Yes, 23k acres burned in the Palisades fire, and 15k in the Eaton fire. Yes that's a lot of area compared to SF, Manhattan, etc. Most of that area is mountainside! There's not suddenly 50 square miles of open space in LA to remake in the image of some ideal.
Of the portion of heavily burned land that was developed, quite a bit was also mountainside, or at least foothill. There's ~25 regular-ish blocks of the villages (backed up against foothill) that were destroyed, and some flat-ish area on Sunset Mesa, and the west side of Temescal Canyon, and a bit on Castellammare (but thankfully that wasn't as heavily impacted). But as the names implies, these are all mesa/ridge tops, bracketed by cliffs & canyons. The impacted parts of Altadena are a bit more regular, but very much sloping foothill backed up against their own mountainside. Moreover, both areas are somewhat peripheral, even for the city-without-a-center.
The point being that these are not places one can casually lay out some expansive transit-oriented scheme that's going to solve housing problems for the city. They're topographically and geographically constrained, and need to be rebuilt in a way that's compatible with their constraints. To say nothing of the fact that these were people's homes, and are people's property, and they might have a say on how they would like to rebuild.
There are some real challenges facing LA w.r.t. family-size rental/affordable housing stock, insurance in fire-prone areas, insurance generally depending on state policy, etc. I hope the civic and political energy leveled against barriers to rebuilding in Altadena and the Palisades can later be focused on ongoing transit expansion and associated higher-density development, infill, etc, in the parts of the city where those make sense. But to pretend that these fires present some great opportunity to 'remake' Los Angeles as a whole is a misunderstanding at best, reductive and insulting at worst.
</rant>
There should be respect to the families that lost their property. But it's not insulting to suggest that NIMBY development exarcebates disasters like this. Heck if land use was as productive as it should in America most of those families wouldn't have a good chunk of their wealth evaporates as a result of a natural disaster, and rebuilding would've been hella more faster and cheaper.
The other part is that if can’t upzone Palisades to upzone other areas instead. It makes sense to build denser close to transit than force it on rich areas in the hills.
Yes. This is what we're already doing around the transit we already have. I hope the camaraderie and community drives us to build more, faster.
> upzone Altadena > upzone Palisades
Why? Why is it imperative that we take this disaster as an opportunity to advance policy change in the affected areas specifically? Why should we build denser housing in areas that are clearly at risk for fire?
That said I hope policy and prudence drive homeowners that rebuild SFH to include more fire-safety and fire-resistant features. Closed eaves, pool-fed sprinklers, automated shutters, (pains me to say) landscaping setbacks, ...
What are you talking about?!? Downtown San Francisco has easily 4x the density of the area and it's built on mountains. Italy has dense villages on the sides of mountains all over the place. The idea that nobody can build density in 2025 because of some type of geological feature is just ridiculous, self-serving, nothing should change ever talk.
The point isn't that LA should force the area to be highrises. The point is that it should be legal, in a housing crisis, to increase the density of one of the lowest density neighborhoods in LA, which is already an incredibly low density city.
Literally just building row houses instead of SFH's would easily double the density. Three-unit row houses like in much of hilly SF would increase the density by 6x. The idea that we either need skyscrapers or SFH's is exactly the problem with our zoning laws. People should be able to build multi-unit when the demand is there.
Could we have built on more of the burned-over mountainside? Maybe? I'm not sure SF is the right comparison though. Just the developed portion affected by the Palisades fire ranges from sea level to 450m elevation (over ~2.5mi straight-line distance); Temescal Peak is 650m. Most of developed peninsular SF is below 100m elevation. Its more like trying to densifiy Berkely or Pacifica or Carmel by building apartment buildings up their hills.
Doable? Probably. But why go to the trouble? Why take the fire and seismic risk of building dense housing on a mountainside when LA is spoiled for space in the basin and valley?
I'm just so sick and tired of ignorant people pretending that elevation, grade, or seismic matter at all when Japan exists, and builds high density housing, regularly in conditions that are vastly more inhospitable than coastal California. Pretending that suburban SFH are safer and more economical is just backward.
>Why go to the trouble?
Because density more efficient, can pay for it's own infrastructure in the long run: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
It is also less prone to fire risk.
