The Brief

The speedy processing of building permit applications is not typically considered a popular political cause.

The recent Los Angeles firestorm may have changed that.

Thousands of Angelenos are now desperate to rebuild their homes as quickly as possible. They have the sympathy and focus of elected leaders at every level of state government. And many of them — particularly in well-heeled Pacific Palisades — have pull at city hall.

That’s helped bump the otherwise dull-as-drying-paint politics of permitting policy to the top of many lawmakers’ agendas.

Exhibit A: The L.A. City Council voted unanimously last week to consider a building permit “self-certification” program.

Rather than require architects and engineers working on small residential construction projects to submit their plans to the city’s building department and wait — often months, if not years — for the green light, self-certification would allow them to sign off on their own handiwork and start construction immediately. The city would still inspect the projects during and after construction.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who introduced the motion, said she began looking into the idea well before fires torched thousands of homes around the city. But the politics of permitting has changed in ways that could have effects far beyond the footprints of the fires.

“There is a constituency of people that have been asking for these changes, but now there is an urgency around it that has helped speed this process forward,” she said. “We should definitely be focusing on rebuilding the Palisades, but we should also make sure that rebuilding the Palisades doesn’t slow down construction in the rest of the city, which is already much lower than it needs to be.”

Over the last four years, the median length of time required to get a permit approved to construct a single family home in Los Angeles was nearly eight months, according to real estate data firm ATC Research. For apartment projects, the typical wait was more than 10 months.

The motion the council passed instructed city staff to look into the idea and report back by early March. The council would then have to vote on a specific proposal before anything about the current process changes.

The general concept seems to have at least the interest of Mayor Karen Bass, who asked city staff to look into the idea shortly after the fires started in early January.

The cause of self-certification is the latest, and likely the most radical, example of lawmakers pushing to cut red-tape in the wake of the blazes.

In early January, with the flames still uncontained, Gov. Gavin Newsom directed his own housing department to look into state permitting requirements, building codes and local bureaucratic processes that could be suspended, expedited or removed to speed up reconstruction. Based on those reports, Newsom on Thursday issued an executive order which, among other things, loosened building permit rules to allow homeowners of recently constructed homes to recycle their own plans. The governor’s office refused to release a copy of the report itself when CalMatters asked for it.

San Diego Assemblymember Chris Ward introduced a state bill that would give small building project developers the ability to hire a third-party licensed architect or engineer to sign off on a project’s plans if a city’s planning department is too slow.

Like Raman in Los Angeles, Ward came up with the idea before the fires. But the drive to bring down construction costs and speed up approval times is a goal that “really needs to apply everywhere all the time,” he said in an interview with CalMatters last month. “I don’t want you waiting six months to build a home.”

From outside the halls of government, developers and pro-housing advocates are hoping that, in the wake of disaster, fast-tracked building approval is an idea whose time has come.

“I do think this is starting to light a fire under folks around bureaucratic streamlining reforms,” said Scott Epstein, policy director at the advocacy group Abundant Housing LA.

“Proceed at your own risk”

Los Angeles already allows contractors to go ahead with limited maintenance, heating and air conditioning systems work and roofing without a city-issued go-ahead. Inspections, and any necessary fixes, occur after the fact.

Raman’s current proposal would go much further, allowing builders to start work on entire single family homes without having their plans reviewed. It’s an unusual idea, but not unprecedented even in Los Angeles County.

The city of Bellflower, packed into just 6 square miles in southeast L.A. County, has been allowing virtually all construction projects to go ahead self-certified for a decade.

If a project architect or engineer is “willing to put their license and their stamp on a set of plans and say, ‘this meets the building code and we’re ready to build it,’ then let’s get out of their way and give them the ability to go start at their own risk,” said Ryan Smoot, city manager.

That risk is considerable. If problems emerge after construction begins, the owner is on the hook to fix them. In practice, that has meant that most projects that go the self-certification route are relatively straightforward.

The aftermath of the Palisades Fire on Jan. 15, 2024.

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Ted Soqui

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CalMatters

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Developers are told to “proceed at your own risk, effectively,” said Smoot. Those without the stomach to do so are invited to go through the standard permitting process and then “don’t complain about it when it takes a little longer to do those reviews than you like.”

