The Brief

Rental housing prices in L.A. are spiking as historic fires burn in Southern California, forcing thousands of residents who’ve lost homes to scramble to find a new place to live.

LAist spotted one Zillow listing for a furnished home in Bel Air that was posted Saturday morning at $29,500 per month. That’s a nearly 86% price hike from September 2024 according to the listing’s price history, which shows the home previously listed for $15,900 per month.

When an LAist reporter called the listing agent, Fiora Aston with Compass, she said dozens of prospective tenants who’ve lost homes to the fires have been contacting her about this and other listings on L.A.’s Westside. When LAist asked why the advertised rent for the Bel Air home had risen so sharply, she said she was getting another call and hung up.

“It's crazy,” Aston said, before ending the call. “I've been in the business for 35 years. I've never seen anything like this. People are desperate. There’s so many families without a house.”

LAist reached out to Compass’ media relations team about the listing in Bel Air, but did not immediately receive a response. By Saturday afternoon, the listing had been removed. Aston texted later that afternoon that a family member had moved in. LAist asked to interview the family member and property owner, but Aston declined.

California has laws against post-disaster price gouging

Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared a state of emergency in connection with the Palisades Fire, which has already destroyed an estimated 5,000 structures in upscale neighborhoods near L.A.’s coastline. The governor’s emergency declaration includes a ban on price gouging, which is defined as any price increase of more than 10% compared to pre-disaster prices.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta told LAist partner KCAL News earlier this week that the ban on price gouging applies to housing as well as other essential goods like food, transportation and medical supplies. Bonta said residents should report suspected price gouging through his office’s website.

“If prices look really out of whack — if they look like they've increased from what you're used to — report it to us,” Bonta said. “We'll take it from there. We'll evaluate it. We'll hold folks accountable and enforce if necessary.”

Rental listing price histories show post-fire spikes

Journalists for other outlets have reported on listings where asking rents have jumped in the wake of the fires. The New York Times reviewed Zillow listings on L.A.’s Westside and found asking rents rising between 15% and 64% since Tuesday. One agent reportedly lowered the asking rent on a property in Encino from $11,500 per month to $9,800 after a journalist with the Los Angeles Times asked why the asking rent had risen nearly 28% in recent days.

UCLA urban planning and public policy professor Michael Lens said he expects L.A. rents — already considered unaffordable for many families — to be driven up by the immediate influx of people all looking for scarce housing at the same time.

“It will put a squeeze, especially on the adjacent communities,” Lens said. “That might be particularly acute from the Palisades effect on the Westside.”

Details of the Bel Air listing 

Located on Casiano Road in Bel Air, the four-bedroom home that was listed on Zillow at $29,500 was described online as a “fully furnished, meticulously restored Mid-Century Modern home.” That listing described the home as “perched in a serene canyon setting” with “breathtaking views of the surrounding landscape, including the iconic Getty Museum.”

The home is currently located in an evacuation warning zone due to the ongoing spread of the Palisades Fire. Aston told LAist the home was not being shown in person due to those warnings. “We decided we're not going to be doing any showing until next week,” Aston said.

She said the owner had taken it off the market a few months ago, but later decided to list it again.

“When this whole situation happened, I told her… people are desperate, and you can probably get good money,” Aston said. “She has a second home, so she moved into her second home, and this house is for lease.”

After Aston disconnected the call, LAist texted her to ask if she was familiar with California’s disaster-related price gouging law. She texted back, “Sorry can not talk right now,” then mentioned another listing in Mar Vista where she said one person offered $10,000 above the $15,000 asking rent.

She ended her text, saying, “Supply & demand.”

Screenshot of texts between LAist reporter David Wagner and listing agent, Fiora Aston on Saturday, Jan. 11. The address has been redacted because we learned it transposed numbers in the text about the listing.