Building suburban SFHs requires everyone else to subsidize it's development, which is already happening exactly with the California FAIR Plan, which will now require literally everyone in the United States to pay more on their homeowners insurances policies to compensate for the predictable losses here, if the system isn't just federally bailed out directly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Plan
If they don't matter at all, there's tons of steep lots you can buy in the hills for like 10-50k with neighboring houses in the mid-to-high millions. People say they're unbuildable but apparently there's no such thing?
More seriously, I generally agree with most what you're saying. It should be easier to increase density in Los Angeles. By-right ADUs & JADUs, 4-unit TIC conversions, transit-oriented dvelopment are all a good start. We should do more. I shouldn't see anything but the back of apartment buildings from my window on the Expo line. 500k people should live in DTLA. Wilshire should look like Tokyo as soon as the train is done.
It's just weird to bring this energy to such a tragic situation. I don't think you could honestly say Altadena and the Palisades were the top two areas you'd focus on increasing density prior to Jan 7. They're no closer, nor easier to connect to transit, nor less fire-prone today than they were then. Most of the SFH that was destroyed in the Palisades were $3-9m[1] houses on 1/8th acre lots i.e. doing a pretty good job paying their own way on their infrastructure. The insurance stuff is going to be a pain, but I expect the prospective-risk model that was just authorized will force homeowners to bear more of their risk (and thereby apply some market forces to land-use decisions in the rebuild). And if the highest-GDP county in the highest-GDP state in the county needs, for once, a bit of Federal help it'd be hard to characterize that as unfair.
To focus on them as a place to enact specific parts of your urban-design vision (however good it is!) feels just as exploitive as 'investors' trying to buy lots cheaply to remake in the image _they_ prefer. These are our friends and neighbors, victims of a disaster. We should help them rebuild as quickly and prudently as possible, so we all can continue pulling the city toward a denser, safer, healthier future.
[1]: yes yes some prop 13 bases in there that I'm approximating away sue me.
Except that it was literally illegal to build anything except SFH's, until the state removed R1 zoning, and even now, you can generally only get two units. They are "unbuildable" because the projects won't pencil, not because we don't have the engineering capabilities.
>It's just weird to bring this energy to such a tragic situation.
I will be completely honest, that the move to exempt wildfire victims from the regulations that anyone without an established home has to deal with is one of the most self-serving, "rules for thee but not for me," results I've seen in my lifetime.
The housing system in CA is broken, and instead of taking this as an opportunity to fix it, we just exempt the very people who benefit from the broken situation most. It's perfectly legal, but it's deeply inequitable.
Is that insensitive of me? I want these people to be able to rebuild as soon as possible, but pretending it's not wildly inequitable to not change the rules for everyone, is just myopia.
To double down on my admittedly unpopular concerns, by allowing people to rebuild without exemption but not fixing the underlying issues, we've opened the door for one of the biggest cases of moral hazard I've ever seen. Call me cynical, but if some disgruntled and unscrupulous homeowner is in a fight with the Coastal Commission, they now know that a wildfire will likely let them do what they want. It's not something 99.9% of folks would do, but the incentives are right there. Moral hazard should be taken seriously.
>Most of the SFH that was destroyed in the Palisades were $3-9m[1] houses on 1/8th acre lots i.e. doing a pretty good job paying their own way on their infrastructure.
As you know the vast majority of them are not paying property taxes at that rate, and never will.
Even SBF wouldn’t take that risk. Billions of dollars of personal liability against … the coastal commission lets you build 110% of the house you already had? Gotta do it a few times to get enough additional square footage to make it worthwhile…
The expedited permissions aren’t carte blanche, they’re pretty limited to rebuilding in place. Which I think you know since you’re agitating for looser regulations to allow the kind of development you’d prefer instead. Does the moral hazard work the other way? Should we worry about Strongtowns readers torching neighborhoods they want to rebuild?
> vast majority
Assessments are public record. Go poke around on the assessors map. There’s a fair share of low bases like my footnote said, but plenty of houses traded over the last 5-10 years, and plenty of people are paying 20-50k a year.
> take this opportunity
Again why does this disaster demand we also solve the housing crisis at the same time? We lost <1% of housing stock, it’s not like we’re rebuilding a leveled city. Work toward policies that that will incentivize the development you’d prefer in places it makes sense across the city, don’t be gross and seize on a crisis to try to impose the change you want.
