I’m a freelance journalist based in and from Southern California. I write about the environment, climate change, housing, and homelessness - and how those topics intersect. I’m also a contributing editor at SFGATE, where I write about the outdoors in Los Angeles.
I previously covered the environment for The Desert Sun in California’s Coachella Valley, where I reported frequently on extreme heat, the Salton Sea, and housing and warehouse development in Riverside County. Before that, I covered housing and homelessness for the Ventura County Star, where I got a crash course in local zoning while covering housing development across 10 cities. I’m passionate about covering the environment and climate change through a housing lens, and right now I’m particularly focused on how where we can afford to live (or if we can afford housing at all) impacts our exposure to pollution and the impacts of climate change.
Housing & Homelessness
California’s homelessness and climate crises leave unhoused communities vulnerable to floods | High Country News, June 2024
Across the West, anti-camping ordinances and law enforcement sweeps are pushing unhoused people into increasingly marginal spaces on the fringes of cities. Many camp along washes, flood channels and rivers. It’s just one of the many ways the climate and homelessness crises are colliding, leaving unhoused people increasingly exposed to extreme weather.
Unhoused people pay a disproportionate price for the West’s deadly roads | High Country News, December 2024
In Los Angeles County, unhoused people are 18.3 times more likely to die from transportation-related injuries than the total county population, with deaths occurring nearly every other day in 2021 and 2022. And the problem is not confined to California: In Multnomah County, Oregon, in 2022, people experiencing homelessness were 44.8 times more likely to die from a transportation-related injury than the county population overall.
As cities enact camping bans, where will California’s unhoused population go? | High Country News, August 2024
“You create a family” when you become part of an encampment, said Emma Rivera, who joined one when she ended up unhoused earlier this year after a car accident. “And when those encampments get torn down, I mean, it’s devastating. What else are we supposed to do?”
How LA County squashed a supportive housing project for seniors | Los Angeles Public Press, August 2024
In late 2022, affordable housing developer National CORE submitted plans for a five-story, 54-unit permanent supportive housing development for individuals experiencing homelessness in unincorporated Los Angeles County. Today that project is dead, after a withholding of county funds and other administrative roadblocks stalled the project for months until it was no longer viable.
Pop-up voting centers bring the polls directly to unhoused Angelenos | Bolts, December 2024
Michael Barnett left the presidential portion of his ballot blank on Nov. 5. The 66-year-old didn’t come to the James Wood Community Center in Los Angeles to choose between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump; instead, he was much more interested in down-ballot races related to policing, healthcare, and housing that would impact Skid Row, his community of nearly a decade.
Why California’s housing market is destined to go up in flames | Grist & The Desert Sun, January 2024
Riverside County cities often rank among the fastest-growing in California by population and housing units, as new housing developments pop up in the foothills to absorb the region’s growing population pushed out from more expensive coastal areas. As Riverside County grows, the number of homes in the wildland-urban interface is growing, too.
In California’s hottest county, a race to prevent heat deaths among unhoused people | The Desert Sun, July 2023
Imperial County has always been hot. The county experiences more days above 100 degrees than anywhere else in California or the West. But climate change is driving up temperatures to even further extremes, creating health threats, especially for people who are unsheltered or work outdoors in the heat of the day. The county also has a higher rate of unsheltered homelessness than any other suburban county in the U.S.
State law hailed as the end of single-family zoning fizzles so far in the Coachella Valley | The Desert Sun, April 2023
A new state law that aims to chip away at single-family zoning in California cities amid a severe housing crisis has so far only streamlined single-family home approvals in one Coachella Valley city.
Climate & Environment
109 degrees on the first day of school? Extreme heat is delaying when students go back | The Hechinger Report & Chalkbeat, September 2024
America’s schools are vastly underprepared for extreme heat: An estimated 36,000 public schools don’t have adequate HVAC systems . . As districts work through the lengthy process of financing and planning these infrastructure upgrades, some hope that pushing back the first day of school could reduce school closures and other effects of extreme heat on students.
On California’s Central Coast, battery storage is on the ballot | Inside Climate News, May 2024
This local pushback demonstrates the tension between the desire for “really high quality local permitting” and the state’s push for “really rapid transformation of the whole electricity grid and rapid deployment of energy storage,” which will require the speedy issuing of permits, said Mariko Geronimo Aydin, co-founder and chief energy economist at Lumen Energy Strategy.
