Los Angeles

Los Angeles is a smog-riddled hellhole that for some reason, Ted Nivison as well as most guests on the podcast call their home. Nobody truly knows why people choose to live in this influencer-riddled, liberal, polluted pile of shit but I guess that's not any of our business.

The rest of this article is basic info about the terrible city. Honestly, just skip it because its all bullshit anyway.

## History of Los Angeles

### Spanish Colonial Outpost

For many centuries, the area was occupied by some 5,000 to 10,000 Tongva (Gabrielino) and Chumash Indians who lived in scores of villages and led a relatively stable existence by hunting, fishing, gathering, and trading actively with distant groups. Europeans entered their world in 1542 when a Spanish sea expedition headed by Capt. Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo sailed into Santa Monica Bay. Noticing the smoke rising from Indian fires, he dubbed the place Bahía de los Fumos (“Bay of Smokes”). Nearly two centuries later, royal authorities ordered Capt. Gaspar de Portolá to California to locate suitable sites for Franciscan missions, military forts (presidios), and civilian settlements. The Franciscans, led by Junípero Serra, established 21 missions in California, including two in the Los Angeles area: San Gabriel (1771) and San Fernando (1797).
In the fall of 1781, California Gov. Felipe de Neve and 44 settlers from Sonora and Mazatlán established a pueblo near a river they called Río de Porciúncula, where the Native American village of Yang-na (or Yabit) was located. They called the new settlement El Pueblo de la Reina de los Angeles (“The Village of the Queen of the Angels”); the name was later shortened to Los Angeles. The newcomers raised enough food to sustain themselves. The Native Americans, soon ravaged by diseases introduced by the Europeans, fared worse. Spain’s hold over colonial California ended in 1822, and in 1835 the new Mexican government raised the pueblo’s status to that of a city. It also secularized the missions and granted about 50 tracts of land called ranchos. Ignoring legal restrictions against them, white settlers began to make their homes in Los Angeles. During the Mexican-American War (1846–48), southern California was the site of numerous armed skirmishes. When the war ended, California was a province of the United States; in 1850 California joined the union as a state and the city of Los Angeles officially became American. For a brief time Los Angeles was California’s largest settled community, with a population of about 1,500.

### The Early-American Era

American Los Angeles, the “Queen of the Cow Counties,” was a rough-and-tumble frontier town. Ethnic conflict flared, particularly in the 1850s. Murder was a daily event, with bandits and vigilantes periodically dominating the scene. In one generation Americans and European immigrants replaced Mexicans in city government. Economic life continued to be shaped by the rancheros until the 1860s, when a severe drought destroyed crops, killed cattle, and undermined the economic viability of the rancheros.

The increasing dominance of whites in Los Angeles, along with economic instability after the American Civil War (1861–65), raised ethnic tensions in the city. Los Angeles earned nationwide notoriety in 1871, when rampaging mobs killed some 20 Chinese residents during an event known as the Chinese Massacre.

At that time the town lacked the ingredients common to most successful big cities. It lay outside the world’s major sea-lanes and had no natural harbour, no major fuel or lumber sources, no railway, and, worst of all, no water supply large enough to sustain a sizable population. It lay more than 20 miles (30 km) inland, along the banks of an unruly river. As late as the 1870s, Los Angeles was isolated from the rest of the country by vast deserts, mountains, and stretches of foreboding frontier territory. Novelist Mary Austin aptly called it “an island on the land.” Yet, in just a little more than a century, this insignificant and remote village would become one of the world’s great metropolises.

### Inventing a City

Los Angeles’s metamorphosis to world-class metropolis began in the 1870s. Its first leap into the modern era came in 1876, when the Southern Pacific Railroad completed a rail hookup with San Francisco. Also during that decade, the city experienced a boom based on the arrival of newcomers seeking a healthy climate. Called “the Sick Rush,” it was one of the first of many booms that have punctuated the history of Los Angeles.

