ot. Some of it is that the number of homeless has gone through the roof. Anyway a lot of this came I read this in PJ Media. Speaking of PJ Media they report that the beginnings of what might be a recall effort against Newsom and the mayor Bass. So I don't know if that's going to happen but they're about 17 yesterday when I checked. The Palisades fire was only 17 percent contained but seemed like the other fires were definitely getting under control but not that one. And there'll be new winds whipping things up so I don't know if anybody's going to get recalled. Some smart people say Gavin Newsom will come through fine just by blaming Karen Bass for everything and that might not be far off. You know honestly I don't think Newsom should keep his job for a variety of reasons but I don't know if this specifically was his fault. You know the fact that he said some things that you didn't like and acted like a clown I don't know if it made anything worse. But Karen Bass has some explaining to do.

One of the things Gavin's done or I don't know if this is state or this is local this might be local but you can't do price gouging because that's bad if you're price gouging but on the other hand it's kind of impossible for the displaced people to find any place to live unless new places become available that weren't available before. So in other words nobody's going to make anything available unless they already made it available. So if the economics and incentives were there before the fire to have a rental well maybe that's still there but if you want somebody to open up that in-law room that used to have Grandma but she died they weren't planning on renting. So if you want them to rent maybe they're going to charge more than the market rate because they're saying oh well I can help somebody and I wouldn't want to rent it but if somebody wants to pay a little more or even a lot more why would I stop them? So you've got the economics of a free market and the availability that is driven by economics fighting against the we don't want to have price gouging and those two compete. You kind of have to pick one. I think the smart economics in this particular case is to let the price gouging happen and let competition erase it. So imagine if you will that somebody says hey the rent here is double because you have so few options. What's that going to do to your neighbor? Your neighbor is going to say how much did you get? They paid that much rent? Whoa I'll try it too. Now you've got competition. Then the next person who says well I'll try it too they can't get a renter unless they lower the price so they're competing with the other rentals. So competition should make a temporary spike in rents that is completely unconscionable you know like people just actually just abusing the people who have already been abused by the fire itself. That will definitely happen in a free market but it's also the only way you get real places that are available and everybody's happy with the price. There's no other way to get there. The government can't get you there. So it's a tough choice and one understands the impulse to limit gouging but it's worse than you think.

So if you were to look at the price of a house in LA let's say you own a house and you wanted to say oh I was thinking of moving and maybe I can rent out my house I'm leaving behind. If you buy a house in California three bedroom house down there in LA in that zip code 90402 would be about 2.85 million which means that if you bought it you'd be paying 20,000 a month on your mortgage. What do you think you could charge in rent in that three bedroom house? Do you think you can get enough to pay your 20,000