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."

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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

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...

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.