Fire Sale: Kirk op-ed on housing disaster capitalism following Eaton Fires
The Eaton Fire as seen from Koreatown, Los Angeles. Photo: Jessica Christian / Unsplash
Chelsea Kirk co-authored an article in Dissent magazine arguing that “in the aftermath of the Eaton and Palisades fires, housing could have been stabilized and tenants could have been protected. But the private market won.” The following are excerpts from the original article.
“When the Eaton and Palisades fires tore through Los Angeles in January 2025, they did so on a scale the city had never before endured…Over the course of twenty-four days, roughly 150,000 residents were forced from their homes. More than 16,000 buildings—among them over 13,000 homes—were destroyed. Two neighborhoods were effectively erased.”
Immediate chronicles of the disaster “leave little room for the structural forces that shaped both the impact of the fires and their aftermath: a parallel story of land speculation, predatory landlordism, insurance industry opportunism, and uneven recovery, the effects of which have persisted into 2026 across Los Angeles.”
“The day after the fires’ ignition, landlords, rental platforms, and insurers were already setting the terms under which tens of thousands of displaced residents could remain in the city. Rather than taking meaningful steps toward recovery by enabling rehousing and stabilization, the post-disaster landscape was reorganized through market mechanisms that privileged profit. The Great Los Angeles Fires, to put it another way, are a story of disaster capitalism.”
Read the entire article in Dissent and check out the Rent Brigade, a volunteer-led effort founded by Chelsea to track rent-gouging in the wake of the fires.
