L.A.’s new homeless solution clears camps but struggles to house people

• July 13, 2023

Tents, makeshift shacks and broken-down RVs crowded both sidewalks under a U.S. Highway 101 overpass in Hollywood seven months ago.

More than two-dozen people lived in the squalid encampment, feet from cars flying past. Neighbors and nearby businesses fumed, saying they and their customers felt unsafe.

On a Wednesday afternoon last month, all traces of the tents – and the people who lived in them – were gone. The sidewalks were spotless, without even a speck of trash.

What happened?

The site was part of a Los Angeles homeless program called Inside Safe – Mayor Karen Bass’ answer to the city’s staggering homelessness crisis. Under the new initiative, outreach workers move from encampment to encampment, offering everyone at each targeted camp a hotel room. From there, the goal is to move everyone quickly from the hotel into permanent housing.

There’s a lot riding on its success at a local, state and even national level. Bass has all but staked her tenure as mayor on fighting Los Angeles’ homelessness crisis. And President Joe Biden’s administration picked L.A. as one of six places to focus its homelessness efforts.

Inside Safe already has been a godsend for people like Tim and Sandy, who live in a condo about two blocks from the overpass and are relieved to see the now-spotless sidewalks.

“It’s absolutely wonderful,” said Tim, who declined to provide his last name to protect his privacy. “I just hope it stays that way.”

Inside Safe has clear advantages over previous efforts to make a dent in L.A.’s homeless crisis. It removes the sprawling encampments that, as the city’s most visible symptom of homelessness, spark never-ending complaints. Advocates say it’s much easier to find long-term housing for people in hotel rooms than for people still in tents. Hotel rooms provide a safe place where residents can heal from the trauma of the street, get their documents in order and relearn how to live indoors. And it means their case workers don’t have to trek all over the city looking for them.

But while Inside Safe has succeeded in putting a temporary roof over the heads of many of Los Angeles’ most vulnerable residents, the program has obvious shortcomings. Now in its seventh month, Inside Safe has moved very few people from hotels into permanent housing – and the city is struggling to produce data on the program’s impact. Access to much-needed services, such as mental and physical health care, have been lacking. And renting the hotel rooms is far too expensive for Los Angeles to keep it up indefinitely, leading some activists to worry participants may end up back on the street when the funding runs out.

A homeless encampment in Los Angeles on June 20, 2023. Photo by Julie A Hotz for CalMatters

The 101 overpass at Cahuenga Boulevard, cleared in December, was the first Inside Safe operation. Since then, the city has completed close to two-dozen – moving 1,373 people into hotels as of earlier this month. But only about 77 of those people – less than 6% – have moved from the hotels into permanent housing, frustrating officials as the number of unhoused people in the city continues to skyrocket.

“We have a real problem if the folks aren’t getting housed,” Councilman Bob Blumenfield, vice chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, said during a recent meeting.

Inside Safe was a major piece of the newly elected Bass’ campaign for mayor. And it has the potential to serve as a model for other cities throughout California. She has outsized influence beyond Los Angeles as chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ homelessness task force. And, home to more than 46,000 unhoused people per the city’s recently released point-in-time count, L.A. is the epicenter of California’s homelessness crisis, accounting for about a quarter of the state’s homeless population.

“It was not acceptable to me to say, you know what, we’re not going to get people off the streets until we have figured out all of the issues,” Bass said in a phone interview. “As we have found problems, we are aggressively moving to address them.”

Despite concerns about the low number of people housed through the program, the City Council allocated $250 million to continue and expand Inside Safe over the next year. Los Angeles County is also launching a copycat program.

Bass agreed the Inside Safe data is “extremely disappointing.”

“Make no mistake — We are not satisfied with the amount of people in housing,” she said in an emailed statement.

Bass blames the issue partly on bureaucracy. People have to jump through a series of hurdles to prove they qualify for subsidized housing, including obtaining the right form of identification. She says she’s attempting to streamline the process. The city’s lack of affordable housing is another major factor. But 3,200 new units are expected to open this year thanks to Proposition HHH (the $1.2 billion housing bond L.A. voters passed in 2016), according to Va Lecia Adams Kellum, CEO of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

Pete Wales, outside his temporary hotel housing, in Los Angeles on June 20, 2023. Photo by Julie A Hotz for CalMatters

Pete Wales, 65, is one of the few Inside Safe participants who found permanent housing. But Wales already was working with a nonprofit on getting into housing before he moved into one of the program’s hotels in February.

At the time he was interviewed by a reporter late last month, Wales was preparing to move into a subsidized studio apartment in a new building near Echo Park.

“I consider myself lucky,” he said.

