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.”

A news helicopter crashed in a Los Angeles neighborhood on Tuesday and burst into flames, killing at least three people near the scene of where an SUV had slammed into a city bus, officials said.

The helicopter crashed around 7 p.m. near a one-story commercial building in the neighborhood of Chatsworth in the San Fernando Valley, as news crews were covering the bus crash that left at least two people dead and six others injured, according the Los Angeles Fire Department.

An NBC4 Los Angeles anchor at the station confirmed during a live broadcast that its chopper went down just before 7 p.m.

At least one person killed in the helicopter crash was outside in the parking lot next to the commercial building, Capt. Branden Silverman, a spokesperson for the Los Angeles Fire Department, said during a news conference. It was unclear if the other two who were killed were on the ground or inside the aircraft.

The scene of a deadly helicopter crash in Chatsworth broadcast be CBSLA.

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Courtesy CBSLA

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One person was taken to the hospital, but their condition was not immediately clear.

“We’re trying to determine how many patients were inside the helicopter,” said Silverman, who described the helicopter as “pretty well destroyed” and adding that officials would be sorting through the rubble to see how many victims were on board.

At least four cars and two storage containers on the ground burned after the helicopter caught fire, which was quickly put out, according to officials. More than 50 firefighters responded to the helicopter crash, according to the fire department.null

Police and LA Metro investigate the scene of a crash between an SUV and a LA Metro Bus that left three people dead on Tuesday in Chatsworth.

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Ronaldo Bolanos

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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About two hours before the crash, an SUV slammed into the middle of a city bus, killing at least two people and injuring six others. Photos and videos online showed half of the SUV lodged into the side of an MTA bus.

The helicopter crashed about a mile and a half from the bus crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration said it will be investigating the cause of the helicopter crash.

This is a developing story.

The Los Angeles region’s lead homelessness agency is effectively forfeiting the federal administrative roles it has held for decades, including applying for millions of dollars in funding for the region and leading the annual homeless count, the agency announced Tuesday.

The decision comes as the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority faces mounting criticism from both the Trump administration and local leaders who accuse the agency of mismanaging homeless services.

It reverses a monthslong legal battle LAHSA had been waging with the federal government to continue in these duties.

The city of Los Angeles, L.A. County and other entities and organizations are now applying to take them over.

At a county meeting Tuesday, Supervisor Lindsey Horvath called it “a fundamental change that reflects the significant performance, contracting and financial concerns that have plagued LAHSA for too long.”

“ Officials avoiding accountability will no longer have LAHSA to hide behind, and the county and city must be accountable to each other and to our entire Los Angeles region,” Horvath continued.

LAHSA's decision

In June, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development suspended LAHSA from conducting its federal duties, including applying for or receiving grants, putting $241 million in anticipated funding and LAHSA’s future in limbo.

LAHSA sued.

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter paused LAHSA’s suspension on Aug. 13, but also instructed a regional planning body known as the L.A. Continuum of Care Board to solicit applications from other entities to replace LAHSA in those key roles.

The Continuum of Care Board opened its application process online last week, inviting qualified organizations to take on one or more of LAHSA’s current administrative roles.

LAHSA’s governing commission voted unanimously Tuesday to not apply, effectively forfeiting the federal roles that comprise most of its remaining responsibilities.

The city of L.A. and L.A. County are both applying, according to LAHSA.

“With both the City and County preparing their own applications, competing against our founding partners would only fracture regional collaboration during an already complex time,” the LAHSA Commission and the agency's leadership said in a statement.

“This decision reflects the shared judgment of LAHSA’s Commission and executive leadership,” the statement continued.

Federal roles

LAHSA will forfeit the following federal homelessness roles:

1. Coordinating and submitting annual federal homeless assistance funding applications to HUD on behalf of the entire L.A. region — about $240 million in the coming year.

2. Planning, executing and reporting the region’s annual point-in-time homeless count.

3. Operating and administering a HUD-mandated database that tracks who's being served and whether they're moving into housing.

4. Managing and operating a HUD-mandated system to match unhoused people to available housing and services based on need.

How we got here

After Carter paused LAHSA’s suspension, the federal housing agency appealed the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Last week, the appeals court issued a temporary stay on Carter's order.

LAHSA said that ruling created more uncertainty about whether the agency was eligible to apply for the federal roles it has held for the past three decades.

“Stepping aside now supports alignment with the direction the City and County are heading with their applications, and focuses public resources where they belong: on the people who depend on the rehousing system every day,” the LAHSA statement said.

LAHSA is a joint powers authority between the city and county, created three decades ago to manage the region’s response to homelessness.

City and county officials are collectively responsible for LAHSA, which has administered federal, state, county and city homelessness funding across the region.

Citing LAHSA’s management problems, L.A. County pulled more than $300 million annual homelessness funding from the agency starting this year, choosing instead to administer the funds through a new county homelessness department.

The city of L.A. is considering a similar move away from LAHSA. Mayor Karen Bass and her election rival Councilmember Nithya Raman both say the city needs its own independent homeless system.

In the current budget year, 73% of LAHSA’s nearly $500 million budget comes from the city of L.A., 20% from the federal government and 4% from L.A. County.

What’s next? 

LAHSA said it will continue to fulfill its ongoing federal responsibilities “until those duties transition to a new entity or entities.”

The agency has agreements with the city of L.A. to manage programs and contracts through June 30, 2027.

