Altadena At The Crossroads
As the ashes cool, the housing market heats up.
Mimi Dwyer, Jesus Jiménez, and Ken Bensinger, in In the Ashes of Altadena, Rebuilding Is Not an Easy Decision, do the classic ‘slice of life’ reporting, telling the stories of a handful of Altadena, California residents grappling with the existential post-wildfire question: shall I rebuild and stay or sell and leave?
The authors draw a muddled picture. Some sell and migrate out of California altogether. Others would like to sell and buy another home in Altadena. Others want to rebuild, but the build out doesn’t pencil out.
Here’s what you might conclude, reading between the lines. For many in Altadena whose homes burned, the only sane response will be to sell. The Los Angeles region’s wildfires have driven the logistics and costs of rebuilding beyond what is sensible: who can live through 3-three to five years of turmoil on top of extremely high reconstruction costs?
Some might resettle locally, but high demand for homes will push those prices much higher than the status quo ante. Therefore, many will choose — or be forced, financially — to relocate out of the area, or out of the state.
The likely outcome will be more wealthy people moving in who can afford the costs (perhaps including self-insuring), and who have somewhere else to reside while rebuilding.
The authors do not boil down the likely outcome, however. It’s an exercise left to the reader. Maybe they were swayed by the new 'Altadena Not For Sale' boosterism, or look to examples like Santa Rosa, California when post-fire zoning changes slowed development and blocked a change in the community’s ‘character’.
Note that ‘change in character’ is jargon for some established residents moving out and some new wave of residents moving in. In the Altadena instance, we are talking about wealthy people displacing less-wealthy longtime residents. In other locales, zoning is used by wealthy residents to keep out less-wealthy would-be residents from moving in. And in both cases, appeals to maintaining a community’s ‘character’ is lauded as a pre-ordained good to be upheld, as opposed to a political battle for control of a municipality’s future.
But in a capitalist economy everything is for sale, and the wealthy hold all the chips, ‘character’ be damned.