Fire resources and tips

If you have to evacuate

• Cheat sheet: Your very short guide to getting packed up right now to evacuate
• Cheat sheet: A very short guide for how to leave your house if you need to evacuate
  

If you have more time:

• Every day is now fire season. Let's get you ready for the next wildfire burning near you

Things to consider:

• Evacuation terms can be confusing. Here’s what they mean and how to sign up for alerts
• This is why fire officials don't want you to stay and defend your home

Navigating fire conditions

• Cheat sheet: Your very short guide to driving in high winds and fire danger
• High winds and fires mean power outages. Here's how to prep

How to help yourself and others

• Resources for SoCal fire victims, evacuees and first responders
• What to do — and not do — when you get home after a wildfire
• If you want to help fire victims, resist the urge to volunteer
• These are the steps fire victims need to take to make an insurance claim

Understanding how it got this bad

• Yes, wildfires are getting worse. The history that got us to this moment

A criminal justice watchdog is calling into question whether Latinos in the L.A. County Superior Court get a fair shot at bail.

The new report from the nonprofit La Defensa, which advocates for reform in the legal system, analyzes a sample of pretrial decisions from 2025 which had been documented by community court-watching volunteers.

One of the key findings was that defendants who were perceived to be Latino had an average bail amount of $157,700 — more than 15 times higher than white defendants and nearly three times higher than Black defendants.

Studies show that inability to pay bail can affect defendants’ livelihoods and their ability to defend themselves, according to the Vera Institute of Justice.

“ Most families — no matter what they did, no matter what they sold — cannot actually purchase that person’s freedom to give them the fighting chance to go against the state,” Titilayọ Rasaki, La Defensa’s state policy and legal affairs director.

The L.A. County Superior Court says it’s following the law on bail requirements and that the findings are missing context because observation is limited.

How court-watching works

La Defensa’s Court Watch LA program is a community-led effort to document and hold the courts accountable. They train volunteers to go in and observe cases.

The volunteers take notes on the charges, the judge’s conduct and the person’s criminal history, if it comes up. That then gets analyzed against publicly available case information and state law. Programs like this exist in several other cities around the country.

For the latest report, La Defensa volunteers observed 140 felony and misdemeanor criminal cases, chosen at random, between January to November 2025.

Judicial accountability lead Bryanna Siguenza explained how she decided where to send the volunteers.

“ I choose a department, specifically ones that are pretty busy, have high case loads, and are arraignment and pretrial,” she said.

What watchers saw

Racial disparities in pretrial settings have been researched at local, state and national levels, but La Defensa’s findings are based entirely on human observation, Siguenza said.

The volunteers are trained to listen for important details that come up in proceedings, but they may not always get the full story behind the charges, like a defendant’s criminal history.

L.A. County Superior Court spokesperson Rob Oftring said the report needs more context.

“Many of the report’s findings, for example, do not appear to account for charge severity or criminal history, both of which are legally significant factors in any release decision…” he wrote in a statement.

La Defensa did not include in its report what charges had been filed in the cases observed. However, according to the report, comparable charges still had disproportionate bail outcomes that “couldn’t be explained by charge severity alone.”

The severity of charges legally informs bail decisions. The Superior Court is required to have standard bail amounts based on the crime, which judges have discretion to adjust.

State law also requires judges to weigh issues like public safety in bail decisions, as well as the defendant’s ability to post bail. According to the volunteers’ observations, the judges considered the latter in just a quarter of cases when setting bail.

Oftring said the court has taken steps to reduce money bail’s usage as allowed by law.

“Bail at arraignment is set only after both the defense and prosecution have been heard and the judge has weighed the specific facts of the case,” his statement read.

The limits of the findings

Oftring said the court values the role organizations like Court Watch LA play in keeping the justice system accountable, but that the sample size of the researchers used in their report is too small to draw any definitive conclusions.

Roughly 272,000 criminal cases took place during that time period, according to Oftring.

Representatives from La Defensa said they know the report is only a snapshot of the system, and that human observation has its limits.

That’s why in November, they requested 10 years of de-identified data to analyze whether bail outcomes differ across judges, courthouses and demographic groups. Rasaki said they haven’t received it.

“  We would say release the data … by all means, we want to partner. We want to analyze,” she said.

Oftring told LAist they are working on several projects that “provide data-informed scrutiny of how the court operates.”

Southern Californians are in for yet another scorching weekend.

The National Weather Service has issued a heat advisory for much of the region through Monday, with temperatures expected to hit their peak on Sunday.

