It has to be absolutely maddening to live there - maddening.

And that's if your house is still standing. I can't imagine what it's like having to live under the burden of the 'What's Next?' roulette the state and the lunatics in charge force people to labor under merely to survive the ordeal.

It isn't as if looking for a roof to keep the sun off your now-homeless head is an easy thing while you wait.

Rents are sky-rocketing in an already overheated market.

...In LA, though - holy smokes.

Specifically concerning the real estate rental prices, I was not prepared for the numbers I read this morning in an Orange County Register piece about the first guy charged for basically scalping a house in the La Cañada Flintridge area to a couple who'd been burned out of their home in the Eaton fire.

A single new rental listing will cause a sidewalk back-up that rivals any traffic jam on the 405 with people desperately searching for a temporary home.

🔥 👏 BRAVO to @GavinNewsom & @KarenBassLA — somehow, in one day, you managed to create tens of thousands of new homeless people & create a new housing crisis we could never imagine.

Thousands of families are living in hotels. NOT long term solution.

Many moving away. https://t.co/qNngQayple

— Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD (@houmanhemmati) February 3, 2025

In a city that already had a housing crunch.

Los Angeles had a housing crisis before deadly wildfires destroyed more than 12,000 structures. The city needed to build 450,000 affordable housing units to meet demand. Now, some landlords are jacking up rents, which is too bad. pic.twitter.com/7fUgXzbPLk

— 🇺🇸Matthew Williams (@greatppls) January 20, 2025

These are simply eyewatering numbers for those lucky enough to score a rental home and how horrible for those who had a lovely little place on the hills that is now charred rubble and they have nowhere to go. The influx of fire refugees is also distorting and exacerbating the housing issues in surrounding counties.

Victims displaced due to the Los Angeles wildfires are straining Southern California’s already tight real estate and rental markets, according to a report from Homes.com. 

The report, published on Wednesday, found that nearly all two-bedroom rentals from Santa Monica and Marina del Rey to Manhattan Beach have been leased. Additionally, housing demand has also risen drastically in Brentwood, Bel Air and Beverly Hills, as well as Newport Beach and Orange County.

Newport Beach in particular shares many similarities with the mostly destroyed enclave of Pacific Palisades, making it a popular destination among displaced residents.

In Newport Beach the median list price for a single family home is $5.995 million, compared to $6.0 million in Pacific Palisades in late-December 2024 prior to the outbreak of the fires, according to data from Altos. 

The Homes.com report also expresses concern over how the influx of people into Orange County from Los Angeles will impact home prices in the area. The median list price in Orange County hit a peak of $2.1 million in 2024, up from a peak of $1.9 million in 2023, according to Altos data.

There had been an impasse over residents being allowed back into Pacific Palisades, and then, suddenly, the mayor decided to throw the gates open before those folks had even had a chance to see their homes. It was a matter of the city running out of money to run the law enforcement necessary to man the checkpoints.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass backed down Saturday night in the face of pressure from residents, reversing a decision to open the Pacific Palisades to general traffic before most locals had been able to visit their own property.

The city had barred residents for entering for nearly three weeks after the Palisades Fire on January 7, before President Donald Trump insisted in a town hall meeting on January 24 that they be able to enter to visit their lots.

For four days, residents were able to visit their homes — or the ruins of their homes — after obtaining permits from police. But on Friday, Bass announced that the area would be open to all traffic starting at 8 a.m. on February 2.

Furious residents bombarded the mayor's office. She backed off as the state extended the checkpoints by offering the city additional law enforcement resources.

Residents are finally being allowed back in to view their properties and collect what they can in a controlled environment. Perhaps make plans about what to do. 

...All evacuation orders have been lifted, but only residents and approved contractors were being permitted back into the former evacuation zones.

Checkpoints and a proof-of-residence or entry pass will still be required to enter the Palisades, the mayor’s office said.

On Sunday, resident and contractor access passes can be obtained at 1150 Pacific Coast Highway (Lot 3) in  Santa Monica between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m.

Bass in a statement said Pacific Coast Highway also reopens to the public Monday with only one lane open in each direction between the McClure Tunnel and Carbon Beach Terrace. Also there will be a 25 mph speed limit, all signals will flash red and extreme congestion is expected. Local traffic only was encouraged.

County public health officials are distributing personal protective equipment to residents returning to their homes in the various burn areas. Authorities urged residents to wear masks, gloves and other protective equipment if they are digging through rubble, noting the toxic nature of wildfire ash and other debris.

Nightly curfew orders remain in effect from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the burn areas in an effort to restrict unnecessary access and prevent looting.

Of course, just because you can see and stand in the ruins of your life's dream doesn't mean the word of the mayor about being about to do anything about it meant anything when she told the President of the United States one thing...

Didn't Newsom and Bass say they were getting rid of all the red tape? @adamcarolla is being proven right. https://t.co/oIs5hOzLrm

— Mike LaChance (@MikeLaChance33) February 4, 2025

...while, WAH-WAH, the exact opposite is what's happening.

