--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram.
--:-- [Discussion of the Grammys]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We're going to ask what comes next on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer.
--:-- [Discussion of the FIFA World Cup]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for this show comes from strawberry.me. Be honest. Are you happy with your job? Or are you stuck in one you've outgrown? Or never wanted in the first place?
--:-- Liam Dillon: Well, I think in the first place, when you go up there now and look at these areas now, I mean, post-apocalyptic is really what it looks like. Burnout cars, charred trees. The only thing left standing in many of these homes are like remnants of brick chimneys.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was our kitchen. It's just gone. Everything is just gone. This has been our family home. And everything is a total loss.
--:-- Liam Dillon: This looks like the apocalypse. This is like a toxic waste site, these two areas. I mean, in the air, you have lead, asbestos. I mean, I saw a photo of someone posted of their bike totally vaporized, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that, you know, the metals from that go into the air. So you have these heavy metals that have been measured miles downwind from the fires.
--:-- Liam Dillon: Ammunition, propane tanks, pesticides, car batteries, really bad stuff. And so I think this first challenge that you have is clearing out this toxic area.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers recently told residents it could take 18 months just to clear the debris before owners even begin to rebuild.
--:-- Liam Dillon: That timeline leaving many families in limbo. We can't move forward until our properties are cleaned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that caused a lot of consternation from people who want to try to rebuild their homes obviously much faster than that.
--:-- Liam Dillon: How are people going to live in that timeline? How do people's loss of use cover them when they're still paying their mortgages, when they're now paying rents on top of it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Please don't kill our spirit. We just want to go home. That's it. We just want to rebuild and we want to go home.
--:-- Liam Dillon: That estimate's now been revised to a year, but still a really long time just for this sort of first stage of the rebuilding effort.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So you said the Army Corps of Engineers. So does that mean this is going to be a federal effort? Is the federal government funding this effort?
--:-- Liam Dillon: Right. So there's a lot of questions and challenges about the role of the federal government, particularly under the Trump administration and congressional leaders as well, tying aid to changes in unrelated California policy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I want to see two things in Los Angeles. Voter ID so that the people have a chance to vote. And I want to see the water be released and come down into Los Angeles and throughout the state.
--:-- Liam Dillon: Those are the two things. After that, I will be the greatest president that California has ever seen.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But these sorts of strings, you know, may well function as a potential concern for how quickly and how comprehensively some of the rebuilding efforts may go.
--:-- Liam Dillon: What about local government? What about state government? How can they be expediting this process for people right now?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So California Governor Gavin Newsom, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, the County Board of Supervisors, all of these groups and individuals have passed rules trying to cut regulations that would block or slow down rebuilding.
--:-- Liam Dillon: California leads the nation in environmental stewardship. I'm not going to give that up. But one thing I won't give into is delay. Red tape, bureaucracy, all of it must go.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, these rules or these waivers, you know, get rid of or at least attempt to various permitting and environmental rules, particularly for homeowners who would like to kind of rebuild their house exactly as it was before or slightly larger.
--:-- Liam Dillon: Another question when it comes to the rebuilding effort is, you know, many of these homes built a half century ago or a century ago. Today's fire codes in California is some of the strictest fire codes in the country for new builds.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In some cases, that may make rebuilding more expensive, but that could make these houses much safer to live in.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And I think it's still unclear exactly under what kind of fire code or fire regime or building code that people are going to either want or need to rebuild their houses to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And of course, that affects the cost of it and whether in some cases they'll actually rebuild.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And we're mostly talking here about people who own their property, who own their homes. But of course, there's a lot of concern for renters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We know Los Angeles has notoriously, some would say, criminally high rent. Right.
--:-- Liam Dillon: I can't imagine the fires are helping. No, and that's just one of the issues, I think.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What you finding in the immediate aftermath of these fires is kind of insane bidding wars I mean 30 families we reported looking through one rental home in over a 10 minute period right
--:-- Liam Dillon: Also very widespread reports of price gouging I've been quoted maybe 5,000. Some of my friends have talked to people and they said 6,000 plus.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then one girl told me somebody was charging 8,000 a month. And these are for tiny one bedroom apartments?
