A huge thank you to our friends at @coloradopublic.bsky.social whose generosity paid for the lunch for @laist.com staff working in the studios today. Our newsroom floor is still off limits due to soot and smoke. Public radio people are good people.

A furnished Bel Air home went on Zillow today for $29,500 / month. A few months ago, it was asking $15,900.

I called up the agent. She said she told her client to re-list the home after this week's L.A. fires.

"People are desperate," she said. "You can probably get good money."

Asking rents skyrocket as LA fires destroy homes For one listing, rent jumped nearly 86% since September. In an interview with LAist, the agent said she told her client, “People are desperate, and you can probably get good money.”

I’ve been too busy trying to make sure that we are serving the communities of Southern California information they need to navigate this terrible disaster to do any posting. But I had to come here to share the latest from LAist’s David Wagner laist.com/news/housing...

Public employees often must disclose outside income and gifts to the public. Why aren’t top LA homelessness officials? Out of hundreds of employees at the L.A. Homeless Services Authority, only the CEO currently files state-mandated disclosure forms meant to flag potential conflicts of interest, according to an LAist ...

Hundreds of employees, $700 million in money to outside contractors and ONE employee who currently must file conflict of interest disclosures: laist.com/news/housing...

Terrific watchdog work by Yusra Farzan, Jill Replogle and Nick Gerda to keep pushing for records they were initially told didn't exist.

LA County leaders lay out plans to pull funding from troubled homeless services agency The proposal, which follows an audit that found major accounting issues at LAHSA, would radically shift how homeless services are delivered in the region.

Should Los Angeles County pull funding from a troubled homeless services agency and establish a new homelessness department within the county government?

Read my @laistofficial.bsky.social story on a new proposal that would bring seismic changes to LAHSA:

laist.com/news/housing...

Audit finds LA’s homelessness agency misused funds, failed to monitor contracts The findings highlight long-standing issues at LAHSA and raise new questions about how large pools of public money are being spent.

NEW: L.A.'s homeless services agency has an $875 million budget. A new audit raises questions about how they're spending it.

Late payments... millions in un-recouped advances... inadequate contract monitoring. Get the details in my
@laistofficial.bsky.social story: laist.com/news/housing...

High-profile nonprofit refunds Orange County $275K in taxpayer funds for work never completed The contracted work on mental health equity was supposed to be performed by the longtime partner — now wife — of a top aide to disgraced former county Supervisor Andrew Do. County officials cited LAis...

Impact: We take public records seriously at LAist, which is how we surfaced invoices and other documentation that led Orange County officials so seek and get this refund for taxpayers, the latest in our investigation into how taxpayer money is being spent in O.C. laist.com/news/politic...

LA voters approved billions for housing and homelessness. Leaders of a new agency told us their spending plans The tax, which at last count had more than 57% of L.A. voters' support, is projected to raise about $1.1 billion dollars per year.

In an election driven by concerns over rising prices, L.A. voters actually chose to pay *more* for everyday items.

For this @laistofficial.bsky.social story, I asked the leaders of a new affordable housing agency how they plan to spend sales tax revenue from Measure A. laist.com/news/housing...

New analysis by LA city controller says at least $513M meant to help the homeless went unspent The office attributed its findings of unspent funds to “a sluggish, inefficient [city] approach that is incompatible with timely spending.”

LAist is definitely keeping on eye on spending to reduce our homelessness crisis laist.com/news/housing...

Michelle Steel's lead continues to drop in highly watched 45th District House race GOP Rep. Michelle Steel's lead over Derek Tran fell to 236 votes in one of the last remaining House races to be called.

Proof that every vote matters: laist.com/news/politic...

LAUSD's eChoices application window closes soon. Here are some tips to help We can’t tell you which schools to apply to, but we can share advice from parents who’ve been there before.

LAist's Mariana Dale is building a School Game Plan for Southern Californians. A key brick dropped today on this very hard to navigate aspect of public school in L.A. We're here to help: laist.com/news/educati...

4 LA-area humans allegedly used giant furry bear costume to claim damage of Rolls-Royce, other luxury cars Officials said they even consulted a biologist to confirm no actual bear was involved in the alleged scheme.

I felt like the universe needed this story yesterday, so I feel pretty good about it being my first offering here. Follow me for the occasional fun and a whole lot of top-notch reporting from laistofficial.bsky.social newsroom.