Episode 2: A Little History, SB79, the West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan, SB782 and AB797

We talk about SB79, touch on the West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan, overview SB782 and AB797 and talk a little about our trip to Sacramento and how and why we can all be our own best advocates and lobbyists. 

Chapters

• 0:29 A little history
• 6:22 A little about SB79 (densification around transportation)
• 6:24 A little about our CSD (Community Standards District)
• 11:50 If SB79 passes, what does that mean for Altadena
• 13:26 What does all of this have to do with homelessness and affordable housing
• 15:38 A little bit about the West San Gabriel Valley Area Plan controversy and the failed Poly development
• 20:26 Politics is self interest masked in altruism
• 20:53 An overview of SB797 and SB782, a little about our trip to Sacramento, and how to be your own lobbyist
• 24:08 The emotional and psychological timeline of a disaster
• 26:58 The policy ship has sailed... or has it?
• 28:02 About SB782 and SB797
• 32:28 Next time, a discussion about SB797 and CLTs (Community Land Trusts)

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:02

Welcome back to After the Ashes, a beautiful Altadena podcast where we explore how policy shapes recovery in wild-prone communities and especially in our own community, Altadena. So I'm Kimberly, and today we're going to zero in on SB 79, and we're going to also overview AB 797 and SB 782, some bills that could redefine how towns rebuild after a disaster. But before we get started with that, we wanted to tell some of our stories about the fire at the introduction of each podcast. And so today I'd like to turn it over to Shauna to share some of her story. And Shauna, what was the most difficult loss for you during the fire, after the fire?

SPEAKER_02: 0:44

I kind of love this question because I think, you know, for those who know me and we've discussed this, I've been asked this a few times for various interviews and documentaries. And, you know, and the question's always like, you know, what was the most difficult loss? What was the most meaningful thing that you lost? What was, you know, was it an heirloom? Was it something of family? family artifact? Was it this? Was it that? And I have a very simple answer to that question every time. And it's not anything that I owned necessarily, even though I did own it. It was the house. It was the house itself. It was the house because in my, I had a Jane's cottage, right? One of the only verified Jane's cottages that was outside of Jane's village. And it turns out, you know, in the post-fire knowledge that mine was actually a model home. It was a one of a kind with the elevation and the exterior and the situation I had in the back with this two-story A-frame kind of barn thing. And that house should have been standing a long time after I was gone. And it had so many stories to tell before me. And it would have had more stories to tell after me. And that, for me, was the most painful. And I will just share briefly. There's so many stories with my house. But I had a man turn up to my house right kind of in the thick of the pandemic. I saw these two women pulling up. And I have a really steep, craggy driveway. And then it's pea gravel. And this little man on his walker. And I'm like, oh, my gosh. no do not bring that man up here like dear God don't fall on my driveway what's happening and finally one of the women came to my front door she's probably in her 60s and she's like hey listen I'm so sorry to bother you especially in the middle of a pandemic at your door but this is my father and he grew up in your house almost 100 years ago and my home had just turned 100 this year and she was like we just happen to be in the area we don't live here and can he see the house and I was like oh my gosh okay masks for everybody yes bring him in and it ended up being you know that he stayed from more than an hour and told me so many stories and I got fantastic photos and he shared that he was a minor league baseball player in Pasadena and that he was the training partner of Jackie Robinson and proceeded to show me how the kitchen was originally laid out and where the kitchen table sat where he and Jackie Robinson he being one of the only Jewish players on the team and one of the only Jewish people in our community before we had a temple which you know and then we did have a temple and now we don't post fire but shared this incredible story of this history and that to me it was lost because that's just my house and you know there were 9,000 of those right I think we lost 6,000 single family homes more than but when you add up multifamily etc it's 9,000 it's beyond that with additional outbuildings and structures and we're looking at 22,000 people or half of our community displaced and that to me it's the history of our structures our historic structures that nothing can rebuild or bring back and the history of our the shared collective history and culture of our people and our neighbors and our community, which is why I went to Altadena 15 years ago. Having grown up in a pre-gentrified Highland Park and then in Mount Washington, Glassall Park, Altadena reminded me of that and what felt really familiar and diverse and beautiful. And that is my biggest fear for the rebuild, which was not the question today, but I will say that is my biggest fear is that I don't know how we bring that back between the architecture and our people. Yeah. I would love to hear you answer this question, too. And I would ask you, too, Steve, but your house is still standing. And I shouldn't be ribbing, Steve, because I feel really important to say, because I say to everyone, from day one, we've had so many people who've expressed their survivor's guilt, and I cannot say it enough or loud enough that there are no winners. It's not a competition. Everyone who was an Altadena resident on January 7th lost everything because we did lose our community and our history and our our collective identity. Separately, and we'll delve into it in future episodes, so many of our neighbors with standing homes have far more nuanced, challenging, difficult situations that are going to keep them out of their homes even longer than it's going to take you and I to rebuild, which is horrifying, and doing it without insurance money because they're fighting at every step. I made a little joke there, but we don't take it lightly. I think even for those who have I've been fortunate enough to get back in their homes. They're back in their homes for what? To live in questionable environmental situation, to be surrounded by destruction, to be surrounded in a construction zone for the next five to seven years, if we're lucky. You know, it's, it's a lot. And to have no community, I mean, no central services, no community, right? I mean, even, even our insurance agent, my, my lucky me, State Farm, even my insurance agent's office burned down, right? It's everybody. So, yeah, I think it's, um, It's a tough one. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

