L.A. housing prices expected to grow after fires amid already existing crisis

The housing crisis has long been an issue in Los Angeles thanks to expensive rent and a limited supply of homes. In fact, the median monthly rental price in Los Angeles is just over $2,800, 41% higher than the national median, according to real estate marketplace site Zillow. These prices are now only expected to grow after the devastation caused by the wildfires. Thousands of homeowners and renters have lost their homes, reducing the number of available places to live. Fewer homes available and higher demand. Long-time residents of Los Angeles may be priced out of the area. Cynthia Strathman joins us now from Los Angeles. She's the executive director of Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, an economic justice organization in Los Angeles that focuses on housing issues. Cynthia, thank you for being here. What was the housing crisis in LA before these fires and how was it being addressed? Hold on one second. I want to make sure that you're unmuted. I can't hear you. Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you so much. Okay. Hi. So the housing crisis before the fires was already fairly dire, especially for folks at the lower end of the income level. That was basically an affordability crisis and was a big driver of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles as well. What we're expecting with the fires is to see some of those tensions exacerbated as people at the higher end of the income spectrum who've been forced out of places like Pacific Palisades and are starting to look for homes in areas surrounding them. So what needs to be done? We've already seen some landlords price gouging post fires. What needs to be done to ensure that people don't get priced out as these areas are rebuilt? Well, I think we need to implement many of the same measures that we've been looking at before the fires even started, which are things like rent controls and in the case of people who've been impacted by the fires, temporary pauses on rent increases. Altogether, we're also very concerned about evictions because many tenants have been pushed out of their homes either legally or illegally in the past. And certainly when you have a situation like this, it incentivizes unscrupulous landlords to try to push residents out in favor of wealthier residents who might be able to pay more in rent. So, Cynthia, is that an issue of needing to work with the state legislature to get some of this stuff passed? Well, the state legislature is always a good idea, but I think we can also work with some of our local municipal officials and I think that they're considering some of these really important mitigation efforts that can help prevent, as you said, long-standing residents from being forced out of the area by the fires. They can help consider some of these measures and put them into place right now. We know home insurance has also been a serious issue for homeowners, particularly in the areas directly affected by the fires. How does that affect the ongoing housing crisis? Well, we're going to be watching that really closely because it has had a big impact on the housing crisis. When home insurance costs go up, obviously the cost of living in a home goes up. Affordable housing owners and managers have seen a lot of problems trying to get insurance and trying to keep home insurance that's affordable. So that's going to be an issue moving forward. And I think a lot of people are really starting to question, is insurance the best way to manage some of our social risks that we incur? Insurance companies are for-profit companies. They're here to make money. And with some of the risks that we're seeing, it's not clear that they're going to really want to take that on. And how do we as a society manage those kinds of risks? We can't count on a private actor to really sustain our communities. Cynthia, we have less than a minute left. What else is so important for people to know about this issue? I mean, I think one of the things I'd really like to highlight is how important it is that we really spend the money we need to mitigate climate disasters at their root causes. We've known that Los Angeles is a high risk of fire for quite a while. I would like to not see us put a lot of money into public infrastructure that's just stopgap or mitigation. We need to think about the long term. Where are we building? How are we building? And who are we building for? And what kind of infrastructure do we need to really make sure that our communities are going to be safe over the long haul? Cynthia Strathman, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you so much.