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Life expectancy in Los Angeles County is 80.5 years, according to the report by Measure of America, a program of the Social Science Research Council. That’s down 1.6 years from the group’sreport, produced by the research group Measure of America, said the report was driven largely by COVID, drug overdoses and cardiovascular disease.
The gap between the longest- and shortest-living communities is more than 16 years — 88.1 in Westwood, 71.8 in Sun Village in the Antelope Valley. Latinos saw the steepest decline in life expectancy of any major racial group, falling 3.7 years.No community fell into the report's lowest tier of well-being, an improvement from 2017, when six did. Educational attainment also rose significantly, with an 18% increase in bachelor's degrees.The report's data end in 2023 — before the Palisades fire, ICE raids and major federal funding cuts. Researchers say those crises will likely worsen the picture. County health officials say they'll use the report to guide planning, programming and investment decisions.How long a Los Angeles County resident lives can depend on where they live in the area, and the gap between the county’s richest and poorest communities has gotten wider over the past decade, according to a report released this week. Average life expectancy countywide is 80.5 years, according to the report by Measure of America, a program of the Social Science Research Council. That’s down 1.6 years from the group’smeasures how Angelenos are doing neighborhood by neighborhood, using a metric called the Human Development Index, or HDI. The index combines life expectancy, educational attainment and personal earnings into a single well-being score between 0 and 10. The county’s HDI crept up to 5.64, from 5.43 in the previous report. That was far short of a county goal set in 2017 to raise L.A. County’s HDI by a full point. “The main reason for this anemic progress is COVID and the disproportionate impacts it had on different groups of Angelenos,” said Kristen Lewis, director of Measure of America.The report was produced in partnership with the L.A. County Department of Mental Health and supported by a group of philanthropic funders including the James Irvine Foundation, Cedars-Sinai and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.The report details disparities between L.A. County’s wealthiest communities — where life expectancy went up — and poorer ones, where it dropped. “What we saw in terms of change over time is that the areas that were already doing well are doing better,” Lewis said. The gap between the longest-living and shortest-living communities is more than 16 years. Average life expectancy in Westwood was 88.1, compared to 71.8 in the Antelope Valley community of Sun Village. Lewis said she drove to Sun Village during the research process and found no grocery stores and no sidewalks.While median personal earnings rose countywide since the last report, they didn’t keep pace with dramatically rising housing costs. In every L.A. County neighborhood, a resident earning the local median salary would need to work more than 40 hours a week to afford median housing costs, according to the report. In 31 L.A. County neighborhoods, that figure exceeds 80 hours. The report sorts L.A. County neighborhoods into five tiers of well-being, based on where they fall on the Human Development Index, from “precarious L.A.” to “glittering L.A.” No community in the county scored below 3.0 on the HDI and landed in the lowest tier in the 2026 report. That’s an improvement from 2017, when six areas fell into that category, including Cudahy, Westmont and Southeast Los Angeles. The latest report examined L.A. County death records between 2019 and 2023. The earlier report had looked at 2010 through 2014. One bright spot, according to researchers, was that educational attainment improved significantly. The share of adults with a bachelor's degree rose by more than 18%.: 194,500 people, 2% of the county. Eight places, including Brentwood-Pacific Palisades, Manhattan Beach, Beverly Hills and Malibu.: 1,461,700 people, 15% of the county. Thirty-two communities mostly along the coast, the Santa Monica Mountains and the San Gabriel Valley foothills.: 4,216,200 people, or 44% of the county population. The most populous tier, including suburban areas of the southern and eastern county, the Santa Clarita and San Fernando Valleys.: 3,823,700 people, 39% of the county. The second-most populous tier. Has the largest share of foreign-born residents at 36.3%.: This category is empty this time. In 2017, six communities fell here: Cudahy, Westmont, Lennox, East Rancho Dominguez, Florence-Graham, and Southeast Los Angeles. All have risen above 3.0 since. Latinos saw the steepest decline in life expectancy of any major racial group, falling 3.7 years to 80.7 years of age. The report attributes this largely to COVID-19, noting that Latino Angelenos are disproportionately concentrated in frontline jobs and are more likely to live in overcrowded, multigenerational households, both factors that increased exposure to the virus. Asian Angelenos have the longest life expectancy, at 86.2 years. Black Angelenos live to 72.9, on average, and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders to just 71.2. Black mothers remain nearly four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white or Asian women.