And I think, thank you so much because that's so true. And it's part of your story is why we started this podcast because we want to be able to, yeah, just figure out how we can come together and collectively rebuild. It's not going to look like it did before, but how can we make it so that it's still a place that we all want to live? And so with that, we want to just transition over to some of the policy that we want to talk about today and So we're going to be passing that over to Steve. But Steve, can you tell us a little bit about SB 79, what's happening with it, why it's kind of important to talk about now, and what are maybe some of the things that you're hearing that might not be true, and what are the impacts, if any, to Alcidea?

SPEAKER_00: 6:20

Yeah, so this is a bill, and again, I really wasn't following it a lot at the outset, that Senator Weiner's introducing, and he's a prolific legislator up there in Sacramento. He's from San Francisco. And he's been very much on the YIMBY density type train. So this bill was moving along. And then just before it started to really get traction or to really get visibility, the governor exempted SB 9, which was a density requirement for both the Palisades and Altadena, among all the other exemptions that we have. So then all of a sudden, you know, everybody was very, I was seeing on the group chats that, you know, are in our neighborhood, you know, comfortable with this. And then 79 started cropping up. And again, I think there's a lot of misinformation out there. This is, this bill really, if you read it, focuses on transit. And it's about densification within a quarter mile of transit stops, but not every transit stop. It's only the transit stops that are Metro based. So, you know, the, the gold line within a quarter mile of any of the gold line stations, this bill would allow for that kind of density. If you have a Metro rapid stop, which is a bus stop, it's the red ones that you see the signs. If you're driving down like Wilshire Boulevard or some of the more dense streets, Colorado Boulevard here, there aren't any up in Altadena. So the effect of this for Altadena, I, I, There's so many other things that we can be spending our bandwidth on, to be honest. It's something that I would probably put to the back. It'd be a continue to monitor, but not something that I would be spending a lot of time focusing on.

