Kamala Harris’s new Malibu estate makes the former vice president the member of an exclusive seaside community, Point Dume, that’s long been accused of “hostility” to people of color. And as a high-profile homeowner, she’s also believed to have coveted access to a beach that’s supposed to be public, but whose overwhelmingly white gatekeepers controversially block access to the rest of the community.
The secluded beach, known as Little Dume, is one of the most beautiful on the California coast. While all California beaches are legally public below the high-tide line, it is almost impossible to reach Little Dume without the means—either with a key or with the consent of a homeowner with a key—to pass through one of three private gates, two of which reportedly use facial recognition technology to keep out the riffraff.
The beach is as “close to a private beach as you can find in California. Some folks even buy homes just to get the key, and leave the places empty,” Page Six Hollywood wrote last month.
Harris—who is half black and has spent her career fighting racial segregation and discrimination in housing—plonked down $8.15 million on a four-bedroom, six-bathroom, 4,000-square-foot Malibu estate in a sale that closed in December 2025, according to multiple media reports. She bought the house with her husband, corporate lawyer Doug Emhoff, who has adult children from a previous marriage.
A property description from the luxury realty firm that handled the sale of the Malibu home touts “breathtaking ocean, island, and city views” and “a private putting and chipping green.”
“With modern conveniences like a tankless water heater, security cameras, and parking for five vehicles, this estate offers refined luxury with every detail thoughtfully designed. Whether lounging by the pool or watching the sunset, this home is a sanctuary of sophistication and comfort,” the description concludes.
The mansion also features two wine fridges—a perk that Harris, who famously enjoys Chardonnays and other white wines with ice, will no doubt put to good use.
The home—which the Washington Free Beacon identified—sits just a two-minute drive from ultra-exclusive Little Dume Beach, where Hollywood stars like Julia Roberts and billionaires like Marc Andreessen have been known to hit the surf. Amazon magnate Jeff Bezos has been spotted in the sun with his bodyguards, according to the Page Six report.
In choosing Malibu, Harris has moved to a town packed with ultra-rich Democratic donors, many of whom are accused of restricting access to various Malibu beaches. Harris’s new digs is just a short ride from Malibu’s own “Billionaires Row”—where billionaire David Geffen’s palatial property sold in 2017 for $85 million.
Geffen, a major Democratic donor who has given millions to Harris and the party over the years, spent more than two decades feuding with locals over access to a stretch of Carbon Beach near his estate. California regulators had allowed a massive remodel of the mansion in exchange for Geffen allowing a path to the beach through his property—a commitment he immediately reneged on. The pathway was only opened in 2005 following a 22-year legal battle.
Geffen’s former business partner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, another Malibu owner, has also faced accusations of failing to install beach accessways, required under California law. Katzenberg, one of Hollywood’s biggest Democratic fundraisers, was cochair of Joe Biden’s and then Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign.
In 2023, a former Paramount and MGM Studios chairman, as well as heirs to the Bally gym fortune, reached a settlement to provide access to Malibu’s Escondido Beach. And Milwaukee Brewers owner Mark Attanasio, another major Democratic donor, has also faced allegations of stealing sand from the city’s public Broad Beach for use on a personal construction project at his home.
Though Harris’s home technically sits outside the zone to automatically receive a coveted beach key, multiple insiders said the veep could easily get one if she wanted.
“I’m sure she could [get a key],” Branden Williams, a luxury real estate agent in Beverly Hills, told the Free Beacon.
“Kamala definitely has one,” a second realtor familiar with the sale told the Free Beacon.
Williams additionally said that Harris and Emhoff had become a common site around the exclusive enclave.
Harris has famously leaned into her POC credentials during her political career, and is believed to be seriously mulling a third run for president in 2028. But her choice of residence suggests she has less interest in spending much time with voters of color as she plots her next move.
Little Dume is just off the larger Point Dume Beach area, which includes more accessible beaches, including Pirate’s Cove, where the iconic final scene of Planet of the Apes was filmed. Four out of five Point Dume residents are white, with black Dumers making up just 2.2 percent of the population, per census records, far below their 14 percent of the national population (overall, Malibu is just under 1-percent black).
Across the board, the larger Point Dume Beach area has a reputation for excluding minorities. Minority surfers have reported feeling unwelcome when venturing too close to the elite enclave.
When David Malana and Theresa Hyuna Hwang visited the area with their surfing group, Color the Water, they encountered a less-than-welcoming reception (a large number of Color the Water surfers are black).
“At almost every site visit, Color the Water surfers were the only BIPOC surfers in the water. Several times, CTW surfers were approached and asked if they were local or from the area—this is often an antagonistic way to assert superiority of those that live nearby,” Malana and Hwang wrote in their 2025 review of Point Dume, The Anti-Racist Surfer’s Guide to Point Dume. “A few of our CTW surfers have encountered altercations out in the water resulting in verbal arguments, hostility, with the attempt to discourage future visits to the area from local surfers who frequent the surf break.”
“Despite the veneer of a laid back community of surfers who are one with nature, there are barriers to access that keep most BIPOC people away,” the pair concluded.
Miki Dora, the godfather of Malibu surf culture, would later become famous for writing bad checks and painting swastikas on his surf boards. Dora “pioneered the concept of localism—the idea that waves belong to surfers who grow up near them and that interlopers deserve violence,” the New York Times wrote in September 2019.
Malana declined to comment for this article. Hwang did not respond to a request for comment from the Free Beacon.
Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder of the socialist magazine Jacobin, said he was not a fan of Harris’s new digs, disparaging the former veep as a “an elitist and champagne liberal.”
“I think all Americans deserve access to our beautiful country and I think the shoreline should be public property and there should not be any restrictions on access to the shoreline,” Sunkara told the Free Beacon.
For many years, Harris has spoken out against racial discrimination in housing and neighborhoods, denouncing segregation, alleged appraisal bias, “redlining,” and racial wealth gaps. As California’s attorney general, she went after predatory lenders and overly aggressive foreclosure practices, and in the Senate she pushed for legislation to remedy past redlining and for stronger enforcement of anti-discrimination laws.
Harris famously criticized Joe Biden—and enraged Jill Biden, who reportedly held the grudge for years—during a 2019 presidential debate for not supporting school desegregation via busing and working with segregationist senators in the 1970s, saying, “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me.” The moment was widely believed to be the high point of Harris’s 2020 campaign, which collapsed before the first primary.
The latest controversy to engulf Little Dume involves La La Land director Damien Chazelle, a key holder who’s being accused of giving access, via the third gate that lacks facial recognition technology, to let in “an unusual number of people,” according to Page Six. One beach regular told the newspaper, “It was like, ‘Who are you and how did you get in?’”
Unlike the Biden clan, thronged with grandchildren and one great-grandchild, which is reportedly struggling to maintain its lifestyle with Joe Biden out of power, Harris and Emhoff are living large. The couple, who have no minor children or grandchildren, also own a home in Los Angeles’s Brentwood, one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest neighborhoods, with a notorious history of now-retired racial covenants. The veep’s home is relatively modest for Brentwood, valued at around $5 million.
Harris reportedly received a multimillion-dollar advance for her campaign memoir, 107 Days, which was a number one New York Times bestseller. Emhoff is believed to bring in millions of dollars from his law partnership.
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