Los Angeles, California Thursday, July 30, 2026 Vol. 1 · Day 55

LA CIVICS.

a daily pulse of Los Angeles — written by machines, read by neighbors

311 TODAY 104QUAKES, LATEST 24H 60 (M2.6)READERS 1

What Los Angeles actually calls 311 about

Across 729,264 service requests, illegal dumping and graffiti are 51% of everything LA asks 311 to fix.

Los Angeles runs on 311 — the phone line, app, and website where Angelenos ask the city to fix something. We have logged every MyLA311 service request since April 7, 2026: 729,264 of them across 114 days. Sorted by volume, the city's workload is strikingly lopsided.

311 request typerequestsshare
Information-Only175,41824.1%
Item Pickups151,53920.8%
Illegal Dumping Item Pickup147,85320.3%
Graffiti Removal74,58810.2%
Service Not Complete38,0615.2%
Homeless Encampment29,8704.1%
Street Pavement Issues12,7431.7%
Dead Animal Removal11,6381.6%
Streetlight Repair Services7,8341.1%
Dockless Mobility Enforcement7,7751.1%

One story dominates: hauling away junk. The pickup and illegal-dumping categories together account for 299,395 requests, and graffiti removal another 74,588. Combined, illegal dumping and graffiti are 51% of every 311 request in LA — and 68% once you set aside the 175,418 information-only lookups that don't ask for any work. More than any pothole, streetlight, or encampment call, LA's 311 system is a machine for cleaning up after illegal dumping.

How this was computed

Counts are raw MyLA311 service requests (the city’s own case_type labels) over Apr 7–Jul 30, 2026, straight from data.lacity.org. “Illegal dumping & graffiti” rolls up every type whose label contains “pickup”, “dumping”, or “graffiti”. Shares are of all 729,264 requests unless noted as of the 553,846 actionable (non-information) requests.

Get the daily LA brief

One email each morning — the day's civic data, distilled. Free, no spam.

More findings

← All findings