Lakers 2026-27 training camp preview: 5 storylines to monitor

• September 27, 2026

EL SEGUNDO — Practically a system refresh, Thursday was arguably as comfortable as Lakers coach JJ Redick has looked in three seasons at the helm.

Redick is coming off of back-to-back 50-win seasons – the first Lakers coach since Phil Jackson to have done so, as he reminded President of Basketball Operations/GM Rob Pelinka during a preseason press conference at their team facility – and admitted that the roster makeup of the 2026-27 team is to his liking.

“I think we’ve always tried to give our players clearly defined roles,” Redick said, “and I think with this group, probably the first time in my three years here that I feel like the pieces actually fit together.”

LeBron James is out. Austin Reaves is back. Walker Kessler is in – and so are eight other new players.

Redick said Thursday that he believes the Lakers have expanded depth – enough to develop into championship contenders in the season ahead. Both Pelinka and Redick brushed off a question about patience.

There is no room for patience when you have a hand in leading the Lakers, the franchise’s 17 NBA titles staring back.

But with training camp set to begin Tuesday after their annual Media Day on Monday, there are plenty of questions about how the Lakers will assemble.

Here are five storylines entering camp, with the first preseason game set for Oct. 5 in Sacramento.

How do the Lakers plan to use Kessler?

The Lakers paid a king’s ransom to acquire Kessler from the Utah Jazz. Two first-round draft picks and two first-round pick swaps, is what Pelinka referred to as the market for a restricted free agent of the 7-foot-2 shot blocker’s quality.

At 25 years old, Kessler – who Pelinka said is fully cleared and fully healthy – is officially the third member of a new Big Three alongside Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic. How does that change the makeup of the Lakers’ starting lineup and how they play?

Redick said to expect Kessler to be dispatched similarly to how the San Antonio Spurs handle French star Victor Wembanyama: keeping him near the basket to make plays.

“I think Walker’s a perfect fit for Luka and A.R. Just in terms of his rim protection and really being an anchor for our defense, it’s an area we’ve struggled with,” Redick said. “I know we have switched a lot one through five over the years; that has been by necessity.”

Despite playing just five games last season after undergoing season-ending left shoulder surgery, Kessler has averaged 9.3 rebounds and 2.4 blocked shots per game over four NBA seasons. Redick sees Kessler playing in the pocket and being a serious lob threat for the Lakers, who led the league in the category last season.

Bromance basketball takes the lead

Since Doncic joined the Lakers in a blockbuster trade with the Dallas Mavericks in February 2025, rewriting the future of the franchise’s identity, he and Reaves have been practically inseparable.

Their shenanigans have been on display for the past season and a half, and in Doncic’s vlog of when he brought the roster to Ljubljana, Slovenia for five days in August.

When asked Thursday if he was excited to see Doncic and Reaves get a proper runway – without James on occasion – as the Lakers’ leading duo, Redick let out a monotoned response.

“Yeah, we intentionally split them up every single day,” Redick said, the short, blunt answer leading to an awkward pause during the press conference.

After the press conference, Redick told the Southern California News Group that he was making a joke with his response. But he insisted that it’s actually true – he does have to split up the stars during practices.

As a duo, Doncic and Reaves had the Lakers’ second-best plus/minus rating last season at plus-5.1 points in just 41 games together due to their respective injuries.

And as Redick said Thursday, they’re the de-factor leaders of this group.

“Austin has been the leader in the gym every single day (during the offseason),” Redick said. “And Luka’s obviously been back this week, and he’s been awesome. So it’s those guys’ team. We’ll continue to develop them as leaders, but it’s a requirement for all the players to lead in their own way.”

The youth

Unprompted during Thursday’s press conference, Redick was quick to gush over the development of second-year wing Adou Thiero.

“Adou has had an unbelievable last two months of development,” Redick said. “It’s the first stretch he’s had since we drafted him where he’s had uninterrupted time in the gym and his body’s been in great shape and he’s just gotten better.”

Thiero, who was injured to begin the 2025-26 season and missed the NBA Summer League before his rookie season, wasn’t the only young player Redick pointed to. Pelinka said that during pickup games on Thursday, Doncic was looking for first-round pick Cameron Carr – and frequently found him for corner 3-pointers and lobs.

Pelinka said they had Carr higher on their draft board than No. 24 overall, where they ultimately landed him in a draft-night trade with the New York Knicks, calling him an “extraordinary athlete.”

Redick said because of their depth at the wing – where there are six or seven players vying for minutes – Carr will get a runway for opportunity.

“I don’t care if you’re a rookie or a 10-year guy, that’s just rare,” Redick said of Carr’s composure, referring to the Baylor product getting injured during summer league play, flying to Los Angeles for an MRI and returning to continue to play. “The guy wants to play, he wants to learn, he wants to compete. Where he was on our board was not 24. He was much higher. So we feel very fortunate that we were able to get Cam.”

They’ll score, but how about defending?

The Lakers should score plenty of points. They’ve added guards Collin Sexton and Quentin Grimes. They’ve added forwards Ziaire Williams and Sandro Mamukelashvili.

