LA's staring down two bills at once — rebuild Altadena without pricing out the people who lived there, and keep the transit system from gutting itself before anyone gets back on their feet. This is The LA Daily Fix — today we're watching to see whether this city actually delivers for working people, or just rebuilds for whoever can afford to come back. Affordable rentals, the D Line, Metrolink cuts — it's all the same fight: does LA protect access, or does it hand another crisis to landlords and bean-counters? We've got the fire-recovery housing numbers, a long-awaited subway extension, and Metrolink hearings you should actually show up to — let's get into it. From Erin Rode at 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 & Main has a piece on Altadena's rental stock after the Eaton fire — and the headline is basically: the fire burned down affordable housing, and what gets rebuilt probably won't be. Right, because the county has a 2024 plan that actually calls for denser, mixed-use corridors along the main streets — and local leaders are just... ignoring it to protect the low-density vibe. The renters who got displaced are the ones who most want to come back, and the policy is working against them. The cruel irony is that renters statistically have higher return rates than homeowners after disasters. So the people most committed to coming back are the ones least likely to find housing when they do. Deferring to 'community character' is code for deferring to homeowners. The renters are the community too — they just don't have the same seat at the table. This is how you gentrify a neighborhood without technically doing anything. From Kavish Harjai at LAist:
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 is flagging something that deserves more attention than it's getting — California's mobile crisis response teams, the ones that pick up when you call 988, are staring down a $150 to $200 million annual funding cliff. Newsom's budget would make this a county option, not a state requirement. So the state builds out this whole behavioral health infrastructure, gets federal money to juice the expansion, and now that the feds are pulling back, Newsom's answer is to hand the bill to counties and call it 'flexibility.' That's not flexibility, that's abandonment. LA County alone would be on the hook for a massive chunk of that — and counties that can't absorb it just lose the teams entirely. That's not a hypothetical, that's the math. And these are the teams we're supposed to be routing calls to instead of sending cops to mental health crises. You can't defund the alternative and then act surprised when the old system is all that's left. From 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 a pretty painful round of cuts: fewer peak trains, weekend service gone, and fare hikes up to 15 percent on a one-way ticket. So they've been quietly bleeding service since March, and now they want to make it permanent and charge riders more for the privilege of waiting on a platform for a train that may not come. This is exactly the death spiral transit agencies fall into when leadership won't fight for funding. To be fair, the hearings are the public's shot to actually push back — June 28th in person, or email comment before that. Trains News Wire had this one first. If you kill weekend service, you're not running a commuter railroad anymore — you're running a monument to one. Show up to those hearings. If something today made you want the fuller version, we've put links to every story in the show notes, so you can tap through and read more when you've got a minute.
That's The LA Daily Fix for this Wednesday. This is a Lantern Podcast.