In the wake of the fires, Smoot said he welcomes the new attention on Bellflower’s permitting process.

“You got 10,000 homes that are going to need to be rebuilt and 10,000 families that just want to get back to normal life and we have an obligation as local governments to get out of the way as much as possible,” he said. “It is actually, from our perspective, really exciting to see other local and state agencies starting to think the same way.”

“I hate to see it in the context we’re in,” he added. “But the silver lining is maybe we’re rethinking how we do government.”

Building departments from Chicago to New York to Dallas allow a degree of self-permitting in construction projects.

But few in California are willing to put quite so much faith in a project’s architect or engineer, no matter their license or experience. Even in development-friendly San Diego, which has a self-certification option for solar installations and office remodels, letting a developer start construction on an entire new house without the city’s once-over is a bridge too far.

“From my experience, we’ve never seen a brand new building — from ground up — that is a perfect submittal that did not have any health or safety issues,” said Kelly Charles, the city’s chief building official.

Imagine an architect messes up and makes the foundation a little too wide, she said. That doesn’t just hurt the licensed experts and the developer. “I’m a homeowner. I’m waiting for my house. My whole yard is torn up. And now you have to saw-cut concrete,” said Charles. “Taking two feet out of the house is not easy!”

Many builders and architects scoff at the idea that city staff know their trade better than they do.

“Why shouldn’t we be able to self-certify if all the liability rests on us and we’re only using licensed professionals?” said Tom Grable, former chair of the California Building Industry Association. “When something happens in the field we fix it.”

He called the entire pre-construction plan check process “redundant and unnecessary.”

Smoot, in Bellflower, said costly re-dos are exceedingly rare, if only because most developers don’t actually opt for self-certification. In Phoenix, Arizona — which has a similarly permissive self-certification program — uptake is also on the low-end. Evidently builders often prefer to have someone double-check their work.

Both cities also have an audit system in place to give a sampling of project plans an official review.

“Just because a program goes to self-certification it doesn’t necessarily mean that city staff aren’t going to be looking at it,” Jason Blakely, Phoenix’s assistant development director.

How to best speed up permitting?

What might work in a sprawling valley like the Phoenix area or a flat suburb like Bellflower may not work so easily across Los Angeles, with its hillside developments facing seismic and wildfire risk, said Steven Somers, the CEO of Crest Real Estate, which consults with developers to navigate the city’s lengthy building approval process.

“The solution is maybe simplifying the code or outsourcing more reviews to increase bandwidth and staffing,” he said. That’s a better solution than handing regulatory oversight to someone working on the project itself and who may have “a financial motivation to make the process go quicker than it should.”

Raman acknowledges the city of Los Angeles still has plenty of questions to answer about how this program would work. She said beefed up oversight and accountability measures would likely be necessary. But whatever the end result, she said, the city should make the approval process faster — both in and outside the still-smoldering burn scars.

With the fire still raging in January, Bass ordered city staff to blitz through post-fire permit applications within 30 days. This week, the city’s Department of Building and Safety turned its West Los Angeles office into a one-stop regulatory shop for rebuilds. What all that extra bureaucratic attention on reconstruction will mean for new proposed housing in other parts of the city is so far unclear.

“What I want to think about as we move forward in Los Angeles,” said Raman, “is not just ways to rearrange the queue, but to actually shorten the queue entirely.”

Reggae star Ziggy Marley has spent decades carrying one of music’s most celebrated legacies. But until now, he had never written a song directly about his father, Bob Marley.

That’s changed with “Many Mourn for Bob,” a track on Marley’s ninth solo album Brightside, his first release recorded in his new studio in North Hollywood.

Marley was just 12 when his father died of cancer in 1981. Now 57, Marley says the song instinctually emerged after years of life experience and producing the biopic One Love, which revisited his father’s struggles like an assassination attempt amid political violence in Jamaica.

“He went through some things that was really tough on a human being – and just understanding him in that light is to have a little bit more emotional, deeper connection to his experience,” Marley said in an interview at his studio.