Redick said with Kessler – who he considers the anchor of the defense – and their perimeter defenders, they think they have “enough.”

Although he has struggled to stay on the court, the Lakers also added veteran wing Matisse Thybulle, who is widely considered to be one of the best on-ball defenders in the league. Redick mentioned Williams, Thiero and Carr as disruptors.

“I think just the combination of Walker’s ability to protect the rim and the wing defenders we have, we’re really excited about that,” Redick said.

Who is the odd man out?

A major storyline of training camp is who won’t be on the Opening Night roster. The Lakers have 16 fully-guaranteed players on their roster, which is one more than the league allows during the regular season.

Pelinka said Thursday that he sees the next month as a period of competition to help make that final roster decision, not ruling out a two-for-one consolidation trade rather than waiving a player.

“The spirit of competition has been great, and to some extent, going from 16 guys to 15 guys, we have until Opening Night for the competition to sort of play out and see who the best 15 players are,” Pelinka said.

Outside of the Lakers’ star trio, new signings and their young prospects in Thiero and Carr, five players remain: Bronny James, Dalton Knecht, Jarred Vanderbilt, Jake LaRavia and Jaden Hardy.

The Lakers also received a pair of second-round draft picks when they dealt center Deandre Ayton for Hardy during the offseason, which could come into play should they opt to go the trade route.

​ Orange County Register 

Earthquake jolts area near Hermosa Beach, Calif.: 3.5 magnitude registered on Sept. 27

• September 27, 2026

A 3.6 magnitude quake shook close to Hermosa Beach, about 16.4 miles west-northwest of Long Beach, on Sunday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.

At 8:40 a.m., a tremor rattled the region at a depth of 7 miles, with its epicenter about 4 miles west-southwest of Hermosa Beach.

Did you feel it?

If you experienced the earthquake, you can share your observations using the USGS Felt Report form. So far, the agency has collected 1735 online responses from people reporting they felt weak shaking. Residents reported experiencing the quake in a number of cities, including Moorpark, Newbury Park, Simi Valley, Porter Ranch and Oak Park according to the USGS DYFI report.

Source: The U.S. Geological Survey

​ Orange County Register 

Why data centers are a hot real estate investment

• September 27, 2026

Why the rush to build data centers?

Let’s ignore all the technology chatter for now. Forget the debates about the infrastructure demands of these massive computing sites. And we’ll also sidestep the big question marks about artificial intelligence – the key driver of data center demand.

If you follow the money, however, you see a major force behind developers’ thirst to construct data centers: They’ve been one of the nation’s hottest real estate investments.

That’s what my trusty spreadsheet found when looking at Nareit indexes tracking values of real estate investment trusts owning properties across 15 key categories. These benchmarks calculate price swings and dividends paid.

The value of trusts that own data centers rose 33% so far in 2026, the second-best performance in the REIT industry, and more than double a 15% gain for all trust assets.

What’s performing better in 2026? Trusts that own lodging and resort properties are up 37% on a strong year for tourism. No. 3 is healthcare properties, up 23% as an aging population needs more medical services.

Remember, real estate sectors like data centers often heat up when there’s a shortage of specific assets. Big gains in value, plus perceptions of high demand, often get developers in a construction mood.

Not just this year

Note that the investment buzz for data centers isn’t just a 2026 story.

Data center values are up 43% from the start of 2024 through August 2026, the industry’s third-best result, and nearly double the 23% gain for all assets.

The gains were only topped by healthcare properties, up 96%, and regional malls, up 69%. Shopping hubs are enjoying a go-out-to-shop renaissance.

Trailing the pack

So, what properties will developers avoid? Well, look at which property trusts trail the pack.

In 2026, the worst places to be are casinos, down 5% as in-person gambling wanes; telecommunications properties, down 2% as cell phone growth ebbs; and timberland, down 1% amid weak construction demand for lumber.

Looking longer-term, back to 2024, the trust laggards have been timberland, down 25%; telecommunications, down 16%; and owning single-family rentals, down 4%, as the housing market weakens and regulatory concerns grow.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

• Try Jonathan Lansner’s Substack collection of economic trends. CLICK HERE!

August’s most popular Southern California real estate stories …

No. 1: Where is OC’s hottest homebuying neighborhood?

No. 2: 338-unit affordable housing complex breaks ground in Tustin

No. 3: Peek inside this Newport Coast estate that sold for $39M

No. 4: Enderle Center sold, Campo on 17th moves ahead in Tustin

No. 5: Rents rise in just 22% of SoCal. See which cities got hikes

No. 6: Home prices dip in 38% of OC. How did your ZIP do?

No. 7: LA-OC’s worst-paying jobs: Can those wages pay the rent?

No. 8: LA-OC homes still ‘unaffordable’ even with a 0% mortgage

No. 9: Corona del Mar retail center trades hands, a first in 80 years

No. 10: California housing is frozen, but not underwater

​ Orange County Register 

Clippers 2026-27 training camp preview: 5 storylines to monitor

• September 27, 2026

Every season, the Clippers face questions heading into training camp. Queries about how well the new players will fit into the roster and if or how deep they are capable of going in the playoffs?