“There's nothing natural or inevitable about inequality,” Lewis said. “It was really decades of deliberate decisions, policies and investments designed to advantage some groups of Angelenos while excluding others that really created this landscape of inequality we see today. Lewis said she hopes local officials and community organizations use the report to guide planning, programming and investment decisions. After the first report in 2017, the city of Los Angeles relocated some workforce development sites based on neighborhood HDI scores, and the county Department of Mental Health used the findings for needs assessment, according to the report. Kalene Gilbert, a coordinator at the L.A. County Department of Mental Health, said the department used the 2017 report to decide where to pilot community school programs, targeting areas with the worst education disparities. “If we're really serious about equity in L.A. County, it's reports like this that really help make that a reality because this provides that understanding of where the need is at a really detailed level,” Gilbert said.The January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires destroyed thousands of homes and displaced tens of thousands of people. Federal immigration enforcement raids that summer disrupted daily life in immigrant communities, leading the Board of Supervisors to declare a state of emergency in October. The passage of the federal budget bill in July 2025 cut $750 million in annual funding for the county's public health system, according to the report.Gilbert said those crises are already affecting the people DMH serves. She said immigration raids have made some clients afraid to leave their homes for appointments, forcing the department to shift toward telehealth. “We consistently hear concern about just even coming out into the community,” Gilbert said.The report's interactive portal, where residents can explore data for their neighborhoods, is available atFor years, mental health has been a top concern for L.A. youth, many of whom experience high-level stressors, including housing insecurity, gun violence and discrimination in and outside school. Last year, the, the Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Centers hope to reach more children and youth who can benefit from therapy, medication management and psychiatric care.For years, mental health has been a top concern for L.A. youth, many of whom experience high-level stressors, including housing insecurity, gun violence and discrimination in and outside school.The commission surveyed 856 youth across the five different districts of the county, 524 of whom listed mental health as a top concern. The majority of the youth who selected mental health as their main concern were Latino and system-impacted., the Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Centers hope to reach more children and youth who can benefit from therapy, medication management and psychiatric care.attended the ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the new location for the GCAOP in Chinatown. She began her remarks by thanking Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Centers “for stepping up,” with the new facility expected to serve more than 230 youth annually. “This place will provide the healing needed to prevent challenges from escalating into crises,” Bass said. “Make no mistake, we have a long way to go, but my administration and leaders like those at Gateways are turning the tide on major challenges like mental health that have been ignored for decades.”funding roughly $1 billion in grants that were meant to boost the ranks and training of mental health professionals who work in schools. The department claimed that the grants were awarded under the Biden administration, a decision that was said to conflict with the current administration's priorities.. These consecutive cuts would reduce resources for school counselors and psychiatrists, something that for school districts like LAUSD can be detrimental., LAUSD enrollment has dropped due to ICE raids spreading across L.A. County and many LAUSD staff, including counselors, have indicated that in times like these, the hiring of more trained attendance counselors and investing in mental health support are vital. Despite that, for many LAUSD campuses, especially in low-income neighborhoods, staff shortages, including counselors and therapists, are a reality. To combat some of the local shortages when it comes to mental health, the Gateways Hospital and Mental Health Centers are partnering with LAUSD to provide outpatient services to students, including individual and family therapy and psychiatric evaluations across more than 15 of the district's campuses. “Our program is designed to meet young people where they are, whether that’s in school, at home, or here in the new Chinatown Service Center location,” said Charlotte Bautista, director of Gateways Child and Adolescent Outpatient Program. “We know early access to mental health care can change the trajectory of a child’s life, and we are providing a safe space where families can heal, grow and thrive together.” Charlotte Bautista, director of Gateways Child and Adolescent Outpatient Program, said this expansion also allows for more students and families who deserve consistent, high-quality care to be reached, reducing waitlists and out-of-pocket costs. “Our program is designed to meet young people where they are, whether that’s in school, at home, or here in the new Chinatown Service Center location,” she said. “We know early access to mental health care can change the trajectory of a child’s life, and we are providing a safe space where families can heal, grow and thrive together.”The L.A. City Council voted Wednesday to study how large property buyers may be adding risk and limiting opportunities for tenants, homeowners and small landlords.The new study follows a housing department report released in October that found large organizations — rather than individuals or families — own a growing share of homes in the city. The October report said rapid property buys by these organizations may lead to residents being displaced and limit opportunities for prospective homebuyers. The new study will aim to measure these risks.Councilmember Monica Rodriguez criticized the “mass consolidation and monopolization” of L.A. housing and said she hopes the City Council will use the research to help first-time homebuyers and mom-and-pop landlords to build generational wealth. Councilmember John Lee welcomed the study, but said he blames the consolidation on the council’s own “over restrictive” policies that make it harder to be a property owner.The L.A. City Council voted Wednesday to study how large property buyers may be preventing Angelenos from becoming homeowners. The vote follows a housing department study released in October that found large landlords, like property management companies and investment firms, owned a growing share of L.A. properties. Rapid property buys by these organizations may lead to residents being displaced and limit opportunities for prospective homebuyers, the report states. The new study approved this week will attempt to weigh how much added risk large property owners’ businesses are placing on tenants, homeowners and small landlords.