Days after fleeing the flames that engulfed her Pacific Palisades neighborhood in Los Angeles, Maya Lieberman still feels numb. But, beyond the destruction, now she will have to fight the battle of finding a new home, with her rival unwitting owners.
“The prices are outrageous,” the 50-year-old stylist commented to AFP. “It’s absurd, I can’t find anywhere to stay.”
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The fires that burned the suburbs of Los Angeles forced 150,000 people to leave their homes. In Pacific Palisades, an expensive neighborhood with luxury homes and famous residents such as Leticia Halliday and Adam Brody, some found the opportunity to strike it rich.
“It’s completely crazy,” Lieberman recounted. “We put in an offer on a house in Venice, they were renting it for $17,000 a month. Then they told us that if we didn’t pay 30,000 we couldn’t have it. They told me there are people ready to counteroffer and pay cash,” he said.
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Lieberman currently lives in a hotel with a pool in Santa Monica Beach. Her house was miraculously saved from the fire and she knows she has “no right to complain”. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel offended and worried about the thousands of others who weren’t so lucky.
“With what’s going on in the (property) market today, some people are going to have nowhere to go,” he said.
“I have friends who booked a hotel room outside of Los Angeles and when they got there they were asked a much higher rate than what they were told,” said Alex Smith, a television producer who was also forced to leave his home.
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In a California on the front lines of global warming and with real estate prices already derailed, some have no qualms about taking advantage of wildfire victims. On Saturday, the state’s attorney general recalled that artificially inflating prices is “an offense punishable by one year in prison and a $10,000 fine.” It warned home rental platforms and those who use algorithms to adjust prices based on demand, calling on them to abide by the law.
When a state of emergency is declared, the law sets a maximum price increase of 10% for a few months. Due to the extent of the disaster, however, the governor of California signed an executive order today extending this restriction until January 2026.
In addition to wealthy landlords, “there are also a lot of renters” in Pacific Palisades, Lieberman said. “The stereotypes that people have in mind are not valid,” Lieberman emphasized.
A simple walk to a hospitality center, a few kilometers away, proves her words. In the parking lot, Brian sleeps in his old car, with a blanket given to him by the Red Cross. He is retired and has lived in Pacific Palisades for 20 years in a studio apartment. “It was fun to sleep in the car when I was younger, but at my age it’s hard,” said the 69-year-old former municipal employee, who declined to give his last name.
Brian dreads the prospect of looking for a new home. Rents in Los Angeles have doubled in the past decade. “I will go to the market again, along with tens of thousands of others. This is not good,” he said with a sigh.
To find something affordable, he’ll have to go far out of town, to Sherman Oaks or Studio City. And these neighborhoods, in the hills behind Hollywood, are more at risk from fires compared to the area where he lived until now, near the ocean.
“What else can I do? Now, I have to fend for myself,” he concluded.
Source: www.zougla.gr
