The Southern California Fires, what's next?

How The West Was Saved

Hi everyone, I hope and pray that you are safe!

Quick message from How The West Was Saved RE: immediate needs as it relates to land use and housing specifically for the LA County region and even more specifically the needs for foundational populations such as Black Americans and other long term residents especially the blue collar class.

• First, NOW IS THE RIGHT TIME to discuss land and housing. Los Angeles was already struggling with a housing crisis prior to the fires and the SoCal fires are going to make the issue of housing even more complex. An email has been sent from our advocacy group to the CA state housing authority HCD, the CA state attorney general and other city-county-state officials regarding a quick response to address the issues of land and housing. We did mention to the state that there are vacant publicly owned assets sitting empty that can be used for shelters (recycle the money back into the community directly) and that there are vacant land sites that can support supportive & affordable rental housing along with affordable homeownership opportunities and again for long term residents and especially long term chronically homeless that need to be housed immediately.

Particulate pollution has the ability to negatively impact cognitive health which could be disastrous especially for an already distressed population. So many unhoused residents are already struggling and I’ve noticed that even more of them are struggling since the fires began. Where in the world are the homeless city-county-state response teams that we are funding for the chronically homeless? Why are publicly owned buildings sitting empty and not being used as permanent supportive housing + services for these folks?!

• We absolutely need a governance restructuring from top to bottom and I’m actually working to coordinate the push to file a class action for land and housing back for new intentional towns. We absolutely should rebuild connected communities within existing counties like Los Angeles, the sprawl is a major killer within the region but at this point we are going to be fighting for land back for new intentional towns and under an intentional Indigenous American Freedmen framework. For far too long FOUNDATIONAL Black American communities have been intentionally disenfranchised with BAD policies. We are literally being governed by rogue state agents and we are arguing that a foreign body is intentionally misrepresenting the needs of foundational American citizens. Any country that I go to, I would be asked to respect the foundational citizens and as an ethnic Black American, I myself want the same respect for foundational American towns. I encourage you to explore the history of Los Angeles and who founded the city. As a reminder Black Americans are an ethnicity that began forming in the 1600 Americas. We are an amalgamation of tribes from the Americas, EU, Africa, etc. that exists in one ethnicity. There are MANY of us that want to maintain our own homogenous healthy protected towns without constant disruptions of rogue state agents & other interference. After hearing what the former LA City Council rep Nury Martinez was heard on audio saying, I realized even more why my ancestors HAD to stay together and watch out for state agents of CHAOS sent to cause disruption

In Los Angeles county we have seen the material conditions DECLINE of existing communities. We have had DRUGS brought into communities, large waves of distressed foreign populations that need more support that we can give while also maintaining our own community standards. Repeating, we are going to be fighting the state for land back for new intentional towns while leaving space for the state to create a land and housing back program within existing towns for long-term residents who are in dire need of accessible affordable housing to rent or own. Why in the world are we allowing our towns to be taken over by outrageous high costs of living, by systems of chain migration to break existing worker strikes, by invasive “celeb” culture” and other community disruptions? Los Angeles is bittersweet and has so much potential. She WILL RECOVER but in the meantime we want to step out and begin the process to build new intentional homogeneous towns while supporting the effort to get land and housing back to those that want to stay in existing cities. The government is meant to work for US. If the currency remains inequitable, WE CANNOT USE IT!

• After being in LA for over 15 years, now more than ever we need to form new intentional coordinated and connected towns. IMO, rebuilding SPRAWL in the mountainous regions of LA County is not based on logic or common sense. The SoCal fires were not only a city issue, not only a Mayor Karen Bass issue but a county-state and federal wide issue that needed to be addressed on that level. Again, the mountains are NOT easy to access on a day to day basis when there are no fires, the heavy winds and conditions made it harder for emergency response teams to assist and also for people to evacuate. If residents want to rebuild in the region, go for it but it should be created as a district that exists outside of LA city district lines with fire teams including autonomous response systems in the region that can assist with fire safety and prevention. We started building in the mountains and the mountain lions, coyotes and other animals started coming down. If you want to live in a suburban enclave in the mountains that are hard to access, that community has to form its own district and be responsible for fire and other safety in again hard to access FIRE PRONE ZONES. That is an issue that belongs to the COUNTY, state, and federal government with local sub-city response teams helping where they can and when they can.

• The federal government/FEMA should be issuing an emergency UBI for all Los Angeles county residents in the amount of $1500 for the next 3-6 months for the stress, trauma, pollution caused by the fires. The sensory overload on a day to day basis in Los Angeles is a literal nightmare from the nonstop LAPD and corporate media helicopter pilots flying/hovering all day to the loud cars using our neighborhoods as race tracks. I shouldn’t have to tell the government what they should be doing this it is something that they should know to automatically DO but we are going to encourage FEMA to issue a payment to ALL LA County residents so they can deal with the trauma caused by this moment.

I’m keeping this short and sweet right now. Emotionally I’m drained as I’m sure most of you are but let’s be real clear, the time to talk about LAND AND HOUSING is NOW. The rent has gone up in LA County by over 65% in the last 10-15 years. We have too many elitists and bad governance mismanaging our housing and land needs. Too many using Los Angeles as if it’s a playground and not a place where real people actually live and have other day to day experiences. We will continue to expose and call out bad faith actors standing in the way of the blue collar community as a whole and again specifically standing in the way of foundational Black Americans continuing the work of our ancestors for redress and accountability of governance that we fund!! We are going to continue to press the state and attorney general while we work to bring forward a class action for land and housing in the state of CA. We also hope to host a community event to regroup in the coming weeks. We hope to have more information very soon. Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t forget to breathe, long inhales through the nose, longer exhales through the nose or mouth (switch it up and do both). One last note, if you’re needing assistance in applying for FEMA because of power or other outages, feel free to shoot us a DM on social media or email us for support via the contact option on our website. If you’re able to apply for assistance on your own, here is the link to do so; https://www.disasterassistance.gov/.