In 1885 the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad opened a through line from Chicago, sparking a fare war and a two-year land boom. An army of land agents and pitchmen publicizing mild temperatures and ocean views sold off large parts of the old ranchos. When the bubble burst in 1887, thousands promptly left town. A newly formed chamber of commerce joined with the railroads, citrus growers, and hotel owners in a vigorous promotion of southern California. Focusing on the unspoiled natural beauty of the region, this campaign persuaded a generation of affluent visitors from the East Coast and Midwest to forgo trips to Europe and instead visit southern California. Many who did so ended up settling permanently in the state.

Creating a harbour large enough to accommodate world shipping was equally important. It involved dredging the mudflats at the port of San Pedro, building a rail line to Los Angeles, and obtaining a federal subsidy for a breakwater. Southern Pacific’s Collis P. Huntington backed Santa Monica as the location of the future port city, but business and political leaders in Los Angeles fought back. They won their battle in the U.S. Congress. In 1910 Los Angeles annexed the town of San Pedro; that act, along with the creation of a new harbour and the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, thrust Los Angeles into the position of a major international trading centre.

Much of the city’s expansive character was the product of Henry E. Huntington’s Pacific Electric rail network, established 1901–11. His crews of Mexican immigrant labourers laid more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of track. For less than a penny a mile, passengers could travel on one of his Big Red trolley cars from the San Fernando Valley to downtown and from Santa Monica inland as far as San Bernardino and Redlands.

The years from 1890 to 1915 have been described as Los Angeles’s golden age. Prominent Los Angeles author and urban ecologist Richard Lillard called it a “post-frontier, pre-industry, pre-Hollywood, pre-automobile” phase. The landscape was so amenable to portrayal on picture postcards that soon practically every household in the country’s northern snowbelt knew of the city where, in the dead of winter, trees bore golden fruit at the base of snow-covered mountains. Despite the positive developments during that period, it was also time of significant social and political turmoil.

At the turn of the 20th century, Harrison Gray Otis, publisher of the *Los Angeles Times*, led a national crusade to stimulate industry by undercutting labour unions. His venomous editorials stirred class resentment. A few unionists began a terrorist campaign against local capitalists and on Oct. 1, 1910, dynamited the *Times* building, killing 20 employees. In 1911, just as Los Angeles seemed poised to elect Job Harriman, the Socialist Labor candidate for mayor, two indicted unionists, John and James McNamara, confessed to the dynamite attacks. It dealt a mortal blow to Harriman’s campaign and put unions on the defensive for a generation.

Meanwhile, middle-class progressives were anxious to eliminate party bosses and end the political dominance of the Southern Pacific Railroad in California. A civic-minded physician, John Randolph Haynes, among others, convinced Los Angeles voters to adopt the initiative, referendum, and recall ballot measures. The reformers soon mounted an attack on Mayor Arthur C. Harper for his ties to the Southern Pacific, his stock speculations, and other corruption-related offenses, and their efforts prompted his resignation in 1909.

### From the Aqueduct to the 1920's

Another decisive step toward creating a metropolis was the development of a system that would import enough water from the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada to sustain a population of millions in the Los Angeles area. The designer of the Los Angeles Aqueduct was a self-trained, Irish-born water engineer, William Mulholland, who also oversaw its construction. The project (1904–13) involved aggressive dealings with ranchers and business owners in the Owens Valley, the work of some 4,000 labourers, and the invention and application of new technologies, including the Caterpillar tractor. The water was propelled entirely by gravity, coursing through open canals, pipes, and tunnels onto a spillway in the San Fernando Valley.
On Nov. 5, 1913, addressing the thousands of Angelenos assembled to watch the water cascade down the aqueduct to the city, Mulholland exclaimed, “There it is; take it!” The city’s 300,000 residents had acquired enough water to slake the thirst of millions. The 233-mile- (375-km-) long aqueduct, at the time the world’s longest, was considered a modern engineering wonder and its designer a genius.