Gaps in Los Angeles homeless services

For many people who spent years on the street, simply getting a roof over their head is far from enough – they may need additional support including counseling, medical care, job training or help getting a new ID. Access to those services has been lacking in the motels, according to Inside Safe participants, outreach workers and even the mayor herself.

“That is a major concern of mine,” said Bass, who says the service providers simply don’t have the capacity to meet everyone’s needs. She wants to bring in doctors, nurses, dentists and social workers in-training from local universities to help fill the gap.

Shayne Smith, outside her temporary hotel housing, in Los Angeles on June 20, 2023. Photo by Julie A Hotz for CalMatters

When Shayne Smith, 53, got into an Inside Safe hotel after seven years on the street, she thought it was a dream.

“It feels really good,” she said. “I can take a shower. I can sleep. I have electricity. I have hot water.”

Smith, a former interior designer, ended up homeless after a devastating seizure put her in a coma and caused her to lose her income. She had to relearn how to do basic tasks like reading and speaking. During her time on the street, Smith said she was the victim of multiple sexual and physical assaults. One beating knocked the veneers off her teeth, leaving her with what she has today – worn down stumps of teeth with exposed nerves and receding gums that have resulted in abscesses and infections.

She has received two 10-minute counseling sessions and a prescription for Zoloft since arriving at the hotel. But she says she needs ongoing, in-depth mental health treatment and medical care for her teeth, and she’s not getting either.

“I’m still not getting treatment and I have massive headaches every day so bad that I feel like I’m going to throw up,” she said. “I can’t eat. I’ve lost a lot of weight. I’m in pain. Really bad pain all the time.”

Kris Rehl, an organizer with outreach group L.A. Street Care who works with Smith and others at that motel, said Smith isn’t the only one whose needs aren’t being met. Another guest at the hotel has a hernia so severe that she’s forced to use a wheelchair, Rehl said.

“The thing that really just destroys me is I will talk to people every week, like Shayne, who says ‘I’m in chronic pain,’” Rehl said. “Or people who are like I have debilitating panic attacks or debilitating depression or PTSD or some sort of urgent medical issue.”

Cost is another worry. The city is leasing rooms in about three-dozen motels, paying between $100 and $125 a night, per room. So far, Inside Safe has burned through nearly $40 million, city staff said during a committee meeting earlier this month. To make the program more affordable, the city is trying to buy some of the hotels. The mayor’s office said it is close to purchasing one 300-room motel, which would drop the nightly cost of sheltering people in those rooms from $135 down to $50, said Mercedes Márquez, the mayor’s chief of housing and homelessness solutions.

L.A. homeless encampment returns

Inside Safe has had mixed success when it comes to its goal of completely eliminating the encampments it targets. The city attempted to close a camp earlier this year at North Spring and Arcadia streets, two blocks from City Hall. On a recent afternoon, about 15 tents still dotted the sidewalks around that intersection.

Bass said that was one of a small number of Inside Safe sites the city wasn’t able to completely clear because some people at the encampment declined a hotel room . She suspects heavy drug use in the area is a factor – one woman overdosed during that Inside Safe operation, and a medic had to administer the overdose reversing drug Narcan four times to bring her back.

Skid Row, the infamous center of Los Angeles’ homeless community, is another area where any progress Inside Safe made is scarcely visible. The program moved 175 people from encampments in that neighborhood into hotel rooms, but it barely made a dent. The streets remain lined with tents and make-shift camps, where as many as 2,000 people are estimated to live.

But for those living and working near the U.S. 101 overpass that was the site of the city’s first Inside Safe operation, the difference is night and day.

For more than five years, passersby were forced to walk in the road to get around the encampment taking up the sidewalk, said Glenn Burroughs, who owns a gym called Sweat Equity Fitness down the street. Sometimes, people pitched tents right outside the gym’s door and it took months for the city to remove them, he said.

“I know I lost a lot of customers,” Burroughs said. “People would tell me all the time that they saw the gym and it had good reviews but they didn’t feel comfortable or safe parking their car or being in that neighborhood.”

Now, Burroughs is in “complete shock” that the sidewalks have remained so clean after the Inside Safe operation.

“It’s been extremely nice,” he said.

Homeless man returns to streets

But it hasn’t been a success story for everyone. About a block from the overpass, one small green and silver tent sits alone on the sidewalk. Inside, a 47-year-old man who goes by Selene, was reading an X-Men comic book on a recent afternoon. He had been part of the Inside Safe operation, and moved from the encampment into a hotel in December.

His reprieve from living outdoors lasted only about six months.

After getting into a disagreement with the hotel manager over his malfunctioning keycard, Selene kicked in the door to his room so he could get inside. As a result, he said, he was told to move out.

