After the Ashes: A Beautiful Altadena Podcast

Episode 8: Relief or Ruse? AB238, Property Tax Increases & the Questions Still Unanswered

Shawna Dawson Beer

In this episode, we dig into AB238, the so-called mortgage relief bill — but is it truly relief, or just another setup for long-term displacement? We also explore how this bill connects directly to property taxes and AB782, and the larger web of legislation reshaping Altadena, often without any community input. 

We ask:

 👉 Will property taxes be based on cash value or square footage?
👉 Why are we being told one thing but seeing nothing in writing?
👉 Who benefits when our property values — and taxes — quietly go up?

One thing is clear: the incentives align to drive property values and taxes up across the board, and Altadena deserves answers.

We invite LA County Tax Assessor Jeff Prang on a future episode to address these concerns directly and help shed light on how these changes could affect homeowners in Altadena and across LA County.

On this episode, we’re proud to spotlight Rhythms of the Village and their upcoming Fall Fest on November 22, from 1–7 PM at John Muir High School!
Though they lost their brick-and-mortar shop to a fire, they’re still here — keeping culture, connection, and community alive. Go for the Live Music, Great Food, Local Vendors, Community Love.  Bring your friends, your family, and your whole tribe. Let’s celebrate the spirit of Altadena together! Learn more @1rhythmsofthevillage

Let’s keep going. Tune in and stay activated.

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome back to After the Ashes, a beautiful Al Tadena podcast. I'm Steve Sachs, and I'm here with Shauna Dawson Beer, and we're gonna tackle another exciting policy issue today. Shauna, which one are we gonna go after?

SPEAKER_01:

It's mortgage relief and property tax. I for I haven't given it a sexy title yet.

SPEAKER_00:

I don't think there is a sexy title for any of these things.

SPEAKER_01:

It's uh we're gonna talk about AB 238, the mortgage relief bill, right? Or the mortgage forbearance bill.

SPEAKER_00:

John's bill.

SPEAKER_01:

It is John Herabedian's bill.

SPEAKER_00:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

It was just signed in on September 22nd.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

So it's fresh, but it's real. It's it's happening. Do you want to give a background? Do you want me to run through a background?

SPEAKER_00:

You know, you've you've you've been dealing with this a lot more than I have.

SPEAKER_01:

I'll give a quick and dirty on it. Um AB 238 is called the Mortgage Forbearance State of Emergency Wildfire Bill. Um it is a mold, a mouthful. It's an urgency statute, meaning it took effect immediately when it was chaptered. So it's a little bit a little bit different.

SPEAKER_00:

Most of the bills that have been passed related to the wildfire have been have been those.

SPEAKER_01:

Um as I said, this was signed in on September 22nd. Um, and the bill is tied directly to the disaster as it was declared by Newsom on January 7th, and the federally declared FEMA disaster, that is the Eaton Fire, the Palisades fire, and any associated events that we've probably all heard called the straight line wins, even though I think we would all call it the SCE fire, but my attorney would prefer that I not say that. Uh so let's talk about the um the grin that I'm getting right now. It's as if Joe was sitting right next to me right now. Except Joe would be wearing a few. Except Joe would be in a pair of great boots and a cowboy hat. Um the major components of AB 238, um, who's eligible, which loans, right? So this is about mortgage forbearances. And actually, I'm gonna back this up a little bit. So for um those who are not familiar, those who are very familiar, again, if you're lucky enough to own your home, right? As we know, homeownership is absolutely a privilege that not everyone is afforded. But if you were able to own your home via through generational wealth, generational families, or if you were able to buy in or you bought in early, you know, like many of us, like you know, again, I consider myself a newcomer in Altadena, having been there 15 years, but 15 years ago, you could still buy homes for considerably under a million dollars, uh, which is clearly has not been a thing for a very long time. So if you were lucky enough to be in that scenario and you owned your home, what happened after the fire is um thanks to another executive order that had been signed, everything went into an automatic forbearance. Your mortgages went into an automatic uh was it three or four months? Four months.

SPEAKER_00:

January through April. You could elect for four months. Correct. Well, you but you didn't have to take each other the four months.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's it's I'm glad you brought that up, Steve. Because therein lies here, I have a lot of things. Therein lies some of the issues, right? Yes. And I know I've seen this and fielded a lot of it in our groups, um, but also my I've had my own personal experience, which is a real fucking thrill.

