Preview:
When the Palisades Fire tore through coastal Los Angeles last month, it obliterated not only the sprawling mansions of celebrities, but 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, post-fire, 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...
Read MoreOur thoughts on this story:

“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,”
A bitter lesson in rent control is coming to California. The owners of the two mobile home parks that were completely destroyed in the recent LA fires may simply elect to rebuild into a different use rather than put back a property that is encumbered with ridiculous rent control requirements. It may be time for all the places that enacted rent control to rethink the concept and perhaps abandon it. There have been a huge number of studies done on the impact of rent control, and the overwhelming conclusion is that it is one of the worst ideas imaginable if you want to have well-maintained and abundant housing. Maybe residents in those states suffering under the suffocating confines of rent control will finally take action to get them repealed.