Home Care In Los Angeles, CA

To the editor: The article about stalling population growth in California, plus the opinion piece bemoaning the lack of housing in L.A., got me to thinking ( Jan. 27; Jan. 27). Is perpetual growth the only way to assure prosperity?

Of course, there is plenty of land to build houses on, but is that what we really want? California is unique among states in the diversity, majesty and grandeur of its natural lands. Yes, we have national and state parks to preserve the most unique and precious features, but should the rest of it be developed into limitless vistas of tract homes with only these few outdoor museums remaining to show what once was everywhere?

Cities understand the value of zoning, restricting the density of housing — with the most desirable neighborhoods having big enough lots that you usually can’t see or hear your neighbors, with plenty of nature in between. Why can’t the state say when enough is enough, to curb endless runaway growth by zoning California statewide to limit density permanently?

People have gravitated here because it is so special. Unless we establish limits, it won’t be special forever. Maybe growth flatlining is a solution, not a problem. Lots of open land is a way to preserve prosperity by preserving the value of what’s still here.

Robert C. Huber, Yorba Linda

To the editor: It’s great to hear that there’s a population plateau in California. It seems the reason why we were so busy trying to build apartment buildings in single-family neighborhoods was because we were having too much population growth.

Well, that’s apparently no longer the case — good. Now the city can stop complaining about housing and focus on affordability of the housing we already have.

Linda Bradshaw Carpenter, Los Angeles

Some 31,000 healthcare workers in California and Hawaii plan to go on strike at the end of the month, with no end date planned.

LOS ANGELES, CA — Some 31,000 Kaiser Permanente nurses and other health care workers are set to strike across California and Hawaii later this month amid an impasse in contract negotiations.

The strike, which is set to begin on Jan. 26, will mark the second work stoppage by members of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals in recent months.

But unlike the strike in October, the union has not indicated how long workers will remain off the job — resulting in a possibility that this may be longer than the previous five-day work stoppage. At the time, the union said that strike was the largest in its history.

The strike will include nearly 20 hospitals and 200 clinics, the vast majority in of which are in California. Participating workers include registered nurses, pharmacists, nurse anesthetists, nurse practitioners, midwives, physician assistants, rehab therapists, speech language pathologists and dietitians, according to the union.

The union on Thursday informed Kaiser executives that its members plan to strike: By law, the workers must provide 10 days notice for work stoppages, according to labor leaders.

The notice follows areport released by the union that questions what it describes as Kaiser's billions of dollars in reserves and plans for expansion while patients are being harmed by "chronic understaffing and delayed access to care."

UNAC/UHCP's contract with Kaiser expired at the end of September; negotiations for a new contract have been underway since May. The union struck days after the contract expired amid a dispute over wages, staffing levels and other matters.

The sides returned to the bargaining table after October's five-day strike. The Mercury News reported at the end of December that it appeared Kaiser had not budged on its offer of a 21.5% wage increase over four years, while the union continued to seek a 25% raise over the same period.

In October, Kaiser leaders said any rise higher than what it was offering would lead to higher costs for KP members and customers "at a time when health care costs are increasingly unaffordable and many are having to make the difficult choice to go without coverage."

That month, the union filed a complaint against Kaiser at the National Labor Relations Board, claiming that the employer unlawfully walked away from negotiations. A Kaiser representative told the Mercury News the decision came after a labor leader tried to "coerce" the company with unspecified damaging information about the company.

"We made this difficult decision following a union leader’s actions that have compromised the National Bargaining process and undermined both parties’ ability to continue good faith bargaining, the Kaiser announced in written statement in December.

The union says that's a "feigned concern about the union's lawful and protected communication" that executives used as a pretext to halt negotiations.

“Kaiser can end this whenever they choose by coming back to the table and bargaining in good faith," union president and registered nurse Charmaine S. Morales said in a statement. "Until they do, we are done waiting. Striking is the lawful power of working people, and we are prepared to use it on behalf of our profession and patients.”

Patch has reached out to Kaiser for comment.

While those wage increases are some of the major points of contention on the national bargaining table, local unions — whose workers are also covered by national contracts — are also negotiating parallel agreements with Kaiser.