Now, he’s back on the street. After dropping him from the hotel, outreach workers gave him a tent and drove him back to the overpass, he said. After he pitched his tent, police quickly came and told him he could no longer camp there. So he moved a block down the road.

A location where unhoused folks receive temporary housing, in hopes of eventually being transferred to permanent housing, in Los Angeles on June 20, 2023. Photo by Julie A Hotz for CalMatters

After living on the street for nearly three decades, Selene has multiple mental health symptoms, including anger issues and anxiety attacks that make his whole body shake. He said he could have used counseling, but never got it while in the hotel. It’s possible that could have prevented the outburst that got him kicked out, he said.

The situation makes him feel useless and worthless, like “a waste of space and a waste of time.” Still, he insists he deserves a chance. “I’m a good person,” he said, a tear running down his cheek.

Despite stories like Selene’s, Inside Safe seems like a “really promising model,” said Nichole Fiore, who studies homeless encampments and solutions as a principal associate with research firm Abt Associates. People are much more willing to move from encampments into hotels than into traditional shelters, she said, as hotels offer a private space with a locking door and the ability to bring more possessions.

But people have so many needs beyond the simple solution of a temporary hotel room – including mental and physical health care and other services, as well as permanent housing.

“Inside Safe has a hard job,” said Lauren Dunton, another associate at Abt. “It’s a very hard thing. It’s not simple.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Secret Service: No DNA, fingerprints from found cocaine

• July 13, 2023

By Colleen Long and Michael Balsamo | Associated Press

WASHINGTON — No fingerprints or DNA turned up on the baggie of cocaine found in a lobby at the White House last week despite a sophisticated FBI crime lab analysis, and surveillance footage of the area didn’t identify a suspect, according to a summary of the Secret Service investigation obtained by The Associated Press. There are no leads on who brought the drugs into the building.

U.S. Secret Service agents found the white powder during a routine White House sweep on July 2, in a heavily trafficked West Wing lobby where staff go in and out, and tour groups gather to drop their phones and other belongings.

“Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered,” Secret Service officials said in the summary.

It’s most likely the bag was left behind by one of the hundreds of visitors who traveled in and out of the building over the weekend, according to a person familiar with the investigation who was not authorized to talk about an ongoing probe and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The presence of cocaine at the White House prompted a flurry of criticism and questions from Republicans, who received a closed briefing Thursday on the results of the investigation.

“There is no equal justice,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Thursday. “Anything revolving around ‘Biden, Inc.’ gets treated different than any other American and that’s got to stop.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Joe Biden believed it was “incredibly important” for the Secret Service to get to the bottom of how the drugs ended up in the White House. The Secret Service is responsible for securing the White House and led the investigation.

Biden wasn’t there at the time of the discovery. He was at Camp David with members of his family for the holiday weekend.

The complex was briefly evacuated as a precaution when the white powder was found. The fire department was called in to test the substance on the spot to determine whether it was hazardous, and the initial test came back negative for a biohazard but positive for cocaine.

The bag was sent for a secondary, more sensitive lab analysis. Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center analyzed the item for any biothreats. Tests conducted at the facility came back negative.

The cocaine and packaging underwent further forensics testing, including advanced fingerprint and DNA work at the FBI’s crime laboratory, according to the summary. The FBI also did chemical testing.

Meanwhile, Secret Service investigators put together a list of several hundred individuals who may have accessed the area where the drugs were found. Anyone who comes through the White House must give identifying information and pass through security before entering.

But the lab results didn’t turn up latent fingerprints or DNA, so agents can’t compare anything to the possible suspect pool. White House staff are fingerprinted; participants in tour groups are not.

Video of the West Executive street lobby entrance did not identify the person or provide any solid investigative leads, the Secret Service said.

The lobby is open to staff-led tours of the West Wing, which are scheduled for nonworking hours on the weekends and evenings. Those tours are invitation-only and led by White House staff for friends, family and other guests. Most staffers who work in the complex can request an evening or weekend tour slot, but there is often a long wait list. There were tours on the day, a Sunday, the drugs were found, as well as on the two preceding days.

The Situation Room, located in the West Wing, where staffers would also drop their phones before entering, has been undergoing construction work and was not in use at the time the baggie was found, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said last week.

Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Patients squeezed in fight over who gets to bill for pricey infusion drugs

• July 13, 2023

Samantha Liss | (TNS) KFF Health News

Health insurers and medical providers are battling over who should supply high-cost infusion drugs for patients, with the tussle over profits now spilling into statehouses across the country.

