Can Los Angeles be saved?

Last March, a makeshift drug factory exploded next to Los Angeles resident Juan Galicia’s craftsman-style home, built in 1910. The flames spread to his gas line, setting off a fire that destroyed the house and killed his three dogs — he tearfully shows me their picture. Had the accident happened an hour earlier, it would have killed one of his sons, as well. “I lived here 18 years and now it’s gone,” the 55-year-old father, an immigrant from El Salvador, tells me. The empty lot next door, he says, was occupied by homeless squatters who cooked methamphetamine there. “People occupy a place and the city does nothing,” he says.