As Pacific Palisades continues to rebuild following the January wildfire that devastated hundreds of homes and triggered mass evacuations, neighborhood leaders are seizing the moment to push a familiar agenda: blocking new housing. The Pacific Palisades Community Council and Councilmember Traci Park are lobbying Governor Gavin Newsom to exempt the entire neighborhood from Senate Bill 9, a California law that allows homeowners to split single-family lots and build duplexes. Their central claim is that fire safety makes the area too dangerous for additional density.

In a letter sent earlier this summer by the PPCC and echoed in Traci Park’s letter sent to the Governor this week, they argue that adding even “a few dozen” new households under SB9 would strain roads, overwhelm infrastructure, and create deadly bottlenecks during future evacuations. Park urges the governor to suspend SB9 implementation until Los Angeles completes a comprehensive evacuation analysis for Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zones like the Palisades. The concern, she writes, is that “opportunistic developers” are trying to capitalize on tragedy.

While the fire risk in the Palisades is real, critics say these arguments reflect a deeper inconsistency. The same leaders raising alarms about duplexes are simultaneously fast-tracking the reconstruction of luxury single-family homes, many of which are being rebuilt even larger than before. Permit fees are waived. Approval processes are expedited. Homeowners are assured they can return their lots to “what it was before the fire—nothing more, nothing less.” In practice, that often means 5,000 to 10,000 square foot homes with more bedrooms, more square footage, more vehicles, and more impact on evacuation routes. No one is asking whether those homes make the neighborhood less safe.

This contradiction exposes a pattern of political opportunism. Instead of being applied as an objective safety standard, fire risk is being invoked to block certain kinds of residents. If the concern were truly public safety, residents would be calling for major investments in infrastructure like widened roads, stronger water pressure, hardened building codes, and real-time evacuation planning. Instead, the focus is on freezing new housing, especially the kind that could open the neighborhood to renters, middle-class families, or anyone without a few million dollars to spend on a lot.

The message from City Hall and Sacramento shows just how quickly affluent Palisades homeowners can get through to elected officials. Mayor Karen Bass has now publicly pledged that SB9 “will not be used to build multi-family housing in the burn area,” citing evacuation concerns. Governor Gavin Newsom, too, has declined to enforce SB9 in the Palisades fire zone. Both have signaled that when enough wealthy residents push back, state housing law can be quietly set aside. It raises an unsettling question: how many millionaire or billionaire homeowners does it take to make a state law disappear?

The Palisades is not alone in this. In 2022, the affluent town of Woodside in Silicon Valley tried to exempt itself from SB9 by declaring its entire jurisdiction a mountain lion sanctuary. The rationale was that adding density would interfere with wildlife habitats, but the real intent was to prevent any multi-unit development. After public backlash and a legal threat from the state attorney general, Woodside backed down. But the episode offered a vivid example of how wealthy communities use environmental pretexts to block housing laws they dislike. The Palisades has not claimed mountain lions, but the playbook is unmistakably similar.

What makes the current effort even more striking is that it does not stop at opposing new housing. The same groups warning that fire risk is too severe for duplexes are also fighting modest fire safety regulations. In May, the PPCC urges state officials to delay or reject “Zone 0” vegetation rules, which require homeowners to remove flammable materials within five feet of their homes. Their reasoning is aesthetic: the rules might harm the look and feel of Palisades landscaping. In other words, hedges are too important to trim, but two homes on a lot is an intolerable risk.

This flexible relationship to fire safety, where risk aversion is absolute when applied to new residents but optional when applied to existing homeowners, reflects a deeper politics of preservation. The Palisades has long been one of the most exclusionary neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Before the fire, it was over 80 percent white, with a median household income over $300,000, and home prices well above $4 million. The neighborhood contains just two deed-restricted affordable units. Its zoning is almost entirely single-family. These statistics are not accidental, but rather the product of decades of policies designed to protect property values, restrict access, and limit change. Instead of disrupting that system, the wildfires are reinforcing it.

State Senator Ben Allen recently introduced SB549, which gives fire victims the option of selling their damaged lots to a public agency for rebuilding as affordable housing. The backlash from Palisades residents was immediate and intense. Social media lit up with conspiracy theories that the fire was intentionally set to drive out wealthy homeowners and open the land to “projects.” Tech investor Joe Lonsdale described affordable housing as a “crack den.” Spencer Pratt posted a video claiming the neighborhood was being targeted for seizure. While Traci Park avoids indulging the more extreme rhetoric, her letter to Newsom echoes the same themes, warning of “outsiders,” “opportunism,” and the erosion of neighborhood character.

This rhetoric is familiar. Since taking office in 2022, Park has consistently aligned with anti-housing constituencies. She co-sponsored a City Council resolution opposing SB79, a state bill to increase housing near transit. She has questioned density bonuses, voted against permanent supportive housing, and often frames state housing law as an overreach. Her response to the fire fits this pattern: move quickly to help homeowners rebuild, and move just as quickly to block anyone else from getting a foothold.

But there are alternative visions that the Palisades and Park seem bent on ignoring. In a July op-ed, LA Times architecture critic Carolina Miranda notes that the problem in Los Angeles is not density, but bad design. She points out that LA has a long tradition of “gentle density” that is beautiful, livable, and compatible with neighborhood character. Bungalow courts, duplexes, and courtyard apartments have been part of the city’s fabric for more than a century. Miranda argues that communities like the Palisades could embrace that legacy by shaping good infill design, rather than rejecting new housing outright.

But Park and the PPCC are not proposing design standards or fire-resilient housing models. They are demanding exemptions. Nor are they asking how the neighborhood could be made safer and more inclusive at the same time. All they want is for the neighborhood to remain unchanged. This impulse to rebuild the Palisades as it was, not as it needs to be may appeal to residents still grieving their losses. But it presents a serious challenge for the city and the state, and a complete lack of imagination from our elected representatives. If every wealthy, fire-prone enclave is allowed to opt out of housing laws, the result will be a balkanized landscape where risk becomes an excuse for exclusion and equity takes a backseat to entitlement.

Steve Soboroff, a longtime Westside power broker and a recovery adviser to Mayor Bass, put the dilemma plainly. “In the deeds, it used to say, ‘No Jews, no Blacks.’ What are they going to write now—‘No affordable housing’?”

Fire risk is real. The trauma of January is not in question. But the solution is not to entrench the very systems that made the neighborhood so exclusive and so vulnerable in the first place. Modern housing construction is significantly more fire-resistant than the aging homes that burned, and infrastructure upgrades can improve evacuation capacity for everyone. Building smaller, smarter, and safer homes should not be controversial, but in this case it is because it threatens who gets to live in the Palisades.

Councilmember Park and her allies can either lead the effort to rebuild a stronger, fairer, more resilient community, or they can continue using safety rhetoric to entrench exclusion. So far, they are choosing the latter. And now, so are the mayor and governor. For a city in crisis, that is a choice we cannot afford.