Searching for the bright side

The deeply personal track is part of a splashy return for Marley, who's touring behind Brightside and will perform at the Hollywood Bowl on June 21.

The new album blends political themes, optimism and musical experimentation.

Its lead single, “Racism Is a Killa,” featuring Big Boi, pairs the heavy topic with an upbeat groove that he hopes will make the song more accessible to young people.

“We just wanna come out straightforward, like I never want to come out tiptoeing,” Marley said. “I want to say something that can catch your ears or catch your thoughts.”

That tension between darkness and hope runs throughout Brightside. Marley described the album as a reflection on enduring difficult periods – from the pandemic to the Los Angeles wildfires – without losing sight of optimism.

“Sometimes we get lost in that so much that we don't realize that there is always a bright side,” Marley said.

The 432 Hz experiment

The album also experiments sonically: Marley recorded Brightside using 432 hertz tuning instead of the standard 440 hertz in most mainstream music. Advocates of 432 hertz believe it produces a warmer, more meditative sound better synced to the natural world. (You can hear the difference for yourself here.)

“It's a lower musical frequency, but it's a higher frequency in a next sense of your spirituality and emotion,” he said. “So even though the numbers go down, the frequency actually go up.”

Marley sees the move as part of a larger search for new creative approaches.

“I'm very open-minded and always trying to evolve and just experiment with life and music,” Marley said.

The Grammy winner, who joins James Blake and Ed O’Brien of Radiohead as the most high-profile artists to record at the lower frequency, floated the idea of a larger movement among artists.

“Let's just have a revolution in the music industry,” he said. “Let's change the frequency.”

Building a dream

Marley works out of his Rebel Lion Studio in North Hollywood, its name a nod to his 2018 album Rebellion Rises while also a play on the word “rebellion.”

He described the studio as an extension of the independent spirit his father built with Tuff Gong Studio in Jamaica.

Musicians set up for rehearsal ahead of the next leg of Ziggy Marley's tour.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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“My father had a dream, and I had a dream too,” Marley said.

Like with Tuff Gong, Marley also plans to expand the studio operation to include vinyl pressing as records continue their resurgence in the streaming era.

“There’s always gonna be a vinyl present going on,” Marley said. “A thousand years from now, people that we're still gonna need vinyl records to listen to music.”

Ziggy Marley in the hallway of his new studio in North Hollywood.

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Josie Huang

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LAist

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For years, Marley said, he worked out of smaller home setups and rented facilities before deciding to build a larger permanent space in L.A.

Marley said the city has become central to his own creative evolution over the last two decades of living and working here.

Drawn initially by music, friends and the city's small but tight-knit Jamaican community, he says being surrounded by creatives from different backgrounds helped push his artistry in new directions.

“I left my safety and my community, my tribe, and come out by myself to L.A.,” he said. “But it's a great experience. It really helped my growth as a human being being here.”

What’s next

Fresh off the release of Brightside, Marley says he’s already working on another album – a notably quicker turnaround since his last album, the family-music release More Family Time in 2020,

“We're doing back to back,” he said.

Ziggy Marley will be performing at the Hollywood Bowl on June 21 as part of a tour supporting his new album Brightside.

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Astrida Valigorsky

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Getty Images

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He’s also busy writing a children’s book based on his feel-good hit anthem “True to Myself” and eyeing opportunities in front – or behind the camera – inspired by his time working on One Love and making the video for “Racism Is A Killa.”

“Same philosophy, same message, but within visuals, you know?” Marley said excitedly. “I want to create some stories and try out. I feel it coming. I can feel it.”

A new free record shop for survivors of last year’s Eaton and Palisades fires is celebrating with a grand opening party Saturday night.

After losing his home in the Eaton Fire, Brandon Jay founded Altadena Musicians to get instruments back into the hands of musicians who lost their gear in fires.

Now he’s doing that with vinyl records, too.

“We want to be here to help replace those items and support music in people’s lives that can’t necessarily afford it right now because they’re saving all their pennies just to live and also just to rebuild their homes,” Jay told LAist.

Jay says they’ve seen roughly 3,000 records donated so far. Now they have a dedicated space on Lincoln Avenue where fire survivors can sign up for time slots and shop for up to 10 records a month.