SPEAKER_02: 8:10

Spinning your wheels on, no pun intended. It's okay. I dropped a dad joke, even though I'm usually the 12-year-old boy in the room, because every time we talk about Wiener's transportation bill, I have an inappropriate joke to make or to keep it nice and PG for everyone listening at home or in their car or wherever you may be. I like to say it's the Wienermobile bill. This is how I remember it because it is Wiener and transportation. So thank you. You're welcome for that visual, everyone. The thing about this, and I think this becomes a very hot topic and a hot button issue in Altadena, right? As we saw prior to the fire, a number of mixed use projects going up, things being green lit. I'm sure most of us or many of us at least were following what was happening with the development of housing for the unhoused, specifically on Lake across the street from Coffee Gallery, just next door to where Dr. Maloof's dental practice was. And I named check Dr. Maloof because he was my dentist and I don't love dentists, but I loved him. And I was really bummed that he got forced into retirement by the pandemic. And then he passed very quickly after that. So Dr. Maloof was awesome. But, you know, that is understandably a very sensitive issue. And even when that was going through, which was a around the time that I was sitting on our land use committee, which is part of our town council, there was a very interesting feedback from the developer on that of like looking at our homeless count and going, wait, why is this going in Altadena? You don't have the unhoused. Like, yeah, this is for Pasadena's unhoused. And this is where this becomes a sensitive topic. I think not because people do not agree that we need transitional housing, that we do to some degree have to be YIMBY because Because if not us, where? And that's everybody. You're in the Palisades, Beverly Hills, I don't care where you are. We all have to take our share of this and find solutions in an incredibly already dense city with not enough housing already, right? But I think there's also a very real and reasonable fear that this fire and the suspension of the application of our CSD, which for those who don't know, that's our community standards district, right? That it dictates how things can be built and what the density looks like and on how close to the fence and how tall and all that kind of fun stuff. And that CSD that a number of Altadenans worked incredibly hard on, including Daniel Harlow, who's my co-admin in the beautiful Altadena group and who's an incredible, he's just another incredibly civic-minded person who's done a lot for our town. He's a subscriber. Of course he's a subscriber because he reads everything. Daniel, I joke, is like the Wizard of Oz in a way because people don't realize he's like the admin of every group, you guys. So don't, again, keeping it clean, we'll say don't F-A, don't F-O in any of our groups because, and when I say ours, not mine personally, any of the Altina groups because you're probably tussling with the same person everywhere. So play nice. The moral of the story is play nice. But I bring up this, bring this all up because this is a very real concern, right? That these things were suspended, our CSD was suspended for SB9. And then we were told that SB9 now has a moratorium. That was immediately after the fire. It was one of the moratoriums

SPEAKER_00: 11:38

that Gavin signed. It'll be up to the supervisor to determine whether or not it's going to go in play or not. The mayor has already said no to the Palisades, but ours is still in suspension or in purgatory.

SPEAKER_02: 11:48

Right. So now if SB79 passes, and I think it's fair to assume that it will, what does that really mean for Altadena?

SPEAKER_00: 11:56

Nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 11:56

Right? Because all the projects that are happening that bring density, they were greenlit before, right? they're generally, or actually if not majority, all of them are on the Lake Corridor in the kind of what we consider our commercial district and on the Lincoln Corridor in what we consider the commercial district.

SPEAKER_00: 12:15

Well, I think you're hitting on something that I've been really looking at in the substack and something we talked about at lunch today is the idea, what Altadena is going to become potentially is a test case for a lot of these policy issues, whether it's affordable housing, or I call it affordable and accessible housing because I don't think it's just about affordability. When you think of affordable housing, you think low income, moderate income. I'm thinking that there's a lot of working families that can't afford to live here either. And what is this gonna look like in terms of how we're going to rebuild affordably and affordably being what people can be able to use. And I think that you're touching on an issue, homelessness and the issues around homelessness which I can go into very deep dives on. In fact, that's what brought me back to local politics here in LA. I just, you know, this is what I think is gonna be very interesting about Altadena is that we are a test case and a pilot for so many of these policy questions that are gonna come up. And while we're gonna be discussing specific bills, a lot of the policy questions surrounding these bills are gonna come into play. Like for instance, you know, one of the questions I was asked last week was, you know, affordable housing. Give me an answer, give me the five points. And I said, okay, fine. We hear a lot about we need to build, build, build. But that's not necessarily true. We may have a housing distortion from an inventory perspective, and it's a generational shift. Now, I'm not saying people who are older need to leave their homes, but I'm also saying that you have an inefficient use of single-family homes right now in Southern California and across California because of Prop 13. So what does that look like? Altadena was 65% of the population was over the age of 65. Mm-hmm. So we're going to see that turnover occur in many of these homes anyway, and how the older homeowners are going to be affected by the fire. Are they going to move into more dense housing, which I know when my dad was ready to leave his house, he went into a multifamily apartment. That made a lot of sense. He didn't need the space. So that's a question that I think is going to be playing out, and whether we're going to have a direct impact answer from Altadena, I don't think we're going to see that. But I think that we are going to start to see some of these little tidbits, you know, sprinkle into our equation here. And it'll be very interesting how that all plays out.

SPEAKER_01: 14:51

So I've been curious about just the West San Gabriel Valley plan and how does that intersect with SB 79? I

SPEAKER_00: 15:01

mean, from my understanding is it's all congruent. But again, that one, I don't know. I'm going to be brutally honest. That's one of the few issues that I've kind of stayed away from. I haven't gotten into this affordable housing density question as deeply as I'd like. And where I'm coming at it from is more on a structural level. I like to look at some of the inputs that are coming and some of the incentives are built around certain shibboleths that I think bear more study. I'm not saying they're right or wrong. I'm saying that I think we need to have more consideration as to why we just accept them.