### The 1920s and ’30s

In the 1920s, irate residents of the Owens Valley, believing their water had been stolen, vented their anger against Los Angeles by dynamiting parts of the system. To add to the tension of the disputes (popularly called “water wars”), the St. Francis Dam in northern Los Angeles county collapsed in 1928, releasing a surging wall of water that drowned hundreds of people. Mulholland accepted full responsibility. In the 1930s the city extended the aqueduct northward to Mono Lake for a total length of 338 miles (544 km) and later imported additional water from the Colorado River and California’s Feather River.
Historian Carey McWilliams wrote that Los Angeles’s growth is “one continuous boom punctuated at intervals by major explosions.” By 1920 southern California’s population had surpassed that of northern California, and in the next several years Los Angeles experienced “the largest internal migration in the history of the American people.” Hundreds of thousands of people arrived by automobile. It was a frenzied period of wildcat oil drilling, intense business speculation, religious excitement, extensive suburban development, the birth of the aircraft and film industries, and civic corruption. The charismatic Pentecostal minister Aimee Semple McPherson captivated audiences with her dramatic preaching. Droves of starry-eyed young people arrived hoping to follow in the footsteps of such movie actors as Mary Pickford, “America’s Sweetheart,” and her daredevil husband, Douglas Fairbanks.
Los Angeles was very much a white-dominated town in the 1930s. Housing and public facilities were segregated, and job discrimination was widespread. The Great Depression caused high unemployment in the region and exhausted the resources of private and public assistance. To slash welfare lists, public officials repatriated thousands of Mexicans—and their U.S.-born children. Amid this dire situation, Los Angeles built facilities for and hosted the 1932 Olympic Summer Games as planned. The city’s remoteness from Europe and from much of the rest of the world contributed to reduced international participation. Nevertheless, the Games were a great success and showcased Los Angeles to the world. Meanwhile, the corruption in City Hall led to a recall movement against Mayor Frank L. Shaw and his close associates. Police misconduct and the mayor’s mishandling of public funds forced Shaw from office and led to the election of reform mayor Fletcher Bowron in 1938.
Economic recovery was relatively swift in the late 1930s owing to the prosperity of the film industry, the tapping of electrical energy from Hoover Dam, and the production of airplanes for Britain and France at the outset of World War II.

### World War II and the postwar years

The World War II era witnessed an enormous surge in the Los Angeles economy, as southern California became a major American manufacturing centre, especially for aircraft production. It was also a time of significant domestic social conflict. After Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in 1941, thousands of Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans were rounded up in the Los Angeles area and interned at camps inland.

Racial tensions between sailors and local Mexican American youths exploded in the so-called “Zoot Suit Riots” (June 3–10, 1943). The servicemen targeted Latino youths who wore trendy zoot suits, double-breasted jackets with pegged pants. The youths were beaten and stripped of their clothing. Some of the violence spilled over onto Filipinos and African Americans. No one was killed in Los Angeles, but media attention helped spread racial intolerance to other cities, where fatalities did occur.

The war, meanwhile, sparked another population boom, as tens of thousands of newcomers found wartime employment in aircraft factories and shipyards. Servicemen who passed through Los Angeles to and from the Pacific theatre of war later returned with their families. This fed yet another population spurt in the 1950s and early ’60s. On a bean field near Long Beach, developers employing 4,000 workers built 23,000 tract homes in a three-year period, creating Lakewood, dubbed “the city as new as tomorrow.”

### The contemporary city

During the city’s 1981 bicentennial celebration, the British periodical *The Economist* declared, “Los Angeles has, it seems, at last become a place to take seriously.” All signs pointed to new levels of achievement: the skyline, freeways, tourist attractions, movie industry, universities, museums, sports franchises—and even the newspaper of record, the *Los Angeles Times*. The size, diversity, and energy of its population were enough to rank it second only to New York City. It was now a world-class city. Los Angeles’s highly successful hosting of the 1984 Summer Olympic Games reinforced its new status.

