Jan. 12 (UPI) — As California’s seasonal Santa Ana winds are still fanning the flames of deadly wildfires that have killed at least 16 people and destroyed some 10,000 structures around Los Angeles, economists and real estate agents are warning of its effects on an already existing housing crisis.
The fires, with little containment, continued advancing toward yet more houses and other structures Sunday leading real estate agents like Jason Oppenheim, who stars in Netflix’s reality series “Selling Sunset,” to encourage people in the profession to “come together for the community.”
“If you’ve lost your home in the Los Angeles fires and you need to find a place to rent until your home is rebuilt, all Oppenheim Group agents will represent you for free or credit you back any commission we receive in the transaction,” Oppenheim said on social media.
Oppenheim, in comments to the BBC, alleged that one renter had been asked for thousands of dollars above the original asking price to rent a home. California has price-gouging laws that should protect against such instances.
In fact, a quick search confirmed that rental prices were on the rise in the tawny L.A. suburb of Bel Aire which, at one point, was at the epicenter of the fires, as first reported by the LAist.
The average price for a 4-bedroom rental was already pushing $20,000 a month before the blazes exploded, up 28% from 2023 prices, according to the real estate site Zumper.
Economists added in remarks to The New York Times that the fires will have a domino effect on the housing market, forcing people who have lost their homes to look for quick rentals, squeezing a housing supply in an already extremely tight and expensive real estate market, potentially devastating people from one end of the socioeconomic spectrum to the other.
“It’s very possible that this event is going to cause a big increase in homelessness, even though the people who got pushed out of their homes are people of means,” said Jonathan Zasloff, who lost his home in Pacific Palisades, and teaches land use and urban policy at UCLA.
California has been facing a tight market and inflated prices for well over a decade despite efforts at the state level to make housing more affordable. As recently as a month ago, the L.A. City Council voted to increase development in existing high-density residential neighborhoods and commercial corridors, but left zoning rules in single-family areas untouched.
Zasloff and others argue the fires will up the urgency, forcing policymakers to address the affordability issue head-on, potentially pushing them to make regulatory changes that allow home building to happen more quickly.
“This is such a devastating event that hopefully it rocks the system to the point where we can get real reform,” Dave Rand, a land-use attorney at the firm at Rand Paster & Nelson in Los Angeles, told The New York Times.
Rand is also on the board of directors of the California Housing Partnership Coalition, focused on affordable housing.
The council has said it plans to build as many as half a million new housing units by the end of 2029. It’s not clear yet how or whether fires will change the numbers, the timeline, or where some of those dwellings may be constructed.