Spencer Pratt Lost His House, Called 911, and Was Told Nobody Was Coming—Now He’s Running for Mayor

Spencer Pratt is not the same person you remember from The Hills. The 42-year-old father of two watched his family home burn to the ground in the January 2025 Palisades Fire, spent the next year becoming one of the loudest critics of L.A.’s government response, and then did something nobody expected: he announced he was running for mayor. Now he’s polling second in the race, debating incumbent Karen Bass on May 5th on NBC, and making it very clear that this isn’t about building a political career. 

On Good Guys, he sits down with hosts Josh Peck and Ben Soffer to talk about everything from the day he lost his house to what his first week in office looks like. Whether you love him, underestimate him, or haven’t been paying attention yet, here’s what he wants every Angelino to know.

What was January 7th actually like for him?

Pratt was already Snapchatting his morning routine when the fire started. He thought it was just a brush fire in the state park. By 5 p.m., his house was gone. “I’m waiting for the fire department to arrive because I thought I had 6 million gallons of water next door to my house,” he says. “Which I later find out they emptied that reservoir in June of 2024.” 

When he called the fire department directly, there were no assets available. When he called 911 because he couldn’t reach his dad, the answer was the same. “I said, ‘Excuse me, my father could be injured or dying. This is 911.’ Oh no, there’s nobody going into that area.” Thankfully, his dad’s phone was just dead. “He drove out of there [safely],” Pratt says. But 12 people in the Palisades didn’t.

What made you decide to actually run?

“Is somebody going to step in here and try to take this individual’s position?” Pratt says about waiting for someone else to challenge Bass. “She should have resigned on January 7th when she was in Ghana and everything’s burning.” Nobody stepped up, so he did. “I personally would like my children to be able to grow up in the L.A. that I grew up in. A beautiful L.A. An L.A. that had hope and dreams. There was no other option.” He announced he was running at a “They Let Us Burn” rally in Palisades Village in front of roughly 1,000 people, and filed his paperwork on February 3rd.

People still think of you as a reality TV personality—does that bother you?

Not even a little. “They think, ‘Oh, he’s a reality star.’ I was, a long time ago,” Pratt says. “And now I’m just an Angelino.” Right on cue, Peck cuts in: “Maybe we need a little reality.” And honestly, that might be the whole point. Pratt’s not connected to any of the political machinery that he says created the problem in the first place. “Nobody gives me any money. So I have no loyalty to be like, ‘Oh, we’re going to keep all these [non-governmental organizations] functioning because it’s the way things have to be.’ No.”

Where is all the money going?

Pratt points to what he calls the “homeless industrial complex,” where billions in taxpayer dollars funnel into nonprofits and shelters with almost no accountability. To make his point, he brings up a homeless hotel in Venice that he says costs $750,000 per bed to house just 33 people. Then he turns to Bass’s track record. According to the MTV alum, she promised to remove 15,000 people from the streets when she ran for mayor. “Do you know how many she’s removed?” he asks. “1,300 last year into graves—yeah, they’re dead.”

His plan for week one: bring in the IRS to audit every nonprofit and establish full transparency on every taxpayer dollar spent. “If this place has toilet paper, we’re going to know how much toilet paper they’re using,” he says. “That’s how detailed we’re going to be.”

What happens after you win?

“If God wanted somebody to really come in and make real change in Los Angeles, he burned Spencer Pratt’s house down,” Pratt says. “And if you really want to make him mad, you burn my parents’ house down and have me listening to my crying mom every day to motivate me to go out and make change.”

But he’s not trying to build a political career out of this. “I don’t want to go do this as a job like these people do,” he says. “I want to go back to feeding hummingbirds and being with my family. But first, side quest, mission to save L.A.”

Ballots arrive May 4th. The primary is June 2nd. If Pratt gets 51 percent of the vote, he wins outright. If not, the top two candidates advance to November. His party? “Save L.A.”

Listen to the full episode on Good Guys with Josh Peck and Ben Soffer, available wherever you listen to podcasts.

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