“It’s shameful that we allow private equity firms in Manhattan to become some of the biggest landlords in many of our cities,”L.A. City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez pushed for both housing department studies, saying she hopes the City Council will use the research to make policy that helps first-time homebuyers and mom-and-pop landlords to build generational wealth. “Mass consolidation and monopolization” of L.A. housing stock puts the first attempt at home ownership out of reach for many young adults and families, she said at Wednesday’s meeting.The Los Angeles Housing Department found that corporations and other large organizations owned a growing share of L.A.’s housing stock from 2018 to 2023. The biggest change in ownership was the large organizations’ share of two- to four-unit buildings in the city, which increased by 29% over the six years studied. The report raised concerns that these organizations are targeting relatively small buildings that are often associated with small landlords. When it comes to single family-homes, more than 1-in-5 properties was found to be sold to an organization and not an individual buyer over the six years studied. The department also noted that there is some evidence behind concerns that “large corporate landlords may be associated with more evictions, more habitability violations, and overall higher levels of housing insecurity for renters.” The report listed three companies that each agreed to pay out millions of dollars in recent years after facing allegations of unlawful practices as landlords: K3 Holdings, Wedgewood Homes and Invitation Homes. According to the housing department report, K3 Holdings ranks as having the fastest-growing inventory of properties over the six-year period. The companyto settle a lawsuit in 2023 that alleged they illegally targeted long-term Latino residents for displacement from properties in Koreatown and Highland Park.The housing department found Wedgewood Homes sold nearly 400 homes in the six-year period of its study. The company resold 81% of those homes in less than a year at an average price increase of 33%, the study found. Invitation Homes is one of the largest owners of single-family rentals in the U.S., the report said, and the companyK3 Holdings and Wedgewood Homes have previously denied any allegations of wrongdoing, and court documents show Invitation Homes Inc. did not admit or deny liability in the lawsuit against the company.At the Wednesday meeting, council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson said he appreciated the effort going toward solving this issue. “When I first took office , eight out of every 10 residential units that went up for sale were bought by a corporation,” he said about the area in South L.A. where District 8, 9 and 15 meet. Harris-Dawson said because the corporations were buying up properties, working people were squeezed out of the housing market in the once-affordable area.“Homes that should be places where people put down roots, raise their kids and build generational wealth are increasingly treated like commodities in an investment portfolio,” Hernandez said.Councilmember John Lee welcomed the study, but said he blames the consolidation on the council’s own policies that make it harder to be a property owner. “I don’t even know if we need a study,” he said. “I think we understand why there’s more corporatization of ownership in our city. It’s the over restrictive policies of this council.”If you're enjoying this article, you'll love our daily newsletter, The LA Report. Each weekday, catch up on the 5 most pressing stories to start your morning in 3 minutes or less.As part of The LA Local's “My LA” series, Rafael Augustin writes about rebuilding after the Eaton fire and the risk of displacement.Days into the Eaton fire, Augustin spoke with Francisco Sánchez, associate administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration under President Joe Biden, who oversees the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience. Sánchez flew in from Washington, D.C. to see the devastation caused by the Eaton and Palisades fires. Sanchez said something to him that's stayed with Augustin over a year later - “You have to fight like hell to make sure what happened in Hawaii doesn’t happen to you,” he said. “They will turn Altadena into condos, if you let them.”Augustin's neighbors scattered across Los Angeles County and began receiving offers from real estate agents and private equity firms that had quietly moved into the region. Before the fire, private acquisitions accounted for about 5% of home sales in Altadena. Four months later, they accounted for nearly 50%. Editor’s note: This is part of our “My LA” series — a look at how changing demographics are shifting culture in LA’s historic neighborhoods and communities — told by the people from those communities. It’s Jan. 11, 2025, and I’m sitting in a restaurant in downtown Los Angeles fighting the overwhelming urge to cry. I just learned my house survived the Eaton Fire, but I can’t shake the tremor in my friends’ voices who lost theirs. The fire