The Brief

When the Palisades Fire tore through coastal Los Angeles last month, it obliterated not only the sprawling mansions of celebrities, but also two seaside mobile home parks where hundreds of retirees and other long-time residents clung to a middle-class lifestyle in one of the area’s last bastions of affordability.

Now, local and state officials will reveal just how far they’ll go to ensure the recovery preserves housing for Angelenos who aren’t rich. Their response could set a precedent as California faces a likely future of more frequent and intense natural disasters on top of a statewide housing crisis. And the fate of the two parks, Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates and Tahitian Terrace, may foreshadow how climate change could affect other mobile home owners in California.

With the fire fully contained, displaced park residents say they’re no closer to answers about the future of their close-knit neighborhoods. The owners of Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates say they’re weighing their options.

Two big questions remain: Will the state or the city of Los Angeles constrain what park owners can do with their land in order to preserve affordable housing in the area? And will officials pony up any money to help them do it?

The two parks may have been more glamorous than most of California’s other nearly 6,000 mobile home parks, with their stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and a mix of two-story luxury models alongside modest trailers. But residents still face challenges that can make a mobile home owner’s path to disaster recovery more difficult than that of single-family homeowners.

For one, they’re more likely to be uninsured or underinsured, due in part to insurers’ reluctance to cover manufactured homes, said Ryan Sears, a policy advocate for Neighborhood Partnership Housing Services, a nonprofit affordable housing developer that builds fire-resistant mobile homes. On top of that, the parks were located in a state-designated high-risk fire zone.

“You’re in what the state is saying is one of the worst possible areas to have a home, and me as an insurer with a bias against manufactured homes, I’m looking at that and thinking that’s just a box of matches sitting in the middle of a ring of fire,” Sears said.

Since residents owned their homes but leased the land underneath them, whether and when they’re able to rebuild will also depend on whether park owners choose to replace infrastructure damaged in the fire.

“If you’re a [single-family] homeowner elsewhere in the Palisades, as terrible as it is to have lost your home, at least you retain the right to return to the land,” said state Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Pacific Palisades. Mobile home residents, by contrast, “don’t even know what the plan is,” he said. “There’s an additional layer of uncertainty and a potential for total loss.”

An aerial view of the Palisades Fire devastation at the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park.

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Ted Soqui

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SIPA USA via Reuters

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Residents wait for answers

While home values in the parks ballooned in recent decades, surpassing $1 million in some cases, residents who bought in years ago were paying as little as $600 per month for rent-controlled lots, not including the cost of their home. That made the area a haven for everyone from retired couples to supermarket employees, Sears said.

Nicole Miller, a retired florist, moved into the Palisades Bowl Mobile Estates in the early aughts, paying $340,000 for a small mobile home, “the kind your grandma would own,” just a crosswalk away from the beach.

“Somebody told me about this mobile home park on the Pacific Coast Highway that was a little gem and I should look into it,” said Miller, 67. She immediately fell in love with the balance of independence and community in the area, where she could tend the plants in her fenced-in yard and join her neighbors for water aerobics in the community pool. “We all respected each other’s privacy but looked out for each other,” she said.

Since the fires, Miller, who is staying with an uncle in Palm Springs, says she spends a lot of each day just staring into space. She thinks about her former neighbors, many of whom have scattered to different parts of the state.

Miller had paid off her home and owed $980 per month in rent for her space, affordable on her fixed income. Palisades Bowl management has paused collecting rent since the fire, but Miller and other residents worry that this could provide a pretext for evicting them in the future, since their leases say that a catastrophe does not provide an excuse for non-payment, Miller said. She said residents also haven’t received a promised refund of the rent they paid at the beginning of January, or heard anything from park owners about their plans.

“We aren’t any better off today than we were the day after the fire,” she said.

The right to rebuild

California law says mobile home park owners who rebuild after a natural disaster must allow tenants to return — but that they can increase rental rates to cover the cost of rebuilding.

As residents continued to sift through the rubble of Palisades Bowl last week, looking for their belongings, co-owner Colby Biggs said park owners were still assessing the damage and planned to ask the Army Corps of Engineers for help with the cleanup by early this week. That help will give the park owners a better sense of the cost to rebuild, said Biggs, who represents a family trust with a 50% stake in the property.

His grandparents bought the 150-unit mobile home park in 2005, and some of the units dated to the 1950s, he said. Mortgage insurance will cover the loss of the clubhouse and office buildings, he said, but not any of the underground infrastructure that makes the park run.

“If we have to go invest $100 million to rebuild the park and we’re not able to recoup that in some fashion, then it’s not likely we will rebuild the park,” he said. “If we can get federal or state funding, it’s a different story.”

