Amanda S. Bennett covers housing, urban development, and the neighborhoods that make Los Angeles unlike any other city in America for News of Los Angeles.
How She Got Here
A chance assignment covering a rent strike in Long Beach during her first year at the Long Beach Press-Telegram changed everything for Amanda. What started as a quick brief turned into a six-month investigation into habitability violations across South Bay apartment complexes — and launched her decade-long focus on how housing policy shapes communities. She joined News of Los Angeles in 2019 after eight years covering development battles, displacement, and the humans caught between both at the Press-Telegram and later the Pasadena Star-News.
What She Covers
Her reporting has examined the Measure ULA implementation challenges, the slow rebuild of Paradise Lost mobile home park after the Woolsey Fire, and the ongoing tensions between historic preservation and density in neighborhoods from Boyle Heights to Venice. She completed the Investigative Reporters and Editors data journalism workshop in 2021, which she credits with sharpening her ability to find stories hidden in permitting databases and code enforcement records.
A Los Angeles Journalist
Amanda grew up in Fresno and moved to Southern California to study journalism at Cal State Long Beach, where she edited the Daily Forty-Niner. She lives in Echo Park with her partner and an unreasonable number of houseplants, and spends most Saturdays walking different LA neighborhoods — partly for story ideas, partly because she still can’t believe how much this city contains.
Stay Connected
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