Is it true that California government officials intentionally let the Palisades and Altadena burn so they could work with their developer friends to drive the homeowners out, buy up the land and turn the neighborhoods into high-density, transit-oriented communities with low-income housing, over the objections of current homeowners who are stalled from rebuilding what they had?
If it’s not completely true, it’s also not as false as it should be.
Intent would be hard to prove, but when policies are idiotic, history is disregarded and warnings are ignored, that’s close enough for government work.
For example, the Coastal Commission stopped the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power from replacing old wooden power poles with fire-resistant steel poles near Pacific Palisades in 2019 because the work had damaged 200 endangered Braunton’s milkvetch plants. The California Air Resources Board enacted smoke regulations in 2000 that sharply curtailed the longstanding practice of prescribed burns to reduce wildfire fuel. The 117-million-gallon reservoir constructed near Pacific Palisades after a 1961 fire in Bel-Air and Brentwood destroyed nearly 500 homes was recklessly left empty with no back-up plan.
What about an intention to drive homeowners out, buy up the land and turn single-family neighborhoods into mini-Manhattans? Is that true?
Once again, it’s not quite as false as it should be. Property owners are being squeezed financially by insurance disputes, slow permitting and costly new building requirements, all while paying the expenses of living somewhere else. How many months or years will it take to rebuild what was lost? What percentage of homeowners can’t or won’t wait? And what will the next owner do with the property?
It’s true that legislation pending in Sacramento would make it easier to build tall apartment buildings on single-family lots, without limitation and without any local process to allow consideration of the impact of the project. Senate Bill 79 would do that for any property located within a half-mile radius of a transit stop, defined all the way down to a bus stop with frequent service during busy traffic hours.
With the addition of some painted stripes on a street to create a bus lane, the landscape could erupt in a rash of tall apartment buildings where only trees were allowed to reach that height before.
SB 79 would bring to single-family neighborhoods the kind of development that is already allowed in some areas near transit. Urbanize Los Angeles reported that the Los Angeles City Planning Commission recently upheld the approval of a 60-unit, seven-story apartment building, with semi-subterranean parking for 40 cars, on the site of a surface parking lot in Koreatown. “Project approvals include Transit Oriented Communities incentives, which allow for the construction of a larger building than would normally allowed by zoning rules. In exchange, seven of the new apartments would be set aside as deed-restricted affordable housing at the extremely low-income level,” the publication reported.
Could that type of development soon be delivered in bulk to Pacific Palisades and Altadena?
Consider the effect of another bill pending in the legislature, Senate Bill 549 by termed-out Sen. Ben Allen, who represents the Palisades. SB 549 makes changes to an existing law called the Second Neighborhood Infill Finance and Transit Improvements Act, or NIFTI-2, to create the Resilient Rebuilding Authority for the Los Angeles Wildfires.
The bill would allow L.A. County to create a new district with non-contiguous boundaries that would be run by political appointees. It could issue bonds and take in property tax revenue plus state and federal funds and philanthropic donations. It could acquire land, buy construction materials, and facilitate reconstruction. It could require union labor exclusively. According to Sen. Allen, as quoted in the Assembly legislative analysis, the bill “creates more flexibility for local governments to finance investments in climate resilient communities” and build “housing, transit and green space in dense communities.”
They weren’t dense before.
Gov. Newsom already signed a CEQA exemption to streamline approval of “infill” housing projects and allocated $101 million in funds for “multi-family low-income housing development,” prioritizing “proximity to the fire perimeters.”
SB 79 and SB 549 can still be stopped in the Assembly. Look up your representatives at findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov. Give them a call.
Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on X @Susan_Shelley