Rick Caruso on LA’s Wildfires, Policy Failures, and the Path Forward

**Elad Gil** (0:05)
Hi, listeners, and welcome to No Priors. Today, we have special guest Rick Caruso on to help us understand the fires that have been devastating Los Angeles over the last couple of weeks. This is recorded on the afternoon of January 27th, as everything is still changing. Rick is the founder and former CEO of Caruso, a real estate company that has developed properties around Southern California, like The Grove, the Miramar Resort and Palisades Village, which was the only structures in the town left standing in the wake of the Palisades fire. He was also the runner up in the 2022 LA Mayoral Race, the former president of LA's Police Commission, and a member of the Board of Water and Power Commission. Rick served under three different mayors and is very well attuned to both Los Angeles related politics and policies, as well as the state of California more generally. Rick, thank you for joining us on No Priors today.

**Rick Caruso** (0:52)
Well, thank you for having me. Good to be here.

**Elad Gil** (0:55)
So you were born and raised in Los Angeles. I know you're very prominent in the LA community and sort of more broadly in the city of California. Could you just give us a very quick background on how you got your start in real estate development in the city and some of the things you've done relative to city government?

**Rick Caruso** (1:09)
Sure. Well, I actually started out as a lawyer and I practiced law for a number of years. Interestingly, it was with a large law firm out of New York. And I say it was a large law firm for the reason that after about six years of being there, the law firm imploded and it forced me to make a business decision. I always loved business and I started out, you know, very small. I bought a duplex. I fixed it up, rented it out. And then I built my company over time. And what I realized is what I really loved doing is being around people and, you know, creating spaces that people enjoy. And the retail sector was the space that I could do that and began building very small retail centers. And one by one, we built the Grove, we built the Americana brand, Palisades.
And I've got an incredible team of people and they're smart and innovative. And we've been able to accomplish some really good things.

**Elad Gil** (2:07)
That's great. Yeah, I guess one of the other key threads of your life has really been public service. And I believe that you've served under three different mayors in LA over time. You were the runner up in the 2022 LA mayoral race. You were former president of LA's Police Commission. You've had a variety of roles. Can you tell us a little bit about your public service engagements?

**Rick Caruso** (2:28)
Yeah, I appreciate it. I'm a big believer in public service. I enjoy it. And I just think it's an important thing to do. So at a very young age of 26, Tom Bradley tapped me to be on the board of the Department of Water and Power. And I then became president. After that, Dick Reardon asked me to go back on the board. So I was at DWP for about 13 years. And then after that, Jim Hahn, the mayor at the time, asked me to head up the Police Commission because LA back then was having really rising crime. We were losing a lot of police officers, very similar to what's happening today. And to come in and turn LAPD around. And I did. I brought in Bill Bratton as the chief of police at the time. And we were able to get crime down to levels not seen since 1950 So I had been very fortunate to have been involved in government service. And the reason I decided to eventually run for mayor was because I saw what could be done, especially if you're not beholding to worry about getting re-elected, if you're just focused on doing the right thing, and becomes a very powerful mindset to have.

**Elad Gil** (3:35)
Something I'd love to delve into in a couple of minutes as we get into all this, and in particular some of your thoughts on crime and what can be done today. I think one of the main topics we're going to talk about was also just the fact that LA has now been hit by a number of really terrible and significant fires of sort of historical proportion. And, you know, there have been historical precedents in terms of the Bell Air Fire of 1961 But it looks like the severity and frequency of fires across the city and state have been escalating, with this one really becoming one of the closest in history on multiple levels, the human level as well as the financial level. What is behind this trend? Are wildfires getting worse due to climate change? Is it other factors like policy, deterring infrastructure, negligence? Like what do you think are the causes here?