In a shortage, marginal consumers wipe out the consumer surplus. The new marginal consumer is now a multi-millionaire. Housing prices will spike dramatically in LA, in every neighborhood, for a decade.
That frictional pain is going to make the median person mad, and harm many peoples’ lives. We should talk again in a year when that new reality has settled in.
Doing it right after a major fire where people are alive precisely because they were able to put themselves and a few belongings into their personal vehicle and go where they could shelter with friends or family is bordering on an impossible ask.
i take waymos all the time, often replacing my car, i have never had a single issue
of course they can scale in a cost effective manner, the operating costs are theoretically the same as just owning a car but they get to amortize it across many different users and don’t have to pay for human labor
But so what if they do have full coverage in 10 years? We can build apartments with no/fewer parking spaces, and therefore somewhat lower costs. Why do we build those sort of apartments on some of the most desirable land on the planet? Look at the One Coast development on the bottom of Sunset - denser than SFH, plenty of parking, and no trouble selling condos starting at $3-5m. At that's at the bottom of the hill!
Does Monaco have apartments for $300k? Does the LES? West Palm Beach?
No one has explained why a given developer should rent for less than 3K when they could easily rent the same space fo 4K? Is the government providing an incentive covering the shortfall?
That global imperative does not translate into a local demand that every SFH (and in particular, these SFHs) be replaced with denser housing. As you realize in your comment, the damaged areas aren't exactly well-positioned to support substantially denser housing.
Even Hong Kong builds mostly between its hills and only on them when really rich people are involved (e.g. Victoria Peak).
It's just like technology: If you make it happen, it will happen. If you don't, it won't. Some people are working hard, developing the technology, while many sit around saying it's impossible, etc.
Opportunity knocks, right now. There's no guarantee of success. Let's go!
"Do it the way we want or die" is a pretty bold take.
Are you going to enforce this or demand to have law enforcement or even military units do it?
You'll notice the loaded language used in the title of the article: "California's future depends on how leaders rebuild". Ideally I would think that the landowners should have priority in deciding what is built on their land. After all it is still at least nominally their private property.
Expect further arguments towards a subjectively perceived "greater collective good" to follow from that point. After this is established, the ends justify the means. In this case, the above poster explicitly describes the means as "men with guns".
That's a myth / fantasy of gun and violence zealots and anti-liberals.
Obviously, to scholars and to anyone looking at the world, the basis for governance is consent. There are not enough guns in the world to do it otherwise. And I've never and I don't know anyone who has ever done something because the government pointed a gun at them. They did it because they are law-abiding people, social beings, and want a fair, ordered society.
For governance, perhaps, but not for government.
A trivial example: I do not consent to the authority of my city, county, state, or country. I have withheld that consent my entire life, and yet all those levels of government continue to not only exist, but to grow.
There are many examples of places around the world who managed to intersperse SFH with medium-density housing (3-4 stories apartment buildings) so it's not an either-or situation. For example: many suburbs of Stockholm have developed this way, it allows options based on people's budgets and needs, while also creating enough density to attract local businesses so people are not entirely car-dependent for basic necessities, creates third places for meetings, etc.
I'm preaching to the choir though, I do understand you will probably never understand or see it that way given the vitriol you started with. It's quite sad because there are other ways for a community to live that can cater to different needs where mixed-housing exists while also making these neighbourhoods more interesting and livable in themselves.
The city could issue no permits to rebuild SFH on that land and then buy it for 15-minute walkable development.
Very few want to give developers the profits they need to match the profits they get rebuilding in accordance with maximizing the return on their investments.
People asking for cheap apartments are just not being realistic. Why rent that square footage at less than luxury prices when the market will readily eat up the square footage at prices far exceeding the national luxury median?
And that’s before we even get to the people who want condos or luxury homes.
You would basically need to make a law that caps how much an owner can make on his land for some of these ideas to work.
And that’s where luxury condos and apartments come in.
There is no scenario where building for less than luxury returns makes sense in these areas. Renting a set square footage for 1500 makes no sense when I can rent the same square footage for 3200.
And that’s at the bottom end.
> Renting a set square footage for 1500 makes no sense when I can rent the same square footage for 3200.
uhhh, except for location?