SPEAKER_02: 15:38

I'll actually wade into that a little bit with the West San Gabriel Valley plan because there was unfortunately a lot of misinformation around that and a lot of, frankly, kind of unnecessary pushback on it to the extent of a petition, and I think if you really dug deep and looked at who was leading that opposition and who was heading up that petition and what their personal motives were, it was like, oh. So without getting too deep into the entire plan, which I don't have the knowledge today to dive into in depth either, but the pieces that were being used as talking points were around housing density again, right? And how do we protect Alderina from overdue development. In particular, on the heels of the poly development. For anyone listening who's not familiar, if you're in Altadena, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you weren't, you may not. There is a large parcel of untouched land that we now know because of the efforts of a number of groups, including Altadena Wild and the Cheney Trail Corridor Project, which is a personal favorite of mine because the work they've done is just so incredible, identifying all sorts of native species and even some protected species and some endangered species that are dependent on this space so it is where the Nuccio family has for many generations had the Nuccio farms and many of us had Nuccio's camellias that was their specialty right these beautiful camellias I had a stunning camellia I will post photos of it somewhere for everyone in our neighborhood group actually this week someone was asking do any of you still have a Nuccio's camellia and is there any way that we can propagate cuttings for people in the community to bring these back because so So many of us had these historic plants, right? Along with our homes that were lost in the fire. It was pretty amazing. Well, the Nuccio, the seniors of the family who've been running this business are finally at a point they want to retire. And the kids, understandably, don't want to take on running this nursery for another generation or two. And so they've been looking to sell this parcel. The highest bidder on the parcel was Polly, a private school in Pasadena. Pasadena or San Marino? Pasadena. I know they're on the border, but it's Pasadena. So understandably, that created a lot of upset because what they wanted to do was develop it into a massive sports complex to bus people in and out. And you have to understand the only access to that is Cheney Trail Road. And the Cheney Trail is effectively a one-lane highway that can hardly support a fire response for the handful of residences on Alzada Road and a few of the name-breaking streets as it is. And I know it well because I almost bought on that street. And then I was like, oh my gosh, can I ever insure this? Which is a topic we're going to come back to. Can any of us ever insure anything in Altadena again? That's going to be a fun one to discuss. But that understandably was met with a lot of pushback for the community. And ultimately, that pushback effectively killed the deal. I understand the upset for the Nuccio family. And I genuinely hope they find, especially now in this post-fire climate, that they find some mechanism to be able to sell that land. I know there's some conservancies looking at it and trying to see if there's a way to make that kind of deal work for them because they deserve to have their generational wealth. I wouldn't begrudge them that. But following that, what is in the West San Gabriel Valley plan is our mechanisms to halt any development of areas like that because, as was said to me by one of our representatives, and I'll leave everyone can guess who that representative is because we have so few of them, so it's a very easy guess, but the statement that person made was like one this is prior to Polly pulling out was one this won't even be addressed before I'm out of office because this is going to drag on so long with environmental impact etc and two by the time it gets there it's getting shut down by fire because there is no way on earth that fire is going to let this happen and this is before the whole town burned okay so I think we know that kind of development is going to be squashed the few people who wanted to say that this plan was bad for all of us and that we needed to kill it are people who also own large parcels of multi-generational parcels that they would like to have the option of selling to a developer because that will be the highest bidder. But it is not what's right for Altadena. So I think with that, it makes a really important general point that I always like to make. Anytime you hear anything, investigate your source. It's just like when you look at a political ad and you look for the fine print of who put it out there. Who's paying for something? Who are they being paid by? Who are their sponsors? Who are their advertisers Follow the money.

SPEAKER_00: 20:22

So I always call it politics is self-interest masked in altruism. And so there's always self-interest there no matter what anybody says.

SPEAKER_01: 20:33

Well, it's hard for there not to be.

SPEAKER_00: 20:36

So.

SPEAKER_01: 20:37

Does

SPEAKER_00: 20:38

that answer the question? I

SPEAKER_01: 20:39

think that answers the question. Did we cover it? I think we covered it.

