California Democrats, led by potential 2028 presidential candidate Governor Gavin Newsom, are looking to exploit the wreckage from the Los Angeles wildfires to build low-income “affordable” rental units, taking advantage of distraught homeowners who just lost everything. However, instead of rolling over and taking the abuse, citizens have fought back and at least temporarily stopped this scheme – exposing the rampant corruption in California politics in the process.
Following the adage to never let a “serious crisis go to waste,” Newsom recently announced a $101 million initiative “to help rapidly rebuild critically needed, affordable multifamily rental housing in the fire-devastated Los Angeles region.” This adds to another $432 million released in February and March following the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires in January, which wiped out more than 10,000 homes, at least 1,000 businesses, and killed 30 people.
In other words, while homeowners are still picking through the wreckage, Democrat officials are shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars for government-subsidized rental units. Even worse, they are pressuring devastated LA residents to sell their property on the cheap to build them.
Earlier this month, SB 549 passed the California Senate and immediately ignited outrage among fire victims in LA, and specifically in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that was devastated by the blazes. As a local Fox News affiliate reported, SB 549 “would allow Los Angeles County to make a so-called ‘Resilient Rebuilding Authority.’ The group would target housing shortages and issues with rebuilding from the Palisades Fire. It would also buy fire-destroyed lots and rebuild a percentage of them for low-income housing units.”
Under the provisions of the bill, “at least 40 percent of the funds must be allocated to building multi-unit low-income housing on lots where single-family homes once stood, particularly in areas like Altadena, Pacific Palisades, and Malibu,” KFI AM 640 also reported.
As Jessica Rogers, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents’ Association, pointed out, SB 549 is nothing more than a “land grab” by the state government. “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,” Rogers said. “This is residents of this community get to decide what happens in our rebuild phase, period.”
It’s clear that the proponents of SB 549 expected the bill to quietly sail through the California Assembly and on to Newsom’s desk for signature. But outraged residents quickly grasped what was happening and rallied opposition to the measure. A few days after the bill passed the California Senate, its sponsor, State Senator Ben Allen, announced that the bill was being put on “pause” until 2026.
“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. “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 councilmembers.”
Of course, neither Allen nor any California Democrat expressed any such concern until outraged residents pointed out that the state legislature was attempting to force them off their property to build government housing. Allen even hilariously blamed “the right-wing blogosphere” – despite the fact that it was the primarily liberal residents of Pacific Palisades who led the opposition to the bill.
Allen wasn’t the only Democrat who apparently couldn’t see that it was his own voters rebuking liberal affordable housing schemes. Newsom told the LA Times that “opportunists [were] exploit[ing] this tragedy to stoke fear — and pit communities against each other.”
“The state is not taking away anyone’s property, instituting some sort of mass rezoning or destroying the quality and character of destroyed neighborhoods. Period,” Newsom told the newspaper. “Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or deliberately lying. That’s not just wrong — it’s disgraceful.”
But it is a fact the state does indeed want to turn single-family homes into low-income, government-subsidized housing. As Los Angeles Magazine reported on several financing proposals under consideration by the California legislature, “The two separate ideas open the door for the development of multi-unit low-income housing on lots where single family homes once stood in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu and other devastated areas.”
Others are pointing out that government officials are prioritizing rebuilding multi-unit rental structures while single-family homeowners have faced a nightmare of red tape and permitting delays to rebuild their homes.
“Though California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass pledged to ease rebuilding efforts by waiving permitting fees and review requirements and removing red-tape, it took about three weeks for residents to learn that wasn’t true,” Elizabeth Stauffer wrote for Legal Insurrection on July 16. “Six months on, the entire process appears to have stalled. Only a handful of building permits have been issued to those whose homes were lost.”
The situation is so bad the LA Times recently ran an article explaining “what to do when your wildfire rebuild permit is delayed.” Just 200 of the 800 permits have been approved as of early July, the newspaper acknowledged.
While Newsom did sign an executive order to lift some home building regulations in early July, it still comes six months after the fires first swept through the Los Angeles area. A separate March executive order aimed to speed up the replacement of utility structures.
The long delays were predicted soon after the fire by conservative comedian Adam Carolla, who suggested the bureaucratic nightmare of rebuilding could even cause California to vote Republican. “You guys all voted for Karen Bass, the Mayor of Los Angeles, you all voted for Gavin Newsom and now you [expletive] get what you get,” Carolla said.