“We’re not evicting anybody,” Biggs said. “But if the park’s not rebuilt, then obviously the residents wouldn’t have the right to reoccupy the park.”

A state law known as the Mello Act requires that any affordable housing demolished in the coastal zone be replaced by an equivalent number of affordable units. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass issued an executive order in the wake of the Palisades and Eaton fires that exempted owners replacing housing destroyed by fire from complying with some permitting requirements under the act. But the exemption applies only to properties where there is no change in the property’s use or density. The order “establishes an accelerated process for homeowners to rebuild what they had before,” said a spokesperson for the mayor, Clara Karger.

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom tour the downtown business district of Pacific Palisades after the fire.

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Eric Thayer

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Getty Images

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Adding to the confusion is uncertainty about whether the Federal Emergency Management Agency will play its traditional role of funding and coordinating recovery from the disaster. President Donald Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have threatened mass firings at multiple federal agencies and froze their funds, in violation of Congress’s Constitutional authority to appropriate money. “FEMA should be terminated!” Trump posted on Truth Social on Tuesday, amid media reports that administration appointees had fired the agency’s chief financial officer and defied a court order by shutting down funding for some disaster-related grants. The president has also suggested he might withhold federal aid unless California changes its voting laws.

Democratic state senators Friday proposed a state-run relief fund that would help families and individuals who were affected by the recent fires but unable to get federal aid. Allen said he and state Sens. Sasha Pérez and Aisha Wahab — Democrats representing Glendale and Fremont, respectively — plan to introduce a separate bill that would temporarily control rents on mobile homes in the fire zone and strengthen mobile home owners’ right to rebuild. The bill does not include any reconstruction funding specifically for mobile home parks.

Will government help?

Legislators could award extra funding to a state program that supports repair and replacement of mobile homes and parks, including those affected by a natural disaster. Lawmakers created the program, known as the Manufactured Housing Opportunity and Revitalization Program, to help residents, non-profit groups and owners fix safety and health problems at aging parks. It gave out $100 million over the past two years, but paused accepting applications in summer 2024. Low- and moderate-income Californians who are disaster victims can qualify for loans to replace their mobile homes through another state program, CalHome.

A coalition of housing nonprofits and community land trusts sent a letter to state lawmakers last month urging them to prioritize affordable housing as Los Angeles rebuilds.

“As we know, there is a growing threat of speculative real estate practices in the wake of climate-fueled disasters,” the letter read. It called on elected officials to use disaster relief funds to rebuild the two mobile home parks and preserve them as permanently affordable housing through a community land trust, a nonprofit that would retain ownership of the land while leasing or selling homes to residents.

While critics might question whether mobile home residents displaced by the fire should be automatically entitled to live on the coast, or whether public money would be better spent housing Californians who have even fewer resources, park residents had a simple answer: It’s our home.

“That’s what we all signed up for and put our life savings into: digs at the ocean,” said Greg Garber, a hardwood flooring contractor who said he paid $150,000 in 1999 for a home he expected to leave to his children. Losing it, he said, was “like losing a loved one.”

Nationwide, nearly 80% of manufactured homes are located in areas at high risk of a wildfire, flood or other climate hazard, a new Urban Institute report finds. More than one-third of California’s manufactured housing stock was built before 1976, the report estimates, meaning those homes are especially dilapidated and likely to be damaged in a disaster.

Some Los Angeles-area mobile home parks have converted to condominiums, said Sears, selling lots individually along with the homes atop them. It priced out those who couldn’t afford the increased cost to buy in, he said.

Palisades Bowl itself almost went that route nearly 20 years ago. Biggs said his grandparents tried to subdivide and sell off the property after a landslide made some of the units uninhabitable. But a majority of residents opposed the move, he said, and the city blocked it. In a related court case, the California Supreme Court ruled that the conversion was subject to the Mello Act, meaning developers must replace any affordable housing that was lost.

Disasters drive inequality

Other California wildfires have wiped out local mobile home parks, one of the few remaining sources of affordable homeownership in the state.

Thirty mobile home parks housed more than 1,400 people in the Sierra foothills town of Paradise before the Camp Fire ravaged it in 2018. Of those, only about five have been rebuilt, said Seana O’Shaughnessy, who co-chairs a housing committee as part of the city’s collaborative rebuilding effort.

“Every single mobile home park was grossly underinsured, so the ability for owners to build back was incredibly difficult,” she said. “There had to be some source of public funding to make it happen.”

