Rick Caruso Joins Adam Carolla to Talk LA’s Future, Politics & Accountability

Summary

The Adam Carolla Show: Rick Caruso Joins Adam Carolla to Talk LA’s Future, Politics & Accountability

Date: November 10, 2025
Location: Live from The Americana, Glendale
Guest: Rick Caruso – Developer, public servant, and former LA mayoral candidate

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Episode Overview

This lively episode of The Adam Carolla Show features Adam in conversation with Rick Caruso, delving into Los Angeles’ trajectory, political dysfunction, accountability in government, and real-world solutions to homelessness, infrastructure, and civic engagement. Caruso, celebrated for his private sector achievements and public service, discusses his vision for the city (and perhaps the state), while fielding sharp, comedic, and substantive questions from Adam and a passionate live audience.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Los Angeles Roots and the Decline of “Opportunity City”

[05:21] – [09:20]

• Caruso details his family’s immigration, his father’s journey from coal mining in Pennsylvania to being an LA gardener, and reflects on LA’s diverse, shifting ethnic landscape.
• Adam humorously bemoans the lack of a true “Little Italy” in LA, suggesting Caruso champion that cause:

  “We need a place to get gelato and listen to guys play the mandolin... You gotta spearhead this.” – Adam Carolla [08:15]

2. Why Get Politically Involved?

[09:41] – [11:05]

• Caruso expresses a sense of duty and the “exhilaration” he gets from solving complex civic problems, rooted in his formative experience serving under Mayor Tom Bradley.
• He notes LA is “at the edge of a cliff,” echoing the urgency of rebuilders, not career politicians:

  “I do enjoy taking very complex problems, taking them apart and putting them back together... I love public service.” – Rick Caruso [10:08]

3. The Palisades Fire: Disaster, Accountability, and Private Sector Ingenuity

[14:02] – [22:10]

• Adam references the recent LA Times exposé on preventable fire mismanagement.
• Caruso argues the Palisades fire was “completely preventable,” links it directly to bureaucratic incompetence, and calls for severe accountability:

  “This goes to exactly what we have in the city... we have the epitome of incompetence and we are paying a dear price... The largest disaster that I’m aware of that could have been so easily prevented. And somebody needs to pay. Maybe even criminally accountable.” – Rick Caruso [14:24]

• Shares how advanced planning and private firefighters saved his property and several city blocks, contrasting city inaction:

  “If it’s predictable, it’s preventable.” – Rick Caruso [22:03]

4. LA’s Trash Crisis and Failing City Services

[23:00] – [28:36]

• Adam rants about the decline in LA’s cleanliness, noting the contrast when traveling to other U.S. cities:

  “LA is just trashy. And I think California... was supposed to be the shining golden state, not golden shower state, because a hobo took a leak on you.” – Adam Carolla [24:56]

• Caruso explains how a billion-dollar city deficit and mismanaged spending have decimated services, doubling trash collection fees and virtually eliminating street cleaning:

  “City services suck and they’re only going to get worse.” – Rick Caruso [28:13, quoting Councilmember Yaroslavsky]

5. Homelessness: Failed Bureaucracy vs. Proven Solutions

[34:49] – [41:47]

• Both decry LA’s failed, expensive homeless approach and the devastating effect on businesses and neighborhoods.
• Caruso advocates working with proven non-profits that deliver housing and services for a fraction of the city’s cost:

  “The city is spending $900,000 per homeless to house them. This is 35,000 a year versus 900,000... Just so logical.” – Rick Caruso [37:17]
  “I remember when I was running for mayor, the hit on me was, ‘You want to criminalize homelessness.’ No, we want to give people a path to a better life. And we want to give people their neighborhoods back.” – Rick Caruso [39:45]

• Adam challenges the “compassion” narrative of allowing people to die on the streets:

  “There’s nothing compassionate about letting somebody die on the streets.” – Adam Carolla [40:26]

6. Overregulation, Economic Decline, and the Creative Exodus

[46:57] – [55:01]

• Caruso says key industries are being regulated out of California, with business owners, including in entertainment, feeling abandoned.
• Adam offers biting stories about the runaway production crises, highlighting hypocrisy even among progressive industry leaders:

  “The most progressive guy in LA will get on a plane and leave the country... if it means saving some money. People will leave to save money or they’ll happily stay if you make it attractive.” – Adam Carolla [53:32]

7. The Need for Builder-Mentality Leadership & Civic Courage

[49:00] – [55:01]

• Caruso praises cities like Glendale, where smart, courageous decisions led to a renaissance.
• They agree: LA and California need private sector-style problem solvers willing to risk not being reelected.
• Caruso:

  “It takes courage and backbone and obviously intellect and competency. But it’s all fixable, is my point.” [49:00]

8. Infrastructure and the Bullet Train Boondoggle

[59:06] – [62:11]

• Rick’s prescription for California’s high-speed rail:

  “Yeah, you put a bullet in the bullet train.” – Rick Caruso [59:29]

• Adam proposes using the bullet train as a monument to government inefficiency, a teaching moment for local schoolkids. [61:00]

9. Trade Schools, Dignity of Work, and Giving Inner City Youth a Pathway

[64:30] – [68:04]

• Adam laments the lack of black inner-city kids in construction trades, emphasizing the dignity and financial security they offer over gang life and failed college-for-all rhetoric.
• Caruso agrees, lauding union trade schools and promising renewed focus:

  “We got to bring trade schools back... It’s a life skill and it never goes away and you’re financially... taken care of for life.” – Rick Caruso [67:43]

10. Audience Q&A: Cost of Living, Olympics, Civic Decline, and Caruso’s Political Future

[69:45] – [97:08]

On Cost of Living and Retirement in LA/California

• Caruso blames rampant fees, regulatory bloat, and lagging housing starts:

  “40% of the cost of housing in California is regulation. 40%.” – Rick Caruso [73:16]

2028 Olympics & Civic Readiness

• Caruso laments lack of leadership/planning versus the 1984 Games; voices frustration that events will now be outside city core ([74:05]).

LA’s Political Turn: Why Did LA Decline?

• Gives credit to Tom Bradley, Dick Riordan, Jim Hahn for courageous leadership; says the city lost its way by electing for ideology not competence:

  “We need to start electing people that frankly don’t care if they get reelected. Just do the right thing.” – Rick Caruso [83:14]

Caruso’s Future: Will He Run for Mayor or Governor?

• No official announcement, but Caruso promises a decision “in a few weeks”:

  “I want to do something that’s good... But I’m at a point very soon I will make a decision...” – Rick Caruso [95:12]

• Agrees to announce his decision on Adam’s podcast first. [96:47]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On political courage:

  “He had the backbone and the courage, the strength to do what was right for the residents... at his own political cost. We’ve lost that.”
  — Rick Caruso (on Jim Hahn) [82:55]

• On LA’s dysfunction:

  “We are getting into 16 years of horrible, incompetent idiots running this city, and I say we need a competent idiot!”
  — Adam Carolla [85:42]

• On leadership mentality differences:

  “They’re process people. They want to talk about everything... but they never want to roll up their sleeves and just go to work.”
  — Adam Carolla [54:16]

• Audience supporter’s plea:

  “We need you. We need you.”
  — Paula, audience member [94:50]

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Important Timestamps

• 04:19 – Adam applauds Caruso’s public/private sector achievements
• 10:08 – Caruso details civic motivation
• 14:24 – Caruso blames city leadership for fire disaster
• 22:03 – “What’s predictable is preventable”
• 24:56/28:13 – Adam and Caruso on LA’s filth and service cuts
• 37:17 – Caruso outlines homelessness cost insanity
• 49:00 – Glendale’s transformation as civic model
• 59:29 – “Put a bullet in the bullet train”
• 67:43 – The renaissance of trade schools
• 73:16 – Housing costs and regulation
• 95:12/96:47 – Caruso describes decision-making on future, promises announcement
• 97:08 – Caruso’s optimism: “God bless LA and the state.”

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Tone and Atmosphere

The episode blends Adam’s irreverent, exasperated humor with Caruso’s pragmatic, optimistic perspective. Both skewer political incompetence and bureaucracy, but the discussion is rich with real-world, actionable solutions. The mood is alternately comedic, candid, and serious, buoyed by audience energy and a shared longing for LA’s restoration.

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Concluding Insight

Rick Caruso’s core message: Los Angeles is facing a crisis not of inevitability but of leadership—and with backbone, competence, and private sector urgency, it can still be reversed. As Adam sums up, the city’s fate will depend on voters choosing proven builders over “process people,” and Caruso hints he may soon step forward to answer the call.

Transcript

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[Rick Caruso]

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[Rick Caruso]

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Live from the Americana in Glendale. This Is the Adam Carolla Show. Today, Adam sits down with Rick Caruso. And now the grove is also what his barber calls his Brillo hair. Adam Corolla.

[Adam Carolla]

The carpet. He's going to be pissed. So I just want to.

[Rick Caruso]

I use those words too.

