Los Angeles is often imagined as a city of wealth and abundance, yet it is also marked by deep housing precarity and uneven access to basic infrastructure shaped by racialized and spatial inequality. Water provision in Los Angeles is fragmented, with a patchwork of often small and locally governed providers. This creates uneven standards of affordability, protection, and access across the metropolitan region.

Focusing on how housing instability and water insecurity intersect, and how residents and organizers are responding under conditions of climate stress and affordability pressures, our research asks: How does plumbing poverty emerge within this fragmented system?