The issue is that some insurers are bypassing hospital pharmacies and physician offices and instead sending more complex drugs through third-party pharmacies. Those pharmacies then send the medications directly to the medical provider or facility for outpatient infusing, which is called “white bagging,” or, more rarely, to patients, in what is called “brown bagging.” That shifts who gets to buy and bill for these complex medications, including pricey chemotherapy drugs.

Insurers say the policies are needed because hospital markups are too high. But hospitals argue that adding an intermediary results in unnecessary risks and delays, and they say some insurers have their own or affiliated pharmacy companies, creating financial motives for controlling the source of the medications. The patients, meanwhile, are left to deal with the red tape.

Paula Bruton Shepard in Bolivar, Missouri, is among those caught in the middle. Flares of lupus, an autoimmune disease, rob Shepard of her mobility by attacking her joints. She relies on monthly infusions to treat her symptoms. But at times, she said, her treatments were delayed due to UnitedHealthcare’s white bagging infusion policy. And interruptions to her treatments exacerbated her symptoms.

“I once had to use a toilet lift and it was kind of demoralizing to say, ‘I’m a 50-year-old woman and I have to use a toilet lift,’” Shepard said of the medication delays.

This is a tug of war over profits between insurers and medical providers, said Ge Bai, a professor of accounting and health policy at Johns Hopkins University. While insurers claim the arrangement reduces costs, she said, that doesn’t mean insurers pass along savings to patients.

“I don’t think we should have more sympathy toward one party or the other,” Bai said. “Nobody is better than the other. They’re all trying to make money.”

The savings from white bagging can be significant for expensive infusion drugs, according to a report from the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. For example, Remicade, used to treat a variety of inflammatory diseases, including Crohn’s, cost on average $1,106 per unit in 2015 under hospitals’ traditional buy-and-bill system, the commission found in its review of state claims data. That same drug cost an average of $975 per unit under white bagging, a 12% savings.

But the report also found patients, on average, faced higher cost sharing — what they are responsible for paying — for Remicade and other drugs when white bagging was used. While some patients had only modest increases to their costs under the policy, such as $12 more for a medication, the review found it could mean much greater cost sharing for some patients, such as those on Medicare.

At Citizens Memorial Hospital in rural Bolivar, more than 1 in 4 patients who receive regular infusions are being forced to use an outside pharmacy, said Mariah Hollabaugh, the hospital’s pharmacy director. Shepard was among them.

Even if the hospital has the exact drug on the shelf, patients must wait for a separate shipment, Hollabaugh said, potentially interrupting care. Their shipped drugs may sometimes be unusable when the doctor needs to change the dosage. Or the medicine comes in a nondescript package that doesn’t get immediately flagged for the pharmacy, potentially subjecting the drugs to damaging temperature fluctuations. For patients, that can mean delays in care.

“They’re in pain, they’re uncomfortable,” Hollabaugh said. “They may be having symptoms that don’t allow them to go to work.”

Siteman Cancer Center, led by physicians from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has confronted the same issue. But the cancer center’s size has helped it largely avoid such insurer policies.

John DiPersio, a Siteman oncologist and researcher who led the university’s oncology division for more than two decades, said Siteman reluctantly allows white bagging for simple injectables but refuses to accept it for complicated chemotherapies. It does not accept brown bagging. Occasionally, he said, that means turning patients away.

“You’re talking about cancer patients that are getting life-threatening treatments,” DiPersio said, referring to the dangers of chemo drugs, which he said can be fatal if used improperly. “It doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s all stupid. It’s all lunacy.”

At least 21 states, including Missouri, introduced some form of white or brown bagging legislation during the most recent legislative session, according to the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists. And in the past two years, the trade group said, at least 13 states have already enacted restrictions on white bagging, including Arkansas, Louisiana, and Virginia.

ASHP has created model legislation to limit insurers from requiring the practices as a condition of coverage.

“This is a major issue,” said Tom Kraus, a vice president at the trade group. “We see this as central to our ability to coordinate patient care.”

At the heart of the tension is an often-litigated federal program that allows certain hospitals and the clinics they own to purchase drugs at deep discounts. The 340B program, named for a section of the law that created it, allows hospitals to buy certain drugs for much less — sometimes for a total cost of a single penny — than what they are later paid for those drugs. Hospitals are not required to pass along 340B savings to patients.

The program was intended to help hospitals spread scarce resources further to treat patients in poor and vulnerable communities, but it has morphed into a means of enriching hospitals and their affiliated clinics, researchers said in a 2014 Health Affairs report. Hollabaugh said many rural facilities such as Citizens rely on the revenue generated from the 340B drugs to subsidize infusions that have no profit margin.