[Adam Carolla]

He was very clean. He said muss up. But I wanted to drive his point home, so I used a little profanity. Thank you guys for coming out tonight. Rick is a guy I admired from afar from quite some time, and now I get to do it in a much closer proximity. So I've always been a fan of Rick and his work and his process and what he's trying to do and what I still think he can do here in LA and possibly even in California. And I've. Yes.

[Rick Caruso]

Is that a poll?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, we did a little poll. It's a partisan crowd, but. But I'm just a big fan of this guy and I'm so glad that I've had an opportunity just to get to know him a little bit. And he's even better than I could have imagined. So thanks for doing this tonight, Rick.

[Rick Caruso]

Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me. And thank you everybody for being here. I really appreciate it. Just so you know, parking rates went up 500%. So on your way out.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

So we'll take some questions from the audience at some point. I thought we'd chat a little with Rick before that and then we'll again take your questions. I think Alicia will run around with a microphone and we can get into that. But I'm curious. So, Rick, you and I may be one of the few people that were sort of born and bred here in Los Angeles. Almost everyone I know seems to be from somewhere else. But you're out here.

[Rick Caruso]

Day one, Day one. Raised in west la. My parents, my dad was actually born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. My grandparents on both sides were immigrants, came through Ellis Island. My paternal grandfather ended up in Uniontown as a coal miner. And my dad was actually born in the coal mining camp and his family finally convinced them to move to the west coast and he moved to Boyle Heights and became a gardener. But yeah, me and my sister, my brother were all raised here.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, when you have black lung at age 8, it's not a good sign.

[Rick Caruso]

Well, and also he was the dynamiter.

[Adam Carolla]

My grandfather was the dynamiter, which is.

[Rick Caruso]

Never a long term career path. You know, being the first guy in and having to get the heck out.

[Adam Carolla]

The dynamiter is like right up there with the king's food tester. It's just not a job where you retire. But that plunger thing, man, that's the greatest job ever. And then, of course, when the fat guy sits on it by mistake, hijinks ensue. So your grandfather was working the mines, Pennsylvania. And you came out here. Your dad came out a young, young man and was a. Was a gardener when he came out to Los Angeles. And so, like, I. I don't think a lot of people know or remember this, but if you're in Los Angeles long enough, Gardner was a job that anyone did. It was. There were a lot of Japanese gardeners in. In LA back in the day. It's a sort of Mr. Miyagi thing that. That's. We had. My grandparents had a gardener, and he was a Japanese gardener. And the reason I sort of bring that up is because everyone can go through, you know, a gardening phase, but then you should pass through it, meaning education and college and all that. And then your son doesn't become a gardener, he becomes a landlord. So that's sort of. And he has someone else do the gardening. But the point is, your dad, of all people, was out here as the Italian gardener back.

[Rick Caruso]

Oh, my grandfather.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, your grandfather, sorry. Out here from Pennsylvania, from the coal mines.

[Rick Caruso]

Leaving the coal mines.

[Adam Carolla]

And so he came out here and had your dad out here, or your dad was only like, seven.

[Rick Caruso]

My grandmother, my grandfather. And they had three boys, and they lived in Boyle Heights in a little triplex. They had one of the apartments and Royal Heights in those days, not to interrupt you, but that was like the old Italian Jewish neighborhood of la. So it was a logical place for an Italian immigrant to end up.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I want to talk about that, because I'm Italian, and this city does not have a Little Italy. It has a little Ethiopia. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but you get a Little Italy first, and then at some point you get Little Ethiopia, you know, time permitting. But you don't get Little Ethiopia. No Little Italy. We need a Little Italy, paisan. I mean, somebody's. Somebody's got to spearhead this because we need a place to get gelato and listen to guys play the mandolin. We don't have any of that out here, which is weird because, I don't know. You know, obviously, New York has little. Well, it's going to have little Soviet Union coming up, so that's a little Communism. It's going to have Stalin Town, you know, next. But. But at least for now, they have a Little Italy. So I'd like. I'd like you to spearhead that.

[Rick Caruso]

I'm on it.

[Adam Carolla]

Getting a charge, and it's a little early in the evening, but I know you're talking about doing something, and I'm guessing. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you're. Well, I'll speak for you.

[Rick Caruso]

I'll go sit over there.

[Adam Carolla]

Rick's the kind of guy, no, I feel like you would like to go on with your life and build all your amazing projects and enjoy all the fruits of your labor, but this town, the city, and this state have come so unraveled over the last 20 years or so that you feel compelled to get involved. Is that true?

[Rick Caruso]

I feel compelled to a point. But I also do like public service. So there's two sides of it. I do see our city at the edge of a cliff and certainly heading in the wrong direction, and I do see our state definitely heading in the wrong direction. And I do enjoy taking very complex problems, taking them apart and putting them back together. And I love public service. There's a guy right here named Art Gastellum. I'll embarrass Art. Art used to work in the city for Tom Bradley and some. What is it now? 40 years ago, Art. I was tapped by Tom Bradley to be a Department of Water and Power commissioner and worked with Art under Tom Bradley. And I really fell in love with public service. So I like that. But I'm getting pushed in a lot of different directions, there's no question. But I feel fortunate that I'm getting pushed.

[Adam Carolla]

Is it possible to unravel the bureaucracy and to actually make things work? And I know sort of as a builder. As a builder, you want to hit the ground running. It's. It's all I've sort of explained to people all the time because I had a background in building as well. It's sort of hurry, hurry, hurry. And subs. Who are your subs now? I think you. You see that with Donald Trump. Trump wants to build, and then he wants to surround himself with good subs who can get the job done. Because building is always sort of about, well, we got to get the land graded, and then we got to do the foundation, and then where's the framing? And then where's the exterior guys? And what about the drywall guys? Whatever, the door and window guys? It's like, boom, boom, boom, like, what's holding us up? Let's go. And every guy I know who does building, especially commercial stuff, has a sort of hit the ground running versus a kind of Karen Bass, you know what I mean? Maybe I'll just go to Ghana and find a hammock and stretch out a little bit. And you could see it when they had that little meeting after the big fire, Trump was screaming, let's go. Let's do it now. People can clean up their own lots. And she was yelling, you know, slow down. We don't want to. Safety first. So I think your instinct as a builder is to fix things, but with the bureaucracy, can you navigate that world?

[Rick Caruso]

Oh, I think so. I know so. I'm not worried about that. And I think that's part of the fun of getting in office and not being a career politician and not be beholden to a whole bunch of rules. You have to go in there with a new set of eyes and really clear thinking and say, I think, first and foremost, what is your number one duty? And I think this is the biggest problem we have now with our elected officials. They're more in for serving themselves and getting reelected than serving the people they took an oath to serve. And if you start by saying, I'm going to go serve the residents and how are we going to do this? You will find ways to get things done. And that's not meaning you're going to go and break the laws and all this kind of stuff, but you're going to get creative. You're going to be innovative. You have a sense of urgency and determination. And I think the people around you that are in the city that are probably bored to death, or in the state that are bored to death because very little happens, would just enjoy the energy of forward momentum for once in their life. So I find that exhilarating, to be honest. I find the challenge to be exhilarating. Is it gonna be easy? No. Is it doable? Yes.

[Adam Carolla]

What did you make of the recent.

Article in the LA Times talking about.

The fire and how it was started a week earlier and how it smoldered for, I guess, seven, six, seven days. And the battalion commander pulled the guys off, but there's texts back and forth saying that the guys thought that they should stay behind. What does that mean to you, and how did that sort of compute with you?

[Rick Caruso]

Listen, it was tough to read. I don't think it was a surprise to many of us that were in the Palisades. I think many of us were saying from the beginning this fire was completely preventable. I know I was saying that, and I was being, you know, ridiculed for saying that, but it was clear we had a fire a week before. And I think, Adam, this goes to exactly what we have in the city of la, and to a great extent, what we have in the state of California, we have the epitome of incompetence and we are paying a dear price. In the Palisades, 7,000 homes burnt down. Thousands of people, families were impacted. Thousands and thousands of people lost their jobs, all because of incompetence. And it starts with the mayor. It's just a matter of fact, because what we haven't heard from the mayor, and I'm not trying to beat her up, I'm just talking about facts. If you were the mayor of LA and this report came out, the first thing you would do if you had been prepared, would stand up at a podium and say, let me walk you through the two dozen meetings I had with city departments to be prepared for these catastrophic wins that were coming. Not a word of that didn't even respond to the after action report. It was crickets. So what I've said, and I will continue to say, I think now we're in cover up mode, right? And the COVID up is always a bigger problem for somebody than the actual negligence or crime or bad deed. And I really feel for people, including our own family, that lost homes, but I really feel for people that don't have a lot of options, that were wiped out financially, lost their homes, lost their neighborhoods, lost their community, lost their schools, their churches, their synagogues, their way of life. And it was 100% preventable. The largest disaster that I'm aware of that could have been so easily prevented. And somebody needs to pay. A group of people really need to be held accountable. And I'm talking about maybe even criminally accountable for what they did.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I spoke to you when we were doing our vlog and you were explaining how you essentially prevented it from happening on your property in the Palisades. And I'm wondering if you'd just sort of share that with the audience. Because, you know, we hear about private fire department, and I don't know if most people know how that works. Now, of course, my dad had a fire department when I was growing up. But many of you did not have what Jim Carolla had, which is a private fire department. I had a Dalmatian. I used to ride in the back of the truck, chili every night, foosball. It was awesome. But I didn't really know how it worked, how essentially having a private fire department worked. And it was an interesting process. And it's also how they mobilized before the fire I thought was interesting and also sort of spoke to you and your abilities as well. So could you just sort of walk us through how that would work?