SPEAKER_00: 20:41

Sean,

SPEAKER_01: 20:45

I took my job. I can go back home now. And I think we wanted to just maybe move on and see if we could just do a little bit of a high level of 797 and 782 and then our

SPEAKER_02: 20:53

very favorite bills that we had a very a very fun field trip to Sacramento that's right

SPEAKER_00: 20:58

I wish I was there I was stuck in DC trying to advocate for some federal legislation so you guys you and Serena took it on for us

SPEAKER_02: 21:07

yeah we did and it actually I'll tell you what it was incredibly positive in the sense that even though we did not you know necessarily get all of the outcomes that we would have hoped right or that we would like so many things came out of that. One, we literally, for those who've not been to Sacramento, you know, the way our state capital is set up and situated is that you literally, you're going into buildings where the governor has an office, your senators have offices, all of your assembly people have offices. You can literally walk floor to floor, door to door, and just like do a tour and hit everyone. And we literally did that. We kind of walked in and we're like, hey, we're Altadena fire survivors. We know that the hearing is today. We have issues that we want to be sure are addressed. And it really highlights and underscores the ability to which we all can be our own advocates when it comes to policy like that, even just as a singular individual. You literally have the ability to walk into the office of your electeds, request the time to sit down, and they or one of their staffers will legitimately make time and sit down with you and listen to you and answer your questions. You may not get the answers you want. You may not get the outcomes you want. But you will be heard.

SPEAKER_00: 22:18

But it's actually very effective. A lot of people think you have to have a lobbyist to go into these offices and go meet with them. If you're effective and you have a story that resonates and you're reasonable and you're not sitting making demands, it's amazing how the electeds don't expect that. And so when you're able to do that, you distinguish yourself and you don't need a lobbyist to do it. I've been with lobbyists and they don't necessarily make that much of a difference. Sorry to all the lobbyists on this, listening to this right

SPEAKER_02: 22:51

now. Or to those who've engaged lobbyists, thinking that will get them what they need.

SPEAKER_00: 22:55

Yeah, I think lobbyists have a role. They're very much like attorneys, right? And an attorney is only as good as the client that tells them what they need. Lobbyists need to be pointed in a direction and do their job. Expecting a lobbyist to just open the, they can open doors, but what happens when you get in that door is very much, you know, up to you. And that's what Shauna and Serena did for very well when they were up there was they didn't need the lobbyists. They just knocked on the doors, which you can do. And I mean, that's what labor does all over Sacramento. And you listen to the electeds up there. They'll tell you every day they're walking those halls. They're advocating their positions. So that is our democracy that we live in. So I'm glad you guys were able to do it. I was following the whole hearings on the plane back from D.C. It was a lot of fun, actually. And

SPEAKER_02: 23:40

it's again, it just underscores that need for all of us to be our own best advocates, which I think is going to be the theme, frankly, of getting through this entire process. We've already had to learn this, right, of being our best advocates with the county for some of us, you know, with CFP, who's been a nightmare for people with both total losses and homes still standing, with the insurance industry. You name it, right? I know. I'm a state farm person. Like, I'm on adjuster eight and nine right now. It's bananas. Wow. But, you know, that's it. We all are going, like, even though we're tired, we're going to have to find ways to take breaks. Like I largely took the month of August off in a way. If anyone was like, where did you go? Why have you been so quiet? Because I joke, except I'm not joking, that I was so tired. I said I was tired on an existential level. Like I need a nap in another timeline. It's hard to understand how we all feel. And if you actually, we're talking about it a lot in our group the last few weeks because we were in this period of the seven month into the eight month mark. And if you follow that design disaster roadmap, right? The kind of like the timeline of a disaster. You see at the seven, eight month mark on the graph, there is a massive trough. It's like you drop off of a precipitous cliff, right? It's just a free fall down. And we're in that. We are in that bottom where you've gone through, you know, the disillusionment and you've gone through, and forgive me because I'm not staring at the graph, but it's like, you know, the disaster happens, the disillusionment, the, you know, community coming together, you know, you've gone through some of your disbelief, you've gone through the the beginning of the grief but really not really you think you did but not really and then you get and then there's also this like kind of this honeymoon period where the community rallies and everyone's optimistic and it's oh we're all going to rebuild one for all we're in this together and then reality hits right and we're in the thick of that reality on so many levels where people who want to stay in the community can't renters are forever displaced seniors are being forced out or in the worst circumstances our neighbors with generational wealth who had no interest because they didn't feel that they needed it in a home that's been paid off forever. Have their own issues. It's just all coming to a head now. The town's moving. When I say the town, I mean LA as a whole is moving on. We've heard about this a lot too where people are like, one, why is the grief coming up so bad? Why am I so depressed? Why do I feel like shit? Why am I in this disillusioned state where I just want to fall apart right now? This is it. This is a very real thing. Two, how does everyone else think that We're over this, right? Like, it's been eight months. Aren't you rebuilding? Haven't you moved on? Haven't you moved on, Kimberly? Don't you have a place to live? Don't you know what you're doing? Steve, everything is normal for you. No big deal driving up and down Lake. Everything's cool. You don't see any destruction anywhere. The cleanup is done. So, yeah, I think it's a very real thing that we're all kind of in this space, but we have to somehow find ways to, I am going to sound like a middle-aged cliche right now, but, you know, for the self-care, right? Find ways to take care of yourself mentally, spiritually, physically, in every way that you can.