The number of participating hospitals and their affiliated outpatient clinics has increased significantly since the 340B program was created in 1992. More than 2,600 of the nation’s roughly 6,100 hospitals were participating in the 340B program as of January 2023. That gives them access to discounts that can knock off as much as 50% of a drug’s cost, according to the Health Resources & Services Administration, which oversees the program.

The insurance industry argues that hospital markups, especially when made on top of those discounts, have gotten out of control.

“The fact is, people got greedy,” Shannon Cooper, a lobbyist for Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City, said during a Missouri state Senate hearing in March.

Markups are not unique to 340B hospitals, said Sean Dickson, who helps lead pharmaceutical policy for AHIP, a trade group formerly known as America’s Health Insurance Plans. The markups thrusted on commercial plans are “widely out of line” with what Medicare will pay, he said, and that is driving up costs without providing additional value.

Legislation that targets white bagging hinders an insurer’s ability to rein in such costs, Dickson said, especially when an area lacks competition.

“What we’re really trying to focus on here is putting pressure on those markups that are not related to cost or safety,” Dickson said.

Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield lobbyist David Smith testified during the March hearing in Missouri that even the idea of white bagging elicited a quick response and that almost every major hospital system in the state said they would drop their prices and come back to the negotiation table.

For now, Citizens Memorial Hospital and other Missouri medical facilities will have to continue to tango with the insurers: Legislation to limit white and brown bagging did not pass during the Missouri General Assembly’s recent session.

Shepard, though, won’t need such legislation.

UnitedHealthcare had been sending her lupus infusion through other pharmacies on and off since 2021, unwilling to cover the drugs if they came from Citizens’ in-house pharmacy. Shepard had to authorize each shipment before it was sent. If she missed the monthly call, she said, it was a “bureaucratic mess” trying to get the medication shipped.

“We are driving unnecessary costs out of the health care system to help make care more affordable, while also maintaining drug safety, effectiveness and quality of care,” UnitedHealthcare spokesperson Tony Marusic wrote.

But after KFF Health News inquired about Shepard’s case, Marusic said UnitedHealthcare stopped white bagging Shepard’s medication to “prevent potential delays in shipping.” And during her latest infusion in June, her hospital was again able to supply Shepard’s medication directly.

“I’m just so relieved,” Shepard said. “I don’t have to take phone calls. I don’t have to reply to emails. I just show up.”

___

(KFF Health News, formerly known as Kaiser Health News (KHN), is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.)

©2023 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

​ Orange County Register 

1930s Newport Beach Harbor Island home seeks $74 million

• July 13, 2023

A waterfront home passed down through three generations of the same family has hit Newport Beach’s upscale Harbor Island market for $74 million.

If it gets that amount, the house would shatter Orange County’s all-time sales record set in November 2021 when hedge fund billionaire Joseph E. Edelman bought a Laguna Beach estate for $70 million in an off-market deal.

The six-bedroom, 3,600-square-foot colonial-style home with five bathrooms and an inner courtyard has stood on this nearly half-acre, double lot since its completion in 1937. Surrounded by eucalyptus trees, it backs up to a bayfront terrace and an expansive lawn to the water’s edge with 100 feet of frontage.

There’s a private dock for several yachts.

The home has been in the Shattuck family since 1951.

Seller Leslie Shattuck told the Wall Street Journal, the first to report the listing, that the house originally belonged to her grandparents. Her parents later took up residence. When her mother died in May, Shattuck and her two siblings inherited the property.

But as she told the Wall Street Journal, “rather than one of us getting it, we just decided that it’s best that no one gets it.”

While the house has been well maintained, there is no mention of what the living space offers. The listing, instead, markets it as an opportunity for the next owner to restore, expand or reimagine it as “a larger, more modern house” — not unlike many of the neighboring addresses in this 24-hour, guard-gated island enclave of 29 homes, which fetch top dollar.

In November 2020, a soft contemporary-style home architect C.J. Light designed on a quarter-acre lot with a bayfront pool, spa, terraced garden, and private dock traded hands for $17.68 million.

Chinese tech billionaire Eric Siliang Tang paid $37 million in October 2019 for a French neoclassic-style mansion at the tip of the island that was once the site of a high-profile suicide. Records show he quietly sold the property in April 2020 for $38 million.

“Harbor Island properties like this rarely ever come to market,” said Rob Giem of Compass, the co-listing agent. “Families in this community keep these homes for decades, passing them down through generations. This is an extremely rare opportunity to purchase the last, double, oversized lot on the south side of this island.”

Giem shares the listing with Evan Corkett and Steve High of Coldwell Banker Realty.