[Rick Caruso]

Sure. But I think again, Adam, this goes to having executive skills where one of them which is really important is to ask questions. Right, Right. So if you're in the mayor, if you're the mayor of LA and you had a fire on January 1st and you're getting texts on your phone saying there's life threatening, catastrophic winds, you probably start out with the first question, are we prepared and how are we prepared? Anybody can do that. This gentleman standing right there, I'll embarrass him. Banion with the red tie on, we're building the Miramar up in Montecito and we've got a fire coming over the hill heading towards the Miramar. We're in framing. You know framing very well?

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

Studs, trimmers, headers, joists, top plates, bottom plates, shear wall. I'll keep going.

[Rick Caruso]

Sounds sexy. Okay. And Banion and I were on the phone and also our CEO Karine. And the simple question was, how do we protect ourselves if this fire keeps coming at us? And the local fire department up in Montecito in Santa Barbara county, we know and should first respond to the homes, not the commercial buildings. And we're just in framing, they're not going to want to waste their time on us. And Banyan put together a plan and came back to Corinne and I and said, we've got private firefighters. I think you brought them in from Arizona. I got water trucks coming in and I got retardant trucks coming in. Now, fortunately, we didn't have to use them. We had them stationed. And that was a terrible fire, if you remember. And then after that fire, we had the rains up in Montecito, Santa Barbara. Right. Flooded. We had people lost their homes, they lost their lives. The freeway. So we went through a terrible patch up there. So we're building Palisades. We know we're in a fire zone. And the first thing that we did was we built a project that didn't have any combustible material. So what looks like wood is really concrete formed to look like wood. And we didn't have exterior vents. Most of the homes that were burned down in Palisades and Altadena burned from the inside out. The embers got through the vents, went inside the house. So we designed it to withstand a fire as best possible and still make it look beautiful. And then of course, Banion had a plan up on a shelf in a binder. And when it said life threatening, catastrophic winds coming, and we knew there was a fire, a Week before Banyan calls up and says, I'm putting the plan into place. And two days, what was it, two or three days before? Two days before. Firefighters, fire trucks, water tanks and retardant. And we're there, stationed, ready to go. Now, I would just say. And then I'll let you ask. Think about, had the city of L. A. Done that in one spot? That's all they had to be, was in one spot. Be pre deployed, and they never were. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

If you have a chance to go up to Mescal Canyon, which I have on a couple occasions, and you go to the top and you look over the devastation, you just see nothing but scorched earth and vacant lots. Now they've been cleared. And then you see Caruso's facility, and it just sits there like a. Like a. Like a jewel in the desert. Everything around it is completely gone. And you would think to yourself, well, what did this person do differently than what was around it? And that's prepare. I think the statement you like, and I don't want to paraphrase, but I've heard you say before, if it's preventable.

[Rick Caruso]

What'S predictable is preventable.

[Adam Carolla]

What's predictable is preventable. Which is a very, very good.

[Rick Caruso]

Listen, I'm really proud. I mean, I'm really proud of our team, what they did. Thank you. Very proud of our team, what they did. I'm also even more proud of the fact we saved the whole block of buildings on our side and the whole block of buildings on the other side. And what that's allowing is businesses are reopening now. They're all small businesses, local businesses. And it's also going to give Palisades at least a part of a downtown to come back to. Right. And I'm really excited. We're going to reopen the Village in August, you know, better than ever. And it's going to be great.

[Adam Carolla]

I look forward to going by there for a $19 coffee. Now, we're not a small. Let's not throw any shade.

[Rick Caruso]

I didn't know we had coffee that.

[Adam Carolla]

Night, but that's okay. $19. I mean, with. With tip, obviously, but I'm not a big tipper, so it's still expensive. Yeah, I know. One of the things I think we're simpatico on here, Rick, is that how trashy this town is. It drives me nuts to drive through this town and look at so much graffiti and garbage. And for some reason, the one that always gets me is the kids toys. I just hear the little kids singing off the side of the 5 Freeway. But, you know, when you, you know, they say you can judge a culture by its prisons, I think you can judge it by its highways. Because I travel the country constantly. I play shows everywhere, every state in the union. And when you're from California and you land in Wisconsin or you land in Kentucky or anywhere, and you're driving along the highway, you always go, wow, it's so nice. Like, it's clean, it's well maintained. The roads are nice. There's not graffiti and garbage everywhere. And LA is just trashy. And I think California, and I think about the sort of. Those sort of postcards from the 50s and that kind of California that we all have in the rear view mirror of the 55 Bel Air, but that grew up with sort of thing. And I also think of California and Los Angeles as sort of on the vanguard of recycling and ecologies, we used to say, and environment and stuff. So it's to have it be so trashy and dirty. It feels so counter to what we're supposed to be. This sort of shining golden state, not golden shower state, because a hobo took a leak on you.

[Rick Caruso]

Whoa.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, sorry, I'm just riffing here, Rick. You knew this was gonna be a popularity contest coming up here. But the point is, I want to clean this place up. And it drives me nuts to see it this way. It really does. And it doesn't have to be this way.

[Rick Caruso]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

And one of the things I liked, I think when you were talking about making a run for mayor, you said, day one, you're going to hire 1,000 sanitation workers or some version of that. But why? Why is it acceptable? I guess, like, why do we permit this?

[Rick Caruso]

Well, you're absolutely right. Listen, in the city and I've been going all over the state, you know, so I don't travel as much as you do around the country, but I've been going all over the state, and there's parts of the state that are just beautifully clean. And it even aggravates me even more. You don't even have to go that far.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, you get into Orange County. When you go into Orange county, you know, you're in Orange county not from a sign, but from not being inside a pothole and not seeing barbed wire on the freeway signs and a. You know, in a shopping cart with the hobo in it on the side of the freeway. Like, all of a sudden it opens up, it gets smooth, it gets green, it gets nice. Like, it's doable.

[Rick Caruso]

It's doable.

[Adam Carolla]

It's it's 21 miles from here. Yeah, it's.

[Rick Caruso]

Well, I, I, I must say, Glendale is a very clean city.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that's so, yes.

[Rick Caruso]

And we love having, We've got a big investment in Glendale and it's been one of the great cities to partner with, so. And I'm not saying that just because the mayor's there. No, I actually am, Laura. I'm saying that.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I love the Armenian community, by the way. That helps. Mark Garrigos is a dear friend. A dear friend. Sorry.

[Rick Caruso]

But we do love Glendale. They've been a great partner to invest with.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Rick Caruso]

Here's a problem in the city of la. Here's a problem in the city of la. And most people don't know this because it doesn't get out. The city of LA this year was a billion dollars over budget.

[Adam Carolla]

Billion.

[Rick Caruso]

And for the first time, I think, in 20 years, had declining revenues. So just think about if you ran your home this way. You're over budget and declining income, you end up going out of business. It's unsustainable. Now, what they did was the mayor and the city council played a lot of magic tricks and was able to sort of move things around. So it balanced out. But they also doubled the fees, believe it or not, of trash collection. So it made the cost of living for everybody in Los Angeles even higher. And the cost of living in LA is already too high. It needs to come down. Which is one thing I would focus on statewide or citywide. But so what happens? City services are cut, right? I can't tell you the last time I saw a street cleaner driving down the city of Los Angeles on a street. Has anybody seen one?

[Adam Carolla]

No.

[Rick Caruso]

They've literally stopped him.

[Adam Carolla]

Hold on. You see the meter maid who's riding tickets because the invisible street cleaner's coming between 11 and 4pm but the street cleaner never shows up. The ticket shows up, but not the street cleaner.

[Rick Caruso]

That's a good point. So that's the problem. I mean, the city does not have the money to provide the services. And City Council member Yaroslavski was saying this, which I posted. Her words were, city services suck and they're going to get worse. And that was a statement she made at City Council. And that's where the city of LA is right now. It's in a bad place.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Rick Caruso]

Yep.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Rick Caruso]

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[Rick Caruso]

Mm.

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[Audience Member]

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[Audience Member]

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[Adam Carolla]

Well, you know, is that the mayor there? Because I got a. I'm a problem solver.

[Audience Member]

I am.