--:-- Liam Dillon: One-bedroom apartments, yes. The gouging is out of control already.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I'm seeing things double. I'm seeing rentals in Oxnard for $25,000 a month.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And you mentioned that there's attention on permits and, you know, clearing out toxic materials. But is any government, state, local, federal paying attention to the renting crisis?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there is a California state law that says you cannot raise advertised rents more than 10 percent above what they were before a natural disaster certainly includes these fires.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And so the state attorney general, Rob Bonta, has tried to sort of marshal an effort to deal with this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We have multiple criminal investigations right now that are moving towards prosecution, arrests, holding people accountable.
--:-- Liam Dillon: These are crimes. People can go to jail for up to a year and be slapped with a $10,000 criminal fine as well.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He's encouraged people to report examples, sent warning letters to more than 650 landlords and hotel operators around Southern California.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And he's even, at this point, criminally charged two people, real estate agents, for violating, allegedly violating these price gouging laws.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he sort of hopes these efforts will have at least a deterrent effect on what's been going on in the market.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And you can see videos on social media that people were posting in the days after the fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What's up, guys? It's Christina, your price gouging landlord's worst nightmare, here to report another property whose rent was raised since the fire started.
--:-- Liam Dillon: I scroll down to the bottom to look at the rental history. And oh, look, this listing was increased by $2,500 a month on the second day of the devastating fires.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That is a price gouge. They are obviously trying to take advantage of people who have lost their homes and need a place to stay.
--:-- Liam Dillon: This is my spreadsheet that I'm keeping track of. People videoing themselves going on Zillow, finding an example of a listing that increased its rent by more than 10 percent, telling people how to report them.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And there was even one group of activists led by the L.A. Tenants Union, which has crowdsourced a list that came up with more than 1,300 possible examples of rent gouging again in just sort of few weeks since this fire.
--:-- Liam Dillon: This isn't the first time Los Angeles has seen one of these destructive wildfires.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think a lot of people will remember a couple of fires in Malibu at least. What do those fires tell us about how rebuilding might go?
--:-- Liam Dillon: I mean, are we going to get 100% back to where we were, 50%, 125%?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think it's really variable in these wildfire responses in California, even within California, but also around the country.
--:-- Liam Dillon: I mean, you look at the recent fire in Maui and there have been reports that have come out that only after 18 months, only three homes have been rebuilt.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's sad. It's disappointing because so much time has gone by.
--:-- Liam Dillon: A year and a half later, town of Lahaina has not moved forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In terms of a percentage, what is any of the businesses up and running?
--:-- Liam Dillon: Zero businesses. Zero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: A closer example you referenced in Malibu, there was a fire in 2018 that destroyed roughly 400 homes in Malibu and more in the surrounding area.
--:-- Liam Dillon: But less than half of them in Malibu have been rebuilt and we're six years on.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But you also have some stories of things getting done faster.
--:-- Liam Dillon: There was a big fire in Northern California wine country, a city called Santa Rosa in 2017, 3,000 homes burned.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then 80% was rebuilt within three years.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And so it can be really circumstantial in terms of, you know, what happens where and why.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You know, in Santa Rosa, for instance, the neighborhood that came back the quickest was in Flatland and more middle class.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And so easier and cheaper rebuilds than what happened in the richer neighborhoods, actually, in Santa Rosa.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I know the focus right now is just on helping people who have lost everything to something, to something in between.
--:-- Liam Dillon: How much discussion is being had about what the city's getting ready for in the next few years, a World Cup, an Olympics?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I think a lot. I mean, the president has brought that up.
--:-- Liam Dillon: I just met with the Olympic people, and they're all set to do a real job.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The governor has certainly talked about that.
--:-- Liam Dillon: Only reinforces the imperative moving quickly, doing in the spirit of collaboration and cooperation.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He enlisted the head of the L.A. 2028 effort as one of the key fundraisers for raising money, private dollars to help rebuild Los Angeles.
--:-- Liam Dillon: I mean, the Olympics in L.A. will be the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What an opportunity to bring the world to a revitalized and a new Los Angeles.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And so these events, not just the Olympics in 2028, but we have World Cup events in L.A. in 2026.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Super Bowl is coming to L.A. again.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And so these mega events are at the least kind of putting timelines on things that absent them may not exist for rebuilding efforts.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And so at a base level, people are saying L.A. is going to be showcased in not just nationally, but worldwide in many events over the coming years.