is 15% contained — four days into what would become the Across from me sits Francisco Sánchez, associate administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration under President Joe Biden, who oversees the Office of Disaster Recovery and Resilience. Sánchez flew in from Washington, D.C. to see the devastation caused by the Eaton and Palisades fires. In disaster-response circles, he’s something of a legend. He helped coordinate the rapid conversion of the Houston Astrodome to house families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. But he’s also about to lose his job. The Trump administration is set to take over the federal government in nine days. I run through the facts about Altadena. One in five residents is Black. One in four is Latino. The median age is 45. We talk about resiliency and rebuilding. We talk about neighbors banding together to collectively bargain with contractors. We talk about the Army Corps of Engineers choosing not to conduct soil testing in Altadena — the first time it has declined to do so after a major fire in two decades.“You have to fight like hell to make sure what happened in Hawaii doesn’t happen to you,” he said. “They will turn Altadena into condos, if you let them.”compared I worried about neighbors — mostly people of color — whose homes survived but who had little choice but to return quickly because they lacked sufficient insurance coverage. I worried about the air we were breathing. But no one seemed able to tell me who was responsible for monitoring it. At the disaster center on Woodbury Road, sympathetic county officials told me the state of California oversaw air quality. I called my state senator, Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez. Pérez, a newly elected Democrat and former mayor, took my calls — and those of my neighbors — seriously. She contacted the governor’s office and spoke with the team responsible for air quality in Altadena. The response she received was: “It’s complicated.” That might have been the understatement of the year. The My LA series looks at how changing demographics are shifting culture in LA’s historic neighborhoods and communities — told by the people from those communities.It became heartbreaking to watch Altadena residents leave LA altogether because they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else in the city. It was even harder to watch my neighbor across the street sell his home after placing an “Altadena Is Not for Sale” sign on his lawn.Volunteers from across Los Angeles flooded the greater Pasadena area to help after the fire. Residents leaned on the Federal Emergency Management Agency , mutual aid networks, family members, local churches and the Los Angeles Fire Department Foundation. I volunteered at — and relied on — community donation centers myself. One of the most meaningful was the Pasadena Community Job Center, which served the region’s undocumented population.From wherever I was staying, I drove an hour to attend town halls, join community meetings, ask questions at disaster centers and speak with elected officials.He was no longer a federal employee, but he still checked in on me and my neighbors. He suggested I attend a Crisis Management Academy at Hayes Boone in downtown LA, where he sat on the board.By chance, I sat next to Rick Crawford, the emergency and crisis management coordinator for the U.S. Capitol and Supreme Court and a former battalion chief with the Los Angeles Fire Department. I told him I lived west of Lake Avenue — historically the predominantly Black, Latino and working-class side of Altadena. Evacuation notices arrived hours later than they did in wealthier neighborhoods east of Lake Avenue — if they arrived at all. My family never received one. I asked Crawford if he believed racism explained the disparity. He told me something worse might have happened. The night before the fires, he said, officials knew a severe wind event was coming. Yet staffing levels were not increased.When the Palisades Fire ignited, city resources were quickly stretched. The city turned to the county for help. When the Eaton Fire exploded, the county deployed the firefighters it had left to protect Altadena.A failure of preparation turned into a failure of response — one that hit my side of Altadena hardest.Friends who lost their homes are waiting for settlements from Southern California Edison Co., which investigators believe caused the Eaton Fire, to determine whether they can rebuild at all. Trial is scheduled for January 2027. A judge recently ordered Edison to produce witnesses when called, criticizing attempts to prolong the discovery process for attorneys representing fire victims. A grand jury is alsoThose of us who have returned do what we can to support one another — and the small businesses trying to survive.Community advocates — including Altadena for Accountability and Altadena Rising, along with Pérez — pushed the California Department of Justice to open a civil rights investigation into the evacuation response in West Altadena.Reconstruction has begun, slowly. The sound of construction — loud, constant — is an inconvenience. But it’s better than the eerie silence that followed the fire. On Mariposa Street, I passed the empty space where Amara Kitchen and Altadena Hardware had once stood. Next door, something new appeared. Betsy, the restaurant from chef Tyler Wells — who also lost his home in the fire — was drawing diners from across LA for its live-fire cooking. It lifted my spirits to see people coming to Altadena again. But as a local resident, I still struggled to get a reservation. Maybe that was the first glimpse of what rebuilding might look like: those with money and privilege dining easily, while the rest of us remain on the waiting list.We fight for accountability, truth and justice. We fight for the right to rebuild our town as it once was. Most of all, we fight for one another. Because, as labor leader Mary