Rebuilding Los Angeles

Speaker 1 Donald Trump was not at the Grammys last night.

Speaker 1 Beyonce was. She won Country Album of the Year.
Lady Gaga was too. She shouted out trans rights.
Alicia Keys was there. She shouted out DEI.
Chapel Roan won Best New Artist and shouted out Healthcare.

Speaker 1 Shakira showed up and shouted out immigrants. But no one got more shout outs than the firefighters in Los Angeles, the city that hosted the show.

Speaker 1 An all-star band opened the Grammys with a cover of I Love LA by Randy Newman, the host, Trevor Noah, was asking for donations all night.

Speaker 1 When Cowboy Carter won album of the year, it was Los Angeles firefighters who finally got to hand our queen the prize she's been after for all these years.

Speaker 4 Cowboy Carter,

Speaker 5 16 Beyoncé.

Speaker 1 Los Angeles fires are finally fully contained. We're going to ask what comes next on Today Explained.

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Speaker 5 today

Speaker 5 today it rained

Speaker 1 sean ramis we're here with liam dillon who covers housing affordability issues for the los angeles times with something like 16 000 structures destroyed in the eaton and palisades fires we asked him what comes next for those looking to rebuild well i think in the first place when you go up there now and look at these areas now i mean post-apocalyptic is really what it looks like.

Speaker 15 Burnt out cars, charred trees. The only thing left standing in many of these homes are like remnants of brick chimneys.

Speaker 16 That was our kitchen.

Speaker 5 It's just gone. Everything is just gone.
This has been our family home, and everything is a total loss.

Speaker 18 This looks like the apocalypse.

Speaker 15 This is like a toxic waste site, these two areas. I mean, in the air, you have lead, asbestos.
I mean, I saw a photo of someone posted of their bike totally vaporized, right? Doesn't exist anymore.

Speaker 15 And that, you know, the metals from that go into the air.

Speaker 15 And so you have these heavy metals that have been measured miles downwind from the fires, ammunition, propane tanks, pesticides, car batteries, really bad stuff.

Speaker 15 And so I think this first challenge that you have is clearing out this toxic area.

Speaker 19 The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently told residents it could take 18 months just to clear the debris before owners even begin to rebuild.
That timeline, leaving many families in limbo.

Speaker 20 We can't move forward until our properties are cleaned.

Speaker 15 And that, you know, caused a lot of consternation from people who want to try to rebuild their homes, obviously much faster than that.

Speaker 3 How are people going to live in that timeline? How do people's loss of use cover them when they're still paying their mortgages, when they're now paying rents on top of it?

Speaker 21 Please don't kill our spirit. And we just want to go home.
That's it. We just want to rebuild and we want to go home.

Speaker 15 That estimate's now been revised to a year, but still a really long time just for this sort of first stage of the rebuilding effort.

Speaker 1 So you said the Army Corps of Engineers. So does that mean this is going to be a federal effort? Is the federal government funding this effort?

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 15 So there's a lot of questions and challenges about the role of the federal government, particularly under the Trump administration and congressional leaders as well, tying aid to changes in unrelated California policy.

Speaker 22 I want to see two things in Los Angeles, voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote. And I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.

Speaker 22 Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.

Speaker 15 But these sorts of strings, you know, may well function as a potential concern for how quickly and how comprehensively some of the rebuilding efforts may go.

Speaker 1 What What about local government? What about state government? How can they be expediting this process for people right now?

Speaker 15 So California Governor Gavin Newsom, L.A.

Speaker 15 Mayor Karen Bass, the County Board of Supervisors, all of these groups and individuals have passed rules trying to cut regulations that would block or slow down rebuilding.

Speaker 20 California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I'm not going to give that up.
But one thing I won't give into is delay.

Speaker 23 Red tape, bureaucracy, all of it must go.

Speaker 15 And, you know, these rules or these waivers, you know, get rid of, or at least attempt to, various permitting and environmental rules, particularly for homeowners who would like to kind of rebuild their house exactly as it was before or slightly larger.

Speaker 15 Another question when it comes to the rebuilding effort is, you know, many of these homes built a half century ago or a century ago, today's fire codes in California has some of the strictest fire codes in the country for new builds.

Speaker 15 In some cases, that may make rebuilding more expensive, but that could make these houses much safer to live in.

Speaker 15 And I think it's still unclear exactly under what kind of fire code or fire regime or building code that people are going to either want or need to rebuild their houses to.

Speaker 15 And of course, that affects the cost of it and whether in some cases they'll actually rebuild.

Speaker 1 And we're mostly talking here about people who... own their property, who own their homes.
But of course, there's a lot of concern for renters.

Speaker 1 We know Los Angeles has notoriously, some would say, criminally high rent. Right.

Speaker 1 I can't imagine the fires are helping.