[Adam Carolla]

I was. So now I'm thinking back. I brought up Mark Garrigos. I was at a party at his house and he has, you know, folks around who are in the community and the government, things like that. And I ran into a guy who was like, I don't know, district selectman of Burbank or something like that. I don't know what his job was. We did something and I said to him, you know, I got a shop, my studios over in Burbank. And behind me is a side street runs along the side of the freeway and construction materials dump there on a daily basis. They just dump. It's busted up stucco, it's two by fours. They dump it because they do jobs. And the dump cost a lot of money. It costs, you know, couple hundred bucks to dump the busted up stucco, tile, concrete or what have you. And the guys that are doing the work don't have a lot of money. And that cuts into their bottom line. And I'm not talking about big time commercial stuff. I'm just talking about, you know, remod residential stuff, probably no permit. They demo it out, they throw it in the back of the pickup truck and instead of heading out to Sun Valley or going to the dump and paying a couple hundred bucks and they just go. Sunday night after the sun goes down, go the back street and just dump it. And you see this stuff sort of dumped. All of you see sofas and beds and sort of junk just dumped all over the city. And I was talking to this guy and I said, you know, you guys ought to start a thing that says you can dump for free. You can bring your stuff here. I said, go out front of the Home Depots, hand out flyers, tell them they'll get a 12 pack of Takati if they drop it off. Let's not take a turn here for the ethnic, but let's face it, it's a certain group. They do construction. I work with these people and they're dumping it off, so let them know they can take it and dispose of it properly. And he said, you know what, that's a really good idea. And I said, yeah, it'll save you all the debt. You got to clean it up as the city anyway. Eventually you're going to drive around and pick it up. Eventually it's going to cost you money. He said, that's a good idea. I said, you're welcome. And then about a half hour later, he circled back to me at the party and he goes, what was that idea again? And I thought, oh man, we are doomed. This is never going to happen. But yeah, a lot of it's just basic common sense stuff and it bothers me that LA is that way. I guess it's an efficiency thing. That bothers me. It's not an efficient city.

[Rick Caruso]

No, it's far from an efficient city. But listen, everybody knows this because we've driven around LA and it really is sad. I mean, we can joke about it and it's good to joke about it, I guess, to relieve some of the tension. To drive around the city to see the amount of people that are passed out on the sidewalks, the homeless, to see the amount of drug dealing that's going on, to look at MacArthur park, the amount of people that are dying in the streets every day, five to seven people every day die in the streets in the city of la, on the street. The amount of trash that's built up, just the trash from the homeless that's built up, it's terrible. And the impact of it is incredible because all of these businesses that are along these streets just pay this dear price because you don't, you don't want to shop there, right? You look at downtown LA is now at some 40% vacancy rate. And that's bad for the people that own those buildings. It's really bad for the couple that owns the local pizza parlor, that has the local florist, that has the local dry cleaner. The downstream impact of this is massive. And that's why so many businesses are closing and that's why the revenue of Los Angeles is going down. This isn't rocket science. There's nothing complicated about it.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I, you know, yeah, I was in Sherman Oaks of all places a couple of weeks ago and I was just going to a little mom pop place selling covers for sunlight, solar roof, whatever, just some hardware. And it was like noon on a Tuesday and I went to go this business and the door was locked and I was like, oh, are you not open? And the woman came around and she unlocked it. She goes, no, no, we're open. But homeless people. So many homeless people wander in here that I just have to keep the door locked. And, I mean, it's symbolic, but you are open for business, except for your door remains locked on a weekday when you're open for business and the sun is shining. Because we are not running the city correctly, we're not handling the homeless situation correctly. Billions of dollars wasted on that. What would be an approach you would have to. To that problem?

[Rick Caruso]

You know, we've got organizations in this region, Adam, that are doing just exceptional work. Downtown, Women's Center, Union Rescue Mission, the People's Concern. They take people from the streets in. They give them the services they need. Mental health care, drug addiction, they give them housing. They have a 90% effective rate, meaning 90% of the people that are walking in are getting a better life and they're staying there and they're getting the treatment. They're not leaving, getting back in the street instead of spending billions of dollars in doing this crazy thing, home safe or whatever the hell it's called, where you're renting a hotel and you're putting a homeless person in a hotel without any services. They're not going to stay in there. They're just bouncing right back on the street. Residents at an Encino called me a while ago to go look at Sepulveda Basin. So I went out there last week. They've been trying to get the mayor out there for a year. They said, the Sepulveda Basin, along where the soccer fields are and the baseball fields are where all the kids play, behind the hedging and the greenery and whatnot, there's three to 400 people living. Yeah, I walked in there, the encampments, you can't believe it. And so I looked at it. I said, okay, because I'm all for solving things. It's easy to state a problem. What, to your point, what's the solution? I called a great group that's doing incredible work for the homeless called Hope the Mission. I said, would you meet me out there? Army Corps of Engineers offered to meet me out there. We all met literally within 10 minutes. Hope the Mission said we can get everybody housed at an average cost of $100 a day. $100 a day. The city of Los Angeles is spending $900,000 per homeless to house them. This is 35,000 a year versus 900,000. So what should we be doing? The city should be redirecting Funds to people concerned downtown, Women's Center, Union Rescue Mission, Hope for Mission, Give them the funds to build and start housing people and getting them off the street. It's just so logical. Why does LA and LA county and the state of California. The state's just as bad. Have the largest homeless population than anywhere else in the world? That's what we got here. And it's just because it's laziness. It's people don't have the backbone or the courage. I remember when I was running for mayor, the hit on me was, you want to criminalize homelessness. No, we want to give people a path to a better life. And we want to give people their neighborhoods back. Their business is back.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, also.

[Rick Caruso]

And it's illegal to be on the street.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I don't get like, what's compassionate about watching someone expire on the street.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, I know.

[Adam Carolla]

I mean, you wouldn't do that with a dog, say, you know, well, let him OD on fentanyl biscuits on the street. Because you're compassionate. There's nothing compassionate about letting somebody die on the streets. I was.

[Rick Caruso]

Have you been to MacArthur park lately?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, someone left the cake out in the rain again. That's a song. I know.

[Rick Caruso]

I feel sorry for Norm Langers. I mean, put it into personal terms. Norm Langer is one of the great restaurateurs. Langer's is deli. The deli, yeah, right. I mean, it is an LA institution. You got to put this thing into personal terms. Norm Langers has been there for like 50, 60 years. He's one of the best damn delis in the world. Right across from MacArthur Park. He's been screaming for help from the mayor and the city council because of the amount of drug addiction, people dying, homeless. I went down with my family for lunch. There's homeless sleeping in his doorways. He now closes at 3 in the afternoon because it's so dangerous there. And now he's threatening to close full time. It doesn't have to be this so.

[Adam Carolla]

Negligent of the city. I might have a few stories, one I think I shared with you and I've talked about on the podcast before, but it does bear repeating, which is, I was on a boat heading to Catalina with a guy who ran the crypto Staples center back then. By the way, his boat wasn't as big as yours. Your boat's a lot bigger. Much bigger boat. I'm going to upset you. Not even close. Dinghy. Compared to your stuff, don't get me wrong. But a boat, you know I'll go on anyone's now.

[Rick Caruso]

You love him. It was fun having you aboard.

[Adam Carolla]

Fun being aboard. The boat I was on was the size of the boat that took me to your boat, let's put it to you that way. So don't feel threatened with the boat envy. But I was on a boat, I was going to Catalina and the guy was running crypto and he was in charge and I was talking about, what's that like running that facility and the different venues and the bands and all that kind of stuff. And I said to him, you know, I took my son to a Lakers game a while back, and I opened the door to walk out the exit and literally almost tripped over a guy selling hot dogs with bacon wrapped around it on a shopping cart on your property.

Right, right up in there.

So these guys are all over the place. They're on your property. He goes, oh, are you kidding me?

[Rick Caruso]

I hate it.

[Adam Carolla]

I go, yeah, you hate it. I would think you'd hate it because you have all these other restaurants of people trying to do business in here and you're selling food in your venue and these guys are up against the door. They're not out on the street, they're on your property. He pulls his phone out, he goes, here's how much I hate. Pulls his phone out and shows me a picture of one of those grills with the hot dogs on there, and there's a giant cockroach on the grill, on the grill next to the hot dog. And he shows me the picture and he goes, I hate it. I said, well, you of all people should be able to do something about it because you run this facility and you know, it really at the time sort of ushered back downtown's renaissance and Staples Center. Now crypto. And you know what, how much I don't. Revenue do you generate for the city with all the concerts and all the events and the sporting events and everything? I go, go down to. Go down the city council and tell those people to clean this crap up. And he said to me, I don't want to get into trouble. And I thought, you don't want to get into trouble.

[Rick Caruso]

What does that mean, though?

[Adam Carolla]

He said, if I go in there and upset these people by telling them to get rid of these people who they think of, that's their constituency. I mean, I think the LA City Council feels like they work for the people selling the hot dogs, not the guys running the crypto center. He literally said, I don't want to upset these people because I'll get. They'll have it out for me if I go in there, so just leave it be. And I thought, wow, we've really come a long way here and not in the right direction.

Right.

