There was a housing crisis in Los Angeles County long before the fire extended through Las Palisadas del Pacífico, Altadena and parts of the San Fernando Valley, turning thousands into homeless people.
Now, it is an even larger and more challenging housing crisis that requires that the officials and developers of the city and the county discover how to rebuild more homes resistant to fire in the burning areas, as well as continue to focus on the construction of desperately necessary homes .
Los Angeles County already had a shortage of 500,000 units, and more than half of the tenants spend more than a third of their income for rent. There have been reports of price rupture, in violation of a state law that prohibits increasing rent in units available by more than 10% during an emergency state.
Now more than ever, the city and county must accelerate affordable housing projects in the works, bring other projects to development as quickly as possible and aggressively close the increase in prices.
Reconstruction in the burning zone will be your own unique challenge. The process must be simplified, as Mayor Karen Bass has said it will be, but there must be a reflective analysis of how to rebuild in a safer way in a high -fire zone before people begin to rebuild.
Meanwhile, people who may really be at risk of being homeless are the people who worked as housewives and gardeners and in other low jobs that were lost when the people who used them lost their homes. They may need financial assistance. “There is no insurance payment for someone to wash the dishes in a restaurant that burned,” said Tommy Newman, vice president of Public Affairs at United Way of Greater Los Angeles.
The organization has raised approximately $ 8 million to date to distribute low -income people whose income has been interrupted by fires or who have lost homes in fires. It will also offer assistance to personnel working for service suppliers for homeless people who lost their homes or were displaced by fires, mainly in Altadena. And the organization is exploring how to prevent the displacement of residents of a lifetime.
Not all who lose a house will need financial help beyond an insurance payment. However, there will be people who lost houses but probably cannot afford to rebuild or buy again, at least not in the Los Angeles area. Do we simply lose these owners for another city or state? What helps, if any, should the city, county or the state offer you?
The non -profit housing defense group abundant Housing has made a series of recommendations to accelerate housing development. Among them, the group has asked the city leaders and the county to accelerate and give up a discretionary review for all multiple homes not in areas identified as severe fire risk areas. (Bass has already resigned, in executive order, a discretionary review of the burned areas of the city). This is definitely an idea that should be considered. We have needed for a long time more multiple homes, particularly close to the traffic lines and throughout the commercial corridors.
This period after disaster should be a turning point for government officials to analyze how to accelerate very necessary homes everywhere in the city and county.
