Why an affordable slice of L.A. paradise might never recover from the Palisades fire

Los Angeles Times ^ | Oct. 13, 2025 3 AM PT | Noah Haggerty

[E. Pluribus Unum]

• The Palisades Bowl mobile home park remains debris-covered, nine months after the fire and months after the neighboring park was cleaned

• FEMA denied cleanup services, arguing it couldn’t trust that the land owners, with a history of attempting to redevelop the park into something more lucrative, would let residents rebuild

• Former residents are running out of insurance money and aid to pay for temporary housing, still with no clear path home.

As local and state leaders celebrate the fastest wildfire debris removal in modern American history, the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Estates — a rent-controlled, 170-unit enclave off Pacific Coast Highway — remains largely untouched since it burned down in January.

Weeds grow through cracks in the broken pavement. A community pool is filled with a murky, green liquid. There’s row after row of mangled, rusting metal remains of former homes.

Yet just across a nearly 1,500-foot-long shared property line, the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park — like thousands of fire-destroyed properties cleared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the last nine months — is now a field of cleaned, empty lots.

The difference in treatment is based on standards used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which directed the corps’ cleanup efforts. FEMA, which focused on providing assistance to local residents — and not properties owned by real estate companies — argued in letters to state officials that since it could rely on the Tahitian’s owners to rebuild the heart of Pacific Palisades’ affordable housing, it would make an exception and include the property. However, it said it could not trust the owners of the Palisades Bowl to do the same.

Both mobile home parks requested federal cleanup services, records obtained from the corps show. And both Los Angeles County and the...

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TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: 1partyrule; arson; california; democratcorruption; democratincompetence; democrats; democrooks; fire; onepartyrule; pacificpalisades

[monkeyshine]

The city wants affordable housing. A trailer is a lot cheaper than a condo.

[Lockbox]

Well Jim Rockford would of gotten to the bottom of this!

[Lockbox]

No money in trailer park for the political class..... politicians like a BIG project, more money to skim off.....

[Pollard]

The houses were “grandfathered in” to the current building code and since the fire, some rezoning is happening. In one of NewScum’s first podcast visits, before he tried starting his own, he mentioned “Land Use” aka zoning.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

That wildfire surely had some fortuitous results for some fortuitous connected people.

[Bonemaker]

“Why an affordable slice of L.A. paradise might never recover from the Palisades fire”

Gee, a whole bunch of democrats screwed. That’s a shame.

[dragnet2]

Like California, he’s dead.

[rey]

Why is it FEMA’s business? Shouldn’t the property owner be able to do as they please with their property? If he had a flop house apartment building that burned and he replaced it with more upscale apartments or a condo would that be frowned upon? Shouldn’t he be free to maximize his investment?

And if the city really wanted to make housing affordable why don’t the wave permit and impact fees that are in the tens of thousands if not more?