Speaker 15 No, and that's just one of the issues I think. What you're finding in the immediate aftermath of these fires is kind of insane bidding wars.

Speaker 15 I mean, 30 families we've reported looking through one rental home in over a 10-minute period, right? What? Also, very widespread reports of price gouging.

Speaker 24 I've been quoted

Speaker 24 maybe 5,000.

Speaker 24 Some of my friends have talked to people and they said $6,000 plus. And then one girl told me somebody was charging $8,000 a month.

Speaker 15 And these are for tiny one-bedroom apartments?

Speaker 24 One-bedroom apartments, yes.

Speaker 26 The gouging is out of control already. I'm seeing things double.

Speaker 26 I'm seeing rentals in Oxmark for $25,000 a month.

Speaker 1 And you mentioned that there's attention on permits and, you know, clearing out toxic materials, but is any government, state, local, federal paying attention to the renting crisis?

Speaker 15 So there is a California state law that says you cannot raise advertised rents more than 10% above what they were before natural disaster, certainly includes these fires.

Speaker 15 And so the state attorney general, Rob Bonta, has tried to sort of marshal an effort to deal with this.

Speaker 17 We have multiple criminal investigations right now that are moving towards prosecution, arrests, holding people accountable. These are crimes.

Speaker 17 People can go to jail for up to a year and be slapped with a $10,000 criminal fine as well.

Speaker 15 He's encouraged people to report examples, sent warning letters to more than 650 landlords and hotel operators around Southern California.

Speaker 15 And he's even, at this point, criminally charged two people, real estate agents, for violating, allegedly violating these price gouging laws and sort of hopes these efforts will have at least a deterrent effect on what's been going on in the market.

Speaker 15 And you can see videos on social media that people were posting in the days after the fire.

Speaker 27 What's up, guys? It's Christina, your price gouging landlord's horse nightmare here to report another property whose rent was raised since the fire started.

Speaker 25 I scrolled down to the bottom to look at the rental history, and oh, look, this listing was increased by $2,500 a month on the second day of the devastating fires.

Speaker 25 That is a price gouge. They are obviously trying to take advantage of people who have lost their homes and need a place to stay.
This is my spreadsheet that I'm keeping.

Speaker 15 People videoing themselves going on Zillow, finding an example of a listing that increased its rent by more than 10%, telling people how to report them.

Speaker 15 And there was even one group of activists led by the LA Tenants Union, which has crowdsourced a list that came up with more than 1,300 possible examples of rent gouging again in this just sort of few weeks since this fire.

Speaker 1 This isn't the first time Los Angeles has seen one of these destructive wildfires. I think a lot of people will remember a couple of fires in Malibu, at least.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do those fires tell us about how rebuilding might go? I mean, are we going going to get 100% back to where we were, 50%, 125%?

Speaker 15 So I think it's really variable in these wildfire responses in California, even within California, but also around the country.

Speaker 15 I mean, you look at the recent fire in Maui and there have been reports that have come out that only, after 18 months, only three homes have been rebuilt.

Speaker 28 It's sad. It's disappointing.

Speaker 15 Because so much time has gone by.

Speaker 28 Yeah, a year and a half later, town of Lahaina has not moved forward.

Speaker 3 In terms of a percentage,

Speaker 29 are any of the businesses up and running?

Speaker 19 Zero businesses.

Speaker 28 Zero.

Speaker 15 A closer example you referenced in Malibu, there was a fire in 2018 that destroyed roughly 400 homes in Malibu and more in the surrounding area.

Speaker 15 But less than half of them in Malibu have been rebuilt and we're six years on. But you also have some stories of things getting done faster.

Speaker 15 There was a big fire in Northern California Wine Country, a city called Santa Rosa in 2017. 3,000 homes burned.
And then 80% was rebuilt within three years.

Speaker 15 And so it can be really circumstantial in terms of what happens where and why. In Santa Rosa, for instance, the neighborhood that came back the quickest was in Flatland and more middle class.

Speaker 15 And so easier and cheaper rebuilds than what happened in the richer neighborhoods actually in Santa Rosa.

Speaker 1 And I know the focus right now is just on helping people who have lost

Speaker 1 everything to something, to something in between.

Speaker 1 How much discussion is being had about what the city's getting ready for in the next few years,

Speaker 1 a World Cup on Olympics?

Speaker 15 So I think a lot.

Speaker 15 I mean, the president has brought that up.

Speaker 20 I just met with the Olympic people, and they're all set to do a real job.

Speaker 15 The governor has certainly talked about that.

Speaker 20 That That only reinforces the imperative moving quickly, doing it in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation.

Speaker 15 He enlisted the head of the L.A. 2028 effort as one of the key fundraisers for raising money, private dollars, to help rebuild Los Angeles.