Harris “Mother” Jones once said: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.” Is your neighborhood changing? We want to hear your story. Whether you’ve lived on your block for forty years or four, we want to know: What does “home” mean to you right now?Share a brief memory or a thought on how your neighborhood is changing with us at pitches@thelalocal.org. We’ll feature some of our favorite responses in our newsletter, and if your story sparks something deeper, we may reach out to commission a full-length piece The U.S. military said on Friday that all six crew members were killed when a KC-135 refueling aircraft went down in Iraq, raising the death toll after two weeks of war with Iran.Thursday. It said the U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft was lost in western Iraq, while the other landed safely. It isThe news came as President Trump and his defense secretary touted success in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran but complained about negative media coverage of Operation Epic Fury.The U.S. military said on Friday that all six crew members were killed when a KC-135 refueling aircraft went down in Iraq, raising the death toll after two weeks of war with Iran.Thursday. It said the U.S. KC-135 refueling aircraft was lost in western Iraq, while the other landed safely. It isThe news came as President Trump and his defense secretary touted success in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran but complained about negative media coverage of Operation Epic Fury. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes have hit more than 15,000 targets and injured the new Iranian supreme leader. Late Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had weakened Iran's rulers, but it may not be enough to topple them — the Iranian people would have to do that.killed in Iran, 773 people in Lebanon and 12 civilians in Israel, as well as two Israeli soldiers killed in Lebanon. Wednesday's aircraft crash over Iraq brings the U.S. military death toll to 13, seven of whom were killed in combat. Eight U.S. service members are severely injured, according to the Pentagon. The humanitarian toll also deepened as the total number of people displaced by the fighting in Iran and Lebanon reached into the millions.Officials brace for an end without a deal — and the risk of a"war routine" A senior official in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations, told NPR they expected the war to last at least another week, and that Israeli leaders increasingly believe the U.S. and Israel will end the war unilaterally, without a negotiated agreement. In such a scenario, the official said, Iran and allied groups, including the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Houthi rebels in Yemen, could establish a new normal of intermittent fire at Israel, prompting repeated Israeli retaliation. The official said that kind of tit-for-tat exchange would leave Israelis living with an intolerable"war routine" even if the intensity of the conflict fades. The official also said Israel is not ruling out an expanded ground operation in southern Lebanon, but described Israel as holding back so far from striking broad civilian infrastructure, largely because the U.S. sees Lebanon as a partner.over the past day in western and central Iran, including ballistic missile launchers, air defense systems and weapons manufacturing sites.the strikes included simultaneous strikes in Tehran, Shiraz and Ahvaz. They targeted regime infrastructure, including an underground site used to produce and store ballistic missiles, as well as a central air-defense base. In Lebanon, Israel said it hit Hezbollah command centers in the country's south and in central Beirut. A senior official in the region, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the strike on Beirut's bustling Bachura neighborhood, located near the prime minister's office, was symbolic, and meant to send a message that Israel will not tolerate Hezbollah's fire much longer. Lebanon's president, Joseph Aoun, has called for direct talks with Israel to end the bombing. Israel has not responded publicly on the matter.the Al-Zrariya Bridge over the Litani River, describing it as a key crossing used by Hezbollah fighters and an area from which launchers had been positioned.Iran and Hezbollah attacks hit Israel overnight; dozens treated for minor injuriesOne person was reported to be in moderate condition and was being treated after being hit with shrapnel. Another 57 people were being treated for minor injuries, mostly from glass shards. Hezbollah also continued firing into northern Israel overnight, and Israel's military said its air defense and strike operations were responding across both fronts.The Trump administration issued a temporary authorization allowing countries to purchase Russian oil already stranded at sea. It argued the move is a narrowly tailored step to stabilize energy markets.last week, a number of top Senate Democrats warned such a move would weaken sanctions and benefit Russia as energy prices rise.French President Emmanuel Macron said Friday a French soldier was killed in an attack in the Irbil region of Iraq that left several other French soldiers wounded."unacceptable" and said the war in Iran cannot justify strikes on forces deployed in Iraq as part of the fight against ISIS. Since the start of the war with Iran, the French president has underlined his concerns about international law not being respected, but also deployed several naval vessels to the Eastern Mediterranean, near Cyprus, to protect French military bases and citizens in the region. French officials have insisted it is a defensive, rather than an offensive mission.Daniel Estrin and Carrie Kahn contributed to this report from Tel Aviv, Hadeel Al-Shalchi contributed from Beirut, Jane Arraf from Irbil, Rebecca Rosman and Eleanor Beardsley from Paris.
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