That this guy who's a contributor and a taxpayer who's running this multi billion dollar industry here he is worried about the city council taking it out on him if he just asked them to do their job. And that's kind of why we're here today. Also, as far as the homeless goes, I was re listening to a conversation I had with Gavin Newsom on the homeless earlier this week. And I told him it was drugs and it was people that had mental issues. And he told me about the true face and the real picture of homelessness, which was a mom with two kids and a full time job whose husband left and was out on the streets. And I said, that doesn't exist. No one's ever seen that. It's all people who are drug addicts and are going through serious mental issues. And he said that's not the true face of homelessness. Now this is several years ago, but how would one solve the problem if one didn't identify the problem? You as a builder want to know what the problem is. And then you go, okay, how do we remedy this problem? That's all you do. You go, what's the problem? They go, here's the problem. You go, here's how we're going to fix this problem. But you would never make up an invisible problem and then try to remedy it with pixie dust. Which is why we have this problem. They're not identifying what the problem is. We have a fire that takes down the Palisades and he wants to blame it on climate change, not on not having the aqueducts filled and not having the proper resources dispatched.

[Rick Caruso]

You're preaching to the choir with me. And what makes it even more frustrating to me now that I've been going around the state talking to people. I was up at Bakersfield talking to some of the largest farmers in the state. I was in Sacramento for a dinner talking to the petroleum industry, listening to them. Been up in San Francisco a number of times with a bunch of the tech CEOs. Nobody feels like the state has their back, right? Everybody feels like they're fighting the system just to stay alive. And I know that's the feeling people have in la. And it's like, why? Why is it so difficult to run a business? You take a look at. And I don't think a lot of people in California realize this. Most of the Oil generation, petroleum generation. The state of California is going to close, and it's going to close under the guise of it's environmentally better to not have these refineries. I don't think so, because we are an energy island, which means all of the gas and oil that we need are going to be coming in on trucks on the highway to replace it. Talking to the farmers, so overregulated for what they do now. There's some regulation that you need, but they're trying to be competitive with other states. Look at our entertainment industry. You're in the business. It's getting. It's getting destroyed in Los Angeles, in the state of California. Well, yeah, but again, I don't want to just be negative. To me, what's interesting is all of it can be changed with the right attitude and a different perspective. It just can.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. Go ahead and applaud.

[Audience Member]

Thank you.

[Rick Caruso]

Can I just give an example?

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Rick Caruso]

And again, I'm not just kowtowing to Glendale here, but we're sitting in a place. And I was up in the office talking to one of my fellow executives.

[Adam Carolla]

He was yelling at his assistant, but go ahead. I was there.

[Rick Caruso]

Mr. But in a very nice way. And I was recounting what this area looked like 20 years ago. There was four city blocks that look like hell. Nobody wanted to be down here south of Glendale. South Brand was dead. North Brand was booming. Right. And the city had the foresight to say, we're gonna get all of this real estate. We're gonna do a competition. We're gonna hire somebody that will invest a lot of money and redevelop it. And now you got. South Brand is booming, and then the city is building housing and apartments and all this other kind of stuff. That was a simple decision that took a lot of courage, but it was a smart decision. I would say change the face of the city because the city said we're going to be a very competitive city and attract businesses. We're going to increase our tax revenue, we're going to pump it into more police and our schools. None of this. It takes courage and backbone and obviously intellect and competency. But it's all fixable, is my point.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Rick Caruso]

And we should go fix it.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. It's reversible as well. If you've hung around long enough, you would see that places like Old Town Pasadena were falling apart and getting dicey and dangerous and had a renaissance because somebody said, let's make Old Town Pasadena nice again, even. And sort of weirdly, Melrose, which was sort of dark and dicey and then got nice and now is getting dark and dicey again. Like, it's. It'll go either direction. You either. You know, it's basically a plant, and you can tend to it and prune it and fertilize it and look after it, or you can just sit back and watch it die and weeds pop up around it. It's work, it's constant, and it's consistent. But as you were talking about the industry, the industry was. Obviously, the entertainment industry was something we sort of had a monopoly on for many years. And then we do what we do, which is we get super greedy and we overregulate. And, you know, I mean, the. The industry just was insane. Like, you know, you would union this and union that. Guys driving vans getting 150 bucks an hour. You know, a PA couldn't run out and move a van. You had to get the teamster to move the van. Before you know it, it just got too expensive to film in Los Angeles. And so people went other places. And if you don't think people will leave, I mean, I'll give you an example. So, like, if you take a look at, like, two of the most progressive types, let's just say in the industry, you take Samuel L. Jackson. Very progressive. Bryan Cranston, Very progressive guy. They both live in Los Angeles. Bryan Cranston. I drove to the Burbank airport so we could get on a plane so we could go to New Mexico, so we could shoot Breaking Bad. Breaking Bad was supposed to be shot here in California, but we got too greedy and the production, and it doesn't matter. And my point is, is it doesn't matter how liberal you are or how woke you are or how much you ring that bell. Pay your fair share or when is enough enough? They'll get on the first flight and go to New Mexico and take the entire circus with them if it means saving some money and putting it in their pocket. Because ultimately, whatever they say, their business people, people first. And when I was in doing a shot, I was doing a show in. In Canada, and I was. Mike, where was the. Where was it? Winnipeg. Beautiful. Mike booked me there in January. It's awesome there, man. I brought my swim trunks. 37 degrees below in Burton Cummings Theater in Winnipeg. So I check into the hotel in Winnipeg in January because Mike thought it'd be a good idea to play Winnipeg in January. And I go up to my floor, and the guy from the hotel, he's walking me down to my room and he goes, look, I'M not supposed to say anything, but the guy at the suite at the end, that's Samuel L. Jackson. I go, okay. He goes, he's shooting a movie. He's here for like four months, five months. I go, oh, what's he. What's he doing to shoot a movie in Winnipeg? Well, it's not Winnipeg. It's supposed to be Chicago. The whole point is, is the most progressive guy in L. A will get on a plane and leave the country and live there for five months to save a couple of bucks in taxes and on the production, gladly. So people will leave to save money or they'll happily stay here. If you make it attractive for them, it's super easy to turn it around. For some reason, we don't seem to be inspired by that. And I think it's because of their mentality. They're dogs that don't hunt. They're process people. They want to talk about everything. They want to have a meeting about everything. They want a discussion group about everything. But they never want to roll up their sleeves and just go to work. And the guys who have the background in development and construction and building commercial, they're all about solving problems and working. And that's why I'm always for the person who is from the private sector who wants to come in and bring that mentality to the government versus the lifelong bureaucrat.

[Rick Caruso]

I'm with you on that.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, why wouldn't you be? Because I'm talking about you here. Here.

[Rick Caruso]

But I would also just add to that, just from the state level. Our elected officials on the state level are so proud to say we're the fourth largest economy in the world, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. Larger economy than India, Japan. Incredible. Well, if we're the fourth largest economy in the world, why don't we act like it? And why don't we have the best schools? Why don't we have the best housing? Why aren't we competitive with making a film in Winnipeg, in London, in Atlanta? Right. In New Jersey? You know, Netflix just opened a huge facility in New Jersey. You know, the other states and countries are eating our lunch. Well, we're at the fourth largest economy. Use the power of our economy to keep the business here and grow it. It's just so simple to me to think about it that way. So to your point, we should be competitive because I don't think anybody wants to go spend five months in Winnipeg. I shouldn't say that the people from Winnipeg here, but lot of good folk from Winnipeg, I guess. We're not doing a project in Winnipeg anytime soon. That's the end of that retail center.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Rick Caruso]

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[Adam Carolla]

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[Adam Carolla]

Well, obviously everyone here is interested in a change of direction. And you would you represent that? And I know you're playing it a little bit close to the vest, but could you give us some hints on what Rick Caruso may be doing in the future?

[Rick Caruso]

Well, there's no announcement tonight. I ran into people outside saying I'm so excited to hear about your announcement you're making tonight. I said the only announcement I'm making tonight is where I'm going to dinner afterwards. But what's that?

[Adam Carolla]

I mean.

[Rick Caruso]

Well, maybe we should. Okay, let's see. Okay, can we do that? Can we do it?

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, let's do it.

[Rick Caruso]

Let's do a round of applause for Mayor.

[Adam Carolla]

Okay.

[Rick Caruso]

Wow. That's pretty robust. Okay, I appreciate that very much. All right, Governor. Whoa. I know. What do you think?

[Adam Carolla]

It was close, but I would say Mayor inched out, Governor. But of course. These people are selfish bastards. They want you all for their own. They don't want to share you with Sacramento. And by the way, what would you do as governor with that bullet train? Like what, do we put a bullet in the bullet train?

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, you put a bullet in the bullet train.

[Adam Carolla]

Like Old Yeller.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, that.

[Adam Carolla]

Take it behind the wood shop.

[Rick Caruso]

That's going to be a monument to something. Yeah, it's going to stop. It's going to be a monument to something.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, you know, it's interesting and as I think about you saying a monument, something popped in my head. But I made a documentary about racing and was Ford.

