Los Angeles City Council Member Traci Park warned Tuesday that there are “some elected officials” and “corporate developers” who want to exploit the Palisades Fire to change the community for their own ends.
The Palisades Fire began on January 7 and burned for several days, torching more than 23,000 acres and destroying nearly 7,000 structures in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of L.A. and nearby Malibu.
Residents are concerned about recent developments that suggest that some state and local politicians — notably, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) — and some developers may be trying to take advantage of displaced residents to redistribute property to low-income households, or to private developers, rather than helping residents to rebuild on their own.
Newsom triggered suspicions last week when he allocated $101 million for future projects to build low-income housing in the area. Residents, stymied by delays in permits for rebuilding, and in compensation from insurance companies, feared that they were being forced out.
Park appeared on a local podcast about the fire, Three Homeless Guys (which this author co-hosts), and was asked about possible efforts to redistribute property, or to force sales to trigger higher property tax revenues.
Q: Are there people trying to do what [co-host] Oren [Ezra] suggested, which is to achieve these redistributive goals or higher property tax revenue or whatever it is?
Park: I think that there are groups, organizations, and individuals that do have certain goals. … Do I think there might be some stonewalling by insurance companies that’s deliberate? Yeah, maybe that that is not beyond me to say yes that could be happening. There is no orchestrated effort by the government that I’m aware of — and if there is, I’m not a part of it — to create delays or issues that would cause people to need to sell to encourage properties to turn over. But do I think that there are some elected officials out there that want to use this as an opportunity and a platform to push other policy goals? Yeah. Have I been worried about that from the outset? Yes. Have I been worried about corporate developers buying out property and changing the way your community looks and feels? You — One of the things about the Palisades that I think is so important is your community character. The Palisades is a very different unique community that grew up over a century. We already talked about the diversity of the housing stock. And I just — I worry that it becomes an opportunity for people, you know, to shove policy goals in that may or may not be consistent with your needs or interests or your safety. And I say that specifically related to the addition of density. Any kind of density without concurrent investment in adequate infrastructure and capacity to support it, especially your evacuation routes. It is an absolute miracle that no one died trying to evacuate the Palisades on January 7th. It is an absolute miracle. And I am not convinced that adding more people without thoroughly assessing the impacts on infrastructure and evacuation routes makes any sense and I also think we have pushed as far into the urban wild interface as we can get away with.
Later Wednesday evening, in deference to growing public concern, State Sen. Ben Allen (D-Santa Monica) withdrew a bill that would have created a new “resilient rebuilding authority” that could have used local property tax revenues to buy burned-out lots for a variety of purposes, including low-income housing.
Park was elected in 2022 with broad support from communities in the western part of Los Angeles, on a wave of public outrage over the city’s failure to deal with the homeless, especially in neighborhoods like Venice.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
