Pacific Palisades – after the fire

D. Berman, who grew up in the Pacific Palisades, reflects on the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires.

Pacific Palisades, a glitzy west side LA beachside community, has recently been in the news for devastating fires which destroyed over 12,500 homes. The media pushed story after story about all the expensive multimillion dollar homes lost, name dropping celebrities right and left. This depiction overlooked a much more complex socioeconomic situation. While this majority white middle-class neighbourhood has never been the vanguard of working-class activism, it absolutely plays a part in the US’s ongoing class war. It is a microcosm of increasing socioeconomic division and ‘class cleansing’ within LA.

The growth of ‘The Palisades’ – as it is known to locals – mirrors that of Los Angeles, exploding during the oil boom and growth of the entertainment industry in the 1920s. Movie studios were constructed at the corner of Sunset Blvd and Pacific Coast Highway in the 1910s, and then (ironically, considering our purpose here) burnt down in 1919 and 1922. That same year, Methodist missionaries arrived and officially founded Pacific Palisades with the intention of being a space of religious education.

This point is significant because most newly built LA communities at the time were speculative enterprises by subdividers. Property magnates were in cahoots with the California Department of Real Estate and Savings and Loan institutions to make sure that their new communities were white only communities. ‘Redlining’ was the process by which segregation was enforced without actual segregation laws. By refusing minorities access to credit and loans for houses in white areas, people of colour were pushed into segregated ghettos.  

Since Pacific Palisades was not founded by developers, this practice was not enforced there. Nevertheless, there was little to no racial diversity in these early years due to a lack of available jobs to people of colour nearby – ensured by racist practices by local unions. 

As Pacific Palisades grew, different neighbourhoods with varying socioeconomic dynamics came into existence. The Methodists created an area of small lots with modest homes on streets named in alphabetical order. The Alphabet Streets, the oldest neighbourhood in The Palisades, were close to the town centre and continued to house the more working class elements of the town up through the 1990s and even beyond. The Palisades Bowl was a trailer park established by the beach with the intention of being a beautiful and luxurious spot accessible for working and middle class families. The Huntington, on the other hand, its sprawling lots with ocean views near the magnificent bluffs overlooking the Pacific, saw the construction of sprawling early century Spanish colonial houses, such as that of Henry Miller. 

The development of the space and aviation industry in the 50s brought many of their associated workers, and the Palisades expanded rapidly. This was the classic ‘Americana’ period of US history, and The Palisades was a picture perfect postcard for this era. Residents from this time recount how idyllic and calm life was in Pacific Palisades, it was the epitome of the ‘American’ dream which everyone was chasing.

The Palisades was unique in that it was a small town village within the larger limits of Los Angeles. It had a village green, mom and pop independent shops, good public services, and a strong sense of community bolstered by events such as baseball games, Scouts troops, summer street parties and a huge fourth of July parade and fireworks display attended by all. 

With each decade, a new wave of wealth arrived, looking for that ‘quaint, village life’. I remember a popular t-shirt in the 90s, it read: ‘If you’re rich, you live in Beverly Hills. If you’re famous, you live in Malibu. If you’re lucky, you live in Pacific Palisades.’ 

However, in the 2000s, the Palisades became the place to live. Houses on the Alphabet Streets were being sold off and torn down one by one, modest homes replaced with huge McMansions pushing their limits all the way to the boundaries of their small plots. Family cars were replaced by Ferraris and other ultra luxury cars. The entire essence of the town was changing. But the final straw was yet to come.

Much of the original town centre was still owned by a trust set up by the original Methodist families. In 2012, after a long process of wearing down property owners and lease holders, Rick Caruso – mayoral candidate, billionaire property developer, and president of the LA Police Commission – bought all of the properties held by The Wilson Family Trust.

Caruso demolished much of the original 1950 historical town centre, replacing it in 2018 with an outdoor luxury mall, with the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci and Erewhon (think Whole Foods on steroids, where an 8 ounce (250g) Hailey Bieber’s Strawberry Glaze Skin Smoothie costs 25 dollars). The Palisades became ‘a tale of two cities’ – with the original residents on one side and the gaudy, ostentatious interlopers on the other. To exemplify the situation, I will tell you ‘a tale of two apartment buildings’.  

On the one hand, we have a 70s apartment complex. Built on Via de la Paz and Sunset, right in the town centre, it was three stories with stucco façade and wood balconies, typical of the time. A friend from elementary school lived there with her family, Syrian Catholics who had escaped persecution. My friend’s uncle found himself in The Palisades, her family following behind. Despite having a PhD in French, my friend’s father retrained as a mechanic. He found a job at the local Shell station, and then was able to buy an apartment in this building in 1984 for $100,000. 