Maturation came with a price tag, however. The city acquired a host of problems endemic to urban American life: traffic jams, gang warfare, increasing poverty, inadequate low-income housing, overcrowded schools, and ethnic and racial hostility. In 1965 a violent uprising in the mostly African American community of Watts was an undeniable reminder that Los Angeles could no longer consider itself simply a sunny city of tourism and the good life. The record smog levels and the riot of 1992—which broke out after LAPD officers were cleared of criminal charges in the beating of African American Rodney King—were sober reminders that urban tensions had not disappeared.

Yet private citizens, organizations, and civic leaders struggling to preserve open space, ensure a healthy environment, and maintain community stability could claim at least partial victories. Efforts to stem the flow of contaminants into storm drains helped clean up the beaches and improve fish habitats. A crusade to “green” parts of the Los Angeles River (i.e., restore areas of the concrete channel to wetlands, parks, and trails)—a laughable concept a few years earlier—was making tangible headway. The establishment of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 1978 preserved a vast tract of valuable open land. A persistent campaign succeeded in preserving at least a fragment of the Ballona wetlands adjacent to Marina del Rey. A broad-based coalition defeated the city’s effort to build a high-technology trash incinerator near downtown and instead forced the city to start a curbside trash-recycling project. Youngsters were mobilized to plant tens of thousands of trees for aesthetic, recreational, and ecological purposes. A movement for historic preservation saved the treasured Central Library and subsequently other historic and cultural monuments. In the early 21st century, strict control of auto exhaust emissions and industrial pollutants noticeably improved air quality.

Los Angeles in the early 21st century was a city undergoing major changes. In downtown, the old City Hall building underwent historic restoration and retrofitting for earthquake safety. The area along Grand Avenue was renovated significantly. The Walt Disney Concert Hall at the Music Center hosted its first musical performances in 2003, and a refurbished Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Music Center for the first time housed resident opera and dance companies. A new Roman Catholic cathedral, designed by Spanish architect José Rafael Moneo, opened in 2002. Just east of Chinatown, the Cornfield, an abandoned railroad yard, became Los Angeles State Historic Park. Modernization of the Alameda Transportation Corridor, a 20-mile (30-km) pathway connecting the harbour with downtown, facilitated the movement of freight and helped pour billions of dollars into the local economy. New dredging and construction expanded cargo handling at what was already the country’s busiest seaport.

Los Angeles has a track record of confronting serious problems with inventive solutions. Even after major riots and serious earthquakes, the city continued to attract millions of visitors annually and large numbers of new residents. As historian Andrew Rolle wrote,

## Economy of Los Angeles

### Agriculture

In generations past, agriculturalists nurtured bountiful orchards of oranges, lemons, apricots, and peaches, planted broad fields of vegetables, and raised dairy cattle. By the mid-20th century Los Angeles was the country’s most productive agricultural county. Most of the county’s orchards and farmland have succumbed to urban sprawl, but agriculture continues to play a role in the regional economy. Principal crops include nursery and greenhouse plants, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and hay.

### Manufacturing

When Edward L. Doheny discovered oil under a private residence in 1892, he set off an oil-drilling spree that made Los Angeles one of the world’s major petroleum fields. Oil fostered industrialism. After the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, some of that city’s manufacturers moved their operations south, where wages were lower. During World War II the federal government poured vast sums of money into plant expansions. Los Angeles produced enough warplanes and merchant vessels to earn the title “Pittsburgh of the West.” During the Cold War, Los Angeles was, arguably, the centre of what became known as the military-industrial complex, notably in the aerospace industry. Partly through a federal housing loan program for service veterans, the construction industry reached its peak activity in the decade after 1945, when developers bulldozed as many as 3,000 acres (1,200 hectares) of farmland daily to build new homes, shopping malls, and offices. Corporations based in the eastern United States saw the advantage of opening branch offices—or even headquarters—in Los Angeles.