Can a lineup, anchored by point guard Darius Garland, be enough to erase the memories of last season’s 42-40 record and Play-In Tournament exit? Those are easy ones.

This season, the questions extend beyond the court. How can the Clippers move forward following a year of allegations and investigations that resulted in hefty penalties and suspensions from the NBA and focus on building a winning team? Finding these answers won’t be as easy as tossing up a basketball.

What’s next?

The Clippers will try to make their fan base digest the fallout from violating salary cap rules and the subsequent penalties without panicking. In addition to a $30 million fine and the loss of five first-round draft picks, team owner Steve Ballmer (one year), President of Business Operations Gillian Zucker (one year) and President of Basketball Operations Lawrence Frank (six months) were all suspended.

The team appears ready to move on. Already, interim CEO and Governor John S. Gibson has promised to hold the organization accountable moving forward.

“Every successful organization faces defining moments, moments that provide an opportunity to move forward with renewed purpose,” Gibson said in a YouTube video.

“When talented people unite around a common purpose, there’s no challenge they cannot overcome … the challenges ahead of us are significant, but so is our resolve.”

In Gibson’s first personnel move, General Manager Trent Redden was promoted to interim president of basketball operations while Frank serves his suspension, and assistant GM Mark Hughes will take over GM duties for the same period. Gibson will deal with the business operations.

Despite Gibson’s positive message, an open federal inquiry into the team’s dealings with Aspiration, the bankrupt company whose deal with former Clippers star Kawhi Leonard led to the NBA penalties, looms.

Winning games would go a long way toward chasing away the summer blues.

Who fills the void at small forward?

Leonard is gone, the seven-time All-Star having been traded to the Toronto Raptors, and he leaves behind a gaping hole on offense and defense. His 27.9 points and 6.4 rebounds per game last season, not to mention his menacing presence on the other side of the court, will be difficult to replace. It’s going to take a village.

Forward Brandon Ingram, who came to the Clippers in the Leonard trade, can score. Last season with the Raptors, he averaged 21.5 points while shooting 47.7% from the field and 38.2% from 3-point range, but he is considered a league-average defender.

Veteran guard Kris Dunn will pick up some of the defensive load, as his 293 deflections and 129 steals were the fifth-most and fourth-most in the NBA last season, respectively.

Rebounding is another issue the Clippers will need to address. Their top five rebounders from last season are gone (Ivica Zubac, James Harden, Bennedict Mathurin, John Collins and Leonard).

Who’s the man in the middle?

Brook Lopez for now.

Second-year center Yanic Konan Niederhauser is out until at least January after having surgery on his right foot, leaving two unproven rookie centers and Isaiah Jackson, who will come off the bench. That puts the starting job on Lopez’s broad shoulders to begin the season.

Lopez came up big for the Clippers last season after Zubac was traded to the Indiana Pacers at the deadline, averaging 8.5 points, 3.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocked shots over 75 games (40 starts).

He scored in double figures in three of the final four games, including a 21-point performance against Portland while shooting 5 for 11 from 3-point range. Lopez had several other big moments last season, but at 38, does he have the energy to handle the starting job over the first three months?

How will Keaton Wagler respond with the spotlight on him?

The ink on his rookie contract was barely dry before the Clippers began marketing Keaton Wagler as the fresh young face of the franchise. The fans who sit in the Wall section at the Intuit Dome have already given the No. 5 overall draft pick an official chant, and he was featured in team-produced videos, including a 2-minute video to promote the release of this season’s schedule.

Wagler also threw out the first pitch at an Angels game.

But finding his place on a veteran-heavy roster could be difficult for the 19-year-old guard. Wagler starred at Illinois, where he averaged 17.9 points, 5.1 rebounds and 4.2 assists while leading the Fighting Illini to the NCAA Tournament’s Final Four in his lone college season. But this is the NBA, and Wagler came face-to-face with that reality during Summer League play in Las Vegas.

In his first game, Wagler struggled to beat his defender one-on-one, and the strength and physicality of the higher level of play slowed him from getting to his spots and social media took notice. Fans-turned-critics blasted his performance, which resulted in seven points on 1-of-7 shooting and five fouls in the 23-point loss to the Sacramento Kings, who got a far better showing from Darius Acuff Jr. that night, a player selected two spots behind Wagler.

Wagler rebounded and finished by averaging 15.3 points, 3.0 rebounds and 3.0 assists in 28.1 minutes per game. The stakes only get higher and the spotlight brighter now, and Wagler will have to adjust quickly to live up to the hype that comes with his draft status.

What’s the deal with Bradley Beal?

In a head-scratching offseason move, the Clippers re-signed Bradley Beal to a two-year, $13.2 million contract despite him being on the shelf for almost all of last season.

The veteran shooting guard suffered a fractured hip in the sixth game of the season, an injury that required surgery and a long recovery for the 33-year-old.

More curious is that the Clippers chose an injury-prone Beal over Mathurin, who at 24 years old has a bigger upside, for essentially the same money. Mathurin eventually signed a two-year, $15.4 million deal with the New Orleans Pelicans.