Maybe in the flats of the palisades.
How much of that location value was because of the views, proximity to LA proper, etc.?
How much of it was due to the types of houses that were in those specific neighborhoods and the type of people that lived in them?
If the "rich and famous" don't return to those neighborhoods and rebuild their multi-million dollar homes, those parcels will be worth significantly less.
Multiple luxury apartments? Maybe? Depending on amenities and view.
But multiple non luxury apartments for the hoi polloi? Not a chance. I challenge even the politicians championing non luxury apartments to run the numbers and make them work. They just don’t.
People are out here advocating that we make multiple apartments available all under 3K. That’s insanity. The same space can easily be rented for much more than 3K. If I’m a developer, what’s my motivation to forgo that ludicrously high return? Being a good guy? I’ll take the return and make a donation to the boys and girls club instead thank you very much.
I don't think anyone really understands how intense wildfires can get when fanned by wind. It will destroy almost anything.
See: Black Saturday bushfires, Australia.
> "it really made no difference whether the houses were brick or timber. In fact, with the speed of the fire front some timber houses fared better than brick as it moved too fast for the houses to catch, but the bricks exploded from the sudden change in temperature."
> "When you have a fire front coming through at 800C it'll melt your window seals and aluminum window frames. The glass will fall out then everything is on fire.
https://longreads.com/2018/12/04/the-case-for-letting-malibu...
> The 1930 Decker Canyon fire was a worst-case scenario involving 50-year-old chaparral and a fierce Santa Ana. Faced with a five-mile front of towering flames
> Despite a further series of fires in 1935, 1936, and 1938 which destroyed almost four hundred homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon, public officials stubbornly disregarded
> He also provided a classic account of the onslaught of the terrible firestorm of Christmas week 1956, which, burning its way to the sea, retraced the path of the 1930 blaze.
And identifies that the policy of colonizing wildfire-prone zones with single family homes was set in the late 50s:
> By declaring Malibu a federal disaster area and offering blaze victims tax relief as well as preferential low-interest loans, the Eisenhower administration established a precedent for the public subsidization of firebelt suburbs.
Fires continued, of course, like clockwork:
> The next firestorm, in late September 1970, coupled perfect fire weather (drought conditions, 100-degree heat, 3 percent humidity, and an 85-mile-per-hour Santa Ana wind) with a bumper crop of combustible wood-frame houses. According to firefighters, the popular cedar shake roofs “popped like popcorn” as a 20-mile wall of flames roared across the ridgeline of the Santa Monicas toward the sea
And so on. So I wouldn’t say it’s “too early” for political takes on reconstruction; this debate — Oh No Fires! What Next For Zoning? — has been going on for almost one hundred years, even if it’s news to the current decade that this was ever a risk.
https://www.kqed.org/news/12021505/a-tragedy-waiting-to-happ...
In fact the station that responded first to the fires of last October was the one cut.
https://oaklandside.org/2024/10/22/oakland-budget-cuts-firef...
The government officials argue that there is no money, but in reality, almost every department is seeing budget increases other than the fire department. The city administrators are getting 3x the money than last budget. California leaders are the absolute bottom of the barrel.
Edit: this just from yesterday https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/response-time-for-oaklan...
Though, charitably, I suppose the city-level mismanagement that you're talking about do not directly contradict gavin's claims about state/federal level cuts. Maybe.
Until someone is willing to grab the nettle and fix the property tax situation to be fair and equitable to everyone then California cities are eventually going to run out of money to maintain infrastructure.
Presumably it's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
> Proposition 13 (officially named the People's Initiative to Limit Property Taxation) is an amendment of the Constitution of California enacted during 1978, by means of the initiative process, to cap property taxes and limit property reassessments to when the property changes ownership, and to require a 2/3 majority for tax increases in the state legislature.
The insidious part is that commercial real estate in California is paying the same rates as they were when the building was built, despite the fact that the value of the building has increased many times since and the building "changing" ownership many times since.
The second insidious part is that because of the enhancements to the tax code over the years it's possible to continue to pay 1978 property tax rates in perpetuity, and even pass those rates on to your descendants. You can even transfer those super low rates to a new property in some cases.
New buyers get screwed because they will be paying at today's rates. So you could be paying 10x more property tax as your neighbor for the same city services.