That includes a group of locals known as the "Blue Book," which together represent 22,000 registered nurses, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants in Southern California. The bargaining team is made up of the presidents of the region's locals, including Kimberly Mullen, an inpatient nurse at Kaiser South Bay Medical Center.

She said staffing ratios, workload and scheduling are among the major issues her team has focused on in its negotiations.

"The most important thing to me — I've been a nurse for 17 ½ years — I want enough time, enough staff and enough resources to give patients the care they deserve. I do not have it. Because I don't have it, my coworkers don't have it, we've been having to do more and more and more with less and less and less — the patients suffer," she told Patch.

Mullen and her colleagues are among those who will be striking beginning Jan. 26.

Picketing is set to begin at 7 a.m. that day at the following California Kaiser locations:

If a bed in a homeless shelter has been taken, is that bed still “available?”

The plaintiffs in a five-year-old lawsuit alleging the City of Los Angeles failed to address homelessness say the answer is an obvious “no.” But the city begs to differ.

According to the testimony of City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, a bed created by the city remains “on offer” whether someone is sleeping in it or not.

That contention is one of several at the core of a hearing in Los Angeles federal court to determine if the city should be held in contempt for failing to comply with a settlement, signed more than 3½ years ago, that requires it to produce more than 12,000 beds of shelter or housing and remove nearly 10,000 homeless encampments from the street.

U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter kicked off the hearing in November with a searing review of the city’s “pattern of defiance of settlement agreement and the deadlines contained within it with performance or performative compliance only resulting in the wake of court hearings.”

Four days of testimony, spread over nearly two months, have produced a striking record of confusion and disagreement over the meaning of basic terms such as “homeless encampment” and “persons served,” leaving the impression of a city that skews definitions when it can’t live up to the common ones.

If an outreach worker tells a person on the street a shelter bed is waiting for them, is that an “offer?” Not by the city’s definition, Szabo testified Monday. An offer occurs only when someone checks into the shelter to occupy a bed.

The distinction matters because the court has required the city to “offer” shelter to anyone whose tent or makeshift shelter is to be removed in pursuit of the settlement. But the city can’t track how often “offers” are made, Szabo acknowledged.

“We elected to use PEH [person experiencing homelessness] served as our best good-faith effort to comply with that requirement,” he said. “It’s a metric that we are reasonably able to verify.”

“PEH served,” he testified, means people who occupy a bed.

The city’s defense is that it’s doing the best it can and making progress on the goals of the May 2022 settlement.

“The good news now is that the city has made extraordinary progress since then,” argued Theane Evangelis, lead attorney for the city’s outside law firm. “It’s served more than 8,000 people, has more than 8,000 beds online, more than 5,000 in progress. Your Honor, these numbers reflect Herculean efforts to combat homelessness, not a pattern of delay or obstruction.”

The 2020 case was filed by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group made up primarily of business and property owners who want cleaner streets. The lawsuit also named Los Angeles County, which reached a separate settlement in 2023. Lawyers for the group contend the city is willfully obfuscating to cover up its inadequate efforts to live up to its settlement.

“Our clients, both the housed and unhoused communities at large, were promised more than aspirational rhetoric, Your Honor,” their attorney Elizabeth Mitchell said in her opening statement. “They were promised measurable action, verified by data, overseen by this court. Three years into the settlement, the city still fights oversight harder than it fights homelessness.”

Two advocacy groups — the L.A. Community Action Network and Los Angeles Catholic Worker — are intervening on behalf of homeless people in the case. Representing them, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles attorney Shayla Myers has argued passionately that they need protection from both parties in the litigation.

She’s been especially focused on the city, which she suspects is using the encampment reduction plan “simply to erase the visible evidence of homelessness on our streets and hide the fact that homelessness is not getting better.”

Under intense cross-examination by Myers on Monday, Szabo struggled to defend his testimony that the city was continuing to maintain “largely or almost all” of about 7,000 beds it was required to produce under a previous agreement that expired at the end of June. He clarified that the was referring to physical beds created by the city and acknowledged that more than 2,000 of those beds were leased with temporary subsidies that expire in two years.