Laguna Beach mansion breaks OC record sale price at $70 million

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​ Orange County Register 

Southern California politicians can’t stay out of jail

• July 13, 2023

Southern California has seen a wave of arrested and charged politicians in the last few months.

Most recently, in the Inland Empire, Riverside Councilmember Clarissa Cervantes was arrested for driving under the influence and San Jacinto City Councilmember Brian Hawkins was arrested on suspicion of assaulting two children. Cervantes was arrested on July 1, Hawkins July 2nd.

Cervantes, who was previously convicted of driving under the influence in 2015, is reportedly seeking treatment for a drinking problem. Cervantes, a Democrat, is running to fill the state Assembly seat of her sister, Sabrina.

Hawkins, a former Republican, announced in May that he would be challenging Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, as a Democrat to represent California’s 41st Congressional District.

“I switched parties,” Hawkins said at the time. “But I didn’t switch my concern for the American people.”

Then came his July 2 arrest for a reported “domestic incident” in which Hawkins was accused of having “committed an assault on two children at the location.” Hawkins has since been charged on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment.

The arrests of Cervantes and Hawkins follow high-profile criminal charges against elected officials elsewhere in Southern California.

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In June, Los Angeles Councilman Curren Price was charged by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office for corruption-related offenses. Word of these corruption charges no doubt helped sink the candidacy of Price staffer Marisa Alcaraz, who was running for a Los Angeles council seat at the time. She was defeated on June 27th.

In May, Orange County state Sen. Dave Min of Irvine was arrested for driving under the influence in Sacramento. Like Cervantes, Min, too, has claimed to seek help and is running for higher office, in his case the House of Representatives.

We recognize all of these elected officials deserve their days in court on their respective criminal charges. In the case of Cervantes and Min, who have both admitted what they did, they should step aside and resolve their problems before seeking political office.

But we’d just like to ask, on behalf of all Californians: can you, elected officials, at the very least stay out of jail?

​ Orange County Register 

San Clemente’s sand erosion study shows ‘critical’ beaches

• July 13, 2023

Not all beaches in San Clemente are equal.

Some are so sand starved they are considered in critical condition, at risk of being reclaimed by the ocean. Meanwhile, other stretches of San Clemente’s coast seem stable, or even growing, with ample sandy space for beachgoers.

The beach town recently released a report, titled “Critical Erosion Hot Spots,” that aims to identify the most-troubled areas and find solutions to address short-term and long-term coastal erosion. The report, part of the city’s Nature Based Resiliency Project Feasibility Study, notes that erosion already is threatening infrastructure in some areas and limiting opportunities for coastal access and recreation.

Jorine Campopiano, who recently served on the Beaches Park and Recreation Commission and spent five years on the city’s Coastal Advisory Committee, said the study is important to better understand the areas most vulnerable to erosion, and to help planners pinpoint where to direct the city’s restoration efforts.

“To date, we haven’t had any sort of ranking on the eroded state of our beaches so this study is an important milestone, helping us gain a better picture of what is happening along our shoreline so the city can make more informed decisions in the future,” said Campopiano in an e-mail.

Some of Orange County’s most popular beaches are disappearing as waves swallow up the sand. Above, North Beach during high tide in San Clemente, CA, (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The loss of sand along the city’s shoreline is concentrated in “erosional hotspots,” while other areas are relatively stable or are even accreting sand, according to the report, which was written by consulting firm Moffatt & Nichol. The city hopes to develop coastal resiliency solutions aimed at reducing erosion where needed, and to stabilize and widen beaches by using nature-based or ‘green’ pilot projects as a first priority, according to the report.

The width of the shoreline varies throughout San Clemente. Some areas are significantly wider than others and the narrowest stretches have nearly no beach at all during mid-to-high tides.

Also, this year, a series of storms battered the coast, leaving the ocean-front rail line vulnerable and, for several months, inoperable.

City officials in recent years have focused on the dire sand situation — which could hurt the coastal economy — by conducting studies, creating an erosion-focused subcommittee, and trying to find creative solutions to keep local beaches sandy.

Related links

San Clemente launches outreach, new subcommittee looking at sand erosion issues
New film puts spotlight on San Clemente’s disappearing beaches
Can Southern California save its disappearing beaches?  
San Clemente prepares for wave of beach changes with sea-level rise, erosion

Last year, after a 15-year hiatus, the city re-established its Beach Monitoring Program. The first survey was conducted in October 2022 and will be done twice a year through 2025 by Coastal Frontiers Corporation.

At the same time, the Army Corps of Engineers has been working on a massive, $15-million sand replenishment program. That project, scheduled to start next year and repeated periodically over the next five decades, will fill in 250,000 cubic yards of sand between T-Street, around the pier, and north to Linda Lane.