FOOL HIM ONCE

Then there's the uncertainty about what the city's plans are. What happens when Mayor Karen Bass and her hand-picked rebuilding czar, developer Steve Soboroff, finally settle on the 'outside consultant' they've spoken of to develop the master plan for rebuilding?

Who will it be? What will it mean to burned-out residents and their rebuilding plans if they can?

Then there are questions about existing Los Angeles law, which mandates precisely what you would imagine it does:

Sorry guys, no rebuilding your fancy houses that burned down by the ocean in LA until there’s a new crack den installed right in the middle of the neighborhood.

The area is like D+43; this seems fair. I don’t make the rules 🤷‍♂️. pic.twitter.com/SVXM5cSCnH

— Joe Lonsdale (@JTLonsdale) January 31, 2025

Well, yeah...that.

...The new Resident Protections Ordinance taking effect soon requires that “In Higher Opportunity Areas and Moderate Opportunity Areas, units deemed or presumed to be occupied by persons or families above the lower income category shall be replaced with low income units.” The RPO applies to units “subject to a form of rent or price control through a local government’s valid exercise of its police power.”

 What does it mean to Pacific Palisades?

Like...wave 'g'bye to the old 'hood.

...This also means that “affordability” is likely to be determined based on citywide median household income that is half the Palisades amount. 

If all units in RSO buildings must be replaced with units affordable to lower-income households making up to about $80,000 per year for a family of four, rents would be about $2,000 per month. For the units in newer, non-RSO buildings that must be affordable to very-low-income households making up to about $50,000 for a family of four, rents would be about $1,300 per month.

Before the fire, a market-rate two-bedroom apartment cost between $4,000 and $5,000 per month, requiring a monthly annual household income of $160,000 to comfortably afford, which means that the RPO replacement requirements could significantly alter the area’s demographics — and even bar higher earning residents from renting out homes at their old addresses.

So, conceivably, if you once rented a lovely apartment in the area and this ordinance as written is in effect for the rebuild, you will now make too much money to return to your former home, even if it's the same landlord rebuilding on the exact same address.

Under the Resident Protections Ordinance, in most cases landlords will be required to replace apartments burned down in the Palisades with Low Income units

Displaced residents will then find themselves ineligible to return because they won’t meet the income requirements

— Joe Cohen (@CohenSite) January 28, 2025

You are out of luck and have, in effect, lost everything twice.

This is amazing stuff.

I’m all for affordable housing, but question such on some of the most valuable property in the country…people ought to have the right to make their own decisions on their land use.

— Kurt Madsen (@KurtgMadsen) January 30, 2025

Former mayoral candidate Rick Caruso - who was never apparently approached by the mayor or her team about helping out - is starting his own nonprofit to help residents and the area. Several of his shops in Pacific Palisades are still standing, so he has a base to work from, and he is ready to go.

...But her one-time political rival Rick Caruso had plans of his own. The billionaire developer has been quietly positioning himself to be the ritzy neighborhood’s shadow power broker. Caruso, who owns a cluster of high-end Palisades shops that survived the fire,  would be able to put his stamp on large parts of a project to create a new Palisades.

In an interview, Caruso said he is forming a nonprofit to help speed and smooth rebuilding.  That entity would give him input over many of the most crucial aspects of rebuilding the Palisades. He and a small team would push for how the community’s infrastructure gets rebuilt and would advocate for maintaining its current residential zoning, he said.

While his nonprofit won’t work with individual homeowners, he hopes to make it easier for them to find construction and financial services in one place. Caruso said he has been talking in recent days to bankers, homebuilders and others about how to expedite and finance the rebuilding process.

“If things get locked down in the city, we want to be able—in a very thoughtful but mighty way—to push through them,” he said. Caruso is best known for high-end outdoor malls in the Los Angeles region.

In fact, Caruso's plans have the mayor's czar in a snit.

...“I’ve talked to Rick, and all I want from Rick is, if I need him, to make a call for me, or do something like that,” Soboroff said. “Or, if he thinks I’m screwing up, to let me know, period. That’s it.”

Nothing's started, and the czar is already defensive?

It sounds as if Caruso might be the very watchdog the area needs.

Before it completely becomes a lost slice of old California...

Pacific Palisades already had low income housing. It was just proportionately low to the quality of life you get, which is why it was so safe, and one of the only statistically safe places to live in LA. There was literally no r•pe and h•micide in the Palisades. That is all…

— Jessica Vaugn (@JessicaVaugn) January 31, 2025

...There was literally no r•pe and h•micide in the Palisades. That is all over if the city installs problematic people strategically to disrupt the stronghold of safety Palisades community had engineered. The free market is one of the only tools the people have to filter out violent crime proximity. Democrats want to override this mechanism so everyone is forced to support the coming surveillance state to keep themselves safe alongside the imported and installed criminals. Santa Monica is right next door to Pali, and it is an absolute ghetto of administratively engineered squalor. This is what Democrats want Palisades to mirror.

...in the hands of unrestrained progressive rebuilders chosen by the very people you elected.

'Elections have consequences' - sometimes is the toughest lesson in the world.