--:-- Liam Dillon: And, you know, you want a rebuilding effort that shows that resiliency and that recovery to show the world that you can do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I think that is certainly a challenge given the timeline here that folks are looking at and facing.
--:-- Liam Dillon: Liam Dillon, LATimes.com
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: In a minute on Today Explained, we're going to try and figure out if Los Angeles can rebuild and get ready for what some are calling the largest peacetime gathering in the history of the world, if they can do those two things at the same time.
--:-- [Discussion of the Olympics]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime.
--:-- [Discussion of Chime]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from LifeKit.
--:-- [Discussion of LifeKit]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is brought to you by Chime. Nobody likes fees and complicated banking, says Chime.
--:-- [Discussion of Chime]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Today Explained is brought to you by LifeKit.
--:-- [Discussion of LifeKit]
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: My name is Alyssa Walker. I'm the editor of Torched, which is a newsletter that tracks the legacy improvements and policy decisions leading up to L.A.'s mega event era.
--:-- Alyssa Walker: I wouldn't say awkward. I would say prescient.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's not what I was thinking when I named it that.
--:-- Alyssa Walker: But you know what? We also kind of knew this might have been a possibility.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's a lot of focus on the Olympics right now, and it doesn't feel insensitive to talk about something that's years away because people are talking about it.
--:-- Alyssa Walker: Gavin Newsom is talking about it. President Trump is talking about it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it's not even the first mega event that's coming to Los Angeles in the coming years.
--:-- Alyssa Walker: Yes. Next year, L.A. is hosting World Cup matches along with other cities across the continent.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And we are joined by the world's most famous soccer mom and her eldest son, Saint Kim Kardashian.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Yes, we are honored to be here to tell you that the U.S. will be playing its first World Cup 26 game here in Los Angeles.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That will be 40 days of fan festivals and watch parties all over the region.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And then we have the Super Bowl in 2027. Big announcement today.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The big game is coming back here in 2027.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: It's so exciting. The Super Bowl is coming.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then we have the Olympics and Paralympics for a month in 2028, which is supposed to be seven Super Bowls a day.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Seven Super Bowls a day. Seven Super Bowls a day. We are basically bringing millions more people to a city that is having a real crisis when it comes to our infrastructure already.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I can't really communicate how severe the situation was before the fires happened.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We were plummeting into a deep fiscal crisis here at the city of L.A.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The city does not have money to plan and implement basic fixes to sidewalks, bike lanes, parks, streetlights.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: There's a lot of trash everywhere. We don't have enough shade trees.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You've seen our famous graffiti towers.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We are in no shape to host millions of people here, let alone care for the people who use our city on a daily basis.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: If there is, God forbid, another fire and LA faces even more rebuilding, you're talking about resources for any big sporting event.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: They need extra police, they need traffic control, they need garbage collection, all of those things.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We need our city to be so much cleaner.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We obviously need to deal with homelessness.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I would love to see the graffiti changed into murals.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We're about to host the Olympics in 2028. Oye, va voy.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't know how this happened.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: There was this great quote from John Mulaney who did this live variety show about L.A. last year.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And he really explained, I think, how everybody in L.A. feels about the Olympics coming.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Making L.A. host the Olympics, that would be like if you had a friend and she was having a nervous breakdown and she had no money and part of her house was on fire.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And to cheer her up, you made her host the Olympics.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: So there's two things that are important to know about our mega event era here in LA.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One is you've probably heard this promise that it's a no build games.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Among the many ways the city hopes to distinguish themselves is by building no new venues for the biggest sporting event on the planet, zero.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We don't need to build a major stadium. We have all of the stadiums built.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: What we do need to build is housing so our people are not on the street.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The other part of it is not really happening, and that is these little infrastructural connections, including the transportation infrastructure, which we are scrambling to build out because, as you might have also heard, we're supposed to be having a car-free games.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Part of having a no Olympics means getting people not to drive but also using public transportation to get to the games.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Which is mostly a logistical way of explaining that we can let people drive and park at all these venues as they move around to participate in the seven Super Bowls a day.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Right. So people who have never been to Los Angeles may still have heard that commuting in the city is not easy, maybe historically hard.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What was Los Angeles doing to prepare for seven Super Bowls a day?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And how has that maybe been thrown in flux in recent weeks?