[Rick Caruso]

You know, this guy races cars. Very impressive. Yeah, he's a really skilled racer. At least that's what he told me for hours on end.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, well, I told you to leave that part off when you brought it up. Just make it seem organic. But anyway, for the next, for the next one. Now, I made a documentary about Ford versus Ferrari and you saw the movie with Matt Damon and Christian Bale. Yeah, it was a good movie and a good story. And I made this story before the feature and I called it the 24 hour war, which I think is a better name because it's a 24 hours of law and Le Mans. They went to war. But anyway, when we were interviewing, we went down to Moda and we were interviewing the Ferrari guys. Ferrari has a room in his sort of boardroom. You may want to implement this. He doesn't have the plaques and the trophies on display. He has parts that broke.

[Rick Caruso]

Wow.

[Adam Carolla]

He has, you know, $10 parts that broke 23 hours into LA and stopped him from winning the race. Like he puts on display all the monuments of stuff they got wrong. And again, I love that idea. You're running the 24 hour LA, they get put out by parts that cost 50 cents. Sometimes gaskets and rings and things that go bad, like just little bitty things happen in a 24 hour race. And it puts the car, the entire car's out. It's not because the engine blew up, it's because a gasket gave way or something like that. So he leaves these as reminders to people to really focus on their work. And maybe we should do that with the bullet train. Maybe we should just make it a monument to California's inefficiencies and basically take school kids there on buses, by the way, not electric buses, diesel buses. And walk them through and say, you see what happens, kids, when you dare to dream but you're stupid? This is where you end up. Everyone tells you to dare to dream, but not dumb people don't dream. Dumb people. You End up with a dumb train that goes nowhere.

[Rick Caruso]

That's a classic.

[Adam Carolla]

But what do you.

[Rick Caruso]

At least we have a plan for that now.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes, I have. Now I'll put me in charge of the education system. I'll talk some sense of these kids. Now. I would like to be transportation czar. I'd like to be the. I'd like to be the traffic czar. We've discussed that.

[Rick Caruso]

Yes, we have.

[Adam Carolla]

I was literally driving from Malibu into. Into Glendale on Sunday. And it was about 9:30 in the morning. I was just driving down the 10 and I passed one of those big electronic freeway signs that normally say click it or ticket. Because none of us have gotten the message about seat belts in 2025. I don't know if you've heard, but there's this nylon strip in your car that goes across your chest. I'll talk to you about it after the show. It's quite an innovation, but it always says click it or tick it. But this time it said something equally as useless. It said, if you're drowsy, pull over and sleep. And I thought, what am I gonna do? Pull over in Westwood? I'm heading to the 405 off the 10. I mean, put it out on the grapevine at 3am for the long haul truckers that ran out of stuff.

[Rick Caruso]

Speed.

[Adam Carolla]

But it's 9:30 Sunday morning when you pull into Westlake Village or Westchester or where should I. What is this information on this sign for? Who's watching it and why can't we just say use your damn signal or something useful or stay out of the fast lane if you're going 45 or like something. Or just drive like champions, you know, something motivational.

[Rick Caruso]

There you go.

[Adam Carolla]

Anything but so. Or as I've said, sell the sign to Taco Bell.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah. Make some money.

[Adam Carolla]

Make some money off it. Put that into the school system.

[Rick Caruso]

Right, There you go. Thank you.

[Adam Carolla]

But you should pull over when you're drowsy on Sunday at 9:30 in the morning driving through Westwood on the 405. Useless. All right, a serious question for you, Rick.

[Rick Caruso]

Okay.

[Adam Carolla]

All right. Because this is something that's near and dear to me and I'd like to know what you think about this or what you would do to remedy it. I drive up and down PCH on a. Almost daily basis and I go to all the construction sites and I see everyone that's working. And I went up to the Palisades and toured a site and saw the crew that was on the site was a lot of framers. H vac guys, electricians, plumbers, blah, blah, blah.

[Rick Caruso]

All of them.

[Adam Carolla]

Nobody from the inner city, no black kids. This entire place, it's mostly Hispanic, mostly all Hispanic. And they're all working the trades and good for them. But I always think about the kids in the inner city. These young guys, they're not going to college. They're getting recruited into gangs, they're getting into trouble. Their rudderless. There's nowhere to go. You know, AI is going to replace everybody, but not the trades guys. It'd be so easy to recruit these guys and teach them a trade. They'd have some dignity. It's the hourly wage, by the way. You know better than anybody. I mean, I said to the guy, what are these guys getting paid? They're getting 250, 350, 400 bucks a day. All these guys. And they're all working. They're driving the equipment, they're framing, they're doing everything. They're making a good wage. You don't need four years of college. You don't have to build up debt to do it. You can basically be, you know, be on the job site at 18 years old. By the time you're 21, you're off and running. And you have a skill and you have some pride. And, you know, you work around these guys, they're content. There's a. There's a thing about a guy who has a skill, who knows how to put things together, who has a field of expertise. There's a dignity to it and there's a pride to it. There's a sense of purpose to it. And these guys aren't joining gangs and they're not out all night and they're not getting into trouble. And I don't understand why this city doesn't, especially after the Palisades, after Malibu and after Altadena, doesn't go into these cities with these broken families and these inner cities and get these kids and recruit them into these vocational programs.

[Rick Caruso]

I think it's a great idea. Yeah, it's a great idea. You know, one of the things we lost in this region, in the state, are trade schools. Yes. And we got to bring. I mean, that's something I've long thought of. We got to bring trade schools back. Now, many of the unions have, within their union shops, they have trade schools where they're training young people. And it's fantastic. I was just up in Las Vegas where the carpenter's union, their facility is incredible up there, and they're training people. The pipefitters are training people. So we have to work with the unions to do more of that. But to your point, we got to get trade schools back open again.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Rick Caruso]

And because it is a life skill and it never goes away and you're financially. You're taking care of for life. So I agree with that. I think there's way too much emphasis on. And I'm a big believer in going to college, but it's not right for everybody, and people should have a trade and they're well taken care of. So I agree with you.

[Adam Carolla]

I was out in Vegas. I was talking to some carpenters. They built a whorehouse in four days over there. Four days? Four days.

[Rick Caruso]

That was a different. I wasn't on that.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, no, you were.

[Rick Caruso]

I just want to be clear what trip I was on in Vegas.

[Adam Carolla]

Four days.

[Rick Caruso]

I'm not traveling with you to Vegas. I know that.

[Adam Carolla]

We may take your boat to Vegas when I'm in charge. Oh, my God, I love that. Yeah, the trades and getting kids back into trades and this.

[Rick Caruso]

Did you actually ask somebody how quickly they built a whorehouse in Vegas?

[Adam Carolla]

I kicked some tires and.

[Audience Member]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

No, come on, Rick, Come on. You know, I'm a God fearing man. I'm just making a joke. All right, now, I think Alicia Krause is out there with a microphone, and we can do a little Q and A. But I don't want to cut you off, Rick, if there's something you'd like to kind of, you know, finish with, other than your whorehouse soliloquy.

[Rick Caruso]

How long would it take to build that same building in L. A?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, my God. Cranston was going to work on the whorehouse, but he went out in New Mexico instead.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, so good.

[Rick Caruso]

I'm ready for questions.

[Adam Carolla]

Ready for questions. So, Alicia, you got a microphone out there. You're poised. There's people in the audience who have.

[Audience Member]

Questions, some excited people in the audience.

[Rick Caruso]

Who have some questions, if you guys don't mind.

[Audience Member]

For the benefit of the listening and viewing audience, and for the gentleman up front, if you can give your first name and what part of Los Angeles you live in.

[Rick Caruso]

Okay, ma', am, my name is Shelley and I live in Lakewood. My question is, I would like to retire in the next few years. My friends who have retired have left Southern California. So how do you stay and retire? It's a really good question. It's not only electric.

[Adam Carolla]

Rick Caruso, governor of California.

[Rick Caruso]

There you go. The governor. Crowd got a lot smaller all of a sudden. The. Listen. It's a problem statewide. And here's What I think we really have to focus on, there's two sides to this, and I think about it a lot. When I started my business almost 40 years ago in LA, I always had the feeling that there was abundant opportunity and that if I worked really hard between one rung and the next rung, you could literally climb up the ladder. That was the feeling I think so many of us had, not only in Los Angeles, but California. It was the state where anything could happen if you worked hard. When you work hard and you're into your career, you should also have the ability to retire and feel well taken care of and not worry about it. But the cost of living in California has gotten so out of control because we just haven't managed it right. And that's where we need to say we're going to start peeling stuff back so it's not costing as much. Why does gas in California cost two to three times gas in anywhere else in this country? Because it's embedded with so many fees and taxes. Start peeling it back. You know the 20%, 20 cents out of every dollar you pay for gas goes to that stupid rail line. It's crazy. Yes, it does.

[Adam Carolla]

Every day I'm gonna tell the kids. That's the first thing I tell the kids.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, yeah. Knock 20 cents out of it.