Gradually, many of the leading industries of the first part of the 20th century—fish packing, shipbuilding, airplane and auto assembly, oil production, steel production, and tire and glassmaking—diminished or vanished. The newer plants feature fewer employees and smaller assembly lines, an increased involvement with electronics and computers, and alliances with laboratories such as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Despite these changes, in the 1990s most goods manufactured in California were produced within a 60-mile (100-km) radius of the Los Angeles Civic Center. The onset of recession in the 1990s—brought on in large part by considerably reduced post-Cold War military spending—shut down many of the leading aerospace facilities, causing severe unemployment and disruption in long-established blue-collar communities.

### Finance and other services

The service sector is the primary component of the Los Angeles economy. Business and professional management services, health services and research, and finance are important, as are trade and tourism. The bulk of the workforce is now employed in services such as retail, restaurants and hotels, government agencies, and schools and colleges. The single largest private employer in the city is the University of Southern California (USC).

Supermarkets, regional shopping malls, and retail strip malls are aspects of retail commerce closely identified with Los Angeles, particularly in the era of the automobile and related suburban expansion. When the city extended Wilshire Boulevard from downtown to the Santa Monica beach in the 1920s and ’30s, the street became the first major shopping artery to cater specifically to customers arriving by car. The first regional mall was the Crenshaw Shopping Center (now called Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza), which opened in 1947. Suburban retail expansion came at the expense of downtown department stores, but downtown still has Broadway, which is frequented mostly by Latino working-class families and is the busiest retail street west of the city of Chicago. With its trade ties to countries in Latin America, Asia, and the Pacific Ocean, Los Angeles is now considered by some to be the crossroads of the Pacific Rim. More than 85 countries maintain trade commissions in Los Angeles, while the Los Angeles Convention Center features key trade shows for national marketers of cars, electronic gear, high-tech products, motorcycles, pleasure boats, and recreational vehicles, among other products.

Los Angeles became a leading financial centre early in the 20th century in conjunction with strong activity in oil drilling, agriculture, and land development. A major milestone was reached in 1920, when Los Angeles’s bank clearings exceeded those even of San Francisco. In later decades more than a billion shares of stock were traded annually on the Pacific Stock Exchange. That institution closed its Los Angeles offices in 2001, redirecting local investors toward electronic trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

### Hollywood

The media business, with filmmaking as its core, pumps tens of billions of dollars into the Los Angeles economy yearly and directly employs several hundred thousand people. Hollywood produces about half of all the films shot in the United States.

As California historian Kevin Starr pointed out, Hollywood is not only a town and an industry but also a creator of dreams and fantasies that have tremendous cultural impact. The “dream factories” are among the most global of industries, with huge overseas markets and an impact on people in practically every corner of the globe. Disney Studios elevated the cartoon character Mickey Mouse into what was arguably the most universally recognized icon of the 20th century. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ annual Academy Award (Oscar) ceremony broadcast from Los Angeles is said to have a TV audience exceeding one billion people. The industry also draws hordes of tourists into southern California.

The recording industry is another major player in the entertainment economy; virtually all major labels either are based in Los Angeles or have facilities there, and the industry employs thousands of workers. Giant corporations such as the Walt Disney Company, in Burbank, and Universal Studios, in Studio City, are involved in practically all aspects of entertainment, including theme parks.