“It’s a really lovely distraction but it kind of keeps me going as well just to know that we’re trying to build something great for the community and keep us all moving forward,” Jay said.

The store will carry copies of the benefit album, Gimme Shelter: Songs for LA Fire Relief. The compilation features cover art by Shepard Fairey and L.A. specific tracks from artists like Elliott Smith ("Angeles" of course), Norah Jones, The Flaming Lips, as well as a cover of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads performed by Jay and about 50 other fire-impacted musicians.

A City Council committee voted Friday to shelve a proposed ballot measure aimed at cutting L.A.'s “mansion tax” nearly in half.

The ad hoc committee on Measure ULA voted 2-1 to set aside a proposal by Councilmembers John Lee and Marqueece Harris-Dawson that would have asked voters in November to reduce the ULA transfer tax rate for multifamily and mixed-use properties to somewhere between 2% and 3.5%, down from the current rate of up to 5.5%.

However, the ballot measure proposal was also referred to the City Council’s rules, elections, and intergovernmental relations committee, which could still choose to move it forward.

Instead, the ad hoc committee advanced a narrower pilot program that would reduce the property transfer tax only for newly built affordable housing projects.

The pilot program won't need voter approval in the form of a ballot measure. Committee Chair Ysabel Jurado, who introduced the substitute language, said she believes the city should avoid a ULA ballot measure because it’s still too early to evaluate the measure’s long-term effects.

“ I'm against going to the ballot, but I'm for making fixes that make this better,” Jurado said.

Voters will see a separate proposal on their ballots by the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association to effectively repeal Measure ULA.

If the L.A. City Council does not approve reforming the measure, the only decision on the ballot in November may be whether to keep the mansion tax in its current form or end it.

About the mansion tax

L.A. voters approved Measure ULA in 2022 to fund affordable housing and homelessness prevention. The measure taxes real estate sales over about $5 million. Since taking effect in April 2023, ULA has raised just over $1.1 billion from 1,633 real estate transactions, according to the city’s housing department.

The city projects it will generate about $500 million in the coming fiscal year — about half of what proponents initially promised. It has funded about 800 new affordable units and helped stabilize thousands of renters facing eviction, according to the housing department.

But critics say the tax has suppressed housing development. Several studies link the tax to a slowdown in apartment construction in Los Angeles, but ULA supporters say high interest rates and broader economic conditions are to blame.

The City Council's ad hoc committee on Measure ULA was formed earlier this year to study how the measure is working and develop potential reforms. That work took on more urgency inside L.A. city hall after the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association qualified a statewide ballot measure for November that would effectively repeal Measure ULA entirely.

Joe Donlin, director of the United to House LA coalition, which campaigned for the original measure, said the City Council committee made the right call by rejecting broader exemptions.

“By not taking up the extreme calls for broad, 15-year waivers that could cost the program about a third of its revenue, the committee acknowledged that ULA is working,” Donlin said in a statement.

A separate group of housing developers, union workers and advocacy groups calling itself the “Mend It, Don’t End It” coalition has been urging city hall to make changes to ULA. On Friday, the group said it supports the measure, but believes targeted reforms are still needed.

“Independent research shows that Measure ULA has slowed housing production in Los Angeles at a time when we need more housing, not less,” said Melanie Mendoza, a coalition spokesperson.

What the data show

The debate over ULA's impact played out in the committee room Friday morning. The city's chief legislative analyst reviewed seven independent studies on ULA’s impact. Three of those studies concluded ULA had suppressed housing production and reduced property tax revenues, while four found no meaningful negative impact.

Before ULA took effect, Los Angeles collected about $22 million a month in transfer tax. After that, it dropped to about $13 million. But city legislative analyst Henry Flatt told the committee a similar decline happened in cities without the tax, including Glendale, Long Beach, Pasadena and Santa Clarita.

“We are not currently convinced that Measure ULA has had an extremely negative impact on general fund revenues,” Flatt told the committee.

The county assessor's office read the same period differently. Scott Thornberry, an assistant assessor with L.A. County, told the committee that commercial and industrial property sales are falling in the city but not elsewhere in the county.