Decades later, Caruso builds his new ‘perfect’ Disneyland-like complex right next door to my friend’s building. When I mean next door, I mean attached. They share a wall. One bedroom apartments in the new Caruso complex were going for $20,000 a month without the option to buy. Caruso’s business model is to be a forever landlord.

This was the first death of The Palisades. It was no longer a unified, close knit village centred around community events and a mom and pop town centre. Instead, it became an impersonal corporate mall, a tourist and shopping destination for the LA elite. Restaurants, shops, and amenities became too expensive for locals to use. It was becoming impossible for Palisadians to live in the Palisades. 

Then came the fire, and overnight the Palisades was gone. Except, of course, for Caruso’s mall. The use of fire retardant building materials was crucial to its survival. But so was the fact that Caruso brought in a private fire fighting service. These trucks were critical due to the fact the fire department ran out of water at 1.30 am the first night of the fire. So while LAFD was standing there, just watching buildings burn, literally helpless to stop the destruction, the private fire service had their own water supply. 

The story of an independent shop near the Caruso centre raises some important questions as to whether or not this private fire service actually impeded the work of LAFD. When Caruso bought all of the properties in the downtown area, there was one shop which refused to sell – PaliSkate. In the end, Caruso pushed ahead with the project and literally built around the unincorporated shop. During the fire, there is coverage of Caruso’s hired fire service parked directly outside of PaliSkate. The owner was relieved, thinking that her business would benefit from the protection. Instead, PaliSkate was allowed to burn while all of Caruso’s buildings around were saved. And guess what? That older apartment complex that was literally attached to Caruso’s mall- it burned. The fire was quite serendipitous for developers like Caruso, leaving the rest of the Palisades suddenly up for negotiation. 

Many residents just won’t be able to afford the cost of rebuilding. Increased construction costs are a serious roadblock. While previously around $400 per square metre, they are now around $1000. Tax refunds for 2021 show that the average house price in the area was $3.5million. However, it also showed that 40 per cent of households earn less than $100,000 a year. This data tells us that a large proportion of Palisadians could afford their houses only because they were purchased decades earlier. Even more crucially, households with this level of annual income will not qualify for loans to help them rebuild. 

This is even more significant considering the fire insurance catastrophe in California. For the past two years, companies have either cancelled policies outright or increased rates to the point that people couldn’t afford insurance at all. One resident I spoke to said that their insurance went up to $40,000 a year, and that was only the basic package without contents coverage. Another said that they had been cancelled the year before and went on the State replacement policy, but that the coverage was minimal and wouldn’t come close to what they would need to rebuild. Many will be forced to accept predatory lowball offers from developers so they can restart their lives.

Media coverage of The Palisades Fire was disturbing for me because it erased the original residents from the narrative of The Palisades, like they didn’t even exist. And I suppose they don’t anymore.

Banishment happened overnight. With 12,500 homes lost in The Palisades Fire and Altadena fires, there is currently a large displaced population in Los Angeles. Rental prices have skyrocketed. A real estate agent I spoke with found temporary accommodation for a client – a small three bedroom house for $30,000 per month. Within five minutes, ten other families had bid on the property, pushing the price up to $50,000 a month with one year’s rent in cash up front. How can one compete with that kind of purchasing power? 

Only the rich can rebuild. They are already in there with their construction teams, after having successfully pushed to be allowed access even before the United States Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Emergency Management Agency have finished toxic debris clearance. They don’t need to wait for insurance money or loans, they have enough liquidity to just buy their way out of the fire. And then there’s Caruso – making his media appearances, attacking the Democrats and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives (DEI), paving the way for another mayoral candidacy and more land acquisition. 

This seems like a pretty bleak outlook, and it is. There are a number of factors that make me view the situation through this lens. Proximity, community, and communication are key to resistance. The first two are out of the question in this situation, considering the obvious. Palisadians are spread thin throughout Southern California and even further. They are not having shared experiences anymore, nor are they able to communicate freely. Communication is done from afar; or even worse, through social media.

The political situation in the US right now also comes into play. People are divided into mainly two groups right now – MAGA and non MAGA – and the two sides hate each other viciously making collaboration unlikely. Furthermore, there is so much misinformation and politicisation from the MAGA side that it is nearly impossible to understand what is actually going on. The Trump administration and his cronies have turned the fires into an opportunity to inflame hate against the LGBTQ+ and POC communities, attacking any non cis white official as an ineligible product of DEI. All of this extra noise has the intended effect – paralysing the people.

The fires were absolutely devastating to residents of Malibu, Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and beyond. But unfortunately, they are just part of a much larger battle that is building. Resistance in Pacific Palisades will simply be part of the larger anti-fascist resistance that is forming in the US.