Rick Caruso on California’s Collapse: Broken Leadership, LA Wildfire Failures & the Fix

Rick Caruso said his team pre-positioned private firefighters, water trucks and retardant in Pacific Palisades two days before the fire, saving his development and the surrounding block. His crews then loaned equipment and water to L.A. firefighters after hydrants failed, turning private preparation into emergency public support.

Caruso believes the Palisades fire was preventable, or at minimum far less destructive than it became. He pointed to the fire starting where another blaze had occurred seven days earlier, no fire-department pre-deployment, an unfilled major reservoir and hydrants that ran dry.

Nine months after the fires, Caruso blamed Los Angeles bureaucracy and lack of urgency for the slow rebuilding. He highlighted that after roughly 7,000 homes were lost, city plan checkers were still working remotely rather than being deployed directly to the Palisades to accelerate approvals.

Caruso gave Gavin Newsom credit for waiving environmental and Coastal Commission barriers, while arguing the state should go much further. He wants Sacramento to force rapid infrastructure replacement—including underground power and new water systems—and said California will also need billions in federal help, making political confrontation with Washington counterproductive.

Caruso is actively weighing another run for office, with people around him pushing either Los Angeles mayor or California governor. He declined to choose publicly but said he “may give that a try,” while the All-In hosts offered their platform’s support whichever race he enters.

Caruso said Los Angeles is spending about $900,000 for each homeless person it successfully removes from the streets, calling the system enormously wasteful. His alternative is to bar encampments and street drug sales while redirecting money toward organizations with proven housing, mental-health and addiction-treatment results.

Caruso favors aggressive local law enforcement but opposes sending the National Guard into Los Angeles except as a last resort. He distinguished Washington, D.C., as federal territory and argued that L.A.’s first failure is political leadership restricting police from enforcing existing laws against drugs, disorder and encampments.

Caruso’s governing pitch is essentially the management philosophy behind his developments: design around the resident’s experience, then make decisions competitors or bureaucracies avoid. He illustrated it with the Grove and Rosewood Miramar, where features others considered liabilities—including an active train line—were deliberately turned into amenities.