Rancho Palos Verdes planning buyouts for 23 landslide-damaged homes

This round of Homeowner Vs. Land has a clear winner: Land.

Rancho Palos Verdes is kickstarting the long and tedious buyout process for homes in the Portuguese Bend area, where residents have stood by helplessly as the water-logged lands beneath their homes slip and slide, rendering the structures uninhabitable.

This week, 23 homeowners were shortlisted to have their homes appraised.

For some residents, the buyout using federal funds will allow them to move and get on with their lives.

But there is still one more hurdle: getting their hands on the money could still take months if not years.

How we got here

The Portuguese Bend area of Rancho Palos Verdes boasts multi-million homes and clifftop oceans views — and ancient geological forces that cannot be stopped. Heavy rain in recent years have contributed to land movement that is literally ripping the peninsula apart.

NASA imagery shows that land was sliding at a rate of 4 inches a week during a four-week period last year, pulling apart structures, cutting gas and power lines and severing roads.

Bottom line: the area is no longer safe for many residents.

What is being done about this?

Last year, city officials announced a $42 million property buyout program.

The city will use the money from FEMA to purchase homes at 75% of their value as of December 2022 — before the slides started accelerating.

Homes will then be demolished and converted to open space, with future development on that land restricted.

But not everyone can get a buyout

In all, 85 homeowners submitted applications for the buyouts.

With hundreds of homes affected by land movement, the city had to create the priority system because there’s currently not enough money to buy out everyone. (Despite the land movement, some homes in the area are listed on Redfin and Zillow for a couple of million dollars.)

The city prioritized homes with utility shutoffs and serious structural concerns. It plans to grant buyouts to 13 homes that were "red tagged," meaning uninhabitable, and 10 "yellow tagged" properties that also suffered severe damage.

“If you have not been contacted by the City about completing an appraisal, this means your property is not among the 23 being considered for buyouts and will not advance in this round of program funding,” city officials announced on Tuesday.

However, if one of the 23 homeowners decides not to take the buyout, another applicant could move up the priority grid.

When will residents get the money?

It could take years. Rancho Palos Verdes is still in the “pre-award” phase of the process and it could take months for the city to get the $42 million.

Even then, that money is coming in installments.

As a result, RPV will buy three homes at a time, and authorities estimate it will take a “few years” to buy all 23.

But, wasn’t RPV losing federal funding?

They could still happen. That money was for the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities program. In April, President Donald Trump announced he was ending the BRIC program which allows communities to prepare for impending disasters.

The buyouts announced this week are funded from another type of FEMA program, the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program.

Is there hope for additional buyouts?

Not quite yet, but possibly in the future. Despite years of trying to hold up the land, it appears homes may increasingly succumb to these same geological forces. In other words, this is not an issue going away anytime soon.

City Manager Ara Mihranian previously told LAist the long term plan is for the city to continue to look at opportunities through FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant program to buy back homes in the landslide complex.