A lot of government officials abuse the system and get exhorbidant pensions, especially when early retirement options start at 50.
The commercial part should be removed to increase tax income.
Fairness and equity are highly subjective. If you ask any Californian they will say that someone else should pay higher taxes. I support reform of the property tax system in general but let's not forget what triggered Proposition 13 in the first place: it was a taxpayer revolt against uncontrolled and unaccountable increases in local government spending. So any reform will still require an effective means of constraining government budgets. Otherwise we'll just end up back where we started.
Example: New construction in Santa Clarita (north Los Angeles county) $800k 3 bedroom town house. Even with ~50% down you are still looking around $4k+ per month in payments, with 25% of that amount being property tax.
You'll also likely be paying more due to Mello-Roos and with HOA and home insurance on top of that. Plus it's unlikely at this point you'll be able to get fire insurance.
Good luck trying to make the numbers work on the country medium income of ~$100k.
(And don't ask how someone on medium income can put 50% down on a $800k home).
I believe there are a lot of families that pass down wealth, most of it being used to buy houses.
This gave me the idea that we could improve long-term urban wealth by following an "urban Cheney's algorithm". A city could be divided into let's say 8 sectors, like pie slices extending from the center, and demolished on a schedule (e.g. one sector per decade). The orderly and predictable demolition would provide an even greater boon to the city than the Nazi bombing campaign provided to London, especially because the wide range of demolition would allow easier renovation of structures like roads, sewers, and transit lines and depots.
The vacant homes count any vacancy even if they are for sale or between tenants. It is impossible to use those for housing. And putting people in them means that normal buyer and tenants couldn’t live there.
Rent is a market and landlords can only charge what people can pay. More cheaper housing will drive down rents, or more likely slow down rent growth since prices are sticky.
Building more homes would make existing home less valuable but would make the land under the homes more valuable cause could be used for more valuable housing. I also think that remaining houses will be more valuable for people who want house over apartment.
I've never seen rent go down or slow down as a result of market forces, it must be forced by the local government.
Why would building more homes drive price down? Why wouldn't the builders just sell it at market price?
No. Certainly not in places where people want to live.
Why would you think there are? Why would someone deliberately let their property deprecate while not earning an income, (setting aside the unearned speculation caused by land values increasing)
LA has about 2-3% empty homes. Higher than some global cities, but still a very small number.
This has no bearing whatsoever in how LA will be rebuilt.
The reconstruction in LA will follow the exact same principles that have governed the construction of all housing in southern california, ever.
That is, the housing will be rebuilt in the way that makes the destruction mafia the most money, right now.
This is the way it has ALWAYS been done, everywhere.
My house in San Diego is 105 years old. A craftsman cottage. It was built in 1920 in the way that made the construction company the most money, in the ~6 months it took them to build the structure and sell it.
The fact that the building has now been inhabited for 105 years, and massive money could have been saved in fuel and maintenance if more robust construction were used, had 0 impact on how it was built.
This is exactly how reconstruction in LA will now proceed. With 0 concern for the future consequences.
That is exactly how all housing is built, everywhere (in the US at least).
The suggestion that this is somehow dictated by, or curtailed by "leaders", is equally disconnected from reality.
Gavin, that plutocratic prick, will not take one step to curtail the profit of the destruction industry. This is illustrated by a large swath of recent CA legislation. For example, a state law that dictates that localities must allow construction of double the number of units if "affordable housing" is included in the project. The law of course, doesn't say "how much", or "what kind" of affordable housing must be included. Local North County San Diego municipalities were then successfully sued by developers who insisted that including 1 "affordable housing" unit in an entire project allowed doubling the number of "market value" housing units to be constructed.
This has all contributed to the unafforability of housing in southern california, and massively boosted profits for real estate developers.
If you want to make housing affordable in So Cal, outlaw short term rentals. That would be a great start.
But the long haul would require significantly curtailing laissez faire capitalism in housing construction. This is something that is just NOT going to happen under the so called "liberal" governance of the state..
You'll be buried under so many environmental impact lawsuits that any burn will take years (if ever) to happen.
If you know more than others, that's great, but then please share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that or don't have time, that's fine, but in that case it's best to just accept that the internet is wrong about everything and not reply.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...