California Democrats clearly expected residents to quietly sell their fire-damaged lots for cheap to the government to build affordable housing. But instead, they fought back and refused to sacrifice their homes on the altar of left-wing “affordable housing” fantasies.
The next step – and one that has proven particularly difficult for California residents – is to vote out the failed leaders who tried such an outrageous scheme in the first place.
Matt Lamb is an AMAC Newsline contributor and is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
And you wondered where all these mysterious fires came from! This was always their goal, it’s why building permits are impossible to get.
As usual, the Democratic Elite want to buy cheap, build new housing that they are invested in, so they can reap huge profits and could care less about the people who have suffered loss. This is another grand scheme to put citizens in the city and get people out of rural areas for better future control of the people. There is no FREEDOM with their schemes.
Just rename California “THE SOVIET SOCIALIST STATE OF CALIFORNIA IN AMERICA.”
Again a dictatorial plan that Newsom and his cronies tried to push through. They lie and lie till their plan is pushed through and then they blame the reps. when people object. It’s the people that decide their future in these burn areas not the Newsom and Bass in this world. The people decide and then they tell their representatives that have been voted in to execute that plan. Not the other way around. Ever since Obama started neighborhood organizing meetings. He talked the people into relenting their power guaranteed under the constitution to those representing them in govt. That is what is wrong in America and the democrats still don’t understand why they lost the election. They took the power away from the people and are busy destroying the constitution and our form of government. What is going on in CA is a test by the dems for the rest of the nation. Expect more fires and floods across the country to grab the land to rebuild in the vision of the communists in charge. Stand your ground people or we will be lost forever.
Look at any larger city these day and see mass amounts of huge apartment complexes being build all over the place. For whom are these complexes being built?? Makes one wonder the end game to all this building.Near where I live a new housig subdivision is being built (houses 5 feet apart, no yards) the huge sign says rent a new home NOT buy a home. What???? A whole subdivision with no home ownership. Rents start at $2700 per month, if you want the front yard upkeep it adds to the price. Again for whom are these for?? A mortgage payment price to rent. Again what is the end game???
Their “affordable housing” would go by the way of their failed train: takes way too long and costs 5 times what it should! Calafornians need to wake up to the fact that the Democrats in power do not have your interests in their minds or hearts. They will exploit you, just like they have everything else they touch. They are more interested in building a slave system for illegal aliens to do their housework, watch their kids, and pick the crops, while they live behind gated mansions. Wake up,before you all end up with nothing.
Barry and Joe both wanted to increase public housing and lower the number of individual homes. It was/is part of their “equity” scam! Why should some people have better homes than others? [Except them and their millionaire, elitist buddies.] Have slum apartments in the suburbs and the requisite problems they create. NewSCUM and BassFACE both promised to cut red tape and get people back in THEIR homes quickly [LIE]. Now, squatters are camping on some of these vacant properties and they refuse to move!
If those incompetent California leaders had done their jobs, those fires would have been contained and those homes still there!
Democrats are accusing Pres. Trump OF being a dictator and here they are forcing fire devastated homeowners in the affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles, to sell their land for cheap so they can turn the area into a low income homes. No wonder L.A has been delaying permits to rebuild, because they had a bad intention for the land of the misinformed homeowners? Hello SOCIALISM, LOS ANGELES IS JUST THE START?
Be careful it’s the introduction of 15 minute cities
Citizens of California, particularly single-family tax-paying homeowners had better unite before it’s too late, organize and oppose the communistic intentions of the current crop of “legislators.” They have an agenda to consolidate populations to establish and effect more control over people, while pretending to be “helping” the disadvantaged. See it for what it really is–compressing people into tighter groups, provide the necessity to utilize public transportations designed, devised and developed long before any need was present
to justify the expenditures wasted on unnecessary projects. Public transportation and public housing are not gifts to the people. Each should be remunerative in that the fees charged users (not taxpayers) should support the systems. Politicians with no business sense should never be elected to public office. They represent leadership of the parasitic classes.
Now the truth comes out as to why they burned Palisades.
Demo criminals at work. Nice precision hits with the Lazer and the land is mine.
As if everything coming out of ‘that’ state doesn’t already stink, this entire fiasco smells particularly bad starting with the cause of the fire itself. It’s been suggested that this is a NWO plan and we all know newscum’s stance on that particular stinky topic.
Cabrini Greene by the Sea. Chicago slums, just with better weather. Fight it, folks!
Housing for criminal border crossers only. Wall off California and just let it fend for itself. I am sure we don’t need Napa wine or Hollywood garbage. Just fall into the Pacific, even better.