UNKNOWN: 26:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 26:44

I continue to say we're lucky that we have each other like even us doing this podcast everyone sitting here we've been through this even in the studio we're in the team here in the studio people from Altadena living this reality too we are everywhere there's 22,000 of us so we're very lucky to have that but we've got to find ways to continue to advocate for ourselves especially with this policy because even if the policy is done and it's going through and there's no amending it and there's no this or there's no that to your point Steve there is still opportunity to navigate this ship and to have some input and feedback to our local representatives and electives, in particular our supervisor, to say, hey, this is how we want this to look. Like, hey, this may have gone through, but this is how we want this implemented. This is how we want this to look. Or not, hey, this is how we want. This is what we as a community are going to demand because we cannot have anything less.

SPEAKER_00: 27:38

And look, the people that are going to be implementing this, not necessarily on the policy level, but the people who are going to be in investors, people who are going to be the outsiders, they're going to demand that of the electeds too. They're going to want to ensure that the community is behind it. So the community does have a say. The community doesn't have a say in shaping the policy per se in terms of the legislation anymore, but the community does have a say in how that policy is being implemented to a certain extent.

SPEAKER_01: 28:05

So just to piggyback off of all of that, can we do just a quick overview of

SPEAKER_02: 28:09

797 and 782? words in two minutes or less.

SPEAKER_01: 28:16

And then we'll deep dive into it next time.

SPEAKER_00: 28:18

No, no, you're good. All right, so 782 is Senator Perez's bill, and it creates what's called a climate resilience district, which is part, it's a build-off of the economic, or what is it again? EIFD. EIFD, what is it?

SPEAKER_01: 28:33

Economic infrastructure. Financing district.

SPEAKER_00: 28:38

Anyway, it's just basically a fancy way of saying we're going to create like a quasi entity that is going to essentially quarterback the recovery. And it's gonna really focus on infrastructure, but it can also get into affordable housing and small business and things like that. But we have a tremendous amount of infrastructure that needs to be rebuilt here. And it allows and authorizes the district, which is the entity that is gonna be created to utilize what's called tax increment financing. financing means very simply is if there's appreciation in the value of the property tax for a parcel or for the entire town, that money can then be used. We borrowed it from Peter to pay Paul and use that money to then pull forward, you know, the increase that can happen down the road and pay for rebuilding sewers or rebuilding infrastructure today. And, you know, betting that, you know, there's going to be a$10,000 difference in that property tax. They can take$5,000 of that potentially and put it towards these types of things and do it. There's 6,000 properties. You can start to do the math. It's a significant number. But, I mean, the numbers are not going to be big enough to rebuild Altadena. That bill, we'll go into more detail on, has its strengths and weaknesses. 797 is different. 797, you know, when I tell my story, I'll tell how 797 was conceived because when I woke up the next morning after being evacuated that night, I saw that my house was still standing and I said, something needs to be done. And 797 is a bill that allows us to tap what's called Community Reinvestment Act money, which is money that banks are required by regulation to invest in underserved communities. And disaster areas are considered underserved communities. And the idea being that this is a source of funds that there's a big delta. Now, in the height of COVID, the banks put out$400 billion worth of Community Reinvestment Act investments. A lot of it was PPP and those types of investments that make investments in people that are affected by COVID. The last few years, it's been down around about$280,$250 billion. So there's a delta there that's available that there's demand, but there's not enough supply. So the banks have a couple hundred billion dollars available annually that they could be putting into things like rebuilding Altadena. Now, there's a way to structure it and all this other stuff which we can go into, but the idea behind 797 was... We have a huge number of families that potentially have to sell because they didn't have insurance and there wasn't any basis on which to sell into where we can preserve the value of their property. And so we wanted to create a mechanism where we can take the money from the banks, potentially, put it through a community-based organization which had transparency and the community knows who's involved and they would have representation on the board, et cetera, and allow to allow them to acquire the land at fair market value, what the land was worth January 6, 2025. And this would prevent people coming in and exploiting the people who've lost everything and allow people to get a fair market price or a bid for their property. And then if they wanted to sell, they could sell to the community-based organization or they can go to developers or whomever, but to give choice. And so that's what 797 was really all about. There's also more to it, which we can go into later on, but that's the nuts and bolts of it at a high level.

