Why an affordable slice of L.A. might never recover from blaze

One mobile home park’s residents feel frustrated and helpless

- BY NOAH HAGGERTY

Photographs by ERIC THAYER For The Times THE PACIFIC PALISADES Bowl Mobile Home Estates, unlike its neighbor, remains filled with fire debris.

As local and state leaders celebrate the fastest wildfire debris removal in modern American history, the Pacific Palisades Bowl Mobile Home Estates — a rent-controlled, 170-unit enclave off Pacific Coast Highway — remains largely untouched since it burned down in January.

Weeds grow through cracks in the broken pavement. A community pool is filled with a murky, green liquid. There’s row after row of mangled, rusting metal remains of former homes.

Yet just across a nearly 1,500-foot-long shared property line, the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park — like thousands of fire-destroyed properties cleared by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the last nine months — is now a field of cleaned, empty lots.

The difference in treatment is based on standards used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which directed the corps’ cleanup efforts. FEMA, which focused on providing assistance to local residents —and not properties owned by real estate companies — argued in letters to state officials that since it could rely on the Tahitian's owners to rebuild the heart of Pacific Palisades' affordable housing, it would make an exception and include the property. However, it said it could not trust the owners of the Palisades Bowl to do the same.

Both mobile home parks requested federal cleanup services, records obtained from the corps show. And both Los Angeles County and the city of Los Angeles lobbied the agency to include the properties in its mission.