The Brief

This story is part of The Disaster Economy, a Grist series exploring the often chaotic, lucrative world of disaster response and recovery. It was produced by Grist and co-published with LAist. It is published with support from the CO2 Foundation.

Last January, a series of massive wildfires broke out across the Los Angeles area, fueled by high winds and dry temperatures. The fires raged for weeks, incinerating entire neighborhoods in the wealthy Pacific Palisades and in middle-class Altadena. They killed at least 30 people and destroyed at least 10,000 homes.

As the embers cooled, thousands of displaced Angelenos scrambled to find new housing in a rental market that was already among the nation’s toughest. They scoured Zillow and Airbnb for units they could afford on short notice. What they found were sky-high prices gouged by property owners and real estate agents rushing to capitalize on the surge in demand.

Dawn Smith and her family had rented in Altadena for nine years. After their home burned in the Eaton Fire, she combed through online listings for a similar alternative. But options were $10,000 a month or more, triple what she had been paying before the fire.

Eventually, she found a smaller place in Sherman Oaks, more than an hour away, for a still-astonishing $7,800. Her renter’s insurance would cover the difference for a few months, but not for the whole term of the lease. Now, as her insurance comes close to expiring, she and her husband are trying to figure out where to go next.

“The prices were insane,” she told Grist, “but because we had to find somewhere, we rented.”

Controversies over price-gouging play out all over the country in the wake of natural disasters as victims scramble for essential goods. Officials in New Jersey went after price-gouging gas stations after Hurricane Sandy; officials in North Carolina went after scam contractors after Hurricane Florence; and Florida prosecutors said they received more than 100 complaints after last year’s Hurricane Milton.

Most states have laws that prohibit such behavior, but they are difficult to enforce in the chaos of disaster, and some economists contend that they can backfire and cause shortages or hoarding.

But housing is a special case. Overpaying for water or gasoline might be difficult, but overpaying for a rental apartment is a long-term commitment that can lead to bankruptcy or eviction down the road. Concerns about price-gouging of rental apartments have appeared after numerous recent wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise and the 2021 Marshall Fire in Boulder. But prosecutors and public officials have largely failed to deter or punish this illegal behavior.

Two days after wildfires broke out in Los Angeles last January, tech founder Edward Kushins and real estate agent Willie Baronet-Israel hiked the price of a home they were renting out in the waterfront city of Hermosa Beach by 36 percent, likely an increase of more than $1,000. The city is about 15 miles from the Palisades burn zone.

A month later, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the two, citing a state law that makes it a crime to raise prices for food and shelter during an emergency by more than 10%. If found guilty, Kushins and Baronet-Israel would face fines of up to $10,000 and as much as a year in prison.

But the Hermosa Beach listing was just one of thousands that were spiking in price. According to a Washington Post analysis of listings data from the firm RentCast, the average rent in the L.A. area rose by 20% in the two weeks after the fire — double the maximum allowable increase under California law. The home-rental company Airbnb also allowed users to raise prices above legal limits on more than 2,000 properties, despite its assurances that it would block such behavior, according to prosecutors.

The burnt remnants of an apartment building in Altadena, California, following the Eaton Fire in January. Many fire victims struggled to find housing as rents skyrocketed.

(

Keith Birmingham

/

MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images via Grist

)

This lack of enforcement is common after disasters. But this time, it triggered an unprecedented campaign for stricter regulation of housing prices — and one that got results.

“The minimal enforcement that has happened has totally sent a signal,” said Chelsea Kirk, a tenant advocate who organized against price-gouging after the L.A. wildfires. “Landlords expect that enforcement does not exist.”

Three dozen states and the District of Columbia have laws that prohibit merchants from price-gouging during an emergency, but unlike California, which prohibits hikes of more than 10%, many of these laws are vague, prohibiting “excessive” or “unconscionable” increases without specifying what that means or what goods are covered.