“I don’t know how many are still being used today,” he said.

The contempt hearing, a mini-trial within a trial, is the latest drama in a marathon case that has included: a 110-page order — overturned on appeal — that would have required the city to house everyone on Skid Row; an order requiring the city to provide housing for everyone living under a freeway overpass; the 7,000 beds; a further settlement requiring the city to create another 12,915 beds and remove 9,800 encampments; a slow-burning battle over what an encampment is — for purposes of the settlement it is a single tent, vehicle or makeshift shelter; an order for a $3-million audit of the city’s homeless programs; a hearing on whether to place those programs under a receiver; the hiring of a 15-member outside legal team to fight receivership whose billings are $1.8 million and counting; the appointment of a monitor instead of a receiver; and the appeal of that monitor’s appointment, which was not even the last appeal in the case.

The current hearing largely focuses on one paragraph in the 2022 settlement that defines — in retrospect, poorly — seven metrics of progress the city must report to the court quarterly.

Three address beds: “the number of housing or shelter opportunities created or otherwise obtained, the number of beds or opportunities offered, and the number of beds or opportunities currently available in each Council District.”

And four, with the qualifier, “to the extent possible,” address people: “the number of PEH engaged, the number of PEH who have accepted offers of shelter or housing, the number of PEH who have rejected offers of shelter or housing and why offers were rejected, and the number of encampments in each Council District.”

“To the extent possible” became the cornerstone of the city’s explanation of why it had used the number of beds occupied as a catch-all for the city’s interactions with people.

Acknowledging that the city hasn’t reported every item required, Evangelis argued in her opening statement in November that the agreement “specifies that, quote, the city will work with LAHSA to include some of those items, quote, to the extent possible. That’s critical.”

Testimony that followed drew a picture of how hard and time-consuming it would be to gather that information from the homeless database called HMIS — maintained not by the city but by the independent Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority — but little evidence that the city pursued “to the extent possible” with much zeal.

The perpetual-motion nature of the proceeding is wearing the patience of at least one City Council member who initially supported the litigation in principle.

“The infusion of investments mandated by the case played a part in the City reducing unsheltered homelessness for the first time after many years of increases,” Councilmember Nithya Raman wrote in a November post on her website shortly after the contempt proceeding began.

“However, the litigation is now dragging on in ways that feel very removed from the goal of providing shelter and housing to people living on LA’s streets.”

Repeated hearings and data requests are “taxing an already strained system, and adding confusion and significant cost,” she wrote. “In a city with limited funding and capacity, the Court’s demands are now actually taking away from the work of housing as many people as possible.”

Who is responsible for the serial hearings could be debated. That they will continue seems certain. A new one is now on the horizon after a state court judge last week ruled that the City Council illegally considered an element of the settlement — the 9,800 encampment reductions — in a closed session without public participation.

Citing a report in The Times questioning whether the Council even voted on the encampment resolution plan, “a critical and material issue before the Court,” Carter ordered a new hearing, on a date yet to be set, to examine whether the city “willfully and intentionally misrepresented material facts to the Court.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s disaster chief quietly retired in late December amid criticism over the state’s indecisive stance on whether soil testing was necessary to protect survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fires.

One year ago, Nancy Ward, then the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency to spearhead the cleanup of toxic ash and fire debris cloaking more than 12,000 homes across Los Angeles County.

Although Ward’s decision ensured the federal government would assume the bulk of disaster costs, it came with a major trade off. FEMA was unwilling to pay for soil sampling to confirm these homes weren’t still heavily contaminated with toxic substances after the cleanup — testing that California state agencies have typically done following similar fires in the past.

Following intense backlash from fire survivors and California lawmakers, Ward pleaded with FEMA to reconsider its soil-testing stance, writing in a Feb. 19 letter that it is “critical to protect public health” and “ensure that survivors can safely return to their homes.” Her request was denied.

However, in October, Cal OES — under Ward’s leadership — privately considered discontinuing state funding for soil testing in the aftermath of future wildfires, according to a confidential, internal draft memo obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

The Times requested an interview with Ward, and sent questions to her office asking about her initial decision to forgo soil testing and for clarity on the future of state’s fire recovery policy. Ward declined the request; The Times later published an article on Dec. 29 about allegations that federal contractors illegally dumped toxic ash and misused contaminated soil in breach of state policy.

