Gavin Newsom, California Democrats Pull a Bait and Switch on Palisades Fire Victims

Victoria Taft-Opinion : Jul 17, 2025
PJ Media

"He said he wouldn't grab the land where homes burned down in the Palisades to build low-income housing facilities—but he and Karen Bass just did. They are changing the character of the Palisades and Malibu to fit their woke agenda. They don't care what residents want. They can't even deliver building permits properly. But this fight is not over..." -Richard Grenell via X

[PJMedia.com] When dreamy, beach-adjacent Pacific Palisades became a moonscape after the conflagration that started on Jan. 7, 2025, homes worth billions of dollars, lifetime bodies of work by musicians and artists, and prized real estate in one of the best areas ofLAbecame dust. Many fire victims want to rebuild and reclaim their old community. However, it didn't take long before the state and local leaders who had promised to move mountains to streamline the rebuilding process began to have other ideas. Instead of receiving help from Mayor Karen Bass and Governor Gavin Newsom, they and state Democrats dragged out the permitting. And now it appears we know why. (Screengrab image: via X-Rick Caruso)

The Palisades and Altadena fires left 15,000 structures in cinders and thousands of people without homes.

Now, using lack of housing in the state as an excuse, Gov. Gavin Newsom and LA planners are considering instituting planning changes that would play the Palisades like a game of Tetris, placing hundreds of units of low-income housing in areas where previously there had been two.

This is how Newsom put it:

Thousands of families—from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu—are still displaced, and we owe it to them to help. The funding we're announcing today will accelerate the development of affordable multifamily rental housing so that those rebuilding their lives after this tragedy have access to a safe, affordable place to come home to.

Senate Bill 549, which is moving through the California legislature, in addition to the county's new ideas, would put in place so-called "Resilient Rebuilding Authorities" that give these bureaucrats new taxing authority, using such things as higher property taxes, tax-increment financing, and grants to buy up burned-out land and put in low-income housing. That's right: They'd raise the prices of the property taxes on the very people they were supposed to be helping by increasing taxes and gobbling up the Palisades and other fire-ravaged areas, and forever changing the community by infilling it with low-income apartment buildings... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

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