"We should continue to improve, because that’s the experiment of democracy, and we should never rest on our laurels."
California Assemblymember John Harabedian—whose 41st district includes Altadena and spans the wildland urban interface from La Canada Flintridge to Upland— spoke with TPR about his legislative agenda, including his efforts to prevent predatory real estate speculation in the disaster’s aftermath and strengthen consumer protections against unscrupulous insurance practices. In this comprehensive interview, Harabedian reflects on the necessity for utility undergrounding, distributed energy resources, and virtual power plants as well as opines on impacts of federal immigration raids across the state.
The LA Times last week wrote, “As the summer real estate market kicks into gear, not only is Altadena for sale—it seems to be flying off the shelves.” John, elaborate on the Community Stabilization Act (AB 797), and your legislative efforts to combat predatory real estate investors capitalizing, as they seem to be doing, on the devastation caused by the ferocious wildfires of January 7th.
As soon as the fires happened, we knew there would be a run on the market where the fair market value of properties would plummet. Folks who were financially unstable, without the balance sheet to last the years it takes to rebuild, would be forced to sell their properties. We wanted to ensure they could sell at fair market value and get every penny they deserve, because for most people, their net worth is tied up in their home.
AB 797, the Community Stabilization Act, provides a financial tool for community-based organizations, nonprofits, and CDFIs to pull together funds and purchase these properties at fair market value. This ensures that wildfire victims are made whole. Step two is, of course, rebuilding those properties with a community-based focus.
AB 797 is important for all those reasons, but it's just one way to approach this issue. We do hope that whoever is buying these properties treats sellers fairly and doesn’t just see this as a way to profit off disaster.
Regarding housing—you’re a co-sponsor, along with Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, of AB 609, which exempts urban infill housing from CEQA. How do you reconcile this exemption with your fire safety and resilience priorities, especially since you represent areas highly susceptible to wildfires.
The two are consistent. The data shows that infill housing is the most climate-friendly and carries the least risk when it comes to fires and other natural disasters. CEQA was never originally intended to apply to housing, especially not infill housing, and certainly not to private housing. To clarify for listeners: this would apply to properties surrounded by existing development.
This isn’t undeveloped wilderness or high-risk fire zones; this is building housing where housing already exists. Unfortunately, we’ve seen CEQA and the threat of CEQA lawsuits stall projects that would qualify under this bill. For my generation of legislators, many of whom have struggled to rent, let alone buy homes, we’re thinking about our kids’ ability to stay in the communities they grew up in. We need to increase housing production, urgently.
This bill is one tool to help. If a housing project complies with local zoning and doesn’t require a CUP, then lawsuits shouldn’t be able to delay it for years or cost millions. Housing is a human right, and we must treat it that way.
Given you represent Altadena and like communities across LA and San Bernardino counties adjacent to the wildland-urban interface, surely the cost and availability of home insurance is a top priority –especially since you are member of the Assembly’s Insurance Committee. Elaborate please on the legislation you're carrying to address the State’s insurance challenges?
We have many challenges, as you just rightly noted, work has been done by the legislature over the last few years, with the Governor, with the Insurance Commissioner, to make the market fairer, more responsive, and to ensure that communities who have been hit by wildfires, who are rebuilding—and that's from communities like Paradise in the north to now Altadena and Palisades in the south—have a functional insurance market that will operate so that they don't have to go to the FAIR Plan or be uninsured.
My bills do their part; these are small but important. AB 597 would ensure that folks who are using public adjusters to mitigate their insurance losses are not taken advantage of by those public adjusters. Public adjusters are representatives who help insurance policyholders deal with their insurance companies, providing data to collect on their insurance policies.
The problem is that many of my constituents and many people I have talked to continue to be taken advantage of by public adjusters. They don’t know how much they are being charged. They're charged very high percentages of the recovered insurance proceeds, making it difficult to survive. The money is being taken by the public adjuster, and they are paying out amounts that they collected before hiring the public adjuster. We need clarity on what a relationship can look like contractually, and we need to ensure that no one is being taken advantage of economically--AB 597 does that.
Another important bill is AB 493, which is truly sad that we need a bill for this. When you lose your home or you have any substantial deterioration or destruction through a wildfire or flood, any sort of disaster, when an insurance company pays you out, the mortgage servicer and the mortgage bank have a right to hold on to that money. They will hold on to that money, and we have had many of our constituents come to us and say, “It's been over six months at this point, and they don't have their money,” which in and of itself is a problem and should be addressed.
AB 493 says that if the bank and the mortgage servicers are holding on to that money and not giving it to the insurance policyholder, they owe the insurance policyholder interest. The banks are holding on to the money, which is not theirs. They’re investing it, earning a percentage return, and keeping it. It’s not fair that they’re holding on to it in the first place, and it’s not fair that they’re making money off proceeds that aren’t theirs.
