Today, Explained - Rebuilding Los Angeles

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

LA Times reporter Liam Dillon assesses the damage now that the fires are fully contained. Torched editor Alissa Walker explains how the 2028 Olympics might impede rebuilding efforts. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Andrea Kristinsdottir, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast Support Today, Explained by becoming a Vox Member today: http://www.vox.com/members Flea, Chad Smith, Anthony Kiedis, and John Frusciante of Red Hot Chili Peppers perform at the LA28 Olympic Games Handover Celebration. Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for LA28. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Donald Trump was not at the Grammys last night. 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, Chappell Rhone won Best New Artist and shouted out healthcare, Shakira showed up and shouted out immigrants, but no one got more shoutouts than the firefighters in Los Angeles, the city that hosted the show. An all-star band opened the Grammys with a cover of I Love L.A. by Randy Newman. The host, Trevor Noah, was asking for donations all night 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.

Carbo, Calvoy Carter. 16, Beyonce. Los Angeles fires are finally fully contained. We're gonna ask what comes next on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Adio. Adio is A-T-T-I-O. What do they do? It's an AI native CRM built for the next era of companies.

They say it's powerful data structure adapts to your business model, syncs in all your contacts in minutes, and enriches everything with actionable data. You can go to adio.com slash today explained and you'll get 15% off your first year. That's attio.com slash today explained. Okay, business leaders, are you here to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP. NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite

is your full business management system in one convenient suite. With NetSuite, you're running your accounting, your finance, your HR, your e-commerce, and more, all from your online dashboard. Upgrade your playbook and make the switch to NetSuite, the number one cloud ERP. Get the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash Vox. netsuite.com slash Vox. Today, today it rained. Sean Rommeswurm 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. Burnout cars, charred trees, the only thing left standing in many of these homes are like remnants of brick chimneys. That was our kitchen. It's just gone. Everything is just gone. This has been our family home. And everything is a total loss. This looks like the apocalypse. 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. And that, you know, the metals from that go into the air. So you have these heavy metals that have been measured miles downwind from the fires, ammunition, propane tanks, pesticides, car batteries, really bad stuff. And so I think this first challenge that you have is clearing out this toxic area.

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. We can't move forward until our properties are cleaned. And that caused a lot of consternation from people who want to try to rebuild their homes, obviously much faster than that. 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? Please don't kill our spirits. We just want to go home. That's it. We just want to rebuild, and we want to go home. 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.

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? Right. 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. 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. Those are the two things.

After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen. 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. What about local government? What about local government? What about state government? How can they be expediting this process for people right now?

So California Governor Gavin Newsom, LA 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. 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. Red tape, bureaucracy, all of it must go. 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. Another question when it comes to the rebuilding effort is, you know, many of these homes built in a half century ago or a century ago, today's fire codes in California is some of the strictest fire codes in the country for new builds. In some cases that may make rebuilding more expensive, but that could make these houses much safer to live in. 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. And of course that affects the cost of it and whether in some cases they'll actually rebuild. 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. We know Los Angeles has notoriously, some would say criminally high rent. I can't imagine the fires are helping.

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. 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. I've been quoted maybe 5,000. 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.

And these are for tiny one-bedroom apartments? One-bedroom apartments, yes. The gouging is out of control already. I'm seeing things double. I'm seeing rentals in Oxnard for $25,000 a month. And you mentioned that there's attention on permits and clearing out toxic materials, but is any government, state, local, federal paying attention to the renting crisis? 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. And so the state attorney general rob banta has tried to sort of marshal an effort to deal with this we have multiple criminal investigations right now that are moving towards prosecution uh... arrests holding people accountable these are crimes people can go to jail for up to a year uh... and and be slapped with a ten thousand dollar criminal fine as well. He's encouraged people to report examples Sent warning letters to more than 650 landlords and hotel operators around Southern, California

And he's even at this point criminally charged two people real estate agents for violating allegedly violated these price gouging laws instead of hopes These efforts will have at least a deterrent effect on what's been going on in the market. And you can see videos on social media that people were posting in the days after the fire. What's up guys, it's Christina, your price gouging landlords worst nightmare here to report a another property whose rent was raised since the fire started. I scroll 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. 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 people videoing themselves going on Zillow, finding an example of a listing that increases rent by more than 10%, telling people how to report them. 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 1300 possible examples of rent gouging, again, in this just sort of few weeks since this fire. 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. What do those fires tell us about how rebuilding might go? I mean, are we going to get 100% back to where we were, 50%, 125%? So I think it's really variable in these wildfire responses in California, even within California, but also around the country. 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. It's sad.

It's disappointing because so much time has gone by. Yeah. Year and a half later, town of Lahaina has not moved forward. In terms of a percentage, what is, are any of the businesses up and running? Zero businesses, zero. 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. But less than half of them in Malibu have been rebuilt know, more in the surrounding area. But, you know, 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. You know, 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. And so it can be really circumstantial in terms of, you know,

what happens where and why, you know, in Santa Rosa, for instance, the neighborhood that came back the quickest was in flatland and more middle-class and so easier and cheaper rebuilds than what happened in the richer neighborhoods actually in Santa Rosa. And I know the focus right now is just on helping people who have lost everything to something to something in between. How much discussion is being had about what the city's getting ready for in the next few years? A World Cup on Olympics?