The state’s decision not to allow mobile home parks to qualify for disaster relief grants aimed at multifamily housing made it harder for park owners, she said. Many former mobile home residents left the state, she said, and some are still searching for permanent housing years later.

The Palisades Fire devastated the Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Park, where rebuilding is a complex question.

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Ted Soqui

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SIPA USA via Reuters

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In Santa Rosa, the non-profit developer Burbank Housing replaced a 162-unit mobile home park with affordable apartments after the Tubbs Fire incinerated it, displacing the mostly elderly residents. Staff for the developer met with residents after the tragedy, helping them access recovery funds and surveying them about their needs, said Burbank Housing Chief Executive Larry Florin. The 13-acre park was rezoned and divided into two parcels: one with market-rate apartments, and another with units guaranteed to be affordable for 55 years, paid for in part by federal low-income housing tax credits set aside for disaster relief. Rents are based on income and range from about $700 to $1,500 per month, slightly higher than the rates residents were paying at the park, Florin said.

Thirty-two of the park’s original residents have moved into the new apartments, among other tenants.

“When neighborhoods are destroyed, they lose the social network that’s binding them together because people spread to all ends of the earth,” Florin said. “We very deliberately have tried to rebuild not just the homes but the community.”

While disasters can occasionally lead to innovative projects like the Santa Rosa development, they often increase inequality, studies have found.

As Los Angeles begins to recover from the Palisades and Eaton fires, the city council is weighing whether to protect tenants from eviction. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has filed charges against real estate agents accused of violating the state’s ban on rental price gouging, and researchers are documenting the disproportionate effect of the Eaton Fire on Altadena’s Black residents.

Miller, the Palisades Bowl homeowner, hopes her neighborhood isn’t forgotten. She wants to go back, and says many of her former neighbors do too. The park was their only option to afford living in Pacific Palisades, she said.

“We’re hoping they return it to its former glory,” she said, “but better.”

Walk through cities around the world and it's easy to spot the trend: utility boxes painted and transformed into public art to spiff up neighborhoods.

In downtown Los Angeles, street artist S.C. Mero has taken the idea of the utility box as art in a different direction with one she’s installed in the Arts District.

“Would you like me to open it up and you can see?” she asked on a recent morning.

At first glance, it looks like an ordinary electrical cabinet — gray and about the size of a refrigerator. But instead of the usual fire-resistant metal, this one is made of wood with a faux concrete base.

The box theater incognito.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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She spins two combination locks and pulls open the door.

A hidden theater

Inside, instead of a tangle of cables and cords, crushed red velvet covers the walls from top to bottom.

A gilded clock and gold-framed pictures of two other electrical boxes (“possibly its mother, and its great-grandfather”) adorn the tiny interior, inspired by one of downtown’s oldest movie palaces, the Los Angeles Theatre.

“The first time I went into that theater, the feeling that I had, I wanted people to have a similar feeling when they opened this up,” she said.

Like the theater, the box is meant to bring audiences together. Mero invites performers to step inside and since its installation a few weeks ago, some 30 poets, magicians, puppeteers and clowns have reached out about using the space.

Many are female artists.

“Maybe it's because of the scale of it, they feel like they can actually have a chance to get inside,” Mero said.

A tradition of unexpected art

The box theater sits across the street from the historic American Hotel, an early hub for artists in the neighborhood.

Jesse Easter, the hotel’s night manager, has a front-row seat to the box theater performances.

“It was the seminal message of the Arts District is still alive,” he says.

Easter first arrived in the neighborhood in the 1980s, a blues and rock musician who also professionally installed art.

He said the Arts District has long been known for unconventional public art. Famously in 1982, artist Dustin Shuler pinned a Cessna airplane to the side of the American Hotel with a 20-foot-long nail.

“I was one of the people that was in the hotel that saw the room that the nail came down into, went through the brick wall, into the floor and stopped,” Easter recalls.

Easter says Mero’s installations boldly continue that tradition of guerilla street art in the neighborhood.

After graduating from USC in 2011, she started to make sculptural works with overlooked street fixtures, exploring issues such as addiction and homelessness.

Before the box theater, there was a giant mailbox.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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Before the theater box, Mero installed an oversized mailbox at the same corner towering over passersby, symbolizing a housing market that remains out of reach for many Angelenos.

Elsewhere in the Arts District, she has installed a 13-foot-tall parking meter sculpture, commentary on the overwhelming nature of parking in the city.

Realizing a dream 

The box theater is perhaps the piece that has invited the most participation.

Jesse Easter, a musician and night manager at the American Hotel, prepares to perform at the box theater.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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Last week, Mero asked Easter and other local artists to perform there. He played a blues song he wrote more than 40 years ago when he first moved to the Arts District.