This is a simple and elegant fix to the extent that the banks continue to hold on to the insurance policy proceeds that aren’t theirs. They owe that homeowner interest, which could be tens, if not thousands, depending on how long the money is held and how much the policy has paid out.
All of us have seen our insurance policy premiums go up, and coverage go down. Most people are unhappy with their insurance coverage, to the extent that they’ve kept it. People have been uninsured and kicked off of their plans, and have had to go to the FAIR Plan, the insurance policy of last resort, which grows exponentially every year. Reforms coming down the pipeline will require insurance companies to write at least 85% of their policies in wildfire zones. I think that’s important to allow insurance companies to use a lot of the data and tools that other states are allowed to use to try to ensure that they think through different modeling and different technologies so that they can better prepare for climate change and things that are affecting our insurance market.
The reinsurance market plays a major role in California’s insurance industry. Until recently, insurance companies were unable to factor reinsurance costs into the premiums they charge. Now, they are permitted to incorporate those costs, which is a step in the right direction. These changes will help, but we must continue working to strengthen the system.
Bring us up to date on the efforts in the legislature to address what you well know is true, which is the gap in coverage for too many uninsured and underinsured homeowners and renters.
There have been discussions, and while there isn’t a formal policy on the table, as far as I know, efforts are around communicating to policyholders their insurance gap. What I mean by that is many homeowners, I would venture to say the majority of homeowners, are vastly underinsured.
They have a policy that if they were to lose their home, they would not have enough money to replace the structure, as it was at 75% of the square footage, because it doesn’t account fully for the per-square-foot cost of rebuilding. That is a problem because most folks don’t know that. Our insurance agents aren't obliged to communicate directly with a policyholder when they take out a new policy or re-enroll.
Currently, there’s no obligation under state or federal law for the insurance company to say, “You’re underinsured, and you’re underinsured based on these metrics.” So I think that a simple fix would be for the consumer to have a direct conversation, a letter [something in writing] that memorializes that they were told that the policy they were about to take out, and that they will pay their premium on, underinsures them by X amount.
That is something that I think would—would be very important, because most people, when hearing that, the automatic response will be either: “Okay, I know I’m underinsured, but I want to save money on my premium: we’re going to go forward, and thank you for telling me,” or, two: “I don’t want to be underinsured: give me a policy where I’m fully insured. I’m willing to pay the extra premium to be covered fully, and let’s have that policy instead of the policy where I’m left holding the bag at a rate of 25 or 50 or 75 percent of the building costs.”
These are things that I think already should have been—should have been done. It’s a good bill idea, and I think it’s something that you’ll see come down the pipeline.
John, it seems like you have a campaign platform for state insurance commissioner.
I have no interest in being the next State insurance commissioner, but I will take that as a compliment.
Pivoting, in the aftermath of the January fires, both in Altadena and the Palisades, many are advocating for undergrounding all transmission regardless of cost, affordability, and equity (who should pay). How should utilities, policymakers, and regulators prioritize undergrounding, and where should it be mandated?
This issue has come before me in several different instances—not only as a member of the Utilities and Energy Committee, so thinking through the policies—but every one of my constituents who was just affected by the Eaton fires have brought up, in various forums, this problem of more and more wildfires, apparently being caused by transmission and/or distribution lines. Forward-thinking means making sure we are not leaving other communities more susceptible to wildfires caused by utility lines.
You asked what kind of priority undergrounding should be—and the answer is simple: it should be our top priority. It is the only way to fully protect communities from wildfires caused by distribution or transmission lines. That’s a fact.
There are mitigation measures, like insulating power lines or installing protective coverings, that can reduce wildfire risk by 85% to 90%. These are valuable and cost-effective steps, but don’t eliminate the risk. The only way to do that is to place the lines underground. We need to invest in undergrounding wherever and whenever we can. People across the board are willing to pay more to get this done. Let’s be clear: this is a multibillion-dollar effort.
As a legislator and someone who lives near transmission and distribution lines, I want to see many more of these lines placed underground. It’s simply too risky to leave communities exposed to aging infrastructure and increasingly frequent high winds. It’s only a matter of time before another devastating fire happens. Yes, the price tag is high, but the return on investment is obvious.
Has the challenge of rebuilding after the fires inspired fresh thinking regarding the value of distributed energy— an alternative undergrounding transmission lines? Elaborate on the aim of AB 740, which passed the Senate last week, and new opportunities for incentivizing load management and virtual power plant implementation, which, parenthetically, the PUC and the IOUs have collaboratively frustrated.
Distributed energy resources—or DER, are alternative ways to locally generate and store energy, which can then be put back into the system. The mere fact that these tools have been in place for several years and decades, and they’re becoming more apparent and utilized throughout all of our communities, has not caused the IOUs and energy providers to utilize them fully—to incentivize the use of them—and come up with a plan to use them as virtual power plants.