SPEAKER_00:

This is what I wanted you to talk about.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh my gosh. Um, so you know, uh, and and I took some shots at Herabedian because Herabedian pushed that that initial four-month forbearance, and that it, you know, uh I'm gonna explain why. So that four-month forbearance, in theory, you should have been able to elect in or elect out, but it didn't really work that way. Um, this all happened so rapidly, and there was no way to really force compliance with different lenders. So, you know, lenders handled this the way and interpreted it the way that they believed they should interpret and handle. So, in the case of my lender, I knew that this was going to be a setup for foreclosure because there was no language that required the lender to um uh consolidate or to um refinance or to um there's another uh mortgage term that I'm I'm missing right now, perimenopause, um that that pertains to restructuring that loan so that the four months of payment that you would miss would be tacked onto the back end or added to your principal or anything else, right? So, in other words, you would be stuck with a balloon payment. And there's no benefit to having four months of no payment to then get stuck.

SPEAKER_00:

To then get stuck with four months of payment at once plus the month that you exactly, plus everything else.

SPEAKER_01:

On top of the fact, you know, we didn't have the money in January, weren't gonna have the money in April. And I was like, this is a setup for foreclosure. People are going to get screwed. And it did, that's exactly what happened. There are so many people in our community who were who did this thinking that it was gonna help them, and it is now set them up for foreclosure and they are battling foreclosure.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think this is similar to what happened with the prohibition of buying undervalued lots, you know, where the predatory buyers like the governor did an exemption within seven days of the the fire hitting, and you know, i i the hope was that a bill like 797 would come into play before the expl the expiration of the executive order. I think he extended it once, but the idea is today there is no real prohibition against that. I don't think maybe there is. I I kind of lost track of it because executive orders to bills and the whole process. But back to your point, you know, that four-month for bay forbearance, so to speak. The hope I sure was that there was gonna be some form of structural fix in place. Or at least that's what I would hope. That's what one would hope, right?

SPEAKER_01:

But it didn't unfortunately it didn't get implemented that way. So, like I know that you know uh this mortgage. There were so many, so many issues. So I know that the intentions were were good. John John's intentions were very good in doing this and pushing it through because it should have been a help for people. Uh, but unfortunately, you know, again, um, with unscrupulous lenders, and I believe they are all unscrupulous, um ultimately it put a lot of people in a bad spot. Now, I I could just I knew it. I knew it was gonna happen. So, this is what I'm talking about. You didn't have to do it, but it was automatically applied. So in my case, I knew this was gonna be a bad deal. And I had actually already, you know, my my loan had just been sold, and I was in the middle of another nightmare between the previous lender and the lender that my loan was sold to. So in my case, I was like, oh, this is just a recipe for disaster. So I continued to make my payments. January, February, March, I made my mortgage payments. In April, I made my payment, plus, per their instructions and directions and their payoff quote that they had generated. I sent in and signed over all of my insurance checks, you know, your coverage A dollars, because they sit on them, they got to co-sign them, and they sit on them and they make interest while you continue to pay your mortgage and pay interest. And that's a whole other conversation and thrill that you never think about. No one talks about, and you wouldn't imagine until you're in this boat with this kind of uh total loss disaster.

SPEAKER_00:

Turns out insurance is a is a racket. It's it's not insur it it gives you peace of mind, but in actuality, when you need it, it yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Uh we won't even get into that one because it would be too much of a sidebar.

SPEAKER_00:

But um, there's people who just this is all they do for a living these days.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, me. I'm on adjuster number 10.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Me, I'm that person. Ten months, ten adjusters. I cannot. So, Steve, let's keep on, let's keep on track.

SPEAKER_00:

I think a lot of people are sympathizing with this. I think these are the things, these are the daily daily frustrations they feel.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, wait till you hear where I'm going with this mortgage story.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I know where you're going.

SPEAKER_01:

You know where I'm going. But for our listeners, oh my gosh. So I specifically deliberately did not take the forbearance I kept paying. Fast forward to April, submit my monthly payment along with all my insurance dollars, my payoff request, my payoff note, send it certified mail to the address I was told to, and this was a whole nebulous thing because of the insurance component. It had to go to a special department that's in another state, it's a whole thing. Had receipt that they had cashed all the checks and that they so they have my money, they had the letter in April. Come May 1st, I get put into foreclosure. And they report to the credit bureaus that my home is in foreclosure. Plus four months of non-payment, because even though they took my money with the forbearance, they didn't apply it. So at this point, I am in this deep thrill of battling on all fronts, right? It took me until the end of July to get that resolved to where my home was finally, in fact, paid off, and they sent me the dividend of because not only did they have all the payoff money, they were sitting on more money because it was more than they were owed. Don't even get me started on the fact that my dirt alone was worth more than I owed, is worth more than I was I owed. Uh, and that is part of this racket. It is a legalized racket, it's like a legalized mafia. Um, so yeah, nightmare. And I'm not the only one. So many people in the same situation, either with with this, and I'm hearing about, and it wrecked my credit. I they still haven't fixed that, and they won't.