Beal, though, is a better shooter and off-ball player and is less likely to pout if his minutes are cut in favor of a younger player. Mathurin will be playing for a big payday next summer and needed a role with significant playing time.

Still, the Clippers don’t need a limited veteran guard whose best days are behind him. The three-time All-Star hasn’t played more than 60 games in a season since 2020-21, when he averaged 31.3 points, 4.7 rebounds and 4.4 assists.

​ Orange County Register 

When a friend becomes a caregiver

• September 27, 2026

By Paula Span, KFF Health News

For several years, Nicole Straight and Patricia Wood, who lived across the street from each other in Sausalito, California, were more neighbors than friends, exchanging sociable greetings and occasionally having coffee.

Then, last October, Wood took a fall, broke her neck, and spent three months in rehabilitation. When she returned to the house she shares with her niece, she couldn’t walk without assistance. “I still don’t dare go up and down stairs unless someone is with me,” said Wood, 93.

That has redefined their neighborly relationship. Straight, 53, a retired chef, now visits weekly, bringing lattes and cookies, and often leftovers from dinners she has made. Her husband installed a grab bar in Wood’s bathroom, put up shelves, and changed her light bulbs and smoke detector batteries. The texts fly back and forth.

Straight calls to say I’m going to the grocery store. Do you need anything? Wood, who no longer drives, provides a shopping list.

“She is a gift from heaven,” said Wood, a retired insurance executive. “We talk and talk. Sometimes we shed a few tears, but mostly we laugh. I never thought I’d have a new best friend at this time of my life.”

Eldercare, typically considered a family obligation, is evolving to adapt to demographic shifts that make reliance on spouses and children less assured.

“The number of older adults who have never married or are divorced has been increasing, so we have more people aging alone,” said Deborah Carr, a sociologist at Boston University who has investigated these trends.

“The proportion who are childless, by choice or not, is also growing,” she added, and families with children have fewer of them than in past generations.

Geographic distances or family estrangements also fuel the need for other kinds of caregivers — roles that friends or neighbors can fill.

How commonly do friends step into caregiving gaps? A recently published study in JAMA Network Open, led by researchers at the University of Michigan, looked into friends and neighbors serving as caregivers, usually in supplementary roles.

They used data from the National Health and Aging Trends Study, in which more than 2,600 older people with health limitations (average age: 79) identified friends and family members who provided help. Family members were most likely to care for aging relatives, but about 14% of participants identified friends (including neighbors) in that role. That represents 2.4 million caregiving friends nationally, the authors estimated.

Last year, a national survey by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving put the proportion of caregivers supporting nonrelatives at 11%.

“Friends are among the auxiliary caregivers who have not been acknowledged,” said Karen Fingerman, a gerontologist at the University of Texas-Austin and co-author of a commentary accompanying the study. “We neglect the sacrifices they make.”

The study, believed to be the first nationwide look at caregiving friends, found they functioned differently from relatives. They’re unlikely to live with the person they’re helping, for example, and rarely serve as the sole caregiver.

“They provide fewer care hours,” said Yee To Ng, a gerontologist and lead author of the study, which found that friends supplied 18 hours of help a month on average, compared with about 67 hours from family.

They assist in different ways, too. “Friends are more likely to provide transportation,” Ng said. Two-thirds of caregiving friends drive their friends around; shopping, helping people go outside, preparing meals, and accompanying patients to medical appointments round out the top five tasks.

Sometimes they do more. Czes Ferrino, 82, is widowed and lives alone in Westerly, Rhode Island. She has no disabling health problems, but when her car died recently, her next-door neighbor went with her to several Subaru dealers to find a used replacement. “He walked me through it like a son would for a mother or grandmother,” Ferrino said.

On the other hand, “there are some tasks friends might not be well equipped to provide or be comfortable with,” Ng said. Personal care, like bathing and dressing, remains largely the province of family members.

“Those can infringe on people’s self-esteem,” Ng said. “With family, we accept that when you’re really ill, they step up with intimate activities. It’s embarrassing to have your friends help you use the toilet.”

The researchers also found that respondents who named friends as caregivers were younger than those with only relatives in that role, and more apt to have college degrees. People with higher education levels have larger social networks, Fingerman said.

Those assisted by friends were also, unsurprisingly, less likely to be married and more apt to live alone — like Ann Greenwater, 84, who lives in a mobile home park in rural Humboldt County, California.

She managed independently until a few years ago, when severe back pain rendered her bedridden for nearly three months. Although she’s up and about now and can handle housekeeping, cooking, and personal care, “I’ve never really fully recovered,” Greenwater said.

She is single, with no family beyond a distant nephew she barely knows, and has stopped driving. But a cadre of friends she knows from a nearby Zen Buddhist center stepped in.

Milli Quam, 86, does her laundry and drops it off, sometimes picking up prescriptions en route. A 73-year-old helped Greenwater with her computer and, along with several others, takes her grocery shopping or shops for her. Members of a local volunteer organization drive her to medical appointments.

“I love Ann, and I’m happy there’s something concrete I can do,” Quam said. “I hope I can keep doing it for a long time.”

