Homeowners

For some defense lawyers, the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. was less about racial profiling than about how persons can be arrested simply for speaking angry words to a police officer. The laws against "disorderly conduct" give police wide power to arrest people who are said to be disturbing the peace or disrupting the neighborhood. In Massachusetts and elsewhere, courts have said the "disorderly acts or language" must take place in public where others can be disturbed.

Fire chiefs in tinder-dry Southern California, faced with lean budgets while more people squeeze into the region, are starting to rethink long-standing policies on ordering mass evacuations in a wildfire, debating whether it may be wiser in some situations to let residents stay and defend their homes. "We don't have enough resources to put an engine at every house in harm's way," said Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper.

If regional water quality officials approve a proposed ban on septic systems in central Malibu as expected, residential property owners in the affected area would be on the hook for $1,000 a month to pay for a centralized wastewater treatment system, city officials said Monday. Commercial property owners benefiting from the treatment system could be required to lay out significantly more, the city said. Malibu said in a statement that such a system would cost $52 million, more than three times the $16.7-million projection that the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board has suggested at recent community workshops.

About a dozen residents of Maurice Avenue on the north end of an island of La Crescenta homes known as Briggs Terrace found themselves in the middle of the street late Saturday, taking stock of their situation. They were surrounded by fire on three sides, and there were no firefighters or law enforcement in sight. Someone asked a question that was on everyone's mind: Is anybody leaving? All shook their heads. The evacuation order had come after nightfall for the Briggs Terrace area, a collection of century-old Craftsman and cabin-style homes, along with newer stucco homes.

Charred slopes in the foothills towering above William Johnson's La Cañada Flintridge home are now a mudslide in the making after being charred by recent wildfires. But getting insurance for his property has been impossible for him and many of his neighbors, he said, as winter rains loom. Johnson, 54, said he called three providers, each of whom said they would not issue insurance for his area. "While I'm trying to get protection, they don't want to deal with their losses, and they're trying to maximize their profits," he said.

Four Westside homeowners groups have reached a settlement that will allow construction to proceed on two 47-story and one 12-story luxury condominium buildings in Century City. The settlement calls for the developer of the Constellation Park project, Century City Realty LLC, a subsidiary of JMB Realty Corp., to pay $2.25 million to a mitigation fund overseen by four groups representing homeowners near Century City.

A woman whose historic Ontario home faces foreclosure was evicted after city officials said they caught her selling its period flooring, baseboards and other fixtures on the Internet. A Superior Court judge granted the city a warrant last week to vacate and secure the classic Mediterranean Revival home, locking out owner Kim Shewalter. "They changed the locks," said Shewalter, 46, who let her home go into foreclosure after her mortgage payments adjusted to $6,500 a month.

Bill Yee doesn't have far to go to cross county lines. Sitting on the couch in his living room, he's in Los Alamitos in Orange County. But when Yee steps into his backyard, he enters new territory: Long Beach, in Los Angeles County. "It's no big deal," says Yee, 74, who pays property tax to both jurisdictions.

Facing pressure from Congress and consumer advocates, lenders are pledging to provide stronger evidence of their progress in reworking costly home loans to prevent borrowers from being foreclosed. Under a plan endorsed by the White House, lenders have agreed to freeze interest rates on certain troubled mortgages and to guide qualified borrowers into more-affordable loans. The plan is aimed at averting massive foreclosures as floating-rate loans adjust to higher payments.