Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom battled with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas over a newly announced executive order against land developers making unsolicited, under-market offers to families afflicted by wildfires.
Newsom announced the order on Wednesday after a week of historically devastating wildfires in Southern California. At least 25 people have died, and more than 13,000 homes and business have burned down.
‘Newsom’s order is overtly paternalistic and could even hurt Los Angeles’ ability to recover from both the fires.’
“Today, I signed an executive order prohibiting greedy land developers from ripping off LA wildfire victims with unsolicited, undervalued offers to buy their destroyed property. Make no mistake — this is a prosecutable crime,” Newsom wrote on social media.
“This predatory behavior is disgusting in the best of times,” he continued in the video attached to the post. “And of course here, in the midst of this tragedy at scale, it’s disgraceful. So we’re gonna hold those folks accountable.”
Cruz responded by offering the counterargument to laws meant to protect victims of the natural disaster.
“Misguided CA policies (1) limited fire mitigation efforts, (2) produced water shortages & (3) under-funded fire fighters. Now, Dem politicians are making it HARDER for those devastated by the wildfires to sell their destroyed properties. This will only hurt the victims,” Cruz asserted on social media.
Newsom immediately fired back.
“Openly shilling for scammers and bottom feeder land speculators is a weird play — even for you, Ted. Our Executive Order doesn’t prevent anyone from selling their property. It prohibits scammers from making unsolicited offers to buy property for pennies on the dollar,” he wrote.
The order doesn’t allow an unsolicited offer to be made for property in the wildfire areas that would be below the value of the property on Jan. 6, before the wildfires. This would effectively ban unsolicited offers for any property where a structure burned down because of the loss of value.
Ironically, as argued by Joe Lancaster at Reason, the overregulation that prevents construction in California would be part of the reason that a property owner might want to sell quickly rather than deal with the painful and costly process of rebuilding.
“[P]roperty owners should be free to weigh any offers presented to them, and it should be their decision whether to accept, counter, or tell the caller to take a long walk off a short pier. Newsom’s order is overtly paternalistic and could even hurt Los Angeles’ ability to recover from both the fires and its preexisting housing shortage,” explained Lancaster.
Now Newsom has made that harder for Californians as well.
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