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LA County, city up price gouging fines; bills seek housing for fire victims
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The Eaton Fire destroyed this home and car in northern Altadena. | Photo courtesy of the state of California/Wikimedia Commons (CC0)
preying on the most vulnerable communities. Barger called the increased penalty a “bold action.” The Office of the County Counsel was also authorized to consider initiating or joining existing litigation regarding price gouging and price fixing algorithm software used by housing websites. Supervisor Holly Mitchell said the rent-fixing algorithms were predatory and compared them to red-lining
practices that kept minorities from buying homes for decades. In last week’s meeting, the county CEO was also asked to draft a board letter requesting online housing applications, including Redfin, Zillow, Apartments. com, AirBnB and VRBO, post a banner on their website about the county’s state of emergency and price-gouging laws. See Fire victims Page 27
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One agency tried to regulate SpaceX. Now its fate could be in Elon Musk’s hands. By Heather Vogell, ProPublica
By City News Service
he Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion Tuesday to increase the penalty for price gouging to a maximum of $50,000 per violation. The supervisors voted 5-0 to increase the penalty. State law allows for up to one year in jail and a $10,000 fine for price gouging, which occurs when landlords or merchants charge more than 10% above what they were charging before a disaster occurs. Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who introduced the motion last week, noted then that “price gouging laws have been in effect limiting the amount of money that can be charged for goods and services including rent. Yet, there are bad actors who are taking advantage of this crisis.” She noted that the recent LA County wildfires burned more than 16,000 structures, many residential, and displaced tens of thousands of people, and cited a study by Rent Brigade that found thousands of potential violations, including in areas not affected by fires, in just the first 11 days since the blazes broke out Jan. 7. Board Chair Kathryn Barger, who co-authored to the motion, said she had witnessed a disturbing trend of price gouging in the area
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The motion will remain in effect for the duration of the local emergency. City of LA to crack down on gouging The Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday addressed gouging Wednesday with preliminary approval for an ordinance to bar excessive price increases for housing and lodging as residents recover from the January wildfires.
This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. When SpaceX’s Starship exploded in January, raining debris over the Caribbean, the Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded the rocket program and ordered an investigation. The move was the latest in a series of actions taken by the agency against the world’s leading commercial space company. “Safety drives everything we do at the FAA,” the agency’s chief counsel said in September, after proposing $633,000 in fines for alleged violations related to two previous launches. “Failure of a company to comply with the safety requirements will result in consequences.” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s response was swift and caustic. He accused the agency of engaging in “lawfare” and threatened to sue it for “regulatory overreach.” “The fundamental problem is that humanity will forever be confined to Earth unless there is radical reform at the FAA!” Musk wrote on X. Today, Musk is in a unique position to deliver that change. As one of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers and head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, he’s presiding over the administration’s effort to cut costs and slash regulation. While it’s unclear what changes his panel has in store for the FAA, current and former employees are bracing for Musk to focus on the little-known part of the agency that regulates his rocket company: the Office of Commercial Space Transportation, known as AST. “People are nervous,” said a former employee who did not want to be quoted by name talking about Musk. The tech titan and his company have been critical of the office, which is responsible for licensing commercial rocket launches and ensuring public safety around them. After the fines in September, SpaceX sent a letter to Congress blasting AST for being too slow to keep up with the booming space industry. That same month, Musk called on FAA chief Mike Whitaker to resign and told attendees at a conference in Los Angeles, “It really should not be possible to build a giant rocket faster than paper can move from one desk to another.” FAA leadership seems to have heard him. The day of Trump’s inauguration, Whitaker stepped down — a full four See SpaceX Page 04
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