“The laws are all over the place,” said Teresa Murray, the lead consumer advocate at the Public Interest Research Group, a nonprofit that focuses on consumer protection. Furthermore, enforcement of these laws is minimal — the government can’t be everywhere all at once after a hurricane or flood, and most disaster victims aren’t aware of their rights and don’t track or call out violators.

The stakes are even higher when it comes to housing, which is already in shortage across the country. Around half the nation’s tenants are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. Wildfires and hurricanes often destroy thousands of homes in quick succession, exacerbating supply crunch in local housing stock.

Research from across the country shows that landlords often hike prices after major fires and floods. Asking prices for rental apartments increased by 25% after the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, for instance, and by 44% in Lahaina following the 2023 Maui wildfires in Hawaiʻi. The increases even hit existing renters: More than a quarter of renters in Boulder said they saw hikes of more than 10% after the 2021 Marshall Fire, and a study of multiple flood events found that inexpensive apartments see hikes of 5% on average after a flood. These hikes hit low-income households hardest, forcing them to relocate or cut down on other expenses.

This same dynamic was on display in Los Angeles earlier this year following the Palisades and Eaton fires. One of the people who tested this market was Blanca, a woman who lived in an apartment building in Altadena, and who declined to give her last name because of her immigration status. The Eaton Fire destroyed her business and caused significant damage to the apartment complex where she and her husband lived. Even though their unit was intact, the building lacked water, gas, and electricity.

An aerial view of burned properties in Altadena, taken in July. Many of the homes destroyed in the January fires have not been rebuilt.

(

Allen J. Schaben

/

Los Angeles Times via Getty Images via Grist

)

Blanca and her husband looked for other apartments, but all the available units they found were far too expensive, some thousands of dollars above what they had paid in Altadena for the same amount of space. They couldn’t afford anything like what landlords were asking, so after a few weeks, they moved back to their unit in the damaged complex and lived there paying rent in unsafe conditions for months.

“The place has not even been inspected, and many people have returned since February,” said Blanca in Spanish. “But there was nowhere else to go.”

In the first days after the fire, California attorney general Bonta trumpeted the state’s price-gouging ban several times — not only could landlords not raise prices by more than 10%, they also couldn’t list new units for more than 160% of typical market value. But property owners seemed either not to know about the law, or not to care.

Bonta, the attorney general, has sent more than 750 warning letters since the fire to property owners who may have price gouged, but has initiated only four lawsuits, and so far not obtained a conviction. The city attorney of Los Angeles has filed a few of its own lawsuits, including against Airbnb, but the district attorney for much larger Los Angeles County has not filed a single price-gouging case. Legal nonprofits say they can’t pick up the slack because they need a named victim in order to sue a landlord, and most disaster victims don’t have the knowledge or resources to pursue litigation.

“We have been a little bit disappointed, I will say,” said Rodney Leggett, the director of litigation at the Housing Rights Center in Los Angeles, which has sued a few property owners over the post-fire price gouging, including the company that owns the historic Villa Carlotta apartments in Hollywood. “We have gotten complaints of people seeing price gouging, [but] we have gotten relatively few … people saying, ‘I am actively being price gouged.’ I think a big part of that is it's really hard for people to track, and to know, the sort of price changes that have occurred.”

But the epidemic of price-gouging in L.A. after the fires has also triggered new progress on the difficult issue of enforcement. As Zillow flooded with overpriced homes, a group of tenant advocates began an unprecedented crowdsourcing campaign to track and shame price-gougers. Kirk, a policy advocate at the progressive nonprofit Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, was seeing numerous instances of price hikes, but she knew that Bonta’s office and local prosecutors lacked the capacity to track and sue every landlord who was posting high-priced units.

Kirk partnered with Lauren Harper, a data analyst and fellow tenant advocate, and together they took enforcement into their own hands. Forming a new organization called The Rent Brigade, they created a spreadsheet that scraped Zillow for apartment listings that violated the price-gouging laws, and also encouraged fire victims and volunteers to submit proof of gouging. In the first few weeks after the fire, volunteers submitted more than 1,500 examples.