SPEAKER_00:

No, it and that's so it's it wrecked my credit. Yeah, and and you are so angry. You are the personification of what so many in Altadina are feeling and are frustrated with. So the misapplication of a bill, because our government never misapplies things or never creates policy that gets us into trouble. 782. Um where what so so what so so it as a result, all this your drama, your situation is something that everybody is near and dear. So we create a new bill. This new bill is supposed to be, what does it do? Explain to us.

SPEAKER_01:

So who's eligible? Which loans? Okay, let's talk about it. So the law applies to, and I'm reading a breakdown, guys, so we we're gonna nail this. Um, to residential mortgage loans, and that's an important distinction.

SPEAKER_00:

Remember chat GPT at the bottom has a disclaimer.

SPEAKER_01:

Residential mortgages.

SPEAKER_00:

I'll be your attorney now.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm looking no, I'm looking at Legiscan. This is um the law applies to mortgage loans secured by real property, improved with four or more or fewer residential units. That's an important caveat. It also allows borrowers with up to 10 investment properties to be eligible in earlier versions. That's interesting. So they tried to get that through, but it didn't happen. Um, and it narrowed it down to just the small residential settings of four or fewer four or fewer units. So if you're an investment property owner, you're SOL. Um, and then your hardship must be very clearly tied to the declared disaster, in our case, the Eaton Fire, to attest the financial hardship. The forbearest forbearance um the the bill requires that mortgages servicers offer an initial forbearance of up to 90 days, and then you can request extensions in 90-day increments up to a maximum of 12 months. And then any earlier forbearance that was already offered will count towards that 12-month total. So, for example, if you took the four months, you only get A month, right? Ah now. I know, I know. So here we go. The this is now this is the interesting thing. Um because that's but there's no balloon on this. Correct. So there's a couple of interesting things that are different here. There's no balloon payment on this. This prohibits balloons. So thank you, John, for getting that. And that that was a nightmare again, set up for foreclosure for so many, too many, and people are now losing their homes over the last forbearance. Um, so this does prevent that. No more balloon payments. So you're not looking at a 12 or an eight-month payment due at the end. They will have to um somehow reconfigure your loan to accommodate those mispayments. Um, this also during the forbearance period prohibits your lender from charging any late fees or default interest rates and from initiating foreclosure processes or seeking judgments, and most importantly, for folks like me, for accounts that were current when you went into the forbearance and are performing as agreed, this bill also prohibits them from reporting delinquencies to any consumer credit agency. That's huge because this is where people really got screwed. Because if you weren't, you know, uh that's that's what's come up in our group just in the last week. A few folks said, Oh my gosh, I can't believe this, took the forbearance, everything was fine with that, did not deal with a with the foreclosure nightmare, did not deal with the balloon payment, but PS, they reported me as in forbearance with four mispayments, and it completely screwed my credit. So, you know, this is another huge piece.

SPEAKER_00:

So, this would be what we call a cleanup bill. This is what it should look like.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, exactly. It's it is a bit of a cleanup bill. Bravo. And this and this may need a little more cleanup. Sorry, John.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, look, it's a hell of a lot better than what it was.

SPEAKER_01:

It's a hell of a lot better than what it was. So let's hope it helped folks. I really hope so. I have so many friends, especially with standing homes, um, who are in such a nightmare scenario with insufficient coverage, insufficient ALE, ALE meaning additional living expenses or the money that you use to pay rent somewhere else when you can't live at home for literally years. Um, but you still have to pay for that other property, including your you know, you gotta pay your mortgage and your taxes. I was just getting my updated tax bill, which, you know, spoiler alert, it's not that much lower. It's still big. I was like, I owe how much in April? A lot.

SPEAKER_00:

County's bankrupt.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Who else is gonna pay these the$4 billion for the sexual assault uh settlements?

SPEAKER_00:

They got$700 million they got to come up with for the uh healthable department.