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So we have Metro, which is our regional transportation authority. They put forth a plan called 28 by 28 years ago, right after we got the bid.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And they had a list of big transportation projects like subway extensions that were going to be completed before the games happened.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This nearly $900 million in federal funding that is coming to the region to expand Metro's rail system ahead of the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games will be vital for our success.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Some of those are finished. Not all of them are finished. Some of them will definitely get finished.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what we've seen from Metro in particular is kind of a reprioritization based on reality.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And the concern I think now post-fires is that where the recovery money is getting spread around is are a lot of those infrastructure dollars going to have to go to places like, say, the Palisades to rebuild their many, many infrastructural challenges that they now have.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: OK, so what I'm hearing is it was going to take a boatload of money to get Los Angeles ready for the Olympics.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And now a boatload of money is needed to rebuild and to restore the city after these fires.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Are there a lot of Angelenos right now saying, hey, let's prioritize one over the other?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And if so, which one is it?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's definitely always been a big contingency of people who have said L.A. should not do this. the Nolympics.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Nolympics is a global coalition, right? They're in many cities trying to show the harms of these mega events, which are documented.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's a real thing. The Nolympics groups kicked the bid out of Boston, and that's how LA got the games in the first place.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: So you can thank them for saying that their city shouldn't do it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And then LA was like, sure, we'll do it. No problem.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: But what I'm hearing now is a little bit different.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There was some polling done over the summer that was like asking people, are you excited about the Olympics?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And it was like a majority was excited.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But then the second question was, do you think LA can produce a car-free Olympics?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And the answer was pretty much no.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So there's this growing, I would say, concern that LA is not going to be able to pull it off, particularly in a way that is going to make the city better than it was before.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: You know, we were promised these permanent improvements to the city and that people everywhere would benefit from having these games here.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And, you know, even some council members are expressing that they have doubts.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Could L.A. say, you know what, we really want to do this, but we just had this huge setback.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What if we did it a year later?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Or do you think it would sooner go somewhere else?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, who knows?
--:-- Kim Kardashian: Well, that's funny because, you know, immediately the right wing pundits started to post on X that we should have the games taken away from us.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This is biblical level destruction.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And the city of L.A. is hosting the Olympics in four years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: There's no way we can showcase L.A. to the world.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: A full federal takeover is needed. Invoke the Stafford Act.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The state's overwhelmed. Martial law might have to be declared.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: That was really, I think, what prompted perhaps Newsom and other people here in L.A. to start to frame a recovery around the Olympics.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But what's interesting is some sports are already moving out of the city of L.A. and the region of L.A.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We have some sports going to Oklahoma City.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: That was already the plan before even before the fires.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: So will they be taken away from us?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I don't think so.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: But they always do have a plan to disperse events as needed, find backup venues.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, there's always a plan.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: The word that I hear a lot and it's you know as someone who writes about mega events but also writes about climate disasters and writes about emergency preparedness is that these claims that LA is a resilient city and they'll point to things like previous earthquakes or uprisings or the pandemic as evidence.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And I don't think LA is a resilient city.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We haven't planned in a way, both through our infrastructure or our policy, to absorb the great risk and the impacts of something like this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the recovery so far has been, let's put everything back the way it was before and hope that nothing like this happens again.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And it will.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We are facing so many issues.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: We can have some fun mega events. We can have some parties. We can bring some tourists here and let them have a good time.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: But let's prioritize helping the people who live here already, who are going to be experiencing the trickle-down effects of this, even if they were not directly impacted for a generation.
--:-- Kim Kardashian: And let's figure out how to make a city that works for everybody.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Alyssa Walker, reader at Torch.la.
--:-- Alyssa Walker: Abishai Artsy made our show today from L.A.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: He was edited by Amna al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, and mixed by Andrea Christen's daughter, not from L.A.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained.