This is nothing new in CA. They are doing it all over the US. Read up on it. There is a land grab all over. People’s farms and land that have been in their family for generations. They’re doing it here and we are trying to fight it. Trump needs to set-up a special team to fight this.
Nothing like high rise low rent apartments overlooking THE BEACH. Yeah, that’ll make me want to visit. not.
Here in the geographic center of So California,Democrats are allowing multistory apartments everywhere you look.This is causing massive densification,where we once had mostly single family homes.They aren’t adding any more roads.So,we will get huge traffic congestion,more air pollution,more uninsured motorists,more accidents,more crime.Democrats want lower home prices and I believe,as people get fed up with sardine living,they will exit and home prices will decline.Eventually the area will become slums,as the people who pay taxes exit,leaving millions of poor.
SO, WHERE’S THE 100 MILLION+ THE FEDS SENT FOR THE VICTIMS IN THIS HELL HOLE?! IS BASSASS AND NEWSCUM SPENDING IT BUYING UP THE BURNED-OUT PROPERTY?! PLUS A FEW OTHER SHYSTER INVESTOR GROUPS!!
So the Dems are saying they want ‘affordable housing’ in Palisades and such. Are they going to make Palisades another Hood with cheap housing? Oh nooo. They will buy it cheap and developers will build apartments then resell at exorbitant amounts. It will be extremely profitable for them. Follow the money honey. You lose. They win. How can anyone still believe them? Y’all choose. But think before you do.
This was their Goal all along , they set the fires for just this purpose, F the American Citizens who worked hard for their home . Wake-up America this could happen anywhere the Demorats have no shame.
This is exactly what happened in Sonoma County after the devastating fires – instead of beautiful landmarks, we now have high rise condos right down to the curb. They have ruined Santa Rosa to make way for more weffare and illegals.Most were not able to rebuild.
This should be an incentive to deport those in the area.
Convince me that like the Maui fires, these LA fires were not intentionally set for this purpose.
They just pushed it down the road, until the people standing up to them, throw in the towel and stop fighting them.
This is a form of using that eminent domain tactic to steal property for owners so developers can achieve the political more profitable goal of the use of the properties.It is like having the government/ and elitists tell us regular folks that we don’t deserve to won property for our benefit.especially when they use this eminent domain tactic, the owner never gets the better part of the bargain financially.
Mr Sleazie and his hand dance. A true liars liar!
This is not just the California Democratic’s it is the entire Democratic Party!! Their agenda is to destroy America and the American people and it shows just how much they don’t care!! It further shows how non American the Democratic Party really has become!! It is about time that the GOP sees that they are not dealing with Americans but are truly dealing with an enemy to our country and democracy!! The Democratic Party has said it in so many was that we are at war, when will the GOP get it!!!!!!
The government is just stalling, knowing the owners of the properties are still required to pay their home mortgages for their burned out homes, In another year, homeowners will be so desperate to get out from under their, now overpriced vacant lot, they’ll sell their properties for anything they can, thinking it’ll help.
My sister-in-law’s brother is a professor with San Francisco State University. She being a conservative Republican and a business owner. He is so far left that they sometimes can barely hold a conversation. She and I are thankful we reside elsewhere and not within California.
How quickly we forget, especially when it doesn’t impact us. Who remembers what happened in Lahaina? Another land grab by the Demoncrats. We haven’t heard anything more on that.
Just one more step closer to 15 minute cities
California wants to buy the land and build “affordable multi-family rental housing” which is another term called government housing. Government housing exists in communist countries and takes away the American dream of home ownership. The voters better wake up and start electing those who want to keep California a free and capitalistic state. Our freedom of choice has been eroding with the regulations that have been passed. This is yet one more nail in the coffin.
Newsom and Bass should be impeached for all of the destruction and crime they have pushed onto their citizens. Why are they still in office???? Are CA citizens brain-dead??
“The state is not taking away anyone’s property, instituting some sort of mass rezoning or destroying the quality and character of destroyed neighborhoods. Period,” Newsom told the newspaper. “Anyone claiming otherwise is either misinformed or deliberately lying. That’s not just wrong — it’s disgraceful.”
Translation: This is exactly what they want to happen. If one were a cynic, one might suggest that the ineptitude of government fire “prevention” was planned to make this a possibility. If anything, this statement kind of makes one think that the threat to investors and landlords not to take advantage of the situation right after the fires was just to prevent competition to the government who planned to do exactly that themselves (and reward their cronies who will build and own the “low income” multi-family housing).