Speaker 18 I mean, the Olympics in L.A. will be the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world.
What an opportunity to bring the world to a revitalize and a new Los Angeles.

Speaker 15 And so these events, not just the Olympics in 2028, but we have World Cup events in LA in 2026. Super Bowl is coming to LA again.

Speaker 15 And so these mega events are at the least kind of putting timelines on things that absent them may not exist for rebuilding efforts.

Speaker 15 And so at a base level, people are saying LA is going to be showcased not just nationally, but worldwide in many events over the coming years. And

Speaker 15 you want a rebuilding effort that shows that resiliency and that recovery to show the world that you can do it.

Speaker 15 And I think that is certainly a challenge given the timeline here that folks are looking at and facing.

Speaker 1 Liam Dillon, LA Times.com, in a minute on today explained, we're going to try and figure out if Los Angeles can rebuild and get ready for what some are calling the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world if they can do those two things at the same time.

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Speaker 33 Looks like another perfect game.

Speaker 34 I'm not today explained.

Speaker 3 My name's Alyssa Walker. I'm the editor of Torched, which is a newsletter that tracks the legacy improvements and policy decisions leading up to LA's mega event era.

Speaker 1 And how awkward has the name of your newsletter become in the past few weeks?

Speaker 3 I wouldn't say awkward. I would say prescient.
And it's not what I was thinking when I named it that. But you know what?

Speaker 3 We also kind of knew this might have been a possibility.

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of focus on the Olympics right now. And it doesn't feel insensitive to talk about something that's years away because people are talking about it.
Gavin Newsom is talking about it.

Speaker 1 President Trump is talking about it. And it's not even the first mega event that's coming to Los Angeles in the coming years.
Can you tell us about what's on the slate for the city?

Speaker 3 Yes. Next year,

Speaker 3 LA is hosting World Cup matches along with other cities across the continent.

Speaker 35 And we're joined by the world's most famous soccer mom and her eldest son, Saint Kim Kardashian. Saint, welcome.
Got some big news for us.

Speaker 36 Yes, we are honored to be here to tell you that the U.S. will be playing its first World Cup 26 game here in Los Angeles.

Speaker 3 That will be 40 days of fan festivals and watch parties all over the region. And then we have the Super Bowl in 2027.
Big announcement today, the big game is coming back here in 2027.

Speaker 3 It's so exciting.

Speaker 3 A Super Bowl is coming. And then we have the Olympics and Paralympics for a month in 2028, which is supposed to be seven Super Bowls a day.

Speaker 1 Seven Super Bowls a day.

Speaker 3 Seven Super Bowls a day.

Speaker 3 We are basically bringing millions more people to a city that is having a real crisis when it comes to our infrastructure already.

Speaker 3 I can't really communicate how severe the situation was before the fires happened. We were plummeting into a deep fiscal crisis here at the city of LA.

Speaker 3 The city does not have money to plan and implement basic fixes to sidewalks, bike lanes, parks, streetlights. There's a lot of trash everywhere.
We don't have enough shade trees.

Speaker 3 You've seen our famous graffiti towers. We are in no shape to host millions of people here, let alone care for the people who use our city on a daily basis.

Speaker 37 If there is, God forbid, another fire and LA faces even more rebuilding, you're talking about resources for any big sporting event.

Speaker 37 They need extra police, they need traffic control, they need garbage collection, all of those things.

Speaker 23 We need our city to be so much cleaner. We obviously need to deal with homelessness.
I would love to see the graffiti changed into murals.

Speaker 38 We're about to host the Olympics in 2028.

Speaker 5 Oi vavoy.

Speaker 38 I don't know how this happened.

Speaker 3 There was this great quote from John Mulaney who did this live variety show about LA

Speaker 3 last year

Speaker 3 and he really explained, I think, how everybody in LA feels about the Olympics coming.

Speaker 38 Making LA host the Olympics, that would be like if you had a friend and she was having a nervous breakdown and she had no money and part of her house was on fire.

Speaker 38 And to cheer her up, you made her host the Olympics.

Speaker 3 So there's two things that are important to know about our mega event era here in L.A. One is you've probably heard this promise that it's a no-build games.

Speaker 4 Among the many ways the city hopes to distinguish themselves is by building no new venues for the biggest sporting event on the planet, zero.

Speaker 23 We don't need to build a major stadium. We have all of the stadiums built.
What we do need to build is housing so our people are not on the street.

Speaker 3 The other part of it is not really

Speaker 3 happening and that is these little infrastructural connections including the transportation infrastructure which we are scrambling to build out because as you might have also heard we're supposed to be having a car-free games.

Speaker 23 Part of having a no-car Olympics means getting people not to drive, but also using public transportation to get to the games.

Speaker 3 Which is mostly a logistical way of explaining that we can't let people drive and park at all these venues as they move around to participate in the seven Super Bowls a day.

