Another El Niño year is here, and Southern California is bracing for the impact. As the extreme weather event looms, the question at hand is whether Los Angeles infrastructure and governance are prepared to meet the moment.
In order to answer this query, Knock LA examined Los Angeles’ different arenas of disaster preparedness. As evidenced by the Eaton and Palisades Fires in January 2025, there are two distinct forms of disaster preparation and response within LA. One takes the form of official city and county government channels. The other is led by decentralized, grassroots community organizing and mutual aid groups.
Scientists anticipate that this El Niño event will be “historic,” with a 75% chance of being the strongest since 1950. Already, coastal cities in Orange County have flooded due to record high tides, with further flooding, rainstorms, and dangerous erosion likely along the entire West Coast as El Niño peaks over the winter.
LA City and County websites offer basic instructions in the event of severe weather. However, advocates and activists throughout the Greater LA area are concerned about the fact that local governments have not taken any significant steps to protect and support vulnerable populations, particularly the unhoused. As it stands, the city and county have no plans in place. If recent natural and social disasters are any indication, when El Niño reaches a crescendo, likely in the early months of 2027, Los Angeles’ unhoused population will be abandoned by policy failures, and picking up the slack will fall instead to community organizations and mutual aid collectives.
What is El Niño, and why is this one “super”?
El Niño is a large-scale, year-long weather event that occurs every two to seven years as ocean water temperatures rise beyond their normal levels. Warm waters travel eastward across the Pacific, from the tropics toward the Americas.
But this one is different. Experts have dubbed it “super”, meaning the impacts will be more intense than a regular El Niño. The reasons for exacerbated weather events in this cycle are that ocean water is warmer than ever, tides are reaching record highs, and a band of warm water — called a Kelvin wave — is drifting from tropical waters toward the western coast of North America. The beginning of an El Niño year is marked by the surface temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean rising to 0.5 degrees Celsius higher than average. On June 2, 2026, the World Meteorological Organization declared that the super El Niño was underway and expected to last until June 2027.
The surface temperature in the tropical Pacific is currently four degrees Celsius above average. Scientists anticipate that warmer water will mean stronger storms, bigger swells, higher surf, and increased likelihood of flooding and erosion. With high tides, elevated ocean temperatures, and a Kelvin wave all moving with the potential to combine, the coast of California could see up to a five-foot elevation in sea level.
The City and County’s plans
As coastal city governments and homeowners stare down the onset of El Niño’s peak, concerned organizers, climate justice advocates, and mutual aid groups are sounding the alarm over the fact that LA City and County have no plan in place to support the 48,000 unhoused people in LA County. In a press release sent to Knock LA on Monday, October 26, a coalition of community organizations outlined their demands of LA City governance and requested to see a plan in place before the weather worsens.
“Extreme weather will impact everyone in the region; it has potentially deadly consequences for the tens of thousands who live exposed on the streets,” said the press release. “City officials appear to have little plan in place.”
On Tuesday November 10, CD11 Coalition for Human Rights and other community organizations announced that Los Angeles is collapsing their augmented winter shelter system into just 328 shelter beds for unhoused people during the super El Niño. No other plans have been released.
As previously mentioned, LA City and County have websites set up for residents to learn more about El Niño and the resources available to them. However, the websites do not outline specialized programs or initiatives that strengthen the environmental resilience of vulnerable neighborhoods, nor do they present a comprehensive list of resources available. The only statement on the websites that comes close is a recommendation to acquire free sand bags from local LA Fire Department stations. Beyond that, the City and County essentially pass the buck onto the individual. LA residents are encouraged to “make a family plan,” “prepare your home,” and “request city services” after a storm. There is no mention of vulnerable populations or unhoused people.
The LA County Department of Public Works is doing door-to-door outreach for homeowners and renters, offering free engineering assessments. According to an article by LAist, a county-employed civil engineer went to a journalist’s house after a free assessment was requested. That engineer said his team had provided 233 sessions with property owners and renters throughout the county. While it is admirable that several hundred housed people are receiving advice on how to equip and prepare their homes, this still leaves thousands of unhoused people unsupported by government offices.