After decades of environmental issues, Pomona is updating its zoning code | Los Angeles Public Press, February 2024
In 2014, environmental justice group successfully advocated for a ban on new waste and recycling facilities in a Pomona neighborhood plagued by pollution. But the underlying zoning that allows industrial uses near homes remained, and online shopping upped the demand for warehouses and air-polluting diesel trucks. The same groups that fought waste facilities a decade ago are now fighting another pollution source in the same neighborhood.
Calculating the toll of a summer heat wave in the desert | The Desert Sun, January 2024
Across the Coachella Valley, people succumbed to the heat, dying from exposure in their homes, at Freedom Park in Palm Desert, in a rental car parking lot near the Palm Springs Airport, under a roadway overpass near Oasis, and in a sand planter outside the Sonic Drive-In in Indio, maybe while seeking shade under one of the handful of newly planted trees bordering the parking lot. The oldest victim was 84; the youngest, 27. Two women in their 70s were found dead in their homes on the same day, one in Desert Hot Springs and the other in Indio, on July 20, when temperatures reached 119 degrees.
Wetlands are appearing around the Salton Sea. Could this be a natural solution? | The Desert Sun, November 2023
Proposals abound aimed at mitigating the effects of the Salton Sea’s quickly receding shoreline, from importing water from Mexico’s Sea of Cortez (still just an idea) to the state’s 4,000-acre habitat restoration along the sea’s southern edge (nearing completion). But near Bombay Beach, this wetland habitat appeared all on its own, without any feats of engineering or years of environmental study.
How one Cathedral City neighborhood was destroyed by Tropical Storm Hilary | The Desert Sun, September 2023
The street’s location in a high-flood risk area, combined with historic rainfall and unexpected mudflows, made it particularly vulnerable to disaster. And given where growth is booming in the Coachella Valley, and the increasing occurrence of extreme weather events like Tropical Storm Hilary, there is a high likelihood that something like this could happen again – on Horizon Road or elsewhere.
Outdoors & Public Lands
The ‘nightmare’ wildfire scenario looming at Southern California’s most popular recreation area | SFGATE, September 2024
Recent fires underscore the precarity of the East Fork, arguably one of the most important recreation sites in all of Southern California, and certainly one of the most visited. They’re also yet another example of the many intertwined ways that climate change is reshaping life in the Golden State: fueling hotter temperatures and extreme heat, but also threatening the very places many people go to seek relief during heat waves, such as the shady and forested banks of the San Gabriel River.
Wildfires and climate change keep cancelling California’s 100-mile mountain marathon | SFGATE, August 2024
Like a fire captain, Ken Hamada easily rattled off the latest acreage numbers, containment percentages and weather conditions of the two most recent fires in Angeles National Forest, the Vista Fire and the Fork Fire. After a few tense days on fire watch, Hamada ultimately got the OK to use the race’s original route. All of this — monitoring fire conditions, making last-minute route changes and, in some cases, canceling the race — wasn’t part of the job back in 1986.
As California storms worsen, some officials want to close this deadly mountain | SFGATE, February 2024
Mount Baldy’s close proximity to millions of Southern California residents, coupled with its steep, frozen slopes that require mountaineering skills and proper equipment in the winter, has resulted in the mountain often being considered one of the most dangerous peaks in the country. The number of fatalities and rescues on Mount Baldy has prompted one local law enforcement agency to call for the trail’s closure during unsafe winter conditions.
Pacific Crest Trail hikers are dealing with California’s historic snow, climate change | The Desert Sun, May 2023
“I think the idea of the PCT in previous years has been this classic straight thru-hike north to south or south to north. That is almost never going to happen again, either because of the snow, climate change is causing things to be more extreme, wildfires,” said Leonie Short, a PCT hiker this year. “I think (future hikers) should be prepared to give up on that dream of a classic PCT.”
New national monument proposed south of Joshua Tree National Park | The Desert Sun, January 2023
“We’re making this a people-centric campaign because oftentimes, monument or conservation campaigns focus on the importance of wildlife and birds, and as an environmentalist that is always super important for me. But as a member of this community, I understand that these local communities do not always have access to the outdoors,” said Frank Ruiz, director of Audubon California’s Salton Sea Program.
‘He just didn’t know what he didn’t know’: Father of hiker who died on PCT takes on a safety mission | The Desert Sun, March 2022
Trevor Laher emerged from his tent in the San Jacinto Mountains near mile 166.5 of the Pacific Crest Trail, at an elevation of over 6,000 feet, about 15 miles north of the famous thru-hike's intersection with Highway 74. . . Just a few miles into his hike that Friday, less than two weeks into his journey on the Pacific Crest Trail, Trevor slipped on ice while hiking around the side of Apache Peak, where the PCT is narrowly cut into the side of the mountain with a steep drop-off.