SPEAKER_01:

They got absolutely unbelievable. So, you know, that so that's where we're at. That is what AB 238 is. So if you have not, you know, let here's the takeaway on this one. If you have not already, now you're a little more educated and informed about this, you know how it's supposed to work, you know how it could work to benefit you, go take advantage of it. Call your mortgage lender, ask them, you know, what you're at. Can you get 12 months? Can you get eight months? At least again, it starts in if you need it. It starts in those. If you don't need it, don't get into this game because it's gonna be, it's gonna be a mess. Yep. But if you're looking at, oh my gosh, I don't know how I'm going to pay this, and I'm struggling and I don't want to end up foreclosed on, this will at least buy you some time. And with any luck, we'll have another fix-it bill at the end of the year period to give you some additional extensions. Because I've said it a thousand times, I'm gonna say it here on this podcast again. What people need is time and money, and money buys time. And when I say time in this case, years. We are not gonna be able to rebuild our homes for years. People are going to need some form of mortgage support for years if they're not in a position or it doesn't make financial sense for them to pay it off. Because how the heck else are they gonna, even if they had ALE, they're gonna run out. People are running out right now. Another batch of people will run out in the new year. The longest it could be extended would be uh January of 2028, if you had enough money. That's the three-year mark. Insurance claims like this are two years, and then you get the federal disaster uh layer, and that gives you an extra year. It's how we get from January 2027 to January 2028. But the majority don't have enough money to stretch to that point. So at some point sooner than later, they're out of money, but their house isn't rebuilt. Then what? Well exactly, Steve.

SPEAKER_00:

I I look, nobody ever said it was easy to be in government.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, apparently it's not easy to have your whole fucking town burned down either.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I didn't say it was. That's why some of us stood up when this happened because we knew that things had to be done. And you know, this was gonna require different thinking and different ways of seeing the world.

SPEAKER_01:

So, with this, while we're on this topic, do we want to talk about property tax?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think it ties in.

SPEAKER_01:

I think so too. You want to walk us through it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, uh, you and I have both been talking about this, and there are others out there, you know who you are, you've you you're probably hopefully listening, who have brought up the property tax question to us and and brought it up to me. And you know, the issue really comes down to we've all been told something, but I'm thinking a lot of people are learning that you can words are cheap, you gotta put things down on paper and you gotta show it. Now, Shauna, stop me if I'm wrong or stop me when I'm incorrect in understanding this. But as I see it or as I've read and you know tried to educate myself and speaking with the assessor's office, there's this conception that we are going to be the LA Times put it out right afterward. You know, if you have a 1,200 square foot house, you build back 1,200 square feet, your property tax stays the same. And this is really for those that are, you know, multi-generational Prop 13, which means people who have been grandfathered into low property taxes for their home, like maybe a thousand dollars a year on a million-dollar home, which is now worth a million. So again, I go back to so the the the constitution as it relates to Prop 13, as it relates to this property tax, is the cash value. Cash value of the home has nothing to do with square footage. And so there's a lot of misunderstanding about what this means. Now, over the summer I got pinged with people telling me, no, no, no, Steve, you don't understand, everything's gonna be fine. People are being assured everything's gonna be fine. I've stood in front of the assessor, has stood there and told me this. You know, people associate with the assessor, they've told me it's gonna be fine, everything's gonna be fine. And I go, give me something in paper, in writing, give me something with the assessor's name and the seal on there that tells me that this is gonna be the case. Because I've been through this before. And I know what happens when somebody makes an assurance to me and then it doesn't work out that way, and I go sue, and the judge goes, sorry, like that's what the law says, they make the determination, that's the end of it. And so if it's not written in paper and it doesn't have the assessor's name, his signature, and his, you know, the transfixed, you know, the seal from the assessor's office, it's not worth what you're being told. So here we are. Cash value is what the law says. It doesn't say anything about square footage. This was a confusion that came up in 2020 after the Woolseley fire. And Jackie Irwin, who was the who is the assembly person out there, and actually is affected by this fire as well, sponsored legislation back in 2020. I think it was AB 882 or something like that. Um it was vetoed by the governor. But on that bill, it was exactly how we understood it, which is the cash value or the square footage, whichever one you built back to, plus 10%, you'd be fine. And the assessors across the state got on the governor, even though it passed the legislature. We can do the same thing with 782, and was able to get the governor to veto it because this would change the entire case of how the assessors' assessments would work. So let's fast forward to today. All right, here we stand, we've been told all these things. The the assessor was trying to push a bill through Assemblymember Schultz from Burbank and it got shelved. Same type of thing. It was about giving more discretion to the assessor. Why? Because the assessor is going to be on the hook to have to decide whether or not what the cash value is. And as it's been explained to me, if he lowers the cash value for the homes here, because he has it in his discretion to bring it down to, you know, like if you rebuild and it was, you know, based on the 1973 or 1978 property tax value, he can do that. But then is that a violation of every other property tax assessment across the county? And so add to that the idea that prop or uh AB7 or SB 782 is all about property tax increment financing, folks. So you have these competing interests, and why we knocked out a straight answer? I got an email the other day from the assessor's office. He's running for re-election in 2026. So I'll let you do the math here. But this is a major issue that I think we we as a community also have to stand up for because the incentives are aligned to go to assess as high as possible. You know, you're gonna go build at Edison has now given us a floor of six hundred dollars a square foot or so. So now your home that was probably bought for$100,000 could now be worth$800,000. Is that difference gonna be taxable? That's the question.