“It was sunset and I was thinking, this kind of is the bookend,” he said.

Other participants performed spoken word poetry and played saxophone.

One performer, Mike Cuevas, discovered the theater by accident.

An Uber driver, Cuevas was waiting for his next delivery order by the box theater as it was being prepped ahead of the night’s performance.

Mero recalls him getting out of his car to look at what she was doing.

“He's like, what's going on here? This looks so cool,” Mero said. “He said as he's driving throughout the city, in between his rides, he writes poetry.”

Cuevas, who goes by the pen name Octane 543-12, left to make a delivery in East L.A., but he said “something in his heart” told him to return that evening.

After watching others perform, he stepped up to the box and read his poetry in public for the first time, a piece about Latino pride.

Mike Cuevas, aka Mike Octane 543-12, publicly reads his poetry for the first time.

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Courtesy of S.C. Mero

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“Another generation will pass through,” he recited. “And they'll understand why we honor with proud delight, the continuous fight for the history of our brothers and sisters.”

Cuevas didn’t know Mero by name or anything about her work, but thanks her for giving him a venue.

“I just felt something beautiful with her art,” Cuevas said. “It's time for me to start expressing myself. She inspired me to do exactly what she's doing but through poetry.”

He now plans to read again at an open mic in downtown L.A. next week.

An overture to look inside

Mero says the project has spoken to her personally, too. Growing up in Minnesota, she loved art as a child but later focused on playing lacrosse and hockey. At USC, she studied public relations.

“Once I started getting so into art, everyone was kind of shocked,” Mero said. “That's why I really want to encourage people to go inside themselves and see what's there, because you never know.”

Mero is hoping for a long run for the box theater. The mailbox installation before it stayed up for five years, only toppled, she heard, after skateboarders accidentally ran into it.

In the meantime, the small theater sits quietly on the sidewalk waiting for its next performer, its exterior starting to collect graffiti like any other utility box.

It’s whale watching season, which always makes me think of the novel Moby-Dick.

In the book, Captain Ahab chased a whale for vengeance. I recently chased whales off the coast of Los Angeles, but in my case, it was in pursuit of the beauty and majesty of the natural world.

With warm — relative to Alaska — spring waters, migratory rest-stops and great feeding grounds, Los Angeles County’s coast is considered part of the “Blue Highway,” a crucial whale migration corridor and one of the best places to spot the gentle giants.

According to Cabrillo Marine Aquarium program director Jim DiPompei, many whales can be seen right in our backyard.

“There’s a little over 90 species of cetaceans (marine mammals) in the world, and we see about 30% of the species we could possibly see here in Southern California,” DiPompei told The LA Local.

Cetacean species you may spot in our waters include humpback whales, orcas, blue whales and dolphins. Your best chance, however, is spotting a gray whale. As school bus-sized gray whales migrate back and forth between Alaska and Baja, they consistently hug LA’s coastline.

But where should you go to actually get a good look at whales? Don’t worry — I got you. Here’s The LA Local guide to cruising the Blue Highway.

Top spots to watch whales from shore

Point Vicente Interpretive Center
31501 Palos Verdes Drive West, Rancho Palos Verdes
Free, laid-back, on the mountains!

At the Point Vicente Interpretive Center in Rancho Palos Verdes, you’ll find an overlook dedicated to whale watching. While this is a great free spot for amateurs to come and look out for whales, this is no playground. Professionals conduct the annual whale census here, tracking the migration of whales.

This is a great place to bring a picnic basket and some binoculars to relax while scanning the ocean. Even if you don’t spot any whale action, you can visit the free natural history museum inside, which focuses on the region and its most famous inhabitants: whales. Afterward, step outside and chat with a museum docent accompanying the census watch.

If you want to see whales, stick to the coastal canyons. Canyons aren’t just massive structures above water — they are also mountains beneath the surface, offering depth, cold water and nutrients that attract food for whales. Gray whales tend to follow the canyons to stay away from the dangerous orcas.

Whale spotting 101

Whale watching season typically runs from December through May. It peaks from January to March.

When looking for a whale, try to spot their water mist blowing above the water. Gray whales typically surface for air every five minutes. When they do, they’ll blow out a water mist — that’s your chance to spot and track them until they surface again.

Get on a boat!

If you want to get eye-to-eye and really feel a cetacean’s scale, there are plenty of whale-watching cruises. They typically depart from Marina Del Rey, Redondo Beach, Long Beach, San Pedro, Dana Point and almost anywhere with a port.

