Rahm Emanuel’s infamous dictum — “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” — is alive and well in the Golden State, apparently.
A little over a half a year on from the destruction wrought by the Palisades and Eaton wildfires in Los Angeles, California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is using the opportunity to pump over $100 million into “multifamily low-income housing development,” according to The Center Square, despite the fact that some of the residents whose houses were burned down are still facing issues rebuilding.
The plan was unveiled Tuesday and will, officials say, “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles” by building new units in “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.”
This sounds good until you realize that this is being done under an ordinance that requires rent-protected housing — in other words, apartments in Los Angeles that were constructed before October 1978 — to be replaced with housing aimed at those in the “low” and “very low” income brackets on a county-wide level.
“Los Angeles has taken significant steps to rebuild after January’s fires, but the devastation is significant and there remains a long road ahead,” Newsom said in a statement.
“Thousands of families – from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu – are still displaced, and we owe it to them to help,” it continued.
“The funding we’re announcing today will accelerate the development of affordable multifamily rental housing so that those rebuilding their lives after this tragedy have access to a safe, affordable place to come home to.”
Now, in case you are unfamiliar with Los Angeles County, there are a few things you should know about it and why this is problematic.
First, it’s incredibly large in population — larger than countries such as the Bahamas, Cyprus, Jamaica, Lebanon, Luxembourg, and Singapore.
Do you think Democrats are bad with money?
Second, while income varies across the region, “low” and “very low” income across the entire county is significantly lower than what passes as “rent-protected” in the upscale Palisades.
Furthermore, as local resident and Breitbart writer Joel Pollak noted, many of the area’s natives “are struggling to rebuild, thanks to the fact that many lost their insurance policies and were forced onto the California FAIR plan, on Newsom’s watch.”
Why’s that? Well, as it turns out, California has multifarious restrictions that limit what private home insurance companies can charge. Instead of putting their tail between their collective legs and swallowing the bill, insurers did what anyone could have predicted they would do: They stopped insuring homes in California.
Because of that crisis, California introduced a state-run insurer of last resort, the so-called FAIR Plan. The only way that you could reasonably call it fair is if you reasoned that, with no other competition and the whiz-bang efficiency big government is known for, it had to be prohibitively expensive by default.
Many of the people whose homes and businesses were destroyed couldn’t afford this kind of fairness — and, given the unspoken “you break it, you buy it” clause of the modern social contract, one might think they’d be the first beneficiaries of state handouts. One would be wrong.
Instead, Jennifer Seeger — deputy director for the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s Division of State Financial Assistance — noted exactly where the money is going toward.
“The 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles County have intensified the region’s longstanding housing crisis, underscoring the urgent need for multifamily low-income housing development,” Seeger wrote in an HCD Notice of Funding Availability.
“The Multifamily Finance Super NOFA – Los Angeles Disaster (MFSN-LA Disaster) makes funds more accessible to support the development of safe, fire-resilient multifamily low-income housing that will provide long-term stability, protect vulnerable populations, and contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles.”
Her office will also prioritize funding for projects which provide 40 percent of its units to either the homeless or people who have spent over 15 days in “jails, hospitals, prisons, and institutes of mental disease.”
Beyond the fact that Los Angeles’ solutions to low-income housing seem to be sub-ideal already (I seem to recall a proliferation of tents on a number of the city’s major thoroughfares) and the fact that this does nothing to quell rumors that the state would use the fires as a cynical excuse to socially engineer, notice what’s conspicuously missing despite the massive amount of money being thrown at this: any sort of real plan on how to avoid this in the future.
Fixing California’s broken insurance infrastructure? Nobody seems to want to seriously take that on. Aggressively clearing brush and creating fire breaks so that we don’t see a repeat? Sorry, the vulnerable three-toed dodo snail population might suffer. Hold those in power to account? Pfft, please, what’re Californians gonna do — vote Republican?
Keep this up and they just might, Gov. Newsom.
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