## Administration and society

### Government

A bewildering jungle of government jurisdictions—municipal, county, special district, regional, state, and federal—prevails in the county. Among elective bodies, the most powerful one is the County Board of Supervisors, a five-member panel with vast executive, legislative, and (in planning matters) quasi-judicial powers. It directly governs unincorporated parts of the county and contracts with some cities such as Lakewood for sheriff protection and other services. Wielding authority over a population of some 10 million people and an annual multibillion-dollar budget, the supervisors oversee the second biggest municipal government in the country, exceeded only by that of New York City. The next most powerful regional elective body is the 15-member Los Angeles City Council, with authority over contracts, permits, leases, licenses, zoning, planning, and funding for all city departments. The mayor is largely limited to preparing the city budget, nominating top officials, and vetoing council ordinances.
By law, city and county elections are nonpartisan, a heritage from the Progressive movement’s battle to eradicate party bosses early in the 20th century. Most Angeleno voters are registered Democrats, although Republicans have considerable strength in the suburbs. In the post-World War II generation, a small, well-organized group of white downtown businessmen ran the city virtually unopposed. The spread of population into the San Fernando Valley and the west side altered the old power alignments. In 1973 a new coalition of white progressives and African Americans led to the election of Tom Bradley, the city’s first African American mayor. This drastically changed the political climate. Upon Bradley’s retirement two decades later, political power in City Hall became diffused, and citizens, especially those living in outlying areas, complained increasingly about bureaucratic red tape, inadequate city services, and insufficient representation on the city council. Voter turnout for city elections fell drastically. Meanwhile, disgruntled leaders in the San Fernando Valley, Hollywood, and San Pedro organized movements for secession from the city of Los Angeles. A major charter-reform movement arose from civil discontents. The new city charter of 1999 established the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment (DONE) to organize neighbourhood councils everywhere (and seven new regional zoning commissions) to broaden the public’s input on all legislative matters.
By the early 21st century the substantial Latino population in Los Angeles had evolved into a potent political force. In the 2005 mayoral election, Antonio Villaraigosa captured an overwhelming majority of the Latino vote and three-fifths of the overall vote to become the city’s first mayor of Latino background since 1872.

### Planning and housing

The future of downtown Los Angeles has been the subject of perennial debate in planning and redevelopment circles. The main problem has been finding sufficient resources to create affordable housing for low- and middle-income families, to create pedestrian-friendly promenades, to increase social services for the substantial homeless population, to preserve the historic theatres on Broadway, and to rehabilitate El Pueblo Park (Olvera Street), Chinatown, and Little Tokyo.
State law requires direct citizen input in the city planning process and encourages strict enforcement of environmental impact laws. While the pressures for unrestrained growth prevailed in Los Angeles through most of the 20th century, neighbourhood and homeowners’ associations and environmental organizations later coalesced and mounted successful campaigns to “slow the growth machine.”
Los Angeles developed some public housing in the early 20th century. Later, in the 1950s, the city acquired federal funds for a carefully designed housing project in Chavez Ravine. The building industry opposed public housing, however, and blocked the Chavez Ravine plan by exploiting the public’s fears of racial integration and communism. When housing official Frank Wilkinson refused to reveal his political affiliations before the House Un-American Activities Committee, it cost him his job. The city shelved the housing project and eventually earmarked Chavez Ravine as the home of baseball’s Dodger Stadium. To ameliorate the housing problem, the city later adopted a rent-control law and enforced building codes against indifferent slumlords, but the supply of low-income units has continued to lag far behind the demand.

### Municipal services

Southern California governments have struggled to provide basic services to a rapidly expanding population spread over a huge area. The city of Los Angeles obtains an adequate water supply from the Owens River, with small amounts from the Feather and Colorado rivers, and from recycling facilities. It creates its own electrical energy from fossil fuels and hydroelectric sources, while the rest of Los Angeles county depends on private electric utility companies. Most other cities in the county (members of the Metropolitan Water District) draw water from the Colorado River and maintain wells and pumps that tap into ancient underground aquifers. The county and federal governments have gone to great lengths to control floodwaters throughout the basin. Many jurisdictions share the facilities of Los Angeles’s Hyperion Treatment Plant, which empties millions of gallons of treated wastewater into Santa Monica Bay daily.
Los Angeles homeowners burned combustible trash in backyard incinerators until 1957, when, in an attempt to reduce the eye-searing attacks of smog that were then plaguing the region, the practice was ended. Now, each day the city’s sanitation trucks collect several thousand tons of household trash and dump it into large local sanitary landfills. Hillside areas covered with tinder-dry foliage in the summer and fall create a huge fire hazard in the region. Wind-driven fires in Bel-Air in 1961 and over wide areas of the county in 1993 caused enormous property damage. Thus, in addition to their ordinary urban duties, firefighters from both the city and county departments must also contend with potentially disastrous brush fires, though the county bears the brunt of fighting the most damaging of these conflagrations.
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) was, until about 1965, considered one of the most highly professional and best-run law agencies in the country. In the 1950s and early ’60s the department prided itself on its ability “to protect and to serve” the sprawling metropolis and its growing diverse population. Then riots (or “rebellion,” as some called it) occurred in the predominantly African American Watts neighbourhood in August 1965. The outburst of arson and looting there was traceable to a host of underlying economic and sociological conditions and to the deterioration of police-community relations.
By the early 1990s the department had one of the lowest ratios of officers to residents of any city force in the country. The living conditions in South Los Angeles at that time were much the same as in Watts in 1965. Poor relations between the police and the community again set off rioting for five days in April–May 1992 when the police officers involved in the videotaped beating of African American motorist Rodney King were acquitted. The widespread disturbances that followed resulted in more than 50 deaths and caused extensive property damage. That riot differed from the Watts disturbance in that it also involved Latinos.

