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A California Senate bill that could have brought more affordable housing to the wealthy, star-studded enclave of Pacific Palisades, CA, which was decimated by the January wildfires, has been shelved until next year after a wave of community opposition.
Introduced in late February and amended in June, Senate Bill 549 would allow Los Angeles County to establish a “Resilient Rebuilding Authority” to coordinate and streamline recovery efforts in areas affected by the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires—but also to use taxes to purchase burned lots and build affordable housing on a portion of them.
Some of the new homes would be reserved for households with incomes of 30% to 60% of the area median income, while others would be set aside for families earning below 30% of the median.
Additionally, the bill would make a provision to build “supportive housing” for homeless people to get them off the streets.
Before the fire, Pacific Palisades was known as a glamorous corner of Los Angeles dotted with palatial homes belonging to A-listers like Tom Hanks and Ben Affleck.
Even after the inferno ravaged the area, incinerating some 7,000 structures, home values in the neighborhood remained staggeringly high. According to the latest data from Realtor.com®, as of June, the median list price in the Palisades was just shy of $5 million.
The typical household income in the area last month was $201,000, more than two and a half times the national median.
Bill sparks backlash
The proposal to add low-income housing to the area sparked strong opposition from some residents and community organizers, who claimed that they had been shut out from the decision-making process by politicians and outsiders.
“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 Los Angeles earlier this month.
Jessica Rogers, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents Association, has been leading the public fight against the controversial legislation.
In mid-July, Rogers penned a letter opposing the bill; so far more than 24,500 supporters have signed it.
Speaking to Fox 11, Rogers accused state lawmakers of attempting to orchestrate a “land grab,” and argued that Pacific Palisades should be restored to what it was, instead of being treated like politicians’ “pet project” where they get to decide what to do with the community.
“We had some low-income housing, and we had affordable housing,” said Rogers. “We want what we had on January 7. Nothing more, nothing less.”
Conspiracy theories spread
The bill has become the target of conspiracy theorists, with former reality TV star Spencer Pratt, who lost his home in the wildfire, telling his 2.1 million followers in a recent TikTok post that they should speak out against the legislation.
“The people that are in charge of this bill, they are the people in charge of letting that whole town burn down,” the alum of “The Hills” said. “Why would we have them in charge of rebuilding what they let burn down?”
As the Los Angeles Times first reported, other online commenters have gone even further, spreading baseless claims that the fires were set on purpose to clear the way for the county to buy up the land, rezone it and then rebuild on its own terms.
In the face of the misinformation mingled with widespread backlash, including criticism from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, state Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat from Santa Monica who authored Senate Bill 549, has agreed to halt and reassess the initiative.
“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 released July 16.
Allen went on to say the bill “will have to be deeply grounded in community input, empowerment, and decision-making, including the support of the impacted councilmembers.”