SPEAKER_01:

That is a big question.

SPEAKER_00:

And there is no clear answer on this. And it's it's mind-boggling because here we are, people are rebuilding now, people are having to make these decisions. And did Edison, by giving that number, now allow a base for the property tax increment financing to be based upon so investors know what the new taxable rate's going to be for all those homes? Now, those are my questions. I'll let Shauna talk now.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, they're all good questions, and I have the same questions. I um, you know, I keep hearing from various circles, not to worry about this. It's it's exactly as we just discussed. It's going to be if you're like for like, you're not gonna have any problem. If you're even if you're doing a small uh addition or even a significant addition, you're only going to be taxed on the addition, that additional square footage, the the original square footage, all that will remain at the same property tax value. This is the party line.

SPEAKER_00:

But to your point, community groups were promised that everything was gonna be fine on 782, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly. To your point, none of it is in writing. None of it. And every time we have pressed and asked that question, it gets danced around, and I'm told not to worry about it.

SPEAKER_00:

What happens when county council comes back and says to the assessor? And it's not the assessor who says this, county council says it. And I oh I know how government works, nobody argues with the lawyers. If the lawyer comes in and says this is the way it's gonna go, then what?

SPEAKER_01:

Here we are. I um had really hoped that we would have Jeff Prang on this uh episode to discuss this with us because I know he's open to having the conversation about this um and has been very open. And you know, we have some mutual friends, and I appreciate his his candidness, and I'm sorry that uh because we had some travel schedule issues um and took the last couple weeks off and then jumped into this pretty quickly, right back into it. This is not the case today. But um, if you're listening, Jeff, we would love to have you on an episode to walk through this with everyone because it's a major concern. Some of us, like myself, you know, this is one of the topics on the short list of reasons that I'm not jumping into a rebuild. There are too many questions that remain unanswered, too many things that could make it, you know, make this not make sense. And the numbers for all of us trying to rebuild have to make sense. So again, more questions than answers.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, and this was sort of back to my whole point about back to 782 and just the the it's not any one thing, but you take all these things into totality, right? You take the property tax, you take Edison making a settlement that I know a lot of people are upset with, but it's not wholly unreasonable. No, it'll make sense for some people. And you have, you know, the insurance situation, you have, you know, the the densification, and you know, it comes together and you start saying, like, what is the what is the goal here? And that is really why it all fills around 782. And you know, again, it's not about gentrification, it's about the right gentrification, it's about having input. And by having 782 in place, we have a lot of arbitrary decisions being made, whether it's the assessor's office, whether it's 782, and it all goes back to who's making these decisions, not us.

SPEAKER_01:

We don't even get consulted.

SPEAKER_00:

And so that's really where we are, and we need to be able to push back and say, wait a second, let's stop this top down and start to build in. Because look, if 782 goes away and we don't need to have the property tax increase to try to pay for everything, we have to come up with a new way to do it, which there are ways to do it. Does that then change the conversation to what's the what's the inducement for the assessor? What is, you know, like where are the priorities and how does this work? But if we go down this road, are we leaving ourselves exposed? And I guess that's that's why, you know, all these things are happening, you know, and it's it's really it gives one pause.

SPEAKER_01:

We're exposed on every front. I mean, what was it like episode two or three? I said, let's count the, you know, yet another way for us to get bent over and well, you know, left because that's but there are it's what continues to happen. I I want to not, I don't want to sound like I'm forever negative or or cynical, but I am a realist. We have there's a lot of people. I'm absolutely a realist, and this stuff is happening. It's happening. It's not like we're just running around. I said some days I feel like chicken little running around like the sky is falling, the sky is falling. It is in fact falling.