A blue-ribbon commission convened by Mayor Bradley looked into the overall management of the LAPD, including racial and gender bias, the process of external review, and hiring and training practices. The commission favoured the concept of community-based policing, in which officers spend more time outside patrol cars and engage local citizens in crime prevention. The Neighborhood Watch program, in which a designated lead officer meets regularly with local residents in order to combat crime and vandalism, has been successful.
One of the most intractable social problems in the late 20th and early 21st centuries was that of gangs and gang violence. The city had innumerable gangs and some two dozen separate programs to cope with them. The complaint of most reformers was that the lion’s share of funds went for suppression, which achieved limited results, and that the money could have been better spent on intervention, social services, job placement, and economic development. One point upon which most people agreed was that the city’s efforts were poorly coordinated.

### Health and welfare

Southern California’s mild climate has long attracted health seekers. Beginning in the 1880s, thousands of tuberculosis and asthma sufferers were treated in numerous hospitals and clinics. Although this “health rush” ended long ago, the region has retained its outstanding medical facilities. The medical schools of USC and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Kaiser Permanente, Cedars-Sinai, and City of Hope hospitals have won numerous awards for quality service.

Responsibility for protecting public health and welfare falls to the county. Its department of health services, the largest such agency in the United States, has long struggled with inadequate funding to serve an increasing number of poor clients. The county also handles all public welfare matters. Its caseloads rose by nearly half from 1988 to 1992, when 1.3 million persons were on welfare, a situation described as a social emergency of historic proportions. In the mid-1980s the welfare rolls swelled largely because of foreign immigrants, many of whom had entered the country illegally. More of those immigrants lived in southern California than in any other region of the United States. A welfare-to-work reform program instituted by national legislation in 1996 reduced caseloads significantly and connected people with social services. However, most participants in the program remained poor and worked at low-wage jobs without benefits. Owing chiefly to the influx of poor immigrant families, in the early 21st century Los Angeles county alone still had more cases to administer than did most U.S. states, and the concentration of poverty was increasing.

### Education

The Los Angeles area is renowned for its institutions of higher learning, both public and private, and its distinguished faculties, including Nobel Prize recipients. UCLA, established in 1919, is the largest branch of the University of California system. The California State University system has four campuses in the county in Dominguez Hills, Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Northridge. Among its well-respected private institutions, USC, the oldest independent university in the West (1880), has outstanding professional schools; the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has earned great distinction in the sciences; and the Claremont Colleges, Occidental College, and Loyola Marymount are among the excellent smaller institutions devoted to the liberal arts. Los Angeles pioneered the creation of two-year community colleges, which now channel thousands of students into California universities.

Southern California has scores of independent school districts. The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the second largest public school district in the country, is run by an independent elected board working under state—rather than city—jurisdiction. Turmoil erupted in the 1970s over court-ordered busing to eliminate racial segregation. This litigation never gained full public support and resulted in “white flight” into the suburbs and the formation of numerous private schools. The LAUSD had upward of 750,000 students in the early 21st century, the majority of whom were Latino. In recent decades the system has struggled to improve instruction and learning amid exploding enrollments and declining public funding for education.