[Adam Carolla]

But wow.

[Rick Caruso]

So what I would focus on in the state is lowering the cost of living. And you're gonna lower the cost of living by reducing bureaucracy, building more housing so more people can afford a house. We're under. We have a low inventory of housing in the city of Los Angeles. The lowest housing start in 10 years is now under Karen Bass, State of California. We're a million homes short. At least a million homes short. Well, that can all be corrected. You should be able to stay in California.

[Adam Carolla]

We were talking off the air about a luxury project you're building and I was asking you about what it cost a unit for you to do. And you know, Rick's stuff is real high end stuff. And the price you were talking about, or unit for the super high end luxury condo is the price the state and the city is quoting for homeless housing.

[Rick Caruso]

That's right. No, it's true.

[Adam Carolla]

With and almost no Carrera marble.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, yeah, it's true.

[Adam Carolla]

But no gym on the roof or none of the amenities it's costing them. I think it was like 900, 900,000 a unit. These are small units for homeless. So I don't think people fully understand the cost of regulation and how that affects everything.

[Rick Caruso]

40% of the cost of housing in California is regulation 40%. But the other thing that we're building that I'm really proud of is low income workforce housing for two hours. Because I don't think people should have to work two hours to get to work and two hours to get home. And I think. And we're not asking for any tax credits, no subsidies from any government agency. And we're doing it. And I think every company should be investing in their employees by doing workforce housing that they can afford to live in and be close to home. And I'm really proud of our company for doing that.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, can Shelley live there or is that going to be. She needs to work for you. All right, Alicia, do you have another question? Are you up there? Hi, I'm Ellen from Sherman Oaks.

[Audience Member]

I'm really terrified with the Olympics coming.

[Adam Carolla]

The whole world's coming to la. Oh, those javelin guys scare the crap out of me, man. I run serpentine to the mailbox. I know what you're talking about. About. I'm just wondering what should be done.

[Rick Caruso]

We got to be ready for it. We don't have a choice but to be ready for it. And I think it's. I think it's just a. God, it's a tragedy, right, that we're even. Can you. In the 84 Olympics. For any of you that old enough to remember the 84 Olympics, did any of us ever sit around saying, are we going to be ready for it? No. You just knew the city was going to be ready for it. Right. We had great people that were out there doing it. What is going on with our leadership in this city that we believe we're not going to be ready for it? And you know why we believe that? Because we see it. The city looks dirty. Nothing's happening. There's no excitement around it. We don't hear about the planning that's going on because there isn't any. And so many of the Olympic Games are literally outside the city of LA now, which I think is really sad. I think it's really sad. I'll go on the record and I'll probably piss off a friend of mine. I think the opening ceremony should be in the LA Coliseum, where it started in 1932. And I don't know, it just bothers me that the opening of the LA Olympics is in Inglewood. Inglewood is in L A, LA is L A. And I think we've got to get back to focusing on, you know, our core principles and our goals and just make things happen. So I'm worried about it too. I'm not involved with the Olympics. I know Casey Wasserman very well. I know he's working his tail off to try to get it done, but I think he's. He's fighting a mighty battle with the city that isn't moving the way it should be moving to get it done.

[Adam Carolla]

It's not a good.

[Rick Caruso]

I think it can still be fixed though. I think there's time to fix.

[Adam Carolla]

How much time do we have?

[Rick Caruso]

Three years.

[Adam Carolla]

We have three years.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah. Not that long. We got that. We got the World cup coming.

[Adam Carolla]

It's. Oh, screw soccer. Don't clap. Come on. We got. We got real football.

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[Adam Carolla]

Homes.com Some might say homes.com is the best home shopping site. I would be amongst those some. And maybe homes.com's super comprehensive and transparent agent directory. Or Maybe it's at. Homes.com is the only site that always directly connects you with the listing agent who knows the home the best. Or Perhaps it's because homes.com has the most in depth neighborhood content of any home shopping site that's extensively researched to highlight the personality of each neighborhood. Yes, they're very granular over there. Homes.com goes above and beyond to bring home shoppers the in depth info they need to find the right home and find it fast. I love these guys. It's a hobby. It's a passion. I go to holmes.com homes.com, we've done your homework.

It's a bad sign when you're San Francisco and the Chinese are coming. Or it's the I Think when we had the super bowl, we had to clean it up between LAX and Sofi and stuff. Or it's your house and you have company coming. It's a bad sign. We have to run around and clean up real fast. It means you're not running your home efficiently. You know, when you're grabbing everything and throwing it in a closet and smashing the door shut, it means your house is crappy. And us in la, we do this thing all the time. We're like, oh, the boss is coming to dinner. Clean up. Get the homeless guys scooped up. If you're running around scooping up homeless people and moving piles of burning garbage, it probably means the city is not running how it should be running.

[Rick Caruso]

I agree. It's a great analogy. I completely agree.

[Adam Carolla]

That's kind of my thing, you know?

[Rick Caruso]

Still think it's fixable? Don't lose hope yet.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, let's see what else out there. Alicia with the microphone and another question.

[Rick Caruso]

Thank you, Mike from Boyle Heights. First of all, Mr. Crusoe, thank you for all you've done for Los Angeles so far. I do hope that you run for mayor. We need you. My question tonight is, and it may be tough to answer, is all the mayors that we've had, all the city council people the last 40 years, what happened to LA? Why have we become what we've become? What have all those politicians done and what can be done to fix it? Yeah, well, I think, you know, I worked for three mayors, so I have a really good perspective on this. And Tom Bradley was a remarkable mayor. He really was remarkable. I learned a lot from him, and he knew how to just get things done. And Arthur will say this. He turned to me. I was 26, 27 years old, 25. 25. Okay. Arthur remembers this better than I do, and he said, go solve the Inyo water lawsuit that had been going on for decades between Inyo county and the city of Los Angeles. Just go solve it. And he just empowered people to go get stuff done, and he was really competent, and he didn't let you off the hook. Dick Reardon was a great mayor, and same thing, did great, great things. And I tell you who I think is the biggest unsung hero as a mayor of the city of Los Angeles is Jim Hahn. Because Jim Hahn asked me to be the president of the police commission. We were under construction in this project, and he called me up and he just became mayor, and he said, would you be the president of the police commission? And I said, no, I will not. Jim, I like you A lot. I've known Jim forever. I said, I'm not going to do it. I said, it's going to be a terrible job. Wouldn't give up. Called me again. Third time, I remember, literally, I was parked on Brand Boulevard about to walk on the construction site. I think it was actually before we even started construction, it was going to a hearing. And he said, one more time, you've got to take the job. Here was the job. You got a very, very popular chief of police that looks like he came out of central casting and actually a nice guy. Bernie Parks, a black man, very popular in Los Angeles, had terrible policies that were driving crime up and causing officers to quit. We had an empty academy. We had spiking crime. We had a department after the Rodney King beatings that was under a federal consent decree. The federal courts were overseeing lapd and I knew it was going to be a tough job. I took the job and I'm so grateful. I did take the job. And I remember calling Jim Hahn and I said, I'm going to recommend we do not renew him and we're going to hire this guy named Bill Bratton. And on the other side of the phone was silence. Why? Because we're going to basically fire a very popular black man and we're going to hire a white guy that's not even from LA and has this sort of funny accent.

[Adam Carolla]

Is he a Boston guy?

[Rick Caruso]

He's a Boston guy.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Rick Caruso]

And what happened? Jim said, just do what's right. And we did it. We got crime down to levels not seen since 1950. Jim lost his second term. He had the backbone and the courage, the strength to do what was right for the residents of the city of Los Angeles at his own political cost. We've lost that. And we need to start electing people that frankly don't care if they get reelected. Just do the right thing. But everybody's got to go do that and stop electing people for ideology and elect people because they're competent. Don't you think?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah.

[Rick Caruso]

Well, what do you think?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I, you know, this sort of first. Whatever. Whatever it is. No, it's not a good plan if the, if the job's important. So, you know when you're doing sort of ceremonial stuff where you go the first female, the first black, the first black lesbian female or whatever. Whatever it is we're talking about, that's fine if you're the ceremonial mayor of Hollywood and you just preside over the Walk of Fame ceremony, but if it's a nuts and bolts job, if you're an airline pilot or you're running the city of Los Angeles, then we need the best. Which can be a black female lesbian or anything, but we need the best. And we shouldn't be factoring in all these other factors that do not have to do with job performance. But if you think back, or I'm thinking back on it, we had Antonio Villaragosa, I think two terms, right?

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

So we got eight years of that. Then.

[Rick Caruso]

You had Eric Garcetti, and we had Garcetti.

[Adam Carolla]

It was no good. And now we have Karen Bass. So. Okay, so here's what I'm saying. Okay, But. But you're asking what's going on in this city. Well, what if I said, what's going on with this franchise? Like, what is going on with.

[Rick Caruso]

You?

