Natasha Hakimi Zapata is the author of Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe. She is the former foreign editor of Truthdig, and her work has appeared in the Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, In These Times, Truthdig, Los Angeles Magazine, and elsewhere.
Months after the fires, Los Angeles is beginning to rebuild, but current proposals don’t address the city’s long-standing housing issues. LA should emulate Singapore, which took a devastating fire as a cue to revolutionize its housing market.
US political discourse is characterized by deep resignation about the high costs and mixed outcomes of our health, housing, education, and childcare systems. But these issues aren’t unfixable — in fact, many other countries have already fixed them.