SPEAKER_02: 32:31

We should next time talk about CLTs too.

SPEAKER_00: 32:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 32:34

And how all that plays in.

SPEAKER_00: 32:35

Yes. For those of you that don't know the acronym, CLT is community land trusts.

SPEAKER_02: 32:43

Yeah. Yeah. I think that they're all kind of tied and connected and kind of can't talk about one without talking about the

SPEAKER_00: 32:48

other. Well, yeah. So the way I, the way I like to think of the distinction is 797 envisions holding property in trust as a opposed to as a trust. And it's a distinction that has a very significant meaning because the idea behind 797 is that properties can be returned back to consumers. It's more or less to provide liquidity for those that need to get out and want to get out at a fair market price with the ability to walk away feeling that they weren't taken advantage of. A community land trust holds that property for an indefinite period of time.

SPEAKER_01: 33:20

In perpetuity.

SPEAKER_00: 33:21

Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 33:22

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So they definitely are different mechanisms for different, I think, yeah, different underlying reasons.

SPEAKER_00: 33:30

We have a lot to unpack. We have a lot to unpack. They serve very similar purposes, which is, you know, to ensure that properties have community accountability.

SPEAKER_02: 33:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 33:39

And that's essentially what we will be discussing at some point.

SPEAKER_02: 33:44

Unfortunately, and I'm going to, man, I hate to be fucking negative at the end of the episode, but I'm going to leave us on this note, and I apologize to any young ears listening. I have an F-bomb problem.

SPEAKER_00: 33:53

Earmuffs,

SPEAKER_02: 33:54

earmuffs. Earmuffs, earmuffs. Another old person, old school reference. We're dating ourselves again. on the issue of a CLT and a land trust. And now I think I may have lost my train of thought because that's totally what happens because also between the fire and perimenopause, I have the attention span of a gnat. This is a miracle I've gotten this far. It's going to come back to me. But shoot, what did I want to say? It's going to come back to me. And you can always save it for next episode if you want to. And listener, this may be the first, but it's absolutely not the last time it will happen. The fact that it didn't happen in episode one is a miracle. So there we are. There you go.

SPEAKER_00: 34:29

It's because you had caffeine now as opposed to before.

SPEAKER_02: 34:31

It's true. I should gone full

SPEAKER_01: 34:33

calf not

SPEAKER_02: 34:33

half calf

SPEAKER_01: 34:34

excellent well I think we're going to wrap it up for today so thanks for joining us on after the ashes a beautiful Altadena podcast so make sure to subscribe share and tune in next week as we unpack both 797 and 782 and the fight to fund wildfire resilience from the ground up this is Kimberly

SPEAKER_02: 34:53

Shauna reminding you also if you have any questions you want to submit please do that through any of our channels it could be through our Facebook beautiful Altadena group it could be through our sub Substack, Beautiful Altadena. It could be through Steve's Alta Policy Wonk. Substack, it could be through our Instagram at Beautiful Altadena. Email. And our email, beautifulaltadenaog at gmail.com. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_00: 35:15

Thank you. It's Steve.

SPEAKER_02: 35:17

See you next time. Thank you. See you next time.