Shortly after the Eaton Fire destroyed thousands of homes in and around Altadena, signs sprung up across the community announcing “Altadena is not for sale.”
Now, nearly one year later, hundreds of Altadena families have concluded that rebuilding isn’t in their budget. In nearly half of recent deals for empty lots, homeowners are selling to investors.
So even more of the land in this country will be owned by corporations and not people.
Lovely
Everyone under the age of 40 has mostly given up on buying a home.
The only exceptions I can think of are couples with dual high paying jobs, or trust fund kids.
I have a friend who bought a home. Pretty envious of it. It’s not super nice (but it is a Luxor) or in a great location. But it’s also not run down or in a bad location. Right next to a busy road but is close to shops and restaurants.
He’s 36. I personally don’t think I’ll ever own property. Not sure what we’ll do with my parents house but that will be interesting when the time comes.
Edit: my friend isn’t well off. He just saved money enough for a down payment and bought it during COVID.
Because Alta Dena contractors tripled their prices for work in new homes in anticipation of developers. The homeowners who live in the area are either established old families who don’t have money but lived in the area for a few generations or are part of the CalTech/JPL crowd that don’t worry about money. No one can afford to rebuild even if they wanted to. Not even the engineers. My friends lost their jobs and homes in the same year and they can’t go back. DOGE eviscerated JPL.
Next, they’ll start the fires purpose to buy the land
They did start the fires. It was their money that suppressed climate change action for decades.
And they did so explicitly because they knew the lack of action would create these kinds of scenarios where they can further consolidate wealth and control.
hundreds of Altadena families have concluded that rebuilding isn’t in their budget
This is another way of wording that the insurance companies found a clause they could use to deny claims, right?
Was their home insured at replacement cost or actual cash value? And if it was at replacement cost is there a coinsurance value that they were not keeping up with?
If insured at ACV or with a coinsurance that wasn’t maintained properly people could easily be getting less than the value of rebuilding.
If your insurance agent hasn’t explained these things to you upon insuring your home, get another insurance agent.
Investors be like: Fuck this place, let’s put up a parking lot
Hey remember when this happened after the fires in Maui?