Highs in the San Fernando Valley, San Gabriel Valley and other inland areas of L.A. County are expected to range from the mid-90s to about 105 degrees. Downtown Los Angeles and much of Orange, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties will get up to the lower 90s. Beaches will also be hot — in the lower 80s.

Moving farther east, things get really toasty. Forecasters have issued a more severe extreme heat warning for parts of the Inland Empire, where temperatures could get up to 108 degrees, and for the Coachella Valley, where they could hit 120.

Humidity will likely also continue to add to the discomfort, but will be concentrated in areas closer to the coast, where it will keep nighttime temperatures relatively warm and make it more difficult to cool down. Inland areas will feel drier.

Those who are most at-risk from the heat are people who work or spend time outside, people without access to air conditioning and those who are either over 65 or young children.

Forecasters are also warning of dangerous rip currents and swells along the coast this weekend.

If you’re headed to the beach to beat the heat, as many Southern Californians likely are, they recommend staying out of the water or, if you do go swimming, stay in front of lifeguards. It’s also a good idea to avoid jetties and tidal rocks.

Wildfire risk

This weekend will also come with a high risk of wildfires.

Forecasters warn that fire danger will be elevated through at least Monday, driven by heat, dry vegetation and low humidity levels away from the coast.

Despite some extra moisture in the air over the last several weeks, there hasn’t been enough to actually produce rain. Without precipitation, and under consistently high temperatures, plants will continue to dry out and become fuel.

“We have humidity, but it's not reaching the saturation point. Therefore, we won't have a cloud. We won't have precipitation,” said Rong Fu, an atmospheric scientist at UCLA who specializes in weather patterns and wildfires.

Fu said a system of high atmospheric pressure sitting over the Western U.S. is pushing warm, dry air across the Sierra Nevada from inland deserts and into Southern California.

That can generate what’s known as downslope wind. Those winds plus the already dry conditions align to create some especially dangerous fire weather.

One spark can easily turn into a large blaze, and humans are the most common cause of wildfires in Southern California, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

People can accidentally start wildfires in a range of ways, including throwing a lit cigarette into dry brush or dragging a chain behind a vehicle, creating sparks. One of the most common human causes is improperly extinguished camp fires.

Lightning can also start wildfires but is unlikely under current weather conditions. Southern California has seen minimal thunderstorms this summer.

The new normal?

Heatwaves in the summer and fall are obviously not new for Southern California, but they are getting worse.

Much of the heat currently blanketing the region is being driven by the high-pressure system, which traps warm air and compresses it against the ground, heating it even further. Forecasters say it’s likely to stay that way through the end of July.

But high-pressure systems like this one usually don’t stick around this long.

“For this pattern to linger almost two weeks — yeah, I would say, from a climatological point of view — that's pretty unusual,” Fu said.

One major driver of the change, Fu said, is climate change: As the climate warms, this kind of “anomalous” high pressure system will become stronger and more frequent.

And one consequence of hotter and longer heatwaves, is extended elevated periods of risky fire weather.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

Los Angeles will be under a heat wave advisory until Monday evening as temperatures show no signs of letting up over the weekend.

Temperatures will linger in the high 80s and low 90s in downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, including Koreatown, Pico Union and Westlake.

The National Weather Service projects temperatures will peak on Sunday afternoon. Meteorologist Bryan Lewis with the National Weather Service said residents can expect more humidity than usual. 

While dense, urban centers have more concrete and see more vehicle traffic, downtown and the surrounding areas will not be the hottest locations during this heatwave in the Southland, as the Antelope Valley will be under an extreme heat advisory over the weekend.

During hot weather, the beach is an immediate go-to for folks that want to stay cool, but Lewis warns against this as the surf will be extra choppy.

The Pacific Coast will see large swells “coming up from tropical systems off the coast of Mexico,” Lewis said. “We are issuing a beach hazard statement that’ll be in effect through at least the weekend [which] may be extended.” 

While the weather is expected to cool down on Monday, forecasts show that another heatwave could develop by the end of next week.

Pools nearby

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Cooling centers

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Pico Union Branch Library

Felipe de Neve Branch Library (Westlake)

Pio Pico – Koreatown Branch Library

Councilmember Heather Hutt’s office recommends residents to rest in shade or a building with air conditioning and to stay hydrated with plenty of water.

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