President Donald Trump vowed to override local officials to deliver relief to Palisades victims — while flatly rejecting any low-income housing in the area: “That’s not the American dream.”
“You give them a 10% bonus so they can build a house larger 10% larger than they had before, if they want, for all the suffering they’ve been caused,” the President said during an event celebrating the launch of his Trump Accounts Wednesday..
The president also said he was putting the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator in charge of overseeing the permitting process, and to “override the local authorities.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass have been frequent targets of the President for the painfully slow rebuild of the both the Palisades Fire and the Eaton fires.
The announcement comes a day after Trump signed an executive order aimed at fast-tracking the rebuilding of Los Angeles.
“I want to see if we can take over the city and state and just give the people their permits they want to build,” Trump told the California Post Friday in an exclusive Oval Office interview when he signed the seven-page order.
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Wildfires destroyed an estimated 16,000 structures, but Los Angeles city and county officials have only issued 2,600 permits to rebuild so far.
Trump’s executive order calls out the “bureaucratic malaise” at the state and local levels, and empowers the federal government to help facilitate the much needed relief for victims.
“We’re so desperate. We really need the help. We cannot do this on our own. Our state’s not capable, our city’s not capable, this is not something that requires a village, it requires the nation. We need our federal government to come in,” Jessica Rogers, a Pacific Palisades resident who lost everything in the wildfire, told The Post.
Less than 15% of all the homes destroyed in the blaze have received the necessary permits to move forward, according to the White House.
