Among the countless homes lost in the Palisades fire, one was my mother’s. For most of my life, that place was my refuge where I would return to feel safe. Now, like so many others, it bears the fire’s uniform mark — a charred chimney in a sea of blue sky.
For the last four years, I worked on climate change in the Biden administration, focusing on mitigating climate risk so that communities would not have to face the indescribable grief Los Angeles is feeling. I traveled to more than 30 countries to invest U.S. funds in climate solutions and bolster community resilience. I saw firsthand how climate disasters land hardest on the most vulnerable, deepening the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. That is happening in the wake of the L.A. fires, too.
In Pacific Palisades, some schools and the public library burned while a real estate billionaire hired private firefighters to save his property. Across town in Altadena, the fires leveled one of L.A.’s most diverse communities, where Black and Latino families thrived after the end of redlining. California’s recovery plan should aim to shrink such inequalities, not deepen them.
It would be a second calamity if the fires intensified the housing crisis. My Palisades neighbors and friends in Altadena, many of them already isolated from their support networks, are fearful that private equity firms will buy up and consolidate housing lots. State and city officials should work hard to prevent this, including by issuing moratoriums on foreclosures for fire-affected properties and, where people still have homes to return to but are experiencing financial hardship from the fires, barring evictions and rent hikes.
If handled carefully, this disaster can actually help solve the housing crisis by spurring the production of affordable units. The state should expand efforts such as the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee, which promotes private investment in low-income rental housing. Apartment building lots should not be repurposed for single-family development, which would only worsen the homelessness crisis.
Our leaders must also protect the workers who will make recovery possible, including by providing resources and protections for “second responders” — the largely immigrant day laborers who perform hazardous and essential debris removal and cleanup. One of the hard lessons from Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy, and from the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001, is that health impacts play out in the months and years after the initial disaster from exposure to pollution and other dangers. Los Angeles County should therefore provide not only basic protective resources, like masks and breathing equipment, but also longer-term services such as Spanish language translation and training in disaster response and mental health counseling.
L.A. must also shore up serious weaknesses in air quality monitoring. Our local network of air monitors effectively measures air particulates and ozone, but it was not built for modern megafires and does not comprehensively measure the air toxins they produce. Parents are now unsure whether it is safe for kids to play outside or go back to schools near the burn zones. The state, which regulates air quality here through the South Coast Air Quality Management District, should update its monitoring to generate better data on pollutants that emanate from urban fires. It should also support innovative technologies to link real-time air monitoring to popular apps for tracking the fires and the weather, such as Watch Duty and AirCare.
Additionally, state and federal officials should reform our approach to insurance and risk management. In my travels around the world, I’ve seen data-driven insurance approaches that are vastly superior to the drawn-out claims processes that burden and frustrate victims in the U.S. Policies that use “parametrics,” for example, trigger automatic payments in response to events such as a fire or flood. This provides better access to insurance and makes reimbursement faster.
Local and federal government should also support private sector-led solutions to expand insurance markets, mitigate risk and lower costs. California can use some of its significant resources to invest public money in early warning technology, rapid response capabilities and, when it comes time to rebuild, home hardening through the use of fire-resistant materials and design strategies. Funding those solutions now will return dividends in avoiding megafires later. The state should also dramatically expand support for community development financial institutions — lenders that support investment in underserved neighborhoods by providing patient, flexible credit to small businesses and entrepreneurs. I’ve seen the federal government use this type of investment to deploy billions through financial intermediaries around the world, supporting job creation and projects in developing economies.
Finally, the county, which contains both the Palisades and Altadena, should shepherd their respective recoveries together. By offering joint hearings, and opportunities for information sharing and collaboration, our leaders can maximize equality, efficiency and learning across Los Angeles.
My family was drawn to the Palisades in the 1970s because of its striking proximity to nature, wedged between the Pacific Coast and the Santa Monica Mountains chaparral. It inspires awe — and, when the Santa Anas come, fright. We settled here not in spite of that quality, but because of how its beauty and power render us more human.
Maybe that spirit helped create the community that took care of my family, and me, for decades. It still gives me hope that we can rebuild — and in doing so create opportunities for everyone.
Jake Levine most recently served as special assistant to the president and senior director for climate and energy at the National Security Council.