[Adam Carolla]

Pick a team, you go, okay, what's going on with the Cleveland Browns? Well, what if they had 16 years of horrible coaches? What if it was just one horrible head coach? This guy did eight years. He sucked. He didn't know anything about football. He was ineffective. So then they put in another one. Same thing, another one. I mean, we're getting into 16 years of horrible, incompetent idiots running this city, and I say we need a competent idiot.

[Rick Caruso]

That's not your endorsement.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes. No. I mean, why would we be run into the ground? We've had idiots. We've had a succession of idiots without a break for well over a decade. So we're gonna have to do something, or we're just gonna keep going in this trajectory. But it's the same way a company. If you ran Ford, if Ford just hired a succession of idiots to run their company or a professional franchise or any entity you bring, Starbucks, whoever, whatever. If it was just one idiot after the next, then, of course, it'd be running to the ground. Sorry, Alicia. I became emotional.

[Audience Member]

It's okay. My name is Jody. I'm a single mother who lives in the Palisades. And when I say I live in the Palisades, I currently live in the Palisades, and I have an enormous amount of survivor's guilt, as opposed to my two people here who don't currently live in the Palisades, I have to ask. We need a census. Because there is a misnomer out there that there is no one living there. And the truth is, if you look around, a lot of the hazards are still very much there, to the point where I had to actually LinkedIn and write to the head of LADWP to ask if the reservoir was filled while my daughter was living with me there. And we're struggling to get information. We have a school that we fought to have opened, which is opened with children in it, in a public school, is that Marquez, Marques and Calvary are open. It's a ghost town in the sense of any given day you walk through, I mean, we have the restaurants, we have things, we have people there who are fighting to keep it alive so that these people can come back. And so we need more people to know that there are people living there. We need the city to know and the workers to know that the brush still needs to be cleared, that the reservoir needs to be filled and that fix the streets. I mean, the amount of flat tires just driving through on a regular basis is horrible. So if we can in any way push for a census to show that there are people living there, we can hopefully.

[Rick Caruso]

Yeah, I think, listen, I agree with you 1000%. I'm up there all the time, obviously, and I'm sorry you two lost your homes. The problem you've got, and again, I'm not trying to beat up anybody. There is just this general attitude that they don't care, they just don't care and they live by these stupid rules. I was walking with my team up there the other day. I get a lot of texts from people and I love it. I got a great idea, right? And then goes into the idea. One of my favorite great ideas was this one lady Johnson Tree company that lives in the Palisades, said, I will donate flowers. Let's plant flowers along Sunset. I just, that was. It was like seven in the morning and I'm a crybaby anyway and I started crying. My wife goes, what are you crying about? I said, this is the greatest idea. Last Sunday we were all up there, hundreds of us planting flowers along Sunset to give hope, right? It was beautiful, wasn't it? It was fantastic. And so my point is Palisades is going to come back in spite of the city, not because of the city. And it's steadfast la. And Nick Geller is here who run steadfast for us. They're doing incredible work. We have a full time team. I don't see anybody standing alongside of us. What I do see is the residents. And I think what we've all got to say to ourselves, we're going to make this happen no matter what. And my rule is we will walk with the politicians, we'll walk around the politicians or we'll walk through the politicians, but we're coming back, period, end of story. And not Just to beat up the city of la. The county's not doing any better. I was in Altadena this afternoon, and Altadena is worse. I don't see almost anything coming out of the ground. And we're spending a lot of time in Altadena with our grant program for businesses and whatnot. And Altadena is going to have to do the same thing. We just. I had one of the best days of my life, along with Nick and some other people at Steadfast, we gave five family homes today. Unbelievable. The dearest, sweetest people in the world, salt of the earth, one gentleman, 85 years old, lived in his home for 40 years. Nobody's coming to rescue him but five families. And we're going to keep that program up. We're going to try to get them back in these homes before the holidays. But why isn't the county doing that? Why isn't the city doing that? Why isn't the state doing that? Why isn't the federal government supporting these regions that are wiped out? We have zero federal aid. And I got to tell you, this really is a moment in this region where I hope people band together and say, we deserve better. I don't care if it's me or not. I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about at every level, we deserve better because those elected officials get paid to fight for us, not to sit on their ass and do nothing. And that's what we have at the state and the local level.

[Adam Carolla]

I have seen Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass give 100 interviews, pressers screaming about ICE, talking about fighting Trump. I've not heard one word out of their mouth about rebuilding anything. I do not hear anything about expediting permits or any federal help or Altadena, Palisades, Malibu. No rebuilding, no fire, no infrastructure. There's no talk. It is just talk about fighting ICE and fighting Trump. Since the fires, I mean, literally, I keep track, I follow along. I've not heard the governor or the mayor say one word, or if they've said one word, it's one word for every 5,000 words they say about fighting Trump and fighting ICE.

[Rick Caruso]

I think. I think you can do a lot of things at once. I'm not. I am not a supporter of what ICE did in the city of L. A. I am not a supporter that. I think it was overly done, it was harsh, it's wrong. And I think we've got to have a path of amnesty for people that have been here working hard, doing the right thing, raising their families. Paying their taxes, all that kind of stuff. Reagan did it. We need to do it again. So I agree with fighting the way ICE is conducting themselves, but I also think if you're going to criticize ICE like Bass does, it's just empty rhetoric. There's nothing behind it. Because she wants her reelection to be a referendum on Trump, not her record, because her record is so bad. That's what that rhetoric is about. But if you really care about the people that you say you want to defend, go and demand a path to citizenship. Go to Washington and make that happen. Our governor should be doing it. Our mayor should be doing it. We need the workers in Los Angeles now more than ever. And it's just patently unfair to me if somebody has been here for years and years and years doing all the right things, doesn't have a criminal record. Somebody has a criminal record, round them up, send them out, you're gone. Close the borders. Absolutely. But if somebody's working hard, doing the right thing, give them the ability to be a citizen of this country, I think, why not? That's the right thing to do. But I want to just say to the lady that was talking about, you know, people don't know you live there. I can tell you something. We at Steadfast do, and we are happy to talk to you. And it's a hell of a good question whether or not that reservoir is full. It's supposed to be full, but we live in Brentwood Park. None of the brush has been cleared. It's the dumbest thing in the world. Same brush that the Palisades had, that became rocket fuel. So I understand your frustration completely.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, do we have one more final question?

[Audience Member]

Hi, Mr. Caruso. My name is Paula Ramirez and also grew up in Boyle Heights, off of first and Boyle, in a duplex as a child.

[Rick Caruso]

Fantastic.

[Audience Member]

And I was very happy to volunteer for your campaign. Last time I was even on the double decker bus with you.

[Rick Caruso]

Wow, that was fun.

[Audience Member]

Yes. And I wanted to say thank you for staying engaged. Thank you for being a voice, thank you for being a leader when we have virtually no leadership in the city. I still live in la. Born and raised there, live in Highland Park. And I have a question. We are all wondering if you're going to bless us with an announcement tonight. We don't even care at what level. Governor, state, city, we need you. We need you.

[Rick Caruso]

I really appreciate that. I'm really honored by it, and I feel very blessed and very grateful for the support I'm getting, not only around the city, but around the state, it's just. I'm really the luckiest guy in the world, but it wears on me. I had a discussion with one of my dearest buddies this weekend about it because I want to do what's right. I want to do something that's good. I'm at this stage of my life that, you know, I want to really give back in a meaningful way. And so I'm really struggling with what is the best path to do that. But I'm at a point very soon I will make a decision, because I'm at, you know, we're just at that point that I have to do it. But it's tough. It's a really tough decision because I want to come in and do good and do the right thing, get it done, and go back to private city. I'm not looking for a career. And so, I don't know, within a few weeks or so, something like that, I'll probably have a decision made. And it's a big topic of discussion in the house with my kids and my wife, who are incredibly supportive with anything that I decide to do. So I'll see. I don't know. Adam. Adam said he'd move to Sacramento with me if I go for governor.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, if I can be traffic czar, I will do that. I mean, we gotta take the boat out there. I'm not driving. That's what you're saying. I'm not taking that grapevine. All right, will you announce it on my podcast or will you give me an exclusive when the time comes for you to make the decision?

[Rick Caruso]

Why not?

[Adam Carolla]

All right, well, then I only have one more question, which is, do you validate parking?

[Rick Caruso]

No. Yes. Well, listen, I'm a capitalist. I do want to say one thing. I did, because today was a. It was an epic day today. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And the Dodgers.

[Rick Caruso]

I got to tell you, here's what I thought. What I thought was so great about today. It was a day that L. A. Needed to be happy. Yeah. It was such a tough year for so many people. And the fact that there was a million people lining the streets of la, excited and cheering. It just goes to show you, do not give up hope on the city of Los Angeles. Great things can and will happen, and for the state, too. So God bless LA and the state. Thank you. And I love this guy. Adam Carolla.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, you didn't have to say it, Rick. You didn't have to say it, man.

[Rick Caruso]

But I mean it, buddy.

[Adam Carolla]

Great to see you, buddy. Rick Caruso, everybody. Thank you guys for coming out tonight.

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