L.A.'s $25 Million Homes Are Sliding Off a Moving Hillside — And the Owners Can't Stop It
Toxic Asset
6,895 views
On September 1, 2024, Southern California Edison cut power to 140 homes and 53 businesses in Portuguese Bend — and never switched it back on. Not for unpaid bills. Because the ground had shifted so far that a live wire on that hillside had become a wildfire waiting to happen.
Portuguese Bend, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, sits on an ancient landslide that Los Angeles County reawakened in 1956 — and it has never once stopped moving since. This is the story of a multimillion-dollar neighborhood above the Pacific built on a seam of bentonite clay: trophy homes being pulled apart inch by inch, the gas and power companies that walked away, and a permanent construction ban that now traps every owner on ground that will not hold still.
The most expensive force in American real estate isn't money. It's everything money can't stop. Here, it's water in the clay — and no wall, no wells, and no fortune has been able to switch it off.
IN THIS DOCUMENTARY — Underwater Assets traces the Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex and the ancient Altamira Slide across the Palos Verdes Peninsula; the bentonite clay and groundwater mechanism driving land movement along Palos Verdes Drive South; the 1956 Crenshaw Boulevard fill that woke the slide; Albers v. County of Los Angeles (California Supreme Court, 1965) and the rule that a public agency pays for the physical damage its projects cause, foreseeable or not; the 1978 Landslide Moratorium Ordinance (Rancho Palos Verdes Municipal Code Chapter 15.20); Monks v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (2008); the permanent building ban adopted in 2025; the Portuguese Bend Landslide Remediation Project and its deep dewatering wells, which pulled more than half a billion gallons of groundwater from the hill; Congressman Ted Lieu's letter to FEMA; the Southern California Gas Company and Southern California Edison shutoffs; Governor Gavin Newsom's state of emergency; the dismantling of Wayfarers Chapel, Lloyd Wright's 1951 National Historic Landmark; and the $42 million voluntary buyout that now appraises homes at what they were worth the day before the ground betrayed them.
Real records, not rage-bait. Every figure here traces to a primary source — recorded sales, California Supreme Court and appellate rulings, the Rancho Palos Verdes Municipal Code, FEMA and California state disaster records, and the city's own remediation reporting. If a number is on screen, it came from a document. Corrections and source checks are welcome in the comments.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The $4 Million Neighborhood That Moves a Foot a Week
1:35 Built on an Ancient Landslide: The Clay No Brochure Mentioned
3:05 The Self-Watering Landslide: How Irrigation Feeds the Slide
5:00 Albers v. County of Los Angeles: Who Pays for Moving Ground
6:55 Half a Billion Gallons: Inside the Dewatering Project
8:40 September 5, 1978: The Moratorium Ordinance Trap
10:20 The Day the Power Company Walked Away
12:00 The $42 Million Buyout and the End of the Market
13:20 A Deed to Moving Ground
Underwater Assets documents American ultra-luxury real estate quietly going under — who built it, what's taking it, who actually pays, and what's left when the smartest money in America walks away. Fortunes. Forces. Fallout.
Subscribe for forensic documentaries on the trophy homes America can't save.
#PortugueseBend #RanchoPalosVerdes #Landslide #LuxuryRealEstate #UnderwaterAssets
10 Comments
SO, what you are saying is a) this happened before, b) it is a known danger, c) the city tried to prevent development, d) owners (not developers) fought to build and won, e) actively caused the slide to occur because they watered their lawns. And now the owners have their hands outstretched, going "pay me to leave."
DATS messed up.
which part of "this land is unstable" was not clear to everyone? 🤷♂
"a fool and his money are soon parted"
dude, you can leave at any time.
nobody paid you to build that house on unstable ground. so why should anyone, especially taxpayers, pay you for building a structure that is not on bedrock?
California: State of Emergency, Land of Disclaimers...
L.A.'s $25 Million Homes Are Sliding Off a Moving Hillside — And the Owners Can't Stop It
Toxic Asset
6,895 views
On September 1, 2024, Southern California Edison cut power to 140 homes and 53 businesses in Portuguese Bend — and never switched it back on. Not for unpaid bills. Because the ground had shifted so far that a live wire on that hillside had become a wildfire waiting to happen.
Portuguese Bend, in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, sits on an ancient landslide that Los Angeles County reawakened in 1956 — and it has never once stopped moving since. This is the story of a multimillion-dollar neighborhood above the Pacific built on a seam of bentonite clay: trophy homes being pulled apart inch by inch, the gas and power companies that walked away, and a permanent construction ban that now traps every owner on ground that will not hold still.
The most expensive force in American real estate isn't money. It's everything money can't stop. Here, it's water in the clay — and no wall, no wells, and no fortune has been able to switch it off.
IN THIS DOCUMENTARY — Underwater Assets traces the Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex and the ancient Altamira Slide across the Palos Verdes Peninsula; the bentonite clay and groundwater mechanism driving land movement along Palos Verdes Drive South; the 1956 Crenshaw Boulevard fill that woke the slide; Albers v. County of Los Angeles (California Supreme Court, 1965) and the rule that a public agency pays for the physical damage its projects cause, foreseeable or not; the 1978 Landslide Moratorium Ordinance (Rancho Palos Verdes Municipal Code Chapter 15.20); Monks v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (2008); the permanent building ban adopted in 2025; the Portuguese Bend Landslide Remediation Project and its deep dewatering wells, which pulled more than half a billion gallons of groundwater from the hill; Congressman Ted Lieu's letter to FEMA; the Southern California Gas Company and Southern California Edison shutoffs; Governor Gavin Newsom's state of emergency; the dismantling of Wayfarers Chapel, Lloyd Wright's 1951 National Historic Landmark; and the $42 million voluntary buyout that now appraises homes at what they were worth the day before the ground betrayed them.
Real records, not rage-bait. Every figure here traces to a primary source — recorded sales, California Supreme Court and appellate rulings, the Rancho Palos Verdes Municipal Code, FEMA and California state disaster records, and the city's own remediation reporting. If a number is on screen, it came from a document. Corrections and source checks are welcome in the comments.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The $4 Million Neighborhood That Moves a Foot a Week
1:35 Built on an Ancient Landslide: The Clay No Brochure Mentioned
3:05 The Self-Watering Landslide: How Irrigation Feeds the Slide
5:00 Albers v. County of Los Angeles: Who Pays for Moving Ground
6:55 Half a Billion Gallons: Inside the Dewatering Project
8:40 September 5, 1978: The Moratorium Ordinance Trap
10:20 The Day the Power Company Walked Away
12:00 The $42 Million Buyout and the End of the Market
13:20 A Deed to Moving Ground
Underwater Assets documents American ultra-luxury real estate quietly going under — who built it, what's taking it, who actually pays, and what's left when the smartest money in America walks away. Fortunes. Forces. Fallout.
Subscribe for forensic documentaries on the trophy homes America can't save.
#PortugueseBend #RanchoPalosVerdes #Landslide #LuxuryRealEstate #UnderwaterAssets
Every number in this video traces to a document: Albers v. County of Los Angeles (California Supreme Court, 1965), Monks v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (2008), Rancho Palos Verdes Municipal Code Ch. 15.20, FEMA and California state disaster records, and the city's own remediation reporting — which shows more than half a billion gallons of groundwater pumped out of the hill while it kept moving. Real records, not rage-bait. If a figure looks off to you, reply with the source and I'll pin the correction.
If your home sat on ground like this, what would you do — take the $42 million buyout, or stay?