AB 740 would require the IOUs—Southern California Edison, PG&E, San Diego Gas & Electric—to come up with firm plans to utilize DER, by having a timeline where they will utilize them at a certain rate by a certain date. This is important because it creates a market for us who have solar panels or batteries to sell our energy on an open market, back to the grid.
It reduces the cost and time we would have to pay into and wait to build more transmission and distribution lines and other infrastructure to create energy, because we have the energy here. It’s just not being utilized. Using virtual power plants in a more concerted, aggressive way is a way of doing that. It’s not a panacea—it’s not a silver bullet, but as you alluded to, the IOUs have not done a great job of harnessing the amount of energy produced through these DER platforms.
Are Governor Newsom and his appointed PUC aligned with AB 740’s goals?
I think that the governor and the PUC welcome the use of, and the continued use of, virtual power plants, and would like to see the IOUs do more with them. I’m confident that when and if it gets to the governor’s desk, he will be supportive.
John, given your background as a prosecutor with the L.A. County District Attorney’s office and with the Stanford Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, as well as the San Gabriel Valley Immigrant Resource Center, could you comment on the impact of current immigration raids and the military’s presence in L.A., on public safety and the region’s economy?
Well, this president is doing everything in his power to ruin our economy. I mean, that in and of itself, it has been clear since his first term. With the second term, with the tariffs, and how aggressively he is undermining every industry at every level. With these ICE raids, he’s depleting our workforce and ensuring that states like California will no longer be able to even keep up with the amount of industry that is here.
Who doesn't know basic economics? He's not a very intelligent businessperson, if this is what you're trying to do to the largest economy in the country that you oversee. From an economic and financial standpoint, these raids are devastating. They're also, from a humanitarian standpoint, despicable. Donald Trump is someone who politicizes everything, and going into neighborhoods, schools, churches, and attempting to tear apart families and communities by snatching hard-working community members from their places of worship—it’s beyond the pale. It's unprecedented in this country. We've seen things like this in other fascist regimes, where the horrible effects of that came later.
This is usually how larger, more disastrous outcomes start. You start by trying to discredit the media. You start by going after academic institutions and academic elites, then come after government officials who don’t like you, like he’s doing with the governor and with what he’s doing to some state and federal officials, and then you militarize society.
This is all a concerted effort to cause chaos, to go after states like California, who are not with him, who do not like his policies, who do not believe in the vision of the country that he has—it is antithetical to what the United States of America is.
Let me be clear: we will always stand with our immigrant communities. We are all immigrants in this country; unless you are Indigenous, you or your family immigrated to this country. It’s the strength of our country, because of that immigration story and the communities. He has done something now where the rest of us will have to continue to stand with our immigrant communities until he backs down. Bullies like to take on people or targets who can’t stand up for themselves. I think he is making a great mistake. Our immigrant communities are strong, and they have allies like me. Every legislator across the board—and our Governor—will stand with them.
I’m aligned with you, but let me interrupt to say—as someone with your own educational experience and Coro—how is the dialogue in the legislature, which includes Republicans, is it civil, or is it now partisan and adversarial?
I will say that, within our Democratic caucus, we’re all very committed to taking this personally. We are very focused on ensuring that anyone in the Republican Party who doesn’t speak out against this and doesn’t do everything in their power to put a check on the federal government during these ICE raids, we will hold them accountable. It is partisan, unfortunately, and what we've seen is a Republican Party that has refused to act in any way to put a check or a balance, in any way, on the Trump administration during these ICE raids.
I hope that more of my Republican colleagues here in the legislature, many of whom are good people, will stand up and call this out for what it is. They represent a lot of these communities. These ICE raids are going up and down from the farthest tip of Northern California to the South, and these aren’t necessarily just blue districts. These are purple districts and some red districts.
We need our Republican colleagues to be more forceful in acting out. That hasn’t happened yet, and it’s disappointing to say the least.
John, last question. As both a freshman state legislator and experienced local official, do the devastating climate events, which clearly require attention and response from SoCal local and state government & agencies… cause you some concern about whether we have in place the appropriate governance structure necessary to successfully meet the moment?
We could always improve governance structures. You’ve seen now with LA County and what’s happening with the Board of Supervisors expanding—with an elected CEO, if you will, of the county—we continue to go through growth and innovation from a governance perspective. We need more coordination, governance-wise, from local, state, and federal resources in responding to things like a wildfire disaster. That’s why I introduced AB 239, which would establish a state-led Disaster Housing Task Force where we have a quarterback, and everyone is working together.
The simple answer to your question is yes. We have governance structures that are working well, but we need to improve in various ways. We should continue to improve, because that’s the experiment of democracy, and we should never rest on our laurels. The policy outcomes will be better the more efficient the tools are from the governance side, so we have a good basis here.
We have good bones, but we need to continue to improve.
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