Mike Nemeth, the head of communications for the California Apartment Association, the state’s biggest landlord lobby, told Grist that most landlords tried their best to comply with the law.

“The California Apartment Association takes seriously the legal and ethical obligations of rental housing providers during declared emergencies,” he said. “Most housing providers want to do the right thing, and our role is to help them navigate complex rules when it matters most.”

(

Zoe Myers

/

AFP via Getty Images via Grist

)

Thanks in part to the Rent Brigade’s pressure, local officials in Los Angeles are now trying to step up enforcement. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted in July to create a new system for penalizing price spike activity. Instead of waiting for a prosecutor or a legal nonprofit to file a court complaint against a landlord, the local government could slap the landlord with an administrative fine, the same way it would punish a restaurant with cockroaches in its kitchen or a driver who parked near a fire hydrant. The fines could reach up to $1000 per violation per day, with an additional $500 per day for failing to cooperate with county investigations.

Jamie Court, president of the advocacy firm Consumer Watchdog, says this kind of ordinance could be a model for how to enforce price-gouging laws.

“This is desperately needed as a deterrent and to let people know that price gouging is not up to prosecutorial discretion,” he told Grist. “People need to know every violation could result in a fine, not just the few prosecutors choose to prosecute.”

Los Angeles County’s price-gouging will lapse at the end of August when the fire emergency ended, so the new rules will only apply the next time California declares an emergency for a fire, flood, or other calamity. But during the last months of the ban, Kirk and other advocates noticed something unexpected — and concerning. The rush of new housing demand from the fire had ended, but many landlords were still listing new units well above fair market rate.

The L.A. housing supply, Kirk and Harper concluded, was so limited that price gouging had become a normal part of the market. Even in the absence of a major shock like the fire, landlords were still asking for exorbitant rents, and tenants were still paying them. The emergency declaration was only going to last for an arbitrary period of a few months, but the overall housing picture was as bad as ever.

“When the fire started, we were seeing a lot of these units coming online for absurd prices from people who don't usually rent, maybe knowing that people coming from the Palisades would be able to afford those kinds of things,” said Harper. “But the further that we get from the fires…I think it's reflective of just high rents.”

Malibu is pushing back the next phase of its speed camera program along a deadly stretch of PCH to November. The 60-day warning period was originally set to start in November, where drivers going 11 or more miles per hour over the speed limit will get a warning instead of a fine.

The delay, the city says, is needed so adjustments can be made to camera installations.

Yesterday, a Nobu worker was killed about a block from the upscale Japanese restaurant on PCH. CBS LA reports that a juvenile had crashed into the employee's parked vehicle.

When fines start

Malibu officials announced the delay of the program's warning phase last week after a testing period in September recorded around 100,000 speeding violations in less than 10 days.

Enforcement at the 10 cameras along a 21-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway will start sometime after the end of the warning period. According to the city, violations will result in fines, but not driver’s license points or insurance penalties.

Why Malibu added speed cameras

Since 2010, traffic collisions on that part of PCH have killed more than 60 people, the city says. In 2023 alone, there were 220 reported crashes there, with 93 injuries and seven deaths — including four Pepperdine University students who were standing along PCH when a driver hit and killed them. The driver, who is charged with murder, is scheduled to stand trial beginning Dec. 1.

Following that incident, Malibu City Council declared a local emergency over dangerous conditions posed by reckless and speeding drivers.

In 2024, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed SB 1297 into law to allow Malibu to install the speed cameras

Looking to say adios to your lawn by sheet mulching or to add a protective layer to your flower beds? Good news, you don’t need to pay for mulch or woodchips. You can instead get them for free in Southern California. Here are a few different ways, depending on your flexibility - and muscle power.

Free mulch piles

Municipalities across the region offer free mulch.

City of L.A.: You can grab mulch anytime from one of its free mulch piles.

O.C.: You can schedule a pickup from a greenery/landfill

Other cities: see below (or check out your own city government’s page).