2 expand homelessness
Ahhh yes, the extremely caring government of the state of California, where your debt is astronomical, your economy is in the toilet,
you just lost your home & possessions to a fire they were at fault for & now they want to give you pennies on the dollar to steal your property, not help you rebuild. Gotta love Democrats
On the flip side, globalists like Black Rock with Vanguard, using retirement money are buying up single family homes so young couples “will own nothing but will be happy.” Deliberate torching of homes while preventing means of fighting fires is criminal and treasonous. Low-income high rises have never worked out, especially government-run. These globalists must be stopped before we lose our culture and country despite President Trump’s massive efforts.
The only fault I found with this article was “… potential 2028 presidential candidate Governor Gavin Newsom ….”. Put kamala as a serious contender, and I doubt he would get the votes she got in her nomination to run for president in 2024. (Yeah … I said it.). He leads California, only because he has pulled the wool over the eyes of the elite, the immigrants, and the ignorant. Running for president, (at least so far) requires votes from the entire nation, and their aren’t that many elite, immigrants and ignorant people throughout the US to buy his crap. Hawaii and California … if they get by with setting fires, and the elites making land grabs … it’s open season on fires across the nation.
The California stink is far-reaching. These politicians are so arrogant and so blatant about their actual goals. Are they planning to build these rental units in the Palisades? Karen Bass promised Pres. Trump she would expedite the permits to rebuild but she was lying and so far hardly any have been given out. I am glad every day I left that indecent state. People always cite the beautiful weather. Really? CA has 4 seasons: fire, earthquake, mud slides and Santa Ana winds. Not one reason to live there.
I like the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” and its about a “fire sale” created to gain control by panic and confusion, and steal everyone blind.
democrats are just unbelievable. Why did you all vote these people in?? Wake up CA, America!!!! Yea build low income housing for all THE MILLIONS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS!!! Thx Joe Biden, I think he should be prosecuted. Same crap with democrats in CO, they are putting so much money to house, give tons of free crap tax payers paying for. Now CO in debt thx to dems here protecting, hiding, standing up gor illegals. U S CITIZENS IS WHO THESE PEOPLE SHLD BE STANDING UP FOR. WE ARE PAYING THEIR SALARIES!!! It was embarrasing with the lack of demicratic leadership during the fires!!!! Watching on the news. Then everyone attacking ICE AGENTS DOING THEIR JOBS PROTECTING AMERICA ALL LEAD BY DEMS!!! I COMPLEYELY BELIEVE IN LEGAL IMMIGRATION BUT FOR BIDEN/HARRIS TO ALLOE ALL THESE ILLEGALS TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY & PUT OUR NATIONAL SECURITY AY RISK!!! YOU WONDRR WHY PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS TO STAND UP FOR US!!! STOP VOTING FOR DEMS THEY WANT TO DESTROY AMERICA, WONDER WHERE THEY WILL LIVE THEN. VOTE THEM OUT, WAKE UP DRMOCRATS UNFORTUNAYELY DONT CARE ABOUT EVERYONE DEVASTATED BY THE FIRES. GOOD LUCK & MAY GOD HELP YOU ALL, VOTE REPUBLICAN!!!
He will never let the owners rebuild Palisades. Gavin Newsom and stupid puppet Karen Bass have held back monies and the owners were not even allowed on their own property. They will build low cost housing and pocket kickbacks. Money and greed their middle names!!
This was their plan all along. That’s why they did NOTHING to prevent or stop the fire.
Make it right??? People’s homes burned to the ground. They have the right and should have everything they need to rebuild. That makes it right…PERIOD!
want to get Newsom out of a job/hopes for presidency: RECALL him @ SavingCalifornia.vote to get petition; print it/sign it/mail it in
While these politicians sit in their mansions overlooking the ocean, all you peasants are going to be required to RENT tiny little shoebox apartments stacked one on top of the other!
What is a Democrat with another dirty little trick up their sleeve? Filthy Marxist, of course. The Democrat DEMONRAT party is as evil as evil can get and needs to be totally outlawed in the US. GET THEM OUT OF OUR GOVERNMENT!
Gruesome has a podcast that he sends out to various states as he preps for a run for president. Time for folks in those states that can receive this podcast start letting him know that you are not fooled and his liberal policies are not welcome.
It is easy to see who started those fires and what their goal was. When do the hand cuffs come out???????