Outrage is mounting across Los Angeles as residents face a staggering 270-day wait for streetlight repairs.
The city is currently buried under a mountain of roughly 33,000 pending repairs, leaving some neighborhoods in total darkness for nearly a year, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The scale of the crisis was highlighted by FOX 11 reporter Matthew Seedorff on X, who shared an automated response from the city’s 311 system.
“Theft and vandalism are driving a massive repair backlog,” the notification read, confirming the nine-month wait time.
The “theft epidemic” has become so severe that copper wire theft now accounts for nearly 40% of all outages, with thieves stripping miles of cable from city infrastructure faster than crews can replace it
Infrastructure failure has become a central flashpoint in the 2026 mayoral election. Councilmember Nithya Raman, who recently filed to challenge incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, has seized on the outages as proof of systemic mismanagement.
Raman, an urban planner, has built her campaign on “fixing the basics,” arguing that the city’s inability to maintain its streets is a public safety emergency.
In response to the crisis, the City Council recently proposed a $65 million plan to bypass traditional repairs in high-theft areas by converting over 60,000 fixtures to solar power.
While this would eliminate the need for copper wiring, the Bureau of Street Lighting remains severely under-resourced, with only 185 field workers tasked with maintaining more than 220,000 lights citywide.