Friends have some advantages as caregivers. “Our friends are our own age and understand what we’re going through,” Carr said. “They may have more empathy and sometimes real knowledge they’ve acquired.” When family caregivers are on the job, friends’ efforts can reduce their burden.

But nonrelatives may also prove less stable as a source of help. Neighbors move. Strains can develop if the person needing care becomes too demanding or feels guilty about accepting help, challenging the egalitarian expectations for friendships. These strains can intensify depression in those with physical limitations, a study led by Carr found.

Nor is there much policy support for these caregiving relationships. The federal Family and Medical Leave Act, for instance, “with rare exceptions does not provide job-protected leave from work to care for a friend with a serious health condition,” Laura Lawless, a labor and employment lawyer with Squire Patton Boggs, said in an email.

“For family, ‘through thick and thin’ is the expectation,” Carr said. “There’s huge stigma to being estranged from your family, but it’s kind of normal for some friendships to just fall away.”

In Sausalito, Wood tells Straight that “she’s not allowed to move until I die.” She’s joking, sort of.

Greenwater’s friends in Humboldt County, to her gratitude, have not fallen away either. But they are aging along with her; at 86, Quam pointed out, she may stop driving before long, too.

“I’m wondering what will happen when these friends aren’t able to come to me,” Greenwater said. “I guess we’ll deal with it when it comes.”

The New Old Age is produced through a partnership with The New York Times.

©2026 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

OC officials, nonprofit, schools work to help formerly incarcerated find jobs, purpose

• September 27, 2026

The version of Orange County that greeted Hector Cervantes when he got out of prison in 2012 was less forgiving than it is today, at least when it comes to the treatment of people who were, and are, formerly incarcerated.

These days, the county’s biggest universities offer programs to help people make the transition from prisoner to student. And local nonprofits train the formerly incarcerated in job skills and, when they can, they help them find work. And sometime in late 2027 or early 2028, Orange County – once a county where the local jail released inmates in the dead of night, often without a ride – will open Common Good, a publicly funded center that will offer everything from temporary housing to jobs.

But all that is what’s on tap today, or tomorrow. In 2012, life for former inmates was tougher.

For example, jobs and job training for Cervantes and the 35,789 other men and women who got out of prisons or jails in California that year were available but limited. Los Angeles County had (and has) Homeboy Industries, which offered jobs and training to former gang members and former prison inmates, but there was nothing similar in Orange County.

Housing, too, was tricky, in part because landlords still could legally screen out people who had been incarcerated. Cervantes rented a room from his sister when he got out, but he would have had to scramble if he had to find a different place.

And school …

“Wasn’t easy,” said Cervantes, who is co-founder and director of UC Irvine’s Underground Scholars program, an 8-year-old effort that offers guidance and support to about 100 formerly incarcerated people who attend the university.

“Anything could have derailed me.”

Yet nothing did.

Cervantes, who turned 23 in 2012, initially earned an associate’s degree from Santa Ana College, working all the while. Then, after missing a deadline to apply to Cal State Fullerton, he wound up at UCI, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in public planning. These days, even though his job is at UCI, he’s studying for his doctorate in education at UCLA.

“I love school,” he said.

Vibe shift

Cervantes had help.

A former girlfriend inspired him to get back into school. A mentor he met in community college nudged him to stick with it.

But in 2012, and for some years after, the Santa Ana native – who said he spent most of his life between ages 13 and 23 either incarcerated or on probation – didn’t have access to the kind of support that he could find, from organizations and from the law, if he got out of prison today.

State and federal efforts aimed at helping the formerly incarcerated get jobs (such as the Reentry Employment Opportunities program), or housing (HOME American Rescue Plan), weren’t yet in effect.

Also, in 2012, “ban the box” laws had yet to be widely implemented, meaning it was still legal for employers to disqualify a prospective employee simply because they’d disclosed a criminal record on a job application form. Today, so-called “business necessity” rules often apply, meaning applicants for most private and public-sector jobs are legally required to be given a chance to explain the circumstances of why they wound up behind bars, and how they have or haven’t changed.

And, critically, the public mood, at least locally, seemed to be darker when it came to recently incarcerated people.

National polling conducted in 2012 by Pew Research, among others, found that a bipartisan majority of Americans believed government was spending too much money on prisons and putting too many people behind bars.

But strong anecdotal evidence from that period suggests Orange County wasn’t yet part of the trend.

The local district attorney of that era, Tony Rackauckas, routinely won re-election by telling voters how tough he was on criminals. Local defense attorneys pushed, whenever possible, for cases to be tried in front of Los Angeles-area juries, while prosecutors angled for cases to be tried in Orange County, where juries were viewed as more inclined to convict.

Though the country was just beginning to downshift from peak incarceration – in 2008, roughly 1 in 100 American adults was in prison or jail – Cervantes said that when he first got out of prison, even talking about a criminal background was tough.

“You just learned not to bring it up, or to let it be brought up.”

What many people perhaps didn’t realize at the time is that a flood of formerly incarcerated men and women were about to get out of prison.