The county’s Department of Homeless Services and Housing is applying to take over all four of LAHSA’s federal responsibilities, according to county officials. The city of L.A. is currently applying for at least two of those roles, putting the city and county in competition with each other.

“Moving forward, another entity will be leading the [Continuum of Care], which I believe should be the county, given our ability to most effectively administer contracts for our region,” Horvath said Tuesday.

Other organizations have also expressed interest. Better Angels, a homelessness nonprofit led by former L.A. mayoral candidate Adam Miller, contacted the court seeking to apply.

Applicants looking to take over LAHSA’s federal roles have until Sept. 25 to submit applications, but had to communicate their intent to apply by Sept. 15.

The applicants selected by L.A.’s regional Continuum of Care Board will have to be reviewed by HUD and the federal court.

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s falling enrollment and budget challenges are fueling conversations planned for later this year about potential school closures and consolidation.

“Our goal is not simply to have fewer schools; our goal is to have stronger schools, schools that are better resourced, schools that offer more programs for our students,” Superintendent Andrés Chait said during a school board meeting Tuesday. The superintendent shared a similar message in a video sent to families Monday.

LAUSD is spending more money than it brings in and has relied on reserves to fill the gap in recent years. In Tuesday’s meeting, district leaders presented an updated snapshot of LAUSD’s finances that shows steeper enrollment declines and lower state revenue and reserves than projected early this summer.

“That deficit spending is only possible while we have reserves and the very significant challenge that we’re facing as a district is that those reserves are being depleted very quickly,” said Saman Bravo-Karimi, the district's chief financial officer. “They’re eventually going to go negative and we can’t have negative balances as a school district.”

How is enrollment changing? 

Almost 4% fewer students are attending LAUSD schools this academic year compared to last year, according to preliminary data — nearly a percentage point lower than expected.

Bravo-Karimi said that each 1% drop in enrollment is a loss of about $20 million a year for the next three years because California funds schools based on how many students show up to class each day.

Fewer students have attended LAUSD schools over the last two decades, in part because of falling birth rates and the region’s high cost of living, but those declines were steeper than anticipated in recent years.

Board member Kelly Gonez said the schools in East San Fernando Valley communities targeted by federal agents have double the enrollment declines of other campuses.

“That increase in enrollment decline last school year was not a coincidence,” Gonez said. “Something changed … that is the presence of a federal administration that is attacking our immigrant communities.”

How is LAUSD approaching school closures?

The district pulled a scheduled vote Monday night on a $960,000 contract with a school closure consultant.

The district planned to work with Alvarez and Marsal to develop a framework for possible school closures, mergers or reconfigurations.

The firm’s priorities, as described on their website, include “maximizing investment value in education” and reshaping how institutions operate.

Alvarez and Marsal are also associated with several controversial decisions, including closing more than a dozen campuses during an overhaul of St. Louis schools in 2003 and faltering when contracted to restructure New York City schools' bus routes in 2007.

Several members of the public and a leader in the district’s teachers union spoke out against the contract and any similar future consultants.

“It’s hard for us to seriously work with this district to fight for more state funding when you squander limited funds you have on contracts with vultures and privatizers like the Alvarez company,” said Julie Van Winkle, United Teachers Los Angeles vice president.

Chait said the decision to remove the contract from consideration was in response to messages from school, community and district stakeholders over the weekend.

“One of the core leadership principles that I’ve always really tried to live by is to listen to folks, especially when they disagree,” Chait said.

Chait said the district needs external support to convene community meetings and compile and analyze data.

“This is arguably the most complex, the most difficult endeavor we will ever take on,” Chait said of school consolidations. “It will reset the footprint of our district for years to come.”

Chait said the district will begin holding community conversations related to school closures in the next few weeks and will share more details during a Sept. 22 meeting.

How did LAUSD’s budget become so strained?

The district’s current $20.6 billion budget projects a $2 billion deficit.

LAUSD approved raises for teachers, principals and support staff earlier this year at the cost of an additional $1 billion this school year. LAUSD, like other districts in the state, also faces increased costs for employee health care, settlements for decades-old sexual assault claims and services for students with disabilities,

L.A. County education officials approved the district’s most recent budget Tuesday on the condition that LAUSD provide additional information about how it is implementing cuts this school year.

However, L.A. County Superintendent Debra Duardo also called out the district's “unsustainable” use of reserves.

“The district’s fiscal status necessitates continued monitoring for both immediate and future corrective actions,” Duardo wrote in a letter to district leadership, referencing the July appointment of a fiscal expert to advise the district.

LAUSD’s board has approved a series of plans to reduce spending and increase revenue. For example, the district eliminated hundreds of jobs, primarily in its administrative offices, earlier this year.

The district’s most recent fiscal stabilization plan includes furlough days for all employees, the elimination of thousands of jobs and cuts to programs that help high-needs schools pay for counselors, tutors and other student supports.

Most of these cuts aren’t scheduled to go into effect until the 2027-28 and 2028-29 school years.

The leader of a congressional panel warned Tuesday he would use “every tool” to get Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass to testify after she skipped a hearing that put L.A.’s homeless services system in the hot seat.

It came as multiple audits, reviews and court rulings have found L.A. has failed to ensure proper tracking of large-scale spending on homeless services — particularly through the joint city-county L.A. Homeless Services Authority, known as LAHSA. Much of the money is federal dollars authorized by Congress.

Bass had declined to testify at Tuesday’s hearing