Column: How catastrophes like the Ghost Ship fire are making cities like L.A. rethink their housing crises

The Bay Area’s housing costs are so preposterous that this year, Palo Alto — the capital of rich-tech —  was considering housing subsidies for working families earning as much (or as little) as $127,560 a year. Los Angeles’ housing market looks reasonable by comparison. The wide-open vistas belie the fact that Los Angeles is the densest urban space in the country — too few places to live and too many people wanting to live here. Raphael Bostic, who was an assistant secretary at the department of Housing and Urban Development, is now at USC’s school of public policy, and he considers how the many catastrophes of the Oakland fire have made cities like L.A. rethink their own housing crises.

Find the full archive of "Patt Morrison Asks" podcasts here or search for "Patt Morrison Asks" on iTunes.

To read this week’s column, click here.

Want unlimited digital access to the L.A. Times? Patt Morrison listeners can sign up here for eight free weeks.

MORE PATT MORRISON ASKS

Mike Judge: The election is over, but our idiocracy is here to stay

Why are Julian Assange and Vladimir Putin helping Donald Trump?

Stanford linguistics professor John Rickford on the legacy of Ebonics

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion or Facebook

UPDATES:

Dec. 15: Raphael Bostic, a former assistant secretary at the department of Housing and Urban Development who is now at USC’s school of public policy, stated in the “Patt Morrison Asks� podcast and column that a downtown project by the U.S. subsidiary of the Chinese-based real estate development firm Greenland had been marketed “almost exclusively� to Chinese families. In fact, the company says, it has marketed here and sold “more than 50%� of its Metropolis properties domestically.