As the Pacific Palisades continues its rise out of the ashes, affordable housing won’t be on the menu for the oceanside enclave in the near future.
On Wednesday, State Senator Ben Allen put the kibosh — for now — on Senate Bill 549, which would establish a government body to determine a path forward after January’s deadly wildfires, Fox 11 reported. Detractors believe it would allow Los Angeles County to take over burned lots and sell them to the highest bidder.
“I appreciate the input of the folks who have weighed in about the bill, and along with legislative colleagues have decided that it would be best for us to pause the bill until next year to give us more time to see if we can get it right,” Allen said in a statement, per Fox 11. “For me to feel comfortable proceeding, the bill will have to be deeply grounded in community input, empowerment and decision-making, including the support of the impacted council members.”
The wording of SB 549 would allow Los Angeles County to create a “Resilient Rebuilding Authority,” which would examine housing shortages and issues with rebuilding from the Palisades wildfire, according to The Los Angeles Times. The new local authority would be able to buy the lots, rebuild homes on them and offer them back to the original owners at discounted rates.
The controversial bill was already approved by the California Senate, but Palisades residents have been voicing their concerns.
“It does sound quite a bit like Big Brother deciding what’s good for all of us,” Aileen Haugh, a Palisades resident, told Fox 11. “It’s irritating to think that other people [not local residents] are going to make decisions of what gets built and how it gets built.”
Jessica Rogers, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents’ Association, assented.
“[Lawmakers are] asking for a land grab,” Rogers said, per Fox 11. “This is a rebuild, this is not a ‘Politicians get to decide a pet project on what they’re going to decide in the Palisades.’ This is ‘Residents of this community get to decide what happens in our rebuild phase, period.’”
SB 549 also drew criticism from figures like reality TV personality Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the January blazes.
In a series of videos on TikTok, “The Hills” star said he consulted with an artificial intelligence chatbot that told him the bill would allow L.A. County to buy up burned lots in the Palisades and convert them into low-income housing, remove local zoning decisions and push for denser reconstruction in the area.
Gov. Gavin Newsom explained the discrepancy between rumors and reality to Pratt on X after the bill was paused.
In the six months since the fires, 13 rebuilding permits have been issued in the Palisades, according to the county’s permitting progress dashboard.
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