So-called “realignment” laws, including AB 109, which passed in 2012 and was aimed at reducing overcrowding in California prisons, were leading to changes within the prison and jail systems. Those changes also meant reduced sentences, including early exits, for a growing number of non-violent offenders. Lately, the state’s prison and jail population has shrunk slightly, yet about 37,000 people a year – more than were exiting from a bigger pool of prisoners a decade ago – have been getting out of prisons and jails in California.

That’s helped to fuel the state’s housing crisis. It’s also boosted the ranks of people needing jobs and housing and school.

But it’s also meant fewer people in custody, more parents raising their children and more potential in the form of business start-ups, scholarship and art, among other things.

This ongoing march of people exiting prison has come at a time when many Americans with no criminal history have begun to question the legitimacy of some convictions. It’s also come when at least some argue that the national push against drug use and abuse – the so-called War on Drugs of the 1980s and ’90s – put people into prison for crimes that many others committed, with impunity, in their living rooms.

The upshot has been, if nothing else, a change in branding for the formerly incarcerated. Throw away the key? The public is more inclined to view training and other forms of assistance, not life-long punishment, as a more practical path for people who used to be inmates.

The data on whether or not this attitude has paid off is still ugly, but it’s improving. Today, about 30% of people who get out of prison wind up behind bars within three years. In 2012, it was closer to 50%.

The path for former inmates “is different now,” Cervantes said. “Not great, but not what it was.”

More than money?

“Our goal, essentially, is this: To get people coming out of incarceration back on their feet and on an equal playing field,” said Meghan Medlin, founder and chief executive of Hub for Integration Reentry & Employment (HIRE), a nonprofit aimed at helping formerly incarcerated people that operates in a warren of clean, organized offices near Theo Lacy Jail in Orange.

“One part of our goal, a big part, is to get them into what we consider to be quality employment,” Medlin added. “That means a living wage with a pathway for improvement and benefits. And it means everything that goes along with that. … Sobriety, housing, training. All of it.”

Medlin said she isn’t, or at least didn’t start out to be, a do-gooder. She worked for many years as an employment recruiter, making a living by connecting employees to employers.

But, early on, she said, she found a niche in helping people “with backgrounds,” which described job seekers who’d formerly been incarcerated or were otherwise involved in the criminal justice system. Those people often wanted more than work, she said; they wanted to change their lives. Getting a job for those people, she said, is pretty fulfilling.

She started HIRE during the first year of the pandemic, after she’d worked outside of the industry for a stint. Since its launch date, Aug. 3, 2020, her organization has helped 4,451 people through a variety of services, including mentorships and skills workshops.

Last year, HIRE’s “Jobs Not Jails” program connected 175 formerly incarcerated people with gainful employment. About three-quarters of those clients had an annual starting wage of $20.88 an hour. It’s not wealth, but it’s also not public assistance.

Construction and restaurants are big employers, but Medlin said HIRE has helped formerly incarcerated people get jobs at banks and insurance companies and other white-collar venues.

Medlin said flatly that HIRE will help any person, of any age, convicted of any crime.

The only must-have, she added, is effort.

“We’re an open-entry, opt-in program, so people have to choose to participate in our services. … Our focus is on whether someone is ready and willing to work, and what barriers we can help them address.

“Not everybody who comes to HIRE is necessarily looking for a job, or is ready for a job at that particular moment.

“Sometimes their first step is getting stable enough to be ready.”

Medlin couldn’t say why the public has changed its views on helping former prisoners, but cost clearly is part of it. Last year, the state estimated the cost of keeping a person incarcerated in California ranged from $127,800 to $132,860 a year. And some economists have noted that the nation loses about $75 billion annually in productivity because of the high unemployment rate (roughly five times the national average) for former inmates.

Still, Medlin suggested that if more people are keen to help former inmates, the shift isn’t all about money.

“When I started in this, people were, like, ‘Why do you do that? Aren’t you scared?’ But I’ve also always had people come up to me, on the side, and say, ‘Oh, I wish this had been here’ for their brother, or their dad or, you know, whoever,” Medlin said.

“I just think it’s become less taboo as more people have used their voice, and as more people have been connected to the (criminal justice) system.

“It’s not always about somebody else.”

‘They need purpose’

Medlin’s office is within walking distance of a 4.6-acre construction project, on land that once held the Orange County Animal Shelter.

That’s where builders are putting up a cluster of stores, a cafe, a commercial kitchen, temporary housing and training facilities – even a gym – all of which is expected to be open by the spring of 2028. The project is the county’s first publicly financed effort to help the thousands of people who get out of prison or jail in Orange County each year, but who don’t yet have new lives.

Not everything about the project – which the county is calling Common Good – is set in stone.

For example, the county has set aside about $117 million for construction and early operation. And officials say they could launch the project with what they will get for that money. But the county also is seeking grants and gifts to boost what it hopes will be a long-running effort, suggesting the final price tag isn’t known.

It’s also not clear if people with all types of criminal backgrounds will be welcome. While HIRE works with anybody, county officials suggested there would be some vetting for those being helped via the Common Good system.

What is clear, for now, is that Medlin’s organization, HIRE, will be the county’s operating partner, training workers who’ll sell everything from pet supplies to lattes, and overseeing short-term housing for up to 52 people.