Ward, who served as Cal OES director for three years, retired on Dec. 30; her deputy director, Christina Curry, stepped into the role as the interim chief. Ward also did not respond to several requests for comment for this article.

Ward was the first woman to serve as Cal OES director. She had also previously served as a FEMA regional administrator, overseeing federal disaster response in the Southwest and Pacific Islands from 2006 to 2014.

A Cal OES spokesperson said Ward’s retirement had been planned well in advance.

“Director Nancy Ward has been a steady hand and a compassionate leader through some of California’s largest disasters,” the spokesperson said. “Her decades of service have made our state stronger, safer, and more resilient. The Governor is deeply grateful for her dedication and wishes her the very best in retirement.”

The internal memo obtained by The Times was written by Ward’s assistant director, and titled: “Should the state continue to pay for soil testing as part of Private Property Debris Removal (PPDR) programs? ”

It laid out three possible answers: The state could keep funding soil testing after future wildfires; the state could defer soil testing decisions to the affected counties with the possibility of reimbursing them; or the state could stop paying for soil testing entirely.

A Cal OES spokesperson said the memo was only a draft and did not represent a policy change. “The state’s position on soil testing remains unchanged,” the spokesperson said. “California is committed to advocating for the safe, timely removal of wildfire debris. Protecting the public health and well-being of impacted communities remains the state’s foremost priority.”

The primary reason for soil testing is to prevent harmful exposures to toxic metals, such as brain-damaging lead or cancer-causing arsenic. Since 2007, comprehensive soil testing has been conducted after 64 wildfire cleanups in California, according to the memo. When soil contamination still exceeded state benchmarks after the initial cleanup, the state government redeployed cleanup workers to remove more dirt and then retest the properties.

This approach, the memo said, was critical in identifying harmful substances that “pose exposure hazards via ingestion, inhalation of dust, or through garden/food production.” Soil testing “helps ensure the safety” of children, seniors, pregnant women and people with health issues who are “more vulnerable to soilborne toxins.”

“The State has a long precedent of conducting or paying for soil testing,” the Cal OES assistant director wrote in the memo. “Pivoting from this would be a significant policy change.”

The memo cites a report from CalRecycle, the agency that has historically carried out state-led fire cleanups, that stresses the importance of the current practice to public health.

“Soil contamination after a wildfire is an invisible threat,” wrote a CalRecycle official. “If not properly cleaned and remediated in a methodical way, property owners may encounter additional hurdles during the rebuilding process and suffer additional trauma.”

“Soil sampling,” the official adds, “is the metric by which Recyclable demonstrates that debris removal operations have successfully remediated the post-disaster threat to public health and the environment.”

However, such soil testing and additional cleanup prolongs the cleanup timeline and can make it more expensive. The memo cites cost estimates from CalRecycle which show that soil testing and additional cleanup work usually costs some $4,000 to $6,000 per parcel, representing 3% to 6% of overall debris removal costs.

The state cost projections align with those made by independent environmental experts. Andrews Whelton, a Purdue University professor who researches natural disasters, estimated that soil testing and further remediation for the Eaton and Palisades fire would cost between $40 million to $70 million.

All told, the CalRecycle report states the usual soil-testing process has been a “relatively low-cost step” to safeguard public health.

Further, although soil testing may add some cost, when it’s taken as a proactive measure, it can save money down the road.

Forgoing soil testing and evidence-backed remediation can generate uncertainty about toxic contamination, which in turn could lower the value of homes in Altadena and Pacific Palisades, Whelton said. What’s more, the property owner may be liable for soil contamination if they fail to disclose environmental risks when selling or leasing.

The internal CalOES memo alludes to this give and take: “Funds saved initially by skipping testing may be outweighed by later unseen costs, for example, reinvesting in remediation, addressing community complaints, litigation, or cleanup failure.”

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has fielded over 1,100 complaints filed by property owners affected by the Eaton and Palisades fires — over 20% of which were related to the quality of work. According to internal reports obtained by The Times, federal cleanup repeatedly deviated from cleanup protocols, likely spreading contamination in the process.

Since then, FEMA officials have backed down from their hard-line stance against paying for post-fire soil testing in California in an attempt to shore up public confidence in the federal cleanup.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week that FEMA will conduct a limited lead-testing program in the Eaton fire burn scar that is intended to “confirm the effectiveness of cleanup methods,” according to an EPA spokesperson. The initiative has already come under the scrutiny of environmental experts who say it lacks the rigor of California’s soil testing regimen.

It remains unclear if California will continue to implement soil-testing safeguards that made the state a national leader in fire recovery. Though state officials say these will remain unchanged, there is no legal mandate to follow these procedures.

The internal CalOES memo circulated under Ward’s leadership has only added to the cloud of uncertainty.

One thing is clear: It’s a moot point for survivors of the Eaton and Palisades fire.

As state and federal officials debated the value of soil testing, most Altadena and Pacific Palisades residents have been left to investigate the extent of environmental fallout on their own.

It feels like the word “iconic” gets tossed around so much that it’s almost lost its meaning. But if there’s one place in California that truly deserves the label it’s Big Sur.

What other spot in the Golden State so perfectly captures the state’s wildness and its simultaneous love of the ocean and the mountains?

So it felt like a really big moment this week when the state announced that, for the first time in three years, the entire 100-mile stretch of Highway 1 from Carmel to Cambria had reopened to vehicle traffic.

My colleague Grace Toohey reported how the coastal route had been closed at different locations through the last three years. The last stretch of the highway that remained closed was a remote, 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute, according to Caltrans.

Officials had been working to finalize repairs on that stretch and to work around what’s known as the Regent’s Slide, a notoriously steep section of the coast that gets persistently pummeled by erosion and rising sea levels, linked in part to climate change. Caltrans has spent an estimated $162 million on roadway repairs, landslide stabilization, debris clearing and complicated engineering on the road since January 2023.

Local businesses joined Gov. Gavin Newsom in heralding the reopening.

“This will be a return to normalcy,” said Ryne Leuzinger, chair of the board of directors for the Big Sur Community Assn., calling the reopening a reunification of north and south Big Sur. “2026 will be a really nice time to visit Big Sur.”

The operators of the Post Ranch Inn declared on Facebook: “For the first time in almost three years, Big Sur feels whole again.... Every breathtaking curve, every impossible ocean view, reminds you why this stretch of coast is on every traveler’s bucket list.”

For some locals not as dependent on the tourist trade, the reopening signals the return of “the traffic and chaos along the road sometimes created by tourists unfamiliar with the area,” said one man who has lived in Big Sur for decades and asked to not be named. Indeed, one post on Facebook proclaimed: “Now the insane traffic begins again!”

Of course, part of Big Sur’s allure has always been its feeling of apartness. I remember venturing there decades ago during a first big weekend getaway with my college girlfriend. The inky nighttime darkness became even harder to navigate in a thick fog.

It felt like our inn was clinging to the edge of the earth because, in a sense, it was. Alison and I bonded over books and a tiny Christmas tree, which we adorned with our own found decorations. Our connection deepened that weekend and today she is my wife.

Everyone knows that Highway 1 has not seen its last road collapse or landslide. Future closures are virtually guaranteed. But at least for that one weekend long ago, I’m really glad they kept the road open for us.

Today’s top stories

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This morning’s must reads

For your downtime

A question for you: What are the best L.A. movies?

We grappled with our list of the 101 best Los Angeles movies for weeks — Is this one ranked too high or too low? — but what did we forget? Was there a film you were expecting? We welcome your thoughts, counterarguments, even a healthy dose of outrage. L.A. contains multitudes and if there’s one thing our city inspires, it’s remakes. Tell us your favorites by Feb. 2 to be considered for an article sharing reader picks.

And finally ... your photo of the day

Today’s great photo is from Ted Judah, a diver who floated across a rare king-of-the-salmon ribbonfish while diving in Monterey.

Jim Rainey, staff reporter Hugo Martín, assistant editor, fast break desk Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor Andrew Campa, weekend writer Karim Doumar, head of newsletters

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