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THE VIEW FROM HERE - In the aftermath of the most destructive wildfire inside the city’s borders, Los Angeles flounders. It has no effective political leadership. While the fire department has done an outstanding job despite the city’s politicos having keep it fatally underfunded for decades, our politicos are clumsily casting about to save their careers. Until cooler minds prevailed, Mayor Karen Bass thought that firing LAFD chief Kristin Crowley was a good idea. After all, Crowley broke the cardinal rule in LA government – she told the truth: Bass’s cutting the LAFD budget on top of decades of underfunding impaired firefighting efforts.
The Palisades Is Devastated
Mayor Bass and her buddy Steve Soboroff are perpetuating Angelenos in their denial of the scope of the disaster. The first reaction to a terrible loss such as the death of a loved one is denial. Even while people intellectually know the situation, processing reality is another thing. One form of denial is magical thinking: “all this can be quickly wiped away and we’ll be back in our homes.” Bass believes she can just waive code requirements and magically homes will spring up anew. No! It will take years.
Karen Bass and Steve Soboroff, who is an admirable person, have a duty to assist Angelenos face and work through the grief. Denial is the first stage which each person processes uniquely. That does not mean homeowners do not realize their homes have been destroyed, but they cannot face the full ramifications of that loss. When a loved one passes away, people will notice that they still think, “Oh, I must tell Mom that I saw Mary Lou and she was wearing her silly hat.” People may vocalize the arduous tasks ahead such as submitting insurance claims, but few fully comprehend the future. Without the insurance money, there will be no rebuilding, and it may take years before your insurance company will pay. The soil may be too contaminated to rebuild without removing all the earth from your lot. Worst yet, you might rebuild only to discover your lot or your neighbor’s property is filled with cancer causing toxins.
Since the city has shown no inclination to address any of the infrastructure problems, it seems foolish to rebuild in the Palisades knowing that Climate Change has made the fire season into a year-round phenomenon. While it was over 60 years between the 1961 Bel Air Fire and this fire, it may be only six years to the next uncontrollable wildfire where fire hydrants run dry.
Obviously, building codes are deficient to protect homes. One problem is that many homes along ridges are too close together. In fact, placing homes on ridge tops may be negligence per se unless the surrounding landscape is hydrated Who will pay that bill?
Are there any measures which the city can take to protect from the mud slides? Climate Change has given LA cyclical weather – years of heavy rains then years of drought. We are in another drought because the city chose to funnel billions of dollars to Wall Street rather than save the water from the rainy years. Almost 4,000 years ago, Joseph warned Pharaoh to save during the 7 good years to make it through the 7 bad years. This principle is one of the most basic principles for governments. It is lynch stone of Keynesian Economics until the vast corruption in Washington destroyed Keynesian Economics so that Wall Street could run amuck. The first disaster was the Crash of 2008. Then, Obama catered to Wall Street (He gave it $15 Trillion) but he failed to store up cash during the prosperous years so that when Covid hit, the government had to indiscriminately dump cash into the economy. Just as Obama refused to prepare for future economic disaster, the city of LA not only refused to prepare for disasters, it has caused them, most notably the Homeless Crisis. Bass cut $17 Million from the fire department while spending $1.3 Billion on the homeless. She wants to cut the LAFD budget another $49 Million next year. Even if Bass takes $1.3 Billion from homeless, will that make the Palisades safe? What about similar LA canyons which are overly dense with dry hydrants?
While Congresswoman Karen Bass did not directly contribute to destruction of our firefighting capabilities during Garcettism (2001-2022), she ignored the atrocious situation. As we learned after the Palisades burst into flames, Mayor Karen Bass places a ceremony in Ghana ahead of her sworn duties at home. During the mayoral election, both Bass and Caruso were champions of more densification to make developers and Wall Street wealthier but not a peep about the impending disasters that Climate Change actually posed for Los Angeles.
Denialism Rules
Under Mayor Bass’s reign, denialism has become king. Bass is denying the decades of pro Wall Street corruptionism to Manhattanize LA which has ruined LA and turned it into a third world city with an increasingly poor population. The city’s land use policies are based on “Lies and Myths,” to paraphrase Judge Goodman’s 2014 description of Garcetti’s land use policies. With its nearly endless scams, the city council funnels our wealth to the top 1%, such as allowing Wall Street firms to acquire enough homes to corner the market and jack up both housing prices and rents far beyond fair market values. This housing scam and others like Measures HHH JJJ and Spot Zoning first became problems in 2009-2010 when Karen Bass was one of our Representatives on Congress, but BLM and Woke DEI were more important. The new CD 2 councilmember Adrin Narazian, however, addressed this housing scam with his December 13, 2024 motion.
“This [Los Angeles’] housing unaffordability crisis is further exacerbated by institutional investors, including single, non-individual entities such as limited liability companies (LLCs) and corporations, that purchase single-family homes and rent them out at a much higher rate to generate profit.” Nazarian motion.
Although Councilmember Narazian did not use the term, he was referring to allowing Wall Street to corner the LA single family home market in order to fraudulently drive up prices and rents which translate into higher mortgages. As a result, anyone who wants to rebuild in the Palisades will have no choice but to pay extra millions of dollars for their new mortgages. Please read The Wall Street Tax
Now is not the time to take advantage of homeowners who are in the denial phase of grief by pushing them into rebuilding by false promises that it will be easy.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected])