It’s also clear that the county is hoping the project will be a key part of its broader effort to streamline and improve public services.

“Basically, it’s better to not return to jail,” said Liz Guillen-Merchant, the county’s assistant deputy chief operating officer.

“But, often, when people are trying to re-enter society after being in jail or prison, they don’t have the resources they need. They don’t have a bed to sleep in at night. And we’re all losing because of that, right? It’s more costly when people are getting rearrested within three days.

“So we’ve heard from the population that will be helped by this, we’ve asked them. And they told us they need purpose. And that’s where we kind of came up with the idea for this crown jewel, the Homeboy Industries of Orange County. Except, where that is a private nonprofit, this is ours, the county’s. We own it.

“This is the right thing to do.”

​ Orange County Register 

From history to the classroom: A school district’s journey to build an ethnic studies class

• September 27, 2026

Principal Kevin Morris greeted students and staff back at Mount Olive Innovation & Technology High School. It was his birthday, which coincided with the beginning of the school year in August. Students playfully joked with him while ushering celebratory remarks.

Not only was it a happy day for the alternative school that recently moved to share Duarte High School’s campus this year, but it was also the early days of an ethnic studies curriculum that took years to find its way to a classroom.

Morris, principal at MITHS for 20 years before being promoted to lead the new combined campus, emphasized the value of cross-cultural education and that Duarte has never been simply trying to check off a box.

“We believe Ethnic Studies is an essential part of our students’ educational and cultural experience—honoring cultural knowledge, lived experiences, and the importance of knowing your own story while understanding the stories of others,” he wrote in a statement to the Southern California News Group. “It also gives students the opportunity to examine history more truthfully and critically, including how colonial perspectives have shaped our understanding of race, gender, sexual orientation, identity.”

MITHS teacher Arianna Rocha has been working hard to present that history in the classroom. She helped build the district’s first ethnic studies course, which rolled out last school year but is beginning as a graduation requirement this year under state law.

That law, five years old come Oct. 8, requires schools to require one semester-long ethnic studies course to graduate high school starting with the class of 2030.

Rocha was part of the district ethnic studies team, including Duarte High history teacher Casey Ramirez and film teacher Emerita Bustos, that collaborated with the UCLA History-Geography Project in 2025 to create the course.

Under California law, districts can choose whether to use the state model curriculum to develop their own curriculum within guidelines. Regardless of what department they house the course, the required course must use ethnic studies content as the primary content.

However, without appropriation of funding from the state budget, the mandate lies dormant. Districts such as Duarte have invested their own labor and resources to ensure the ethos of the course is carried out intentionally.

And that’s what Duarte has done: Build a course.

Duarte began developing the foundation for their ethnic studies courses prior to the pandemic through a partnership with Creating Creators and Cal State L.A., which combined literacy and professional filmmaking experiences for students from K-8 Beardslee Dual Language Academy to the high schools. Students in elective courses created digital “testimonios,” films and oral histories, and participated in the CSULA Chicanx Latinx Film Festival.

The collaboration supported the ethnic studies classes’ multimedia showcase of their historical research of local Rocktown at Duarte’s Historical Museum, where film students recorded oral history podcasts on-site at the opening.

Rocktown was a majority Black and Mexican American neighborhood in Duarte targeted by freeway construction and commercial development. Ethnic studies students pored through newspaper clippings and worked with film classes to record interviews with Rocktown residents to uncover stories of a vibrant community left out of the headlines.

The intergenerational event packed the museum with a line out the door as Rocktown members who had not seen each other in years reminisced and brought mementos from home.

The Rocktown history project set the groundwork for the school district’s first ethnic studies classes, which Duarte staff hope to continue to build on.

Rocha recalled a Chumash student who began a dialogue with her grandmother by sharing what she learned in class about local Native Americans.

“I think that’s just what we want; we just want kids to feel like they’re being seen,” Rocha said.

In Rocha’s ethnic studies class last month, fairy lights illuminate the room where students were scattered, some working in table groups, others cosied up with a stuffed animal on her couch.

It was an inclusive atmosphere that lent itself well to the new course when it was launched.

Many students have praised the nascent class.

“I felt welcomed and seen for the first time in a history class,” wrote Vicente, who took Rocha’s course last school year. “We learned about history that is actually relevant to me, and I felt a little more connected to my community and I understood my classmates a little better.”

Morris highlighted how Rocha’s classroom matched the safe, empowering energy of Ramirez’s classroom, which also hosted the ethnic studies course pilot to great success last year, in part from drawing on the school’s thriving film program.

Ramirez, the history teacher who helped build the course, beamed as she described plans for a permanent display of her students’ work, advocacy toward a Rocktown memorial plaque, more Rocktown residents to be interviewed and digital archives of the community histories.

“To see that they took a lot of pride in finding out about their community — it really pushes us to want to continue that work. It takes a lot of time, and it takes a village,” Ramirez said. “The fact that we even had a modicum of success was just … exciting.”

Ellen Wang was a 2026 intern with the Pasadena Star-News through a partnership with the Asian American Journalists Association’s Los Angeles Chapter, AAJA/LA.