• Riverside County Department of Waste Resources 
• City of Rialto Free Compost & Mulch 
• Burrtec's Coachella Valley Composting Facility. It is located at 87011 Landfill Rd in Coachella. 
• City of Rancho Mirage Free Compost and Mulch Program 
• City of Ventura Free Compost and Mulch Program

Free mulch delivery

If you don’t want to go pick up the free mulch yourself, consider ChipDrop. It’s a service that connects arborists with gardeners to deliver free wood chips.

Beware: you may get a lot of mulch. Like, a lot.

(

Jenn Baughman

/

LAist

)

Connect with an arborist:

If you want to try to control the amount of mulch you get - or the date of delivery - you may want to consider talking to an individual arborist. They often end up with excess woodchips they need to get rid of, or take to the dump. If you call they might be happy to offload some for your garden.

Opponents of Proposition 40 have a message for voters: Don’t be fooled. The billionaire tax is a “Trojan horse” for new taxes on all Californians, ads proclaim. But is that true?

Tucked into the initiative is language granting the Legislature authority to amend the tax by a two-thirds vote “if the statute is consistent with and furthers the purposes of the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act.” Opponents argue lawmakers and a future governor could, with the stroke of a pen, expand the wealth tax to people with far less than $1 billion.

In a high-tax state, that argument could hold a lot of sway with voters.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West put Prop. 40 on the ballot; the initiative would levy a one-time, 5% tax on billionaire’s assets. The union rejects the premise of the ad. It says the tax is limited to billionaires and any legislative amendment would have to hew closely to that purpose. Dave Regan, president of SEIU-UHW, said opponents’ ads are pure scare tactics.

“The billionaire tax is a tax on billionaires. Period. If you’re not a billionaire, you don’t pay the tax,” Regan said in a statement to CalMatters.

Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, the group that paid for the ad, said the message was meant to highlight the policy implications of a wealth tax and the power Prop. 40 gives lawmakers.

“Californians deserve to understand those issues and what they could mean for taxpayers and the state’s economy,” Lapsley said in a statement.

A separate, billionaire-backed group opposed to Prop. 40 has also said the initiative “gives politicians the power to expand the tax to anyone.”

The truth lies somewhere in between.

California courts have given lawmakers real authority to amend laws created by ballot initiatives if the original text of the initiative permits it. However, that power is not unlimited and the measure includes language restricting future legislative changes, said Michael Colantuono, an attorney with expertise in state election law.

Opponents’ ads also don’t mention that Prop. 40 writes the tax into the state Constitution, not just state law, so expanding it would likely require another trip to the ballot.

Legislative authority

Legal experts agree that if Prop. 40 passes, lawmakers would be able to make certain amendments without taking it back to voters.

The state Constitution allows the Legislature to amend a ballot initiative without another vote if the initiative permits it. That’s a relatively common clause in ballot measures, and Prop. 40 includes it.

Megan Jones, a tax attorney at Holland & Knight, said proponents’ claims that the tax could never be changed are disingenuous.

“If it’s going to further the purposes, then they could,” Jones said.

For example, voters passed the Political Reform Act, which governs campaign finance and lobbying rules, in 1974 and lawmakers have amended it almost continually since.

Similarly, lawmakers have amended the Mental Health Services Act, a voter-approved 1% income tax on millionaires, 10 times since its passage in 2004. None of those amendments adjusted the tax rate. Most recently, lawmakers voted to substantially alter how the state spends mental health money and raise additional bond funds. Those changes went back to voters in 2024 as Proposition 1.

But there isn’t always a clear line for when voters need to approve changes, experts say.

“It is common for the Legislature to make amendments,” Colantuono said. “It is (also) common for there to be disputes about those amendments.”

‘Furthers the purposes of’

“Ultimately, it ends up in court,” said Chris Parker, a principal tax attorney at the firm Baker Tilly.

The California Supreme Court ruled in a 1995 case that the Legislature may amend voter-approved laws if the changes can be interpreted as furthering voters’ original goals “by any reasonable construction” — giving lawmakers broad latitude.

