Los Angeles Wants to Rebuild. Red Tape Is Still Holding It Back.
A year after the L.A. fires, bureaucratic gridlock has left thousands of victims in limbo.
When the Palisades and Eaton fires tore through the Los Angeles area last January—destroying more than 16,000 structures and killing 31 people in what became the most destructive blazes in the city’s history—officials were quick to make bold promises. Governor Gavin Newsom signed executive orders suspending review requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act and the Coastal Act. Mayor Karen Bass pledged to fast-track rebuilding, setting a 30-day target for permit reviews and moving to waive permit fees for fire victims. The message was clear: red tape would not stand in the way of rebuilding.
One year later, that optimism has faded. As of mid-December, Los Angeles has issued rebuilding permits for just 14 percent of homes destroyed in the Palisades—and that counts only permits issued, not homes actually rebuilt. In unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County, where the Eaton Fire burned near Altadena, that figure is only slightly higher, at 16 percent. The vast majority of residents have either not begun the permitting process or remain mired in its early stages. Block after block of empty lots extend through Pacific Palisades and Altadena. The landscape has been cleared, but construction has barely begun.
Mayor Bass’s 30-day review pledge has not been borne out in practice. According to the city’s own data, average permit processing times have consistently exceeded that threshold. In November, just 61 rebuild permits were issued for Palisades, with an average processing time of 93 days—more than triple the promised timeline. “It feels endless,” one resident told the Guardian, describing months spent navigating a permitting process in which every step has become “a fight.”
City Hall has nonetheless celebrated symbolic milestones. Last month, Bass issued a press release touting what she called the first completed rebuild in the Palisades, a “major milestone.” Residents quickly pointed out that the structure was not, in fact, a family home rebuilt after the fire, but a developer’s “showcase” model home. The building was permitted for demolition and reconstruction before the fire even began.
The first true post-fire residential completion came instead from Altadena: an accessory dwelling unit approved by Los Angeles County in November. Both milestones arrived more than ten months after the fires, lagging behind the recovery timelines of several recent California wildfires.
What explains L.A.’s sluggish pace? The obstacles are both structural and self-inflicted. Despite executive orders meant to streamline rebuilding, homeowners continue to describe a maze of agencies, conflicting requirements, and shifting rules. One 78-year-old architect who volunteered to design ten homes in the burn area told Bloomberg that a rotating cast of inspectors offered contradictory guidance, forcing repeated and costly resubmissions. “The building department’s answers change every day,” he said.
Leadership churn has compounded the problem. In the immediate aftermath of the Palisades fire, Bass appointed Los Angeles notable Steve Soboroff as chief recovery officer to coordinate rebuilding efforts. But Soboroff departed just a few months later amid internal turmoil, and the position has yet to be permanently refilled.
As the Los Angeles Times recently documented, the recovery effort has also suffered from a series of false starts and delays. “Since the Jan. 7 fire destroyed thousands of homes,” the Times’s David Zahniser wrote last week, “Bass has been announcing recovery strategies with great fanfare, only for them to get bogged down in the details or abandoned altogether.”
Even the cost-cutting measures touted early on have stalled. In April, Bass announced that rebuilding permit and plan-check fees would be suspended, potentially saving homeowners tens of thousands of dollars. But her executive order merely suspended fee collection pending a city council vote to formally waive the fees.
Nearly a year later, the council has yet to adopt a permanent waiver. It has repeatedly delayed a vote as members argue over the fiscal impact. Residents face continued uncertainty about whether—or how much—they will ultimately be billed.
The same pattern has played out with Measure ULA, the city’s so-called “mansion tax,” which imposes steep transfer taxes on high-value property sales. Bass initially backed legislation to exempt fire victims from the tax for five years, easing sales for homeowners unable or unwilling to rebuild. But she abruptly withdrew her support hours before the bill’s first scheduled vote, leaving the tax fully in place.
Newsom, for his part, has exempted fire rebuilds from certain green-building mandates, including the state’s rooftop solar requirements, which can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a home. He has also allowed homes to be rebuilt without conforming to new building code regulations set to take effect next year. These are sensible accommodations, but they underscore how California’s web of mandates has made even basic rebuilding a regulatory minefield.
Then there’s the case of SB 9, the state law that allows homeowners to build duplexes or split their lots in single-family neighborhoods. In July, Newsom signed an executive order allowing Los Angeles to exempt wildfire-affected areas from the law, enabling local governments to block denser development in neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades. Mayor Bass quickly exercised that authority.
The move appeased some residents concerned that new construction would destroy their neighborhood’s character. But the policy will make it harder, not easier, for some families to rebuild. With construction costs running $500 to $600 per square foot—meaning a modest 2,000-square-foot home could cost $1.2 million—some homeowners could offset rebuilding costs by splitting their lots or building rental units to generate income. The pro-housing group YIMBY Law has since sued Newsom over the order, arguing the exemption “raises the barrier of who gets to come back at all.”
A year after the worst fires in Los Angeles history, thousands of families remain displaced. Mortgage forbearance periods are expiring. Infrastructure repairs continue to lag. Newsom has demanded $34 billion in federal wildfire aid, even as he wages public feuds with President Trump. Yet no infusion of federal dollars can fix a system designed to move slowly.
Despite pledges to the contrary, decades of regulatory accumulation cannot be suspended by executive fiat. The emergency orders meant to speed recovery have given way to the same bureaucratic inertia that plagues California governance in normal times. The same regulatory machinery that helped create the state’s housing crisis is now ensuring that its wildfire recovery remains equally protracted.
For the residents of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the road home remains long indeed.
Sharp analysis of how emergency orders can't override decades of regulatory accumulation. The contrast between Bass's 30-day promise and the actual 93-day average really captures the gap between political theater and institutional reality. I saw similar dynamics after natural disasters in other states where temporary streamlining measures got tangled up in existing bureaucratic structures. The SB 9 exemption decision is telling becuase it shows how even pro-housing policies get suspended when neighborhood character concerns enter the picture, leaving families with fewer pathways to rebuild affordably.
Zoning shouldn't exist. Building permits shouldn't exist. If a building falls down and kills someone, sue the builder. If they'll just declare bankruptcy, require liability insurance and do nothing else.