LA Squawk Box for Thursday, June 25, 2026
LA county voter turnout at 37.8%, a call to suspend CARE+ sweeps during environmental emergencies, cleanup starts as Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights knocked down, and more.
What’s happening today?
High-ranking LA city officials will be taking part in a “homeless strategy” committee meeting this afternoon, at 3:15 p.m. The members of this committee are City Administrative Officer Matt Szabo, Chief Legislative Analyst Sharon Tso, Chair of the City Council’s Housing and Homelessness Committee Nithya Raman (sometimes council offices send representatives) and a representative of the mayor’s office, Deputy Mayor of Homelessness & Community Health Etsemaye P. Agonafer. On the agenda for this meeting is time-limited subsidies, which are one or two year vouchers that people receive as a transitional way to go from being homeless to permanently housed. Such short-term vouchers are often used in Mayor Bass’s Inside Safe, where people can only usually expect to be temporarily sheltered in motel rooms. The committee is also getting a presentation on “homeless response indicators” and an update on staffing up the city’s homelessness bureau. Raman has also looked to a version of the time-limited subsidies program as a way to address people’s housing needs, in a white paper she included in the homelessness plan she released for her campaign for mayor.
What just happened?
On Day 8 of the Lineage cold storage warehouse fire in Boyle Heights…
LA firefighters announced they’ve finally put out the fire at the Lineage cold storage warehouse in Boyle Heights. The alert of the “knockdown” went out at 5:58 p.m. Fire chief Jamie Moore had previously promised to get the fire put out by around this time, and he had also said the warehouse should be turned over to Lineage by Friday for cleanup. The LA Times’s story on the knockdown points to the presence of Lineage crews already on site on Wednesday to do cleanup, and those crews were coordinating with Bureau of Sanitation officials, who were also there, to make plans for hauling away debris and other material. The LA Times’ story also includes interviews with workers and owners of nearby businesses, such as Jim Burgers, a mechanics shop and a beauty salon that saw their business drop. Some said they needed to close shop because workers with asthma or other conditions could not work under the conditions during the fire.
There have been concerns about what’s happening with the estimated 85 million pounds of food that was being stored at the warehouse when the fire broke out, especially in light of what happened at a fire at another Lineage warehouse in Washington. That fire took much longer to put out — 60 days. By the end of it, the rotted food in that warehouse along with the water that had been poured over the warehouse “ended up contaminating some of the groundwater,” says CBS’s Matt Guman. It’s unclear if that would be an issue with this fire, which appears to have been put out after much less time.
A pollution advisory by the Department of Public Health also expired at noon on Wednesday. And even though Mayor Karen Bass issued a declaration of a local emergency last Saturday to free up resources and also to skip the normal process for contracting, and submitted it to the LA City Council on Monday, that hasn’t been voted on by the council yet. That vote is now expected to take place on Friday. Meanwhile, the LA County Board of Supervisors ratified their chair, Hilda Solis’s declaration from Saturday, when they met for their regular meeting this past Tuesday.
LA Council member proposes suspending CARE+ homeless encampment sweeps during environmental emergencies, like the Lineage fire
Los Angeles City Council member Ysabel Jurado on Wednesday introduced a motion that calls for the Sanitation Department to suspend CARE+ sweeps during environmental emergencies. Her motion references the Lineage warehouse fire, as well as other times a declaration of emergency is made by local or state officials. CARE+ operations are conducted by sanitation department workers, and they require unhoused people to move out of the way, for the cleanups. During these operations, unhoused people are more likely to be unable to “shelter-in-place” inside their makeshift housing, as was being asked of people during the Lineage fire, for example.
According to the 2025 Point-in-Time Count, an estimated 4,306 people experience homelessness in Council District 14 on any given night. During environmental emergencies, these residents often face some of the highest levels of exposure while having the fewest resources to protect themselves.
At the same time, the City continues to conduct encampment cleanup operations through programs such as CARE and CARE+. These operations serve important sanitation and public health purposes. However, they also require residents to move themselves and their belongings, often over significant distances and for extended periods. During periods of extreme heat, poor air quality, smoke, hazardous debris, or other environmental emergencies, requiring unsheltered residents to remain outdoors while relocating their belongings may increase their exposure to dangerous conditions.
The City’s environmental emergency response protocols should account for the circumstances faced by unhoused residents and evaluate whether routine City operations may increase exposure to hazardous conditions during declared environmental emergencies. Establishing clear procedures for encampment cleanup operations during such events would help ensure that public health guidance, emergency response activities, and City operations are aligned.
A few more things…
Lineage hired M Strategic Communications to handle their crisis communnications, according to this filing with the City Ethics Commission. Film the Police offered up some additional context on this filing that shows that this firm is led by a former state legislative staffer for Mayor Karen Bass during her Assembly days.
POLITICO says there were changes made to Mayor Karen Bass’s re-election campaign. Douglas Herman, who has been Bass’s chief adviser on the campaign, is leaving the team, according to POLITICO’s Melanie Mason. Bass’s campaign is bringing on Julie Chávez Rodríguez, who has worked on campaigns for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
LA County’s voter turnout should be 37.8% for the June 2 election, according to the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s 12th update on the results. The final certification of the election results is expected to be on Friday, June 26.
LA Council member John Lee recused himself Wednesday from a vote on what outside law firm the city will retain to oppose an appeal in Los Angeles County Superior Court that he filed in March to fight a $138,124 fine for ethics violations, which include misusing his position and accepting excessive gifts, including during a trip to Las Vegas. The City Council voted 10-0 to go with a law firm recommended by the Ethics Commission that includes a lawyer with expertise in ethics litigation.
A City News Service story picked up by the LA Daily News details a $6.5 million jury award to Pablo Vera, who “said he was peacefully celebrating near what was then called the Staples Center on Oct. 11, 2020, when mounted LAPD officers struck him multiple times with batons, breaking a forearm and causing injuries that required surgery and years of physical and emotional recovery that continue.”
The LAUSD board has named Alexander Chait as the district’s new superintendent. He’s been acting superintendent since Feb. 27, a couple days after Carvahlo’s home and office were raided in connection to ongoing FBI investigations into an AI chatbot company that the district hired under his tenure.