In 2021, the state Supreme Court held that the Legislature appropriately amended Proposition 57, a criminal justice reform measure, by barring the transferring of minors under 16 to adult court. Justices cited the 1995 case, noting that “a strong presumption of constitutionality supports the Legislature’s acts.”

Still, the language of the proposition matters.

A few years earlier, in 2019, the Third District Court of Appeal held that a legislative attempt to allow public funding of political campaigns “directly conflicts with a primary purpose” of the Political Reform Act. Lawmakers responded by passing a new bill asking voters to weigh in directly — it appears on this year’s ballot as Proposition 4.

Judges look at two things, Coluantuono said: what reasonable voters thought they were approving, and whether later legislative changes helped that goal, or got in the way.

Certain provisions of Prop. 40 would make it difficult for lawmakers to expand the tax beyond billionaires. The 1995 case established that courts may weigh the language of a ballot measure, arguments printed in the voter guide, and historical context when deciding whether change is consistent with voter intent.

Prop. 40’s purpose and intent section says the measure is meant to support healthcare and education “by raising revenue from a one-time tax on billionaire wealth” — referencing billionaire wealth three times. The voter guide arguments similarly target “approximately 200 California billionaires.”

“They could probably adjust the structure of the tax in marginal ways, but what they couldn’t do is make it a more than a one-time tax, and they probably couldn’t lower the threshold on wealth,” Coluantuono said.

Opponents contend lawmakers could interpret the purpose of the act far more broadly, and a court would agree. They point to the first listed purpose of the initiative that says the tax is meant to “protect access to high quality, equitable health care, and to support funding for kindergarten through grade fourteen public education and food assistance programs.” Opponents also say the proposal gives the Legislature the authority to change all parts of the initiative, including the constitutional provisions.

“Prop 40’s findings and statement of purpose and intent were carefully crafted to ensure that

extending the tax to non-billionaires would be consistent with the measure,” said Kurt Oneto, a lawyer for the No on 40 campaign, in a statement.

Experts said the question would likely come down to how a court read the act’s purposes.

A separate concern: how do you prove wealth? 

Should Prop. 40 pass, it would create an entirely new tax structure in California — one that assigns a value to very wealthy people’s investments, public and private businesses, as well as personal property such as art or car collections.

Valuing something like a tech startup that hasn’t produced a product or gone public could prove especially difficult, Parker said.

“The excise tax that’s being proposed here is on potential,” he said. “The question then is, if we open the door to taxing potential, when does that stop?”

Lawmakers have periodically tried to pass wealth taxes, but the bills quickly stalled. This marks the first time voters will directly decide on one, making Prop. 40 a crucial test of how much appetite Californians have for his kind of tax structure. Jones said the bigger worry isn’t the tax itself, but other taxes that could follow.

“It’s a slippery slope,” she said.

Coluantuono said it would still be politically risky for lawmakers to try to implement a wealth tax on everyday Californians, but history shows temporary taxes have more than once become permanent.

“When we get a revenue stream in the government and we start spending it on services that people value… there’s tremendous political pressure to prevent the sunset,” he said.

Supported by the California Health Care Foundation (CHCF), which works to ensure that people have access to the care they need, when they need it, at a price they can afford. Visit www.chcf.org to learn more.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and her challenger, City Councilmember Nithya Raman, appeared at a South L.A. forum Saturday, where they agreed on some aspects of the city’s approach to reducing homelessness, but offered different ideas on addressing housing costs.

The two appeared separately in conversations with Brenda Verano of CALO News at A Place Called Home, a youth services community organization.

Bass went first, saying she grew up just 20 blocks south of the venue.

“South L.A. has been a big part of my life and what I have done,” said Bass, who in 1991 helped start Community Coalition, which fights for racial and economic justice in that part of the city.

Each candidate was asked how they would build trust in City Hall among Black and Latino residents in South L.A.

“Black and brown poor folks the most have been central in my administration and will continue to be so,” Bass said. “But to me, representation is not just about faces in a room. It's about collaborating on everything you're doing.”