According to the report, erosion is primarily concentrated at the southern city boundary and north of San Clemente Pier at Mariposa Point, Capistrano Shores, and Shorecliffs.

That “critical” beach on the south end of town is just down the cliff from the private community Cyprus Shores, which in recent years has lost its beach. It’s the area where the railroad was battered by waves and where waves undermined the toe of the bluffs, triggering a landslide.

The study shows that area has lost about 5.5 feet of sand a year since 2001 and it is considered the most critically eroded portion of the city’s shoreline.

The Orange County Transit Authority has constructed a slope stabilization project to try and stabilize the hillside and placed boulders on the beachside to try and stop the wave action.

“While a steadily decreasing trend in the width of this beach has been recorded over the past 25 years, there has been a dramatic drop off or complete disappearance of the majority of the subaerial beach over the past five to eight years,” the report reads.

Another severely eroded sections of coast is the Shorecliffs area on the north end of the city. That area has been eroding at an average of 1.5 feet a year since 2001.

“Along the northern half of the reach, the Shorecliffs Beach Club and amenities have suffered from increased narrowing of the shoreline fronting the property,” the report reads, noting that the vegetated dune system on the south end of Shorecliffs beach is retreating.

Mariposa beach also was identified as a “critical” area, which results in the restriction of beachside emergency access for lifeguard vehicles, reduced use of multiple pedestrian coastal access points, and a complete loss of beach along most of the area, according to the study.

Suzie Whitelaw, a geologist with the community activist group Save Our Beaches San Clemente, said the study clearly shows how the north and south ends of the town have almost completely eroded away.

The group has been communicating with the county’s public works department to rebuild the area with sand from the Santa Ana River, much like the county project happening just north at Capistrano Beach and Doheny State Beach, an area also suffering from severe erosion.

The first truckloads of sand are unloaded and compacted at Capo Beach in Dana Point, CA on Thursday, June 15, 2023. The sand replenishment project is being done between Capo Beach and south Doheny State Beach. (Photo by Paul Bersebach, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“There is plenty of sand available, we just need to get our permits in place,” she said. “I rode my bike along the Santa Ana River Channel, and there’s about a mile of sand, piled 30 feet high, that needs to go before the El Niño storms hit.”

Another point in the study: erosion and lack of sand is hurting wave quality at most surf spots throughout city, and recreational loss appears to correspond with the lack of beach along the coastline over the past five-to-10 years.

Campopiano also noted the report shows the T-Street surfing reef acts as a sand retention structure and helps stabilize the sand in that location. A potential nature-based solution could be to mimic the T-Street surfing reef in another location, she noted.

Campopiano said the study is important to better understand the areas that are the most vulnerable to erosion, as well as to help the city better focus where to direct their restoration efforts.

“This study reports that the northern and southern ends of our town are critically eroded while our middle city and state beaches are more stable,” Campopiano wrote in an email response. “So the northern and southern beaches probably need more attention, at the minimum more sand, and would likely benefit from a nature-based, sand-retention solution.”

​ Orange County Register 

Chipotle Mexican Grill tests robot that can skin avocados

• July 13, 2023

Chipotle Mexican Grill is working on a way to split the work of making guacamole between humans and machines.

The Newport Beach-based chain is partnering with an El Segundo-based company called Vebu Labs to develop a cobot, or collaborative robot, that can slice in half, core and peel avocados before a staff member takes over to mash them and prepare the guac.

The prototype robot is called Autocado, according to a news release, and it is being tested at Chipotle’s test kitchen in Irvine, according to a news release.

The hope is that Autocado will cut the roughly 50 minutes it takes to make guacamole in half, the news release said, by processing 25 pounds of avocados at a time and collecting the waste.

Chipotle has a history of testing cobots. Last year it tested a machine named Chippy that could fry and season tortilla chips. The goal, chief restaurant officer Scott Boatwright said at the time, was to farm out some of the more repetitive kitchen duties to machines and leave humans with the more satisfying ones.

Boatwright also said that Chipotle is devoted to hand-mashed guacamole.

In 2019, the chain made a commercial with Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris that featured a demonstration on how to mash guac by the manager of a Chipotle restaurant in Temecula.

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​ Orange County Register 

Can Dodgers play deep into October while relying on so many rookies?

• July 13, 2023

LOS ANGELES — At one point in their game on June 17, the Dodgers had five rookies on the field – Bobby Miller, James Outman, Michael Busch, Miguel Vargas and Jonny DeLuca.

It was both a high point of the season in terms of the Dodgers’ incorporation of young players – and a low point of their season competitively. The Dodgers lost 15-0 that day, part of a three-game sweep by the San Francisco Giants at Dodger Stadium that dropped L.A. into third place in the National League West.

