, even though it is about 60% completed.

Challenges to get it done include market conditions that are hamstringing other planned real estate developments. Builders complain of high interest rates for borrowing money to finance construction.

New tariffs are driving up the cost of imported construction materials while raising uncertainty about how long the tariffs may last or what new ones may arise. Labor costs have also been increasing in recent years, and the recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids have added a destabilizing effect on the construction labor pool, industry observers have said.

Los Angeles architect Douglas Hanson, who designed the 35-story Circa apartment complex next to Oceanwide Plaza, has an idea to shield people’s gaze from the graffitied towers and bring in some money.

He suggests rolling down vinyl advertising signs that could be seen on the from the freeway on the west side of the complex and lowering other vinyl coverings on the east side that would display a beach scene or some other art.

“You can get good money for advertising in that neighborhood,” which allows large commercial displays, Hanson said. Ad revenue would more than pay for the signs, he said.

The buildings wouldn’t be fully wrapped like a Christo art project, he said. “Just drape them down and leave a little bit of the history of the building behind them.”

The Oceanwide Plaza site was a sprawling asphalt lot used for event parking when Oceanwide Holdings bought it in 2014 with a vision to build a fancy, mixed-use development that was far bigger in scale than what is typically built in the U.S.

Oceanwide set to work on the complex, which was intended to house luxury condominiums, apartments, a five-star Park Hyatt hotel and an indoor mall that would include deluxe shops and restaurants. A massive electronic sign on its facade was to bring a flavor of Times Square to Figueroa Street.

Many of the residents and visitors were expected to be Chinese citizens, but the country’s government implemented tighter controls on money leaving the country in 2019 and the pool of potential condo buyers shrunk.

The city has delayed releasing a report detailing its handling of the Palisades fire so as not to interfere with a federal investigation into the cause of the blaze, the mayor announced Tuesday.

The U.S. attorney’s office for the Central District of California made the request late last week, the mayor said. The city will not release the report until the conclusion of the federal investigation.

The delay comes more than seven months after the Palisades fire broke out in January, killing 12 and largely destroying the Westside neighborhood.

“We want to see the report. It’s fire season. We need to know what worked and what didn’t,” said Sharon Delugach, who serves on the city’s Fire Commission, a citizen panel overseeing the Los Angeles Fire Department.

Delugach said commissioners had not been shown the report.

Officials believe the Palisades fire was first detected about 10:30 a.m. on Jan. 7 as high winds sent flames coursing through the mountainous area near the Pacific Ocean.

Much of the focus of the investigation has been on whether a blaze sparked by fireworks a week earlier — which firefighters believed they had put out — might have reignited.

That fire, called the Lachman fire, was reported on New Year’s Day, and forward progress was stopped after just a few hours.

Still, investigators have not determined whether the fire was sparked on Jan. 7.

Because there are no power poles near the point of origin and the trail area is well traveled, the fire could have been caused by a person.

The city’s report could answer questions about the Fire Department’s response to the blaze. In the aftermath of the blaze, Bass removed Fire Chief Kristin Crowley from her position, saying the top fire official did not contact her until after the fire broke out, despite worsening wind conditions.

Fire Department officials had decided not to pre-deploy any engines or firefighters to the Palisades, which they had done in the past, despite being warned about the severe winds.

Several former top fire officials said the department could have deployed at least 10 additional engines to the Palisades to patrol before the fire.