SPEAKER_00:

There is billions of or are billions of dollars.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I think that's the big takeaway of this episode and the last episode on 780, uh 782 SB9. That I and I didn't say this in the last episode, and I should have, and I and I should be repeating it every episode because it is a perfect framework to understand what we are looking at. Do not underestimate the reality that we, Altadina, are one of, if not the biggest real estate deal Southern California has ever seen. We are a multi-billion dollar real estate deal.

SPEAKER_00:

Haven't I been saying this from the start?

SPEAKER_01:

You have been saying this from the start. And you know, and I've been screaming this with you from the rooftops, and people are not. I think people are actually now starting to come around and get this. Yeah, but it's gonna be too late. But at which point it's too late. There's too much money at stake. We are too valuable. This is what I keep saying that like everyone but the fire victims are getting rich. Everyone but the fire victims are are making money here. Yeah, it is a cash. We our disaster economy is a cash cow. We are a cash cow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_01:

For everybody but us. And make no mistake, that is also going to come from your property values and your property taxes and your assessments. Because there's no way for it not to, because this is how 782 works. So there we are.

SPEAKER_00:

Call to action, folks.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, call to action. More more letters and calls, more letters and calls.

SPEAKER_00:

Or don't complain when it happens, because there will be nothing we can do.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. And I don't want to say I told you so. It gets really tiresome being right. I'm serious. I would love to be wrong. I would love to be wrong on this topic. Please do, by the way. Please. Open challenge. Please do prove me wrong because I would love to be wrong, because then that's one area where we're all a little less screwed, and I'll take that right now.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's a heads-eye wind, tails you lose.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, on that cheery note, um, it's time for a little small business shout-out.

SPEAKER_00:

All right.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, I want to talk about Rhythms of the Village. All right. Do you know Rhythms of the Village?

SPEAKER_00:

I do.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, cool. So Rhythms of the Village was located. Sadly, their building is gone on North Lake.

SPEAKER_00:

They're right by the post office.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep, they were by our post office for a very long time. Just a fantastic shop, but also fantastic, also a fantastic band.

unknown:

Yep.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, hosting drum circles, hosting community events, all manner of things separate of their shop, um, where they sold a lot of great stuff that you can find online. You can find Rhythms of the Village online through their social media. Um, they have some really awesome merch. It's one of my favorite lines of Altadina hoodies, hats, tote bags. Um, the hoodies in particular were always my favorite. I it's one of the first things I replaced after the fire. Um, and they also just welcomed um a new baby, a little boy. Oh, I think like a week ago. Yeah, Mazletov for the family. They have a new baby boy. Um, so they are bringing back their Rhythms of the Village Fall Fest. It is on November 22nd from 1 to 7 p.m. And this year it'll be at John Muir High School. Okay. Because obviously it cannot be hosted by them. So I will read from their own event post where they said live music, good food, local vendors, community love. All are welcome to this vibrant celebration of culture and unity. More than 1,500 people came to the springfest, and this time they are going even bigger. So bring your friends, your family, bring your whole tribe, and let's celebrate the spirit of Al Tadina together.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, on that note, we're gonna wrap up this episode. Um, as always, I am Shauna Dawson Beer. I am also at Beautiful Al Tadena on Instagram, on socials, on Substack, on Facebook. You can find our Facebook groups for locals only on Facebook under Beautiful Al Tadina.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, yeah, I'm nowhere near as out there. I'm Steve Sags. I'm on the Substack, and that's about it.

SPEAKER_01:

So And where's your Substack, Steve?

SPEAKER_00:

Uh Alta Policy Walk. And um, yeah, come on, take a look. Bore yourself to death.

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's good stuff, it's a deep dive.

SPEAKER_00:

It's um it's pull them back though. I I you know, we we've gotten to the point where you know there's not much more we can do.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, that's a depressing statement where Steve is like, well, the ship is sailed, so we don't have to continue.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, like it's it's going to a new stage and we'll see. But I know it was a lot at the time. And you know, for those that have stuck it out, thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And likewise, thank you to everyone who's listening. And on that note, if there's anything you would like us to talk about or cover that we haven't or aren't, um, shoot us an email. Shoot me an email, beautifulaltina og at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00:

Or just we'd love to hear Semi Nastygrams on the Substack.

SPEAKER_01:

That works too. He especially loves nasty public comments.

SPEAKER_00:

I enjoy reading them too.

SPEAKER_01:

All right, on that note, um, until next time.

SPEAKER_00:

It's Steve. Steve here and Shauna. And we'll talk to you soon. Bye now.