Raman said the establishment “has taken the people of Los Angeles for granted.”

“I’m running for mayor because I don’t want to ignore any part of this city,” she said. “I want to make sure we are people who know these communities not just in the mayor's office but across the many commissions, across the many departments that are designed to oversee these neighborhoods.”

How the candidates would work with LAPD 

Both vowed to expand pilot programs where unarmed social workers respond to certain non-emergency 911 calls instead of the police department.

“Law enforcement should not be dealing with homelessness and substance abuse and mental health,” Bass said. “Those are public health issues.”

But Bass said it's doubtful the police department’s budget will be cut before the 2028 Olympics. The mayor in the past has expressed support for growing the number of police officers.

Raman has said the department is about the right size. She expressed concern about the police department’s cooperation with ICE during recent federal immigration raids.

Raman also criticized the department for its crowd control tactics during protests around ICE facilities. Police used tear gas and rubber bullets against some protestors.

“This mayor did not speak out against those actions by LAPD, appointed a chief who has not met this moment, who said he would not enforce laws put in by the state to protect us,” Raman said.

Chief Jim McDonnell has previously said his department would not enforce California's state law banning federal immigration and law enforcement agents from wearing masks on duty. A federal appeals court in February blocked enforcement of the law.

Bass said if the judicial ban is lifted, she would order McDonnell to enforce the state law. The mayor also defended the department’s use of police officers for crowd control during ICE operations.

“If there is a crowd around an arrest, then LAPD is involved because we don’t want to have the federal government doing that,” she said.

Both say city should exit troubled homelessness agency

On the city’s response to homelessness, Bass called the current system “completely disfunctional” and called for a new system under the control of the city.

Currently, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority oversees the city’s delivery of homeless services. Numerous audits have found poor accounting of taxpayer money at the agency — which spent nearly $830 million in public funds last fiscal year.

The county has already pulled its funding from the agency in favor of standing up a new county-run Department of Homeless Services and Housing.

Bass said unhoused people are not getting enough care once they leave the streets.

“It is insufficient. They are not taken care of in terms of their health, education, etc. A new system would enable us to do that,” Bass said.

Raman has said she also supports leaving LAHSA and investing in a new homelessness bureau. She noted that street homelessness fell in her council district while numbers across the city went up, according to this year’s homeless count.

“In the past few years, this mayor has refused to audit our homelessness response,” Raman said. “I am very committed to doing that, and I'll request that audit on day one.”

Sharp divides on housing development, renter protections

On housing, Raman criticized the mayor’s opposition to building more densely in residential neighborhoods near transit centers. She said the result has been more building in the city’s poorer council districts, including the South L.A. district that hosted Saturday’s forum.

“Wealthier neighborhoods, less diverse neighborhoods, whiter neighborhoods have actually pushed back on affordable housing, on greater density,” Raman said.

More of the city, said Raman, should bear the burden of greater density.

“We need to build more housing in Los Angeles, but we need to build it across every single neighborhood,” Raman added.

Bass has said density doesn’t belong in some neighborhoods. She opposed a state law, SB 79, that will force cities to allow apartment buildings up to nine stories tall near rail transit stations.

Bass said her administration has fast-tracked new income-restricted housing. But she argued that certain development restrictions are necessary to prevent gentrification.

“We need housing, but we cannot displace Black and Brown people,” Bass said. “If you have housing that is just built anywhere and everywhere, they're coming for us.”

Raman also criticized Bass’ move to temporarily lift restrictions on short-term rentals in preparation for an influx of visitors during the 2028 Olympics.

“I want to make sure that this mayor’s push for deregulating short-term rental during this time, in ways that are harmful to renters, don’t go through,” Raman said. She said tenants could be displaced as landlords turn long-term rentals into short-term accommodations.

Airbnb and business groups back the proposal, saying it will fill a visitor lodging gap for the Olympics and that it would generate significant municipal revenue. Airbnb has put more than $4 million toward backing Bass and three other city candidates, according to the latest campaign finance reports.