It was a temporary setback. The Dodgers won 12 of their next 17 games and will open the second half of the season on Friday in New York tied for first place in the division, percentage points (.573 to .571) ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks. It is the seventh time in the past nine full seasons that the Dodgers reached the All-Star break with at least a share of first place.

They have gotten to their accustomed place atop the division relying on an unaccustomed number of rookies.

Eight rookie pitchers have combined to throw 155⅓ innings so far this season (four have combined to make 23 starts) with a combined ERA of 6.26 and a 1.54 WHIP, both numbers helping to drive up a staff ERA that ranks an unsightly 23rd in the majors.

Four rookie position players – Outman, Vargas, Busch and DeLuca – have combined for a .215/.307/.381 slash line and .688 OPS.

It might be accurate to say the Dodgers reached the midsummer break in first place despite the best efforts of their rookies.

“I think the pitchers we’ve used or are using are getting real experience and I just feel like they’re only going to get better,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of the crop of rookies. “I think the pitching, I think that’s something that is an easier bet if the stuff is good. And I think both guys (Miller and Emmet Sheehan) have the talent. We were all surprised (how much Gavin Stone struggled). But it was his first couple goes at it. I still believe he’s going to be a top-end guy.

“And then on the hitting, with James and Miguel, specifically the learning curve, experience or lack thereof, has shown itself. And we’re going to keep running these guys out there until otherwise. I refuse to put pressure on these guys to say that there’s a timeline. It’s just going to be – it is until it’s not. The bet is that these guys are going to find it.”

“Otherwise” arrived for Vargas on Sunday. Batting .195 and sinking in a 5-for-63 slump, he was demoted to the minors. After being handed the second base job this spring, he lost it to an outfielder – Mookie Betts will likely continue to figure prominently in the infield mix in the second half along with Chris Taylor, who is expected back from a knee injury this weekend.

The efforts of their four All-Stars (Betts, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and J.D. Martinez) have allowed the Dodgers to absorb the lack of contributions offensively from their rookies. So, like Roberts, President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman focuses on the pitchers when asked if the Dodgers can get where they want to be in October while relying on contributions from so many rookies.

“I think the experience that Michael, Bobby and Emmet have gotten has been incredibly helpful – not only for their long-term development but also the short term,” Friedman said. “I know that there are takeaways after outings that they are learning from and knowing those guys I’ll bet on them to incorporate as we go.

“So I can see those guys being a part of a strong October pitching staff. In what role, we’ll figure out based on getting in and based on what our pitching looks like.”

That could change significantly in the next month – or beyond if you buy into the optimism that injured players like Walker Buehler, Blake Treinen, J.P. Feyereisen, Jimmy Nelson and/or Ryan Pepiot can return to throw impactful pitches for the Dodgers this season. Friedman will say only that there is “a very realistic chance” that “a number of guys” from that group will pitch for the Dodgers this season.

The alternative is what it always is at this time of year – spin prospects into immediate help.

From Manny Machado to Yu Darvish to Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, when there has been a difference-maker available in a mid-summer trade, Friedman has usually found a way to land him for the Dodgers.

The overriding question this year, however, is what difference-maker – if any – will be available. The addition of a third wild-card playoff spot in each league (plus the mediocrity raging through both Central divisions) has made it more difficult to sort the buyers from the sellers as the deadline approaches.

“The clouded playoff situations around the league have made it challenging to get into much substance on the trade front at this point. Most are taking a wait-and-see approach after the All-Star break and see where they’re at,” Friedman said.

“I think the new (postseason) rules definitely enhance that. But I think this year even within those new rules is especially harder. Just because of the way it’s played out (in various divisions).”

Unfortunately for the Dodgers, the “murky trade market,” as Friedman described it, comes in a season when they might need help more than they have in previous years.

“I think that’s a fair question,” Roberts said. “Every year’s different. Every roster is different.

“I think if you look at the track record of our guys. Whenever there’s been a need, a void, a hole, a weakness – whatever it might be – we’ve done a great job of filling those holes.”

Those holes are more readily identifiable this season – pitching, pitching and, oh yeah, also pitching. Even if the Dodgers’ front office might have more difficulty filling them from the outside this year, it’s hard to imagine them remaining this reliant on rookie contributors through the second half and into October.

“From our standpoint, we’re going to assess what’s available and we’re going to pursue what’s available and if things make sense we’re going to do them and if they don’t we’re not,” Friedman said.

“But, again, so much of it is going to be who’s available. … It’s great to want something. But if it’s not available or it doesn’t line up, that doesn’t do us much good.”

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​ Orange County Register