Many cruises have a naturalist on board to answer questions and provide expert context to ocean wildlife.

On my tour departing from Long Beach, we saw five gray whales and a swarm of common dolphins feeding.

But be warned: If you get seasick easily, this trip might not be for you. On our two-and-half-hour trip, the boat rocked emphatically as we approached feeding sites. It’s fun if you can imagine yourself on a see-saw, but it might not be that enjoyable if that sounds nauseating.

While boat captains are not allowed to approach the whales too closely due to environmental protections, the whales can approach the boat if they choose. Sometimes the whales seem curious and watch us in return — it’s up to them and how they are feeling.

Get involved

Cabrillo Marine Aquarium
3720 Stephen M. White Drive, San Pedro

If you really catch the whale-watching bug, you’re in luck.

At the Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, they offer a whale-watching naturalist program where you can volunteer and train to be a naturalist on board whale-watching cruises.

DiPompei said they train anyone over the age of 18 “who’s interested in learning about whales and volunteering their time to be on these whale-watching boats to talk to the general public and to talk to students.”

This program was started in the 1970s by John Olge, one of the founders of Cabrillo Marine Aquarium, with an emphasis on education and showing schoolchildren the beauty of our natural world.

The aquarium is also a great place to introduce whales to children. With kid-sized exhibits and educational programs throughout the year, it’s an ideal way to show young ones just how big and beautiful our oceans are.

Despite the loss of federal subsidies that lowered costs for millions, California’s private health insurance marketplace held nearly steady this enrollment season. In all, 1.9 million Californians renewed their plan or selected one for the first time — a 2.7% drop compared to last year.

A closer look, however, shows Californians are making concessions to afford staying insured.

More enrollees are opting for “bronze-level” plans. These plans have lower monthly premium costs but higher deductibles and copays; they cover 60% of medical expenses — leaving enrollees to pay the rest. One-in-three new enrollees chose bronze plans for 2026, compared to one-in-four last year, according to Covered California. And 130,000 Californians renewing their coverage switched from a silver or higher-metal tier plan to bronze.

“Many Californians see the value in remaining covered, but they had to make sacrifices and shift to lower-tier plans. We see it as a commitment to health and the value that Covered California provides,” Jessica Altman, Covered California’s executive director said in a statement.

While bronze-level plans may offer people some peace of mind, the high deductibles and copays tend to discourage people from seeking care, said Miranda Dietz, director of the Health Care Program at the UC Berkeley Labor Center.

“Those out-of-pocket costs do impact people’s decisions to get care, so that’s worrisome as well,” Dietz said.

People earning above 400% of the federal poverty level — $62,600 for an individual and $128,600 for a family of four — no longer qualify for premium assistance after Congress chose not to extend the enhanced subsidies at the end of last year, pushing many to opt for plans with cheaper premiums or drop their marketplace plans entirely.

Of the 224,000 middle-income enrollees set to renew, 22% cancelled their plans, according to Covered California. New sign ups for people in this income bracket decreased by 59% compared to last year.

Whether those who renewed coverage or newly signed up continue to pay their premiums is another question. A clearer picture of who stays enrolled will emerge around April, Covered California said.

“Once you actually face the prospect of paying that premium and the stress that puts on your budget, it’s entirely possible that some of those folks may fall off, and the [enrollment] numbers might go down,” Dietz said.

Affording care: A growing stress point 

It’s unknown whether people who cancelled their marketplace health plans are enrolling in other types of insurance. Covered California data from the last five years show that when people terminate their marketplace plan, 10% to 14% of them report becoming uninsured.

The Affordable Care Act’s enhanced premium subsidies, first enacted in 2021 as part of federal COVID-19 response, helped lower the insurance costs for millions of Americans. They especially helped middle-income earners by allowing them to qualify for financial assistance for the first time, capping premiums at 8.5% of income. That help is now gone, and premiums are up an average of 10%.

Lower-income enrollees remain eligible for standard federal premium aid available since ACA marketplaces launched. They also benefit from state help. California allocated $190 million in 2026 to provide state-funded tax credits for people who earn up to 165% of the federal poverty level — $25,823 for an individual or $53,048 for a family of four — averaging about $45 a month per enrollee.The end of the enhanced federal subsidies also come at a time when poll after poll shows health care costs are a growing stress point for people. Seven in 10 Californians say health care expenses place a financial strain on their household, according to a recent survey by the California Health Care Foundation. Four in 10 have medical debt and six in 10 report skipping care. Meanwhile, eight in 10 Californians say making health care affordable is an “extremely” or “very” important priority for state officials and lawmakers in 2026.