Tag Archives: Palisades Fire

We Don’t Seem To Be Doing Very Well At Helping Disaster Victims

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On Saturday, Breitbart posted an update about the victims of the Palisades Fire in California.

The article reports:

More than 70 percent of people who were affected by the Palisades Fire in California from January are still living in temporary housing, according to a report.

A survey conducted by the Department of Angels surveyed “2,300 fire-impacted residents across” Los Angeles County, according to the Los Angeles Times. The survey found that 75 percent “of surveyed Pacific Palisades residents and 67% of surveyed Altadena residents are in temporary housing.”

Per the outlet:

Roughly 75% of surveyed Pacific Palisades residents and 67% of surveyed Altadena residents are in temporary housing. Many expect they’ll have to move again in the next few months. The report found that although residents who experienced a total loss have struggled with finding stable housing, residents who experienced structural and smoke or ash damage have had to move more frequently.

For residents who lost their homes in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Pasadena and Malibu, 22% said they expected to move again within the next six to 12 months and 9% expected to move within the next few months. Of those residents who experienced structural and smoke or ash damage, 19% expected to have to move in the next few months and 18% believed they’d have to move within a year.

Fox News reported  one person explained that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) “has Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Relief Dollars.”

The person explained to Fox News that prior to the government shutdown, they were “going to meet with HUD” to talk about that, adding that it could be used to reinvest in infrastructure.

I’m sorry–the fire was almost a year ago–you waited until September to meet with HUD? The government was shut down for forty days. Am I supposed to believe that those were the exact forty days you chose to meet with HUD?

There are a number of problems with rebuilding Pacific Palisades. The first is the excessive permitting in California. The second is the fact that many of the residents did not have fire insurance because it was canceled and they did not have time to renew it. That means taking out a construction loan for the full value of what you are building. That is expensive. There is also the reason of taxes. The land has significant value. Even with a small house, the tax assessment of what you build is going to be high. In California when you buy a house, you pay taxes on what you paid for the house for as long as you own the house. When you sell your house, the buyer pays taxes on whatever he paid for the house. I suspect that if the residents rebuild the houses, they will be assessed at their current value–not at whatever they were previously assessed for. If you bought your house in 1970 for a million dollars and paid taxes on that amount until it burned down, what will the rebuilt value be? Just based on inflation it will be at least three times what it was previously valued at. There is also the fact that the California government has floated the idea of turning the area into low-income apartment buildings.

This isn’t looking good for those who lost everything in the fire.

When Government Gets In The Way Of Progress

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In early January of this year, the Palisades Fire destroyed large areas of Pacific Palisades, Topanga, and Malibu. It is estimated that more than 1,200 commercial and residential structures were destroyed in the fire. So how is the rebuilding going?

On Wednesday, Breitbart reported:

Members of the Los Angeles City Council voiced their frustrations on Tuesday after learning that the city had only issued four building permits since the Palisades Fire — while paying $10 million to Hagerty Consulting for a “report.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass proudly announced in February that the city had set up a “one-stop” center for residents affected by the fire to obtain permits to rebuild their homes without enduring the usual city bureaucratic processes.

However, as local ABC News affiliate KABC-7 reported, only four permits have been issued in the past six weeks.

I don’t think the “one-stop” center is working.

The article notes:

Likewise, City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez questioned the $10 million the city spent on Hagerty Consultants:

“We have city departments who know how to do this recovery, who have been involved in recovery efforts in the past,” Councilmember Monica Rodriguez told ABC7. “And yet they can’t be afforded the opportunity to hire the personnel that they need, but we can give a $10 million contract to an outside agency to help write a report for us.”

Rodriguez called the Hagerty contract “obscene.”

As Breitbart News reported in February: “the city hired the consulting firm in a secretive process. The amount and terms of the contract have yet to be revealed to the public. Hagerty was hired despite two former consultants for the firm recently pleading guilty to defrauding New York City of federal relief funds during the Hurricane Sandy disaster recovery.”

This is simply another example of government being the problem rather than solving the problem. California needs to hire someone who can actually cut through red tape rather than just spend taxpayer money.