So I think a lot. I mean, the president has brought that up. I just met with the Olympic people and they're all set to do a real job. The governor has certainly talked about that. That only reinforces the imperative moving quickly, doing in the spirit of collaboration, cooperation. He enlisted the head of the LA 2028 effort

as one of the key fundraisers for raising money, private dollars to help rebuild Los Angeles. I mean, the Olympics in LA 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. And so these events, not just the Olympics in 2028, but we have World Cup events in LA in 2028, but we have World Cup events in LA in 2026. Super Bowl is coming to LA again.

And so these mega events are at the least kind of putting timelines on things that absent them may not exist for rebuilding efforts. And so at a base level, people are saying LA is going to be showcased in not just nationally, but worldwide in many events over the coming years. And you know, you want every building effort that shows that resiliency and that recovery to show the world that you can do it. And I think that is certainly a challenge given the timeline here that folks are looking at and facing. Liam Dillon, LATimes.com. In a minute on Today Explained,

we're gonna 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. Okay, business leaders, are you playing defense or are you on the offense? Are you just, excuse me, hey, I'm trying to talk business here. As I was saying, are you here just to play or are you playing to win? If you're in it to win, meet your next MVP, NetSuite by Oracle. NetSuite is your full business management system in one suite.

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Get yourself a cocoon. Explained at checkout. Get yourself a cocoon. It's like another perfect day. Today Explained. My name is 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. And how awkward has the name of your newsletter become in the past few weeks? 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?

We also kind of knew this might have been a possibility. 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. 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? Yes. Next year, LA is hosting World Cup matches along with other cities across the continent. 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. 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.

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. It's so exciting. Yeah. The 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. Seven Super Bowls a day. Seven Super Bowls a day. We are basically bringing millions more people to a city that is having a real crisis when it comes to our infrastructure already. 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. The city does not have money to plan and implement basic fixes to sidewalks, bike lanes, parks, street lights. There's a lot of trash everywhere. We don't have enough shade trees. 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. If there is, God forbid, another fire and LA faces even more rebuilding, you're talking about resources for any big sporting event. They need extra police, they need traffic control, they need garbage collection, all of those things. 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.

We're about to host the Olympics in 2028. Oy va voy. I don't know how this happened. There was this great quote from John Mulaney who did this live variety show about LA last year and he really explained I think how everybody in LA feels about the Olympics coming. 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. And to cheer her up, you made her host the Olympics.

So there's two things that are important to know about our mega event era here in LA. One is you've probably heard this promise that it's a no-build games. Among the many ways the city hopes to distinguish themselves is by building no new venues for the biggest boarding event on the planet. Zero. 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. The other part of it is not really 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. Part of having a no-car Olympics means getting people not to drive, but also using public transportation to get to the games. 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. Right. So people who have never been to Los Angeles may still have heard that commuting in the seven Super Bowls a day. 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. 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? 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, and they had a list of big transportation projects like subway extensions that were going to be completed before the games happened. This nearly nine hundred million dollars 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.

Some of those are finished, not all of them are finished. Some of them will definitely get finished, but what we've seen from Metro in particular is kind of a reprioritization based on reality. 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. Okay, so what I'm hearing is it was going to take a boatload of money to get Los Angeles ready for the Olympics,

and now a boatload of money is needed to rebuild and to restore the city after these fires. Are there a lot of Angelenos right now saying, hey, let's prioritize one over the other? And if so, which one is it? There's definitely always been a big contingency of people who have said LA should not do this. The NoLympics, NoLympics 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. The 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 saying that their city shouldn't do it. And then LA was like, sure, we'll do it, no problem.

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? 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. So there's this growing, I would say, 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. We were promised these permanent improvements to the city and that people everywhere would

benefit from having these games here. The LA 2020 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. And you know, even some council members are expressing that they have doubts. 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? 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. This is biblical level destruction, and the city of LA is hosting the Olympics in four years. 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. That was really, I think, what prompted perhaps Newsom and other people here in LA to start to frame a recovery around the Olympics. 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. That was already the plan before even before the fire. So will they be taken away from us? I don't think so. But they always do have a plan to disperse events as needed, find backup venues. I mean, there's always a plan. 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 the pandemic as evidence. And I don't think LA is a resilient city. We haven't planned in a way, both through our infrastructure or our policy, to absorb the great risk and the impacts of something like this. 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. We can have some fun mega events, we can have some parties, we can bring some tourists here, let them have a good time,

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. And let's figure out how to make a city that works for everybody. Alyssa Walker, reader at Torch.LA. Abhishek Artzi made our show today from LA. He was edited by Aminah Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andhra Krishnan's daughter not from LA. It's Today Explained. you