“We are seeing, we believe, a trend line of impact to property tax revenue growth in the city of L.A. specifically," Thornberry said.

What the committee did

Instead of the ballot measure, the committee voted to develop a five-year pilot program cutting the ULA tax to 1.5% for newly constructed affordable housing projects that meet specific requirements.

Lee, whose ballot measure was replaced with language advancing the pilot program, said he hadn't seen the substitute prior to Friday’s meeting and voted against it.

“This was just placed in front of me,” he said. Lee objected to a provision in the substitute recommendations calling for $30 million in new spending on homelessness support.

“Without knowing where this money's coming from, I'm going to have to vote no,” he said.

Lee told LAist he supports stronger oversight and technical improvements to Measure ULA, but believes a ballot measure is the right approach.

“Voters deserve the opportunity to consider targeted changes that would preserve the intent of the measure while addressing its unintended impacts on housing production and real estate activity in Los Angeles,” the councilmember said, in a statement.

Friday's meeting was the committee's final scheduled hearing. The committee, which is set to dissolve June 1, also voted to advance a narrower nonprofit tax refund limited to organizations that can prove all sale proceeds went directly to affordable housing.

The committee continued a separate motion on fire exemptions for Palisades fire victims, which will be heard by another council committee. A motion to loosen eligibility rules for the ULA Citizens Oversight Committee was noted and filed.

Councilmember Imelda Padilla, who introduced several of the committee's motions, said the process had been guided by a commitment to protect the measure.

"My goal has always been to listen carefully, bring people into the conversation, and protect ULA while honoring the voters' intent," she said at Friday’s meeting.

In her closing remarks, Jurado reflected on the three-member committee’s past work.

“We released $14 million in rental assistance to the most vulnerable Angelenos and $300 million for affordable housing,” she said. “We did in six or seven meetings what others couldn't do in five years.”

The ad hoc committee's recommendations now move to the full City Council.

Harris-Dawson and Lee’s ballot measure motion will be considered by the City Council’s rules committee at a later date, officials said.

Monsterpalooza, the annual movie-monster bash for horror fans, returns to the Pasadena Convention Center this weekend, starting Friday night (May 29) and lasting through Sunday.

What to expect

Now in its 18th year, devotees can rub elbows with legendary beastie creators, browse hundreds of vendors who traffic in the weird and unsettling, and marvel at practical effects that’ll make your flesh creep.

Dozens of panels and presentations are scheduled, including a deep-dive into the 95th anniversary of the Dracula and Frankenstein movies by writer Julian David Stone.

Writer Julian David Stone gives a presentation at a past Monsterpalooza event.

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Perry Shields

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Courtesy Julian David Stone

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Stone said that the two classic movies have left a lasting impact.

“Dracula is a movie about supernatural horror..... and Frankenstein is about technological or man-made horror," he said. "You can just trace those two themes all the way forward to this past year with Sinners and Megan 2.0."

Richard Redlefsen's Armageddon Rat at the PPI Booth at a past Monsterpalooza.

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Steve Jennings Photography

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Courtesy Visit Pasadena

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Stone first attended the convention in 2008, returning over the years as a fan, spectator and presenter.

“It’s just a terrific convention that celebrates all things horror,” Stone said. “There’s a lot of celebrities you can meet who were in these horror films and you can get pictures with them." He added that he’ll never forget when he met Carla Laemmle in 2010 — the last living cast member of the original 1931 Dracula.

Mike Mekash and Chris Nelson re-created Twisty the Clown on Dan Gilbert at the PPI Booth at a past Monsterpalooza.

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Steve Jennings

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Courtesy Visit Pasadena

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Who's attending

If you’re jonesing to be photographed with high-profile entertainers (expect a fee for many), this year's event has a line-up that includes musician Alice Cooper, actress Lin Shaye from the Insidious movie franchise and David Howard Thornton, who plays Art the Clown in the popular Terrifier movie series.

Cosplay and crazy costumes are encouraged, although a T-shirt celebrating a classic horror movie will also do. Just come ready to adore all things that gnaw and gash.