Speaker 1 Right. So people who have never been to Los Angeles may still have heard that commuting in the city is not easy, maybe historically hard.

Speaker 1 What was Los Angeles doing to prepare for seven Super Bowls a day? And how has that maybe been thrown in flux in recent weeks?

Speaker 3 So we have Metro, which is our regional transportation authority. They put forth a plan called 28 by 28 years ago, right after we got the bid.

Speaker 3 And they had a list of big transportation projects like subway extensions that were going to be completed before the Games happened.

Speaker 23 This nearly $900 million in federal funding that is coming to the region to expand Metro's rail system ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be vital for our success.

Speaker 3 Some of those are finished. Not all of them are finished.
Some of them will definitely get finished.

Speaker 3 But what we've seen from Metro in particular is kind of a reprioritization based on reality.

Speaker 3 And the concern, I think, now post-fires is that where the recovery money is getting spread around is are a lot of those infrastructure dollars going to have to go to places like say the Palisades to rebuild their many, many infrastructural challenges that they now have.

Speaker 1 Okay, so what I'm hearing is it was going to take a boatload of money to get Los Angeles ready for the Olympics.

Speaker 1 And now a boatload of money is needed to rebuild and to restore the city after these fires. Are there a lot of Angelinos right now saying, hey, let's prioritize one over the other?

Speaker 1 And if so, which one is it?

Speaker 3 There's definitely always been a big contingency of people who have said LA should not do this.

Speaker 3 The No Olympics, No Olympics is a global coalition, right? They're in many cities trying to show the harms of these mega events, which are documented. It's a real thing.

Speaker 3 The No Olympics groups kicked the bid out of Boston, and that's how LA got the games in the first place. So you can thank them for

Speaker 3 saying that their city shouldn't do it. And then LA was like, sure, we'll do it, no problem.

Speaker 3 But what I'm hearing now is a little bit different. There was some polling done over the summer that was like asking people, Are you excited about the Olympics?

Speaker 3 And it was like, a majority was excited. But then the second question was, Do you think LA can produce a car-free Olympics? And the answer was pretty much no.

Speaker 3 So there's this growing,

Speaker 3 I would say,

Speaker 3 concern that LA is not going to be able to pull it off, particularly in a way that is going to make the city better than it was before.

Speaker 3 You know, we were promised these permanent improvements to the city

Speaker 3 and that people everywhere would benefit from having these games here.

Speaker 39 The LA 2028 Olympics is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the games to have a positive impact on our local communities, our local economy, and celebrate our unique cultural tapestry on the world stage.

Speaker 3 And, you know, even some council members are expressing that they have doubts.

Speaker 1 Could LA say, you know what, we really want to do this, but we just had this huge setback. What if we did it a year later? Or do you think it would sooner go somewhere else? I mean, who knows?

Speaker 3 Well, that's funny because, you know, immediately the right-wing pundits started to post on X that we should have the games taken away from us.

Speaker 4 This is biblical-level destruction, and the city of L.A. is hosting the Olympics in four years.

Speaker 4 There's no way we can showcase LA to the world. A full federal takeover is needed.
Invoke the Stafford Act. The state's overwhelmed.
Martial law might have to be declared.

Speaker 3 That was really, I think, what prompted perhaps Newsom and

Speaker 3 other people here in LA to start to frame a recovery around the Olympics.

Speaker 3 But what's interesting is some sports are already moving out of the city of LA and the region of LA. We have some sports going to Oklahoma City.

Speaker 3 That was already the plan before, even before the fires. So, will they be taken away from us? I don't think so.
But they always do have a plan to disperse

Speaker 3 events as needed, find backup venues. I mean, there's always a plan.

Speaker 3 The word that I hear a lot, and it's, you know, as someone who writes about mega events, but also writes about climate disasters and writes about emergency preparedness, is that these claims that LA is a resilient city, and they'll point to things like previous earthquakes or uprisings or

Speaker 3 the pandemic as evidence. And I don't think LA is a resilient city.

Speaker 3 We haven't planned in a way, both through our infrastructure or our

Speaker 3 policy,

Speaker 3 to absorb the great risk and the impacts of something like this.

Speaker 3 And the recovery so far has been let's put everything back the way it was before and hope that nothing like this happens again. And it will.
We are facing so many issues.

Speaker 3 We can have some fun mega events. We can have some parties.
We can bring some tourists here and let them have a good time.

Speaker 3 But let's prioritize helping the people who live here already who are going to be experiencing the trickle-down effects of this, even if they were not directly impacted for a generation.

Speaker 3 And let's figure out how to make a city that works for everybody.

Speaker 1 Alyssa Walker, reader at Torch.la, Abhi Shai Artzi, made our show today from LA. He was edited by Amin Al Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andre Kristen's daughter, not from LA.

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