On Tuesday, the Los Angeles City Council approved a motion to extend relaxed parking restrictions until October 1, 2020. The motion also directs Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the Bureau of Street Services to report back with a phased transition plan for resuming parking enforcement and street sweeping services and proposed economic relief measures for parking fines.

The councilmembers also passed a motion on Tuesday to establish the COVID Emergency Eviction Defense Program. This program would use over $10 million in L.A. CARES Act funding to assist renters who may be evicted from their homes due to job loss and economic hardship as a result of the pandemic. The program would work alongside recently passed state legislation to protect renters from being evicted.

Additionally, Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to use $50 million of L.A.’s federal CARES Act funding to provide people with two weeks of pay if they are infected with COVID-19 and cannot work, regardless of employment or immigration status.

Reopening California and Los Angeles County

Last Friday, Governor Newsom introduced a “Blueprint for a Safer Economy”, establishing a new color-coded system for businesses to re-open and schools to allow in-person instruction that went into effect on Monday. Under the new plan, each county is given a designation of "purple" (widespread), "red" (substantial) "orange" (moderate) or "yellow" (minimal) that measures the spread of COVID-19 and dictates what types of businesses and activities are allowed to open in each county. Los Angeles County is currently designated as “purple” based on the average new cases per day but has a 7-day average of five percent positivity testing rate which falls under the “orange” category. If a county has conflicting data, the designation will be the more restrictive option. Supervisor Janice Hahn announced on Wednesday that the LA County Health Officer Order will be updated to allow hair salons and barber shops to resume indoor operations at 25 percent capacity, although the implementation date is unclear.

It is not confirmed whether malls and other indoor business operations will be permitted with the updates to the Health Officer Order. A county must stay in their current tier for a minimum of three weeks before they are able to move into the less-restrictive tier in which a county must meet that tiers criteria for a minimum of two weeks. To read more on the new color-coded tier system click here.

The California State Legislature held their last day of session Monday August 31^st in a grueling night of hearings that ended past 1:00am. The deadline to get all bills adopted was midnight on the 31^st, anything after that would essentially be deemed “dead”. To read a full update on bills the Hollywood Chamber took positions on and their outcomes please click here. Bills that passed floor vote on Monday are now in the process of being sent to Governor Newsom’s desk to be signed, automatically adopted into law, or vetoed.