LA is about to find out whether it can rebuild for the people who actually lived here — or just the people who can afford to move back. This is LA Politics and Urbanism Daily — I'm Cassidy, Devin's here — and today we're tracking fire recovery in Altadena, a D Line milestone, and Metrolink eyeing more cuts right when people need it most. So yeah, three stories, same question: who does this city actually build for? Let's get into it. Erin Rode, writing in Capital & Main:
The aftermath of the Eaton fire in Altadena, California, could damage the community's affordable rental housing. Early indications suggest that the rental housing lost in the fire is unlikely to be rebuilt at the same level of affordability as what came before. This could result in less economically and racially diverse communities, as renters are often more likely to return to their communities than their homeowner neighbors.
Capital and Main has a piece on what fire recovery actually means for Altadena's renters — and the short version is, the affordable housing that burned is probably not coming back at the same price point. And here's the ugly part: renters are actually more likely to want to come back to their community than homeowners are, and they're the ones who get priced out when everything gets rebuilt shinier and pricier. The county's own 2024 long-range plan already calls for denser, walkable corridors along Altadena's major streets — the framework is there. But local leaders keep bowing to residents who want to keep it low-density. So the plan exists, the fire cleared the land, and we're still going to rebuild single-family sprawl because some people don't want neighbors. That's not preservation — that's displacement with extra steps. LAist, with Kavish Harjai:
The D Line train currently shuttles people from Koreatown to downtown L.A., largely running parallel to the B Line. The approximately 4 mile-long extension will add three new stops along Wilshire Boulevard…
LAist has a piece on the D Line extension, and on mobile crisis teams, which is actually the part that matters today. California's 988 mobile response teams are looking at a $150 to $200 million annual funding cliff, because Newsom's budget would make the service optional instead of required. So the state builds out a whole behavioral health response system, gets counties depending on it, and then just... pulls the floor out? That's a bait-and-switch. And the people who lose crisis responders aren't in Bel Air — they're on the streets these trains run through. Counties that want to keep the service would have to absorb the full cost themselves — roughly $150 million a year. A lot of them can't. So you end up with a patchwork, which means whether you get a crisis team or a cop depends on your zip code. Here's David Lassen at Trains News Wire:
Southern California's Metrolink, which has significantly reduced service since March because of operating issues, has announced the dates for online and in-person hearings regarding possible further cuts and fare increases.
Metrolink is scheduling public hearings — May 13th and 14th online, June 28th in person at the Metro Board Room — on what could be more service cuts and a 15% fare hike on top of the reductions they've already been running since March. So they've been quietly bleeding service since March, and now the fix they're floating is charge riders more and run fewer trains. That's not a transit agency, that's a hostage situation. Weekend service could disappear entirely — which, for the commuters using Metrolink to get across the basin without a car, is not a minor inconvenience. That's the whole deal gone. And watch who actually shows up to that June 28th in-person hearing versus who's affected. The people who'd lose weekend service aren't the ones who can take a Tuesday morning off to do public comment theater. Have a question, correction, or story idea about Los Angeles politics, housing, or city life? Send it our way at ladailyfix at lantern podcasts dot com. We read the inbox, and your notes help shape the show.
We've put links to all of today's stories in the show notes, so if one of them deserves a closer look, you can find the original reporting there.
That's Los Angeles Politics and Urbanism Daily for this Wednesday. This is a Lantern Podcast.