​ Orange County Register 

LA declared a golf course mountain lion habitat to kill a housing project

• September 27, 2026

Recently, the city of Los Angeles ruled that a golf course is now protected mountain lion habitat, which is odd because mountain lions are ambush predators that don’t like spending time in wide open spaces like manicured fairways, putting greens, or a 28,000 square-foot clubhouse. The only way this makes sense is if you are familiar with how the city of LA treats housing, especially  in more affluent single-family neighborhoods 

This is about a proposal to build 398 new homes on part of the Woodland Hills Country Club — 175 for sale, 223 rental units, 61 income-restricted — on a private golf course that offers little public benefit. The project was proposed under AB 2011, a 2022 state law amended in 2025, that lets cities approve housing faster on underused commercial land without years of discretionary review. Los Angeles is required to plan for more than 456,000 new homes by 2029, and is nowhere close to accomplishing that.

What’s followed is the classic playbook local officials and homeowners groups use to block housing: “neighborhood character,” not enough parking, too much traffic — all while the city insists it’s taking the crisis seriously. Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, who represents the district where the Country Club sits, has thrown everything but the kitchen sink at this project. Here’s the play-by-play.

First, in December 2025, Blumenfield introduced a motion instructing the city to analyze how these new laws applied to the project, and whether there was a way to stop it — while writing to state legislators, asking them to push for an interpretation that would disqualify it.

Second, in February 2026, Blumenfield with the help of Mayor Karen Bass, sent a letter to Governor Newsom asking the state to define “vacant site” so the golf course wouldn’t qualify as vacant land under the law’s fire-zone provisions – along with another motion to get the city to do the same.

Third, that same February, a motion to physically narrow Canoga Avenue, the street the project sits on, so it would no longer qualify as a “commercial corridor.” A city that takes years to fix a streetlight or repair a sidewalk apparently has the resources to study shrinking a street to dodge housing law.

Fourth, another motion that month, aimed at closing off the last element the golf course needs to qualify under AB 2011: a rule allowing parking on agricultural land. The goal: apply the change to every agriculturally zoned property in the city, whether or not it has anything to do with this project. Blumenfield wasn’t even confident it would hold up, admitting, “I’m still working through the legal ability of the City to do this.“

Fifth, by June 2026, the “vacant site” strategy was dropped as too shaky — replaced by a habitat study citing mountain lions and bats. Not a new trick: a Bay Area town tried declaring its entire city a mountain lion sanctuary in 2022, until California’s Attorney General ruled a whole town can’t declare itself wildlife habitat. LA is running the same play, scaled down to one golf course.

Sixth, in July, the coalition of neighbors fighting the project flat out refused to engage the developer’s offer to find a lower-density compromise. “we are not interested in entering into a tolling agreement with the developers. Furthermore, we formally express our opposition to any proposed rezoning of this area” they said. No deal, no housing.

Six tactics, one target, all circling back to the same argument against new neighbors. The Woodland Hills-Warner Center Neighborhood Council joined the other groups in warning that new housing would threaten “the look, feel, and safety of our single-family neighborhoods,” arguing such neighborhoods “foster stability, enhance the overall mental health of a city,” and that “what is forever lost cannot be regained.” Rising housing costs, and the homelessness they fuel, do more damage to a city’s mental health than new homes ever could.

Their one legitimate concern is fire safety, since the golf course sits on the edge of a high fire severity zone — but fire mitigation was part of the compromise they rejected outright. If fire safety were really the issue, you’d come to the table. Instead, they’re betting the mountain lion designation knocks this project into a discretionary process they can slow-walk until the developer gives up.

That bet paid off. Weeks after Blumenfield told constituents he already believed “the fact that Mountain Lions use this property is well documented,” his own Planning Department’s “independent” review reached the same conclusion: the site is ineligible under AB 2011. The developer’s own biologists disagree, and the developer has announced it will sue.

This is what a typical housing fight looks like in LA: not a good-faith conversation about how to build something that fits the neighborhood, but a search for how to make sure it doesn’t happen in “my backyard.” These groups will tell you they’re not against housing, they’re not NIMBYs. But when the developer offered exactly that — lower density, negotiated — they turned it down.

There’s a simpler reason for all this: fighting against housing costs a politician less than fighting for it, especially with wealthy, high-turnout voters like these. Blumenfield is termed out this year, but he’s already confirmed he’s running for State Senate in 2028, in a district that includes Woodland Hills. Fighting loudly for this community now builds the goodwill and fundraising he’ll use for his campaign — at the expense of the housing existing Angelenos desperately need.

Win or lose, this lawsuit will cost the city real money it can’t afford. LA is already over a million dollars deep fighting Venice Dell, a 120-unit affordable housing project it approved back in 2021, only to have a judge rule in June that the city exceeded its own authority trying to kill it anyway. The Woodland Hills project could easily be next. Nine months, six delay tactics, zero homes built. If LA spent a fraction of that effort working with developers instead of hunting for the next loophole, we would all be better off.

Jon Rawlings is a chapter leader with YIMBY Los Angeles

​ Orange County Register