When Knock LA reached out to the LA City Emergency Management Department asking about plans in place to support unhoused people, the Department’s response was to direct our questions to the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority (LAHSA) and the Department of Public Works (DPW).
“The Emergency Management Department (EMD) has been hosting a series of well-attended online webinars in recent weeks, open to the public,” said Public Information Officer Joseph River in an email to Knock LA. “In early November, EMD will also begin holding in-person townhalls; the first is scheduled for the San Pedro/Harbor area. Many of the City agencies tasked with preparing Los Angeles for extreme weather are being featured.”
Knock LA asked LAHSA and DPW the same questions, but did not receive a response.
Past extreme weather in LA and local governments’ reactions
To further evaluate LA City and County’s structures and policies in place to support unhoused people during this year’s El Niño, it is worthwhile to look to the past. Los Angeles is a disaster-prone area. From earthquakes to droughts to mudslides to wildfires, the region is no stranger to extreme weather and environmental events. But upon examining local governance’s record on responsiveness and climate-resiliency planning, the failures of institutions to support vulnerable populations are abundant.
One does not have to look far into the past to discover that LA City and County have a habit of responding to extreme weather in lackluster ways. According to Peggy Lee Kennedy with the CD 11 Coalition for Human Rights, in months and years prior when natural disasters hit Southern California, LAHSA instructed unhoused people to call 211, LA City’s hotline for health and community services. Kennedy claimed that when folks followed these instructions, they would then be on hold with 211 for hours before a hotline operator would tell them there were no shelter beds or hotel rooms available.
“It was cruel and inhumane,” Kennedy told Knock LA. “Nobody should have been told to wait on 211, and then they’re told, ‘Oh, we’ll put you on the wait list,’ or, ‘We’re out of hotels.’ Well, of course they’re out of hotels. There are hardly any of them. It was just a brutal thing to do.”
One of the other barriers to information is internet access. LA City has been promoting their webinars and distributing El Niño resources online, but this information is unreachable if one does not have sufficient or reliable internet.
It is worthwhile to mention how the wildfires that burned large swaths of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena in January 2025 revealed significant gaps in Los Angeles’s disaster response infrastructure. For starters, soon-to-be former Mayor Karen Bass was out of the country despite warnings from experts of an extremely high fire risk and a promise that she would not make trips abroad while mayor.
Fire departments flocked to the Palisades, an affluent community with property values averaging just under $3 million for a house. Altadena, an unincorporated, predominantly Black area at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, was largely left to fend for itself. Elderly residents called 911, but responders did not arrive. Neighbors scrambled to assist each other in evacuating their homes as the fire bore down on the community.
Over the following weeks as firefighters struggled to contain the blazes, the Red Cross opened up emergency shelters around the County. One of these was situated in the Pasadena Convention Center. What should have been a place of refuge turned into a nightmare for evacuees and unhoused people seeking shelter.
“They made that Convention Center so uncomfortable, and I feel like it was by design,” said community organizer Fahren James in an interview with Knock LA. “They made it unbearable [so] that people wouldn’t stay.”
These past performances during environmental disasters by the LA City and County governments left much to be desired from advocates. Without a concrete policy or set of plans in place for unhoused populations during this super El Niño, concerned community members worry that the impact of the inclement weather will be deadly. Already, more than six unhoused people die every day on the streets of LA. That number has the potential to skyrocket during extreme weather. With the resources — both monetarily and infrastructure wise— available to local governments during severe weather events, such harm and potential loss of life would be a shamefully preventable disaster.
This article is part one in a two-part series.
Rosalind Jones (she/they) is a queer, Los Angeles-based writer and community organizer. She is a contributor for Knock LA, a founding member of the social justice organization Community Solidarity Project, and authors a Substack titled ‘Another World is Inevitable’. Rosalind holds a BA in Diplomacy and World Affairs from Occidental College and a certification in Creative Writing from the UCLA Extension.