Thursday, April 23, 2026

LA County Stormwater Capture Jumps to 120 Billion Gallons

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Los Angeles County captured more than 120 billion gallons of stormwater during the 2025-26 storm season, a sharp increase from the previous year that will significantly boost the region’s groundwater supply, officials announced Wednesday.

The total of 120.3 billion gallons collected between October and April 15 marks a dramatic rise from the 11.9 billion gallons captured during the prior storm season, according to county officials.

The water is expected to recharge aquifers with enough supply to meet the needs of about 3 million people for a year.

Downtown Los Angeles recorded 16.9 inches of rainfall during the season, about 110% of its annual average, according to county officials. By comparison, the previous year brought just 6.6 inches, less than half the typical annual total of 15.4 inches.

Officials said stormwater captured in reservoirs and spreading grounds reached 185% of average for this time of year.

“Capturing more stormwater here in Los Angeles County is one of the most powerful opportunities we have right now to strengthen our local water supply,”

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Financing Cited as Primary Hurdle to Housing Growth in LA County

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Financing, rather than local opposition, is the primary barrier to building affordable housing at scale, the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency said Wednesday, citing overwhelming demand in its first round of project funding.

The agency reported that 127 applications were submitted seeking a combined $1.5 billion to build 11,625 housing units — more than double initial projections and exceeding recent levels of affordable housing production in the region.

“These results challenge a long-standing assumption about what’s holding back affordable housing in Los Angeles County,” Rex Richardson, mayor of Long Beach and chair of the agency’s board, said in a statement. “The challenge isn’t a lack of sites, developers, or community will. The challenge is financing and operational support.”

Following an initial review, 79 applications requesting $954 million advanced for further evaluation, officials said. The agency has authorized up to $250 million for the inaugural funding round, including $100 million already awarded to 10 projects,

Thursday, April 23, 2026

California Dreaming, or California Drowning?

By EDDIE RIVERA

Erratic White House policies and global instability are conspiring to keep California’s housing market in a suffocating holding pattern

The economic mood in America has grown as unpredictable as the administration setting the tone, and California’s housing market is absorbing the punishment in real time. According to a new report from the California Association of Realtors, the state’s real estate sector stumbled through March with neither the momentum its stakeholders had hoped for nor the clarity they desperately need.

Existing home sales dropped 3.5% from February and fell 2.5% compared to the same month last year — the third consecutive year-over-year decline and the steepest in eight months. The total sales figure of 265,320 units marks the 42nd straight month the market has failed to crack the 300,000-unit threshold, a benchmark that once seemed routine but now feels aspirational.

Prospective buyers have not vanished — they have simply gone quiet, paralyzed by job market anxieties,

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Two Historians Bring Blackface and Baseball to Vroman’s

The hidden legacy of minstrelsy and the cultural life of America’s pastime converge in a joint author event Thursday in Pasadena

A Princeton historian who spent 20 years tracking blackface minstrelsy through American attics, sealed archives and forgotten photo albums will share a stage Thursday night with a UC Berkeley professor who uses baseball as a lens on modern American culture. The pairing is no accident: the two authors blurbed each other’s books, and both treat popular entertainment as a window into the nation’s deeper history.

Rhae Lynn Barnes and David M. Henkin will discuss and sign their new books — “Darkology: Blackface and the American Way of Entertainment” and “Out of the Ballpark: How to Think About Baseball” — at 7 p.m. April 23 at Vroman’s Bookstore, 695 E. Colorado Blvd. The event is free, and a book purchase from Vroman’s is appreciated, according to the bookstore’s event listing.

Barnes, an assistant professor of American cultural history at Princeton,

Thursday, April 23, 2026

UCLA Health Survey Adds Armenian Language Option

CITY NEWS SERVICE

UCLA’s California Health Interview Survey is now being offered in Armenian for the first time, expanding the state’s largest health survey to better capture data from one of California’s largest ethnic communities, officials announced Wednesday.

The CHIS survey, administered by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research since 2001, is the largest population-representative state health survey in the nation, according to the university.

Officials said the 2026 survey will be conducted in seven languages — English, Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese), Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog and now Armenian — as part of an effort to improve representation among underserved communities.

“CHIS is an important snapshot of what policies are working, who might be getting left behind, and where there’s room for improvement,” Ninez A. Ponce, director of the UCLA CHPR, said in a statement. “We’re proud to now offer CHIS in Armenian, which will allow us to capture a more complete picture.”

California is home to roughly 250,000 people of Armenian descent,

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Wildfire Risk Bills Move Forward with Bipartisan Support

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Two measures aimed at reducing wildfire risk across Southern California are expected to be heard in the Senate Appropriations Committee in the coming weeks following unanimous, bipartisan approval in an earlier committee.

State Sen. Ben Allen, D-Pacific Palisades, said Senate Bills 894 and 1297 are designed to improve both community-scale fire prevention efforts and individual home hardening.

“Too many lives are being lost, homes destroyed, and public resources wasted to more frequent and destructive fires over recent years,” Allen said in a statement. “The fire risk we face is driving an affordability crisis through rising insurance premiums and utility bills. It’s clear we need a more holistic approach to building community resilience.”

Allen said home hardening and defensible space improvements can reduce a structure’s fire risk by nearly 50% when implemented together, but the cost of such upgrades has limited participation.

SB 894 would provide low-interest loans to homeowners and small businesses to help finance those improvements,

Thursday, April 23, 2026

ACLU Hits Back at ‘Retaliatory’ Arrest of Pasadena Man Who is Plaintiff in Class Action ICE Raids Lawsuit

CITY NEWS SERVICE

A civil rights group Wednesday hit back at what it calls the Trump administration’s “retaliatory” arrest last week of a Pasadena plaintiff involved in a class action lawsuit challenging the government’s illegal immigration raids in Los Angeles.

Isaac Villegas was detained last week during a scheduled check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in downtown Los Angeles.

Villegas is a plaintiff in Vasquez Perdomo v. Mullin, a closely watched lawsuit filed in L.A. federal court challenging the raids. The Pasadena day laborer sued the federal government in June 2025, after he and two other workers were arrested by immigration agents as they waited at a bus stop.

An immigration judge ordered Villegas, who is from Panama, released on a $5,000 bond the following month and he’s been checking in with ICE since then, according to his attorney, Stacy Tolchin.

Last week, ICE arrested Villegas as he was attending a scheduled immigration check-in and jailed him again despite the judge’s order granting his release.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Supervisor Barger Touts ‘Positive Talks’ with President Trump to Hold Insurers Accountable

CITY NEWS SERVICE

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger and City of Los Angekes city Karen Bass had “very positive” talks with President Donald Trump Wednesday amid efforts to support fire victims and hold insurers accountable.

Barger and Bass are in Washington D.C to advocate for families who lost everything due to the January 2025 wildfires. The pair of elected officials met with Trump and administration officials Wednesday afternoon.

“We had a very positive discussion about FEMA and other rebuilding funds as well as the support of the president to continue joining us in pressuring the insurance companies to pay what they owe — and for the big banks to step up to ease the financial pressure on L.A. families,” Barger and Bass said in a joint statement, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“Our job is to fight for our communities. When it comes to this recovery, our federal partners are essential, and we are grateful for the support of the president,”

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Pasadena Appeals Court Blocks Law Banning Masks for Federal Agents

CITY NEWS SERVICE

A Pasadena appeals court on Wednesday temporarily blocked California from enforcing a law limiting when federal agents can wear masks.

The No Vigilantes Act, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last year, came in response to the Trump administration’s immigration raids in Southern California over the summer, during which masked, unidentified federal officers detained people as part of the president’s mass deportation program.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the state’s attempt to regulate federal law enforcement violates the Constitution.

“We conclude that the No Vigilantes Act attempts to directly regulate the United States in its performance of governmental functions,” Judge Mark Bennett, a Trump appointee, wrote in the court’s opinion. “The Supremacy Clause forbids the state from enforcing such legislation. The United States is therefore likely to succeed on the merits of its Supremacy Clause claim, and the other preliminary injunction factors also weigh in its favor.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Pasadena Teachers Union, School District Report No Movement on Salary, Class Size After Eighth Bargaining Session

Both sides plan to return to the table May 22 as layoffs of more than 160 certificated positions move forward

The Pasadena Unified School District and United Teachers of Pasadena met April 17 for what PUSD described as the eighth bargaining session of the 2025-2026 cycle, and in separate written statements issued afterward, both sides reported no movement on salary or class size.

UTP introduced a new proposal at the session requesting a 5% ongoing salary increase beginning with the 2026-2027 school year, according to both sides’ bargaining updates.

The negotiations are occurring as the district implements layoffs of 161.35 full-time equivalent certificated positions approved by the Board of Education on Feb. 26 to address a structural budget deficit of more than $30 million, according to prior district actions and coverage.

PUSD’s positions in this article are drawn from the district’s April 17 written bargaining update. PUSD was not interviewed for this story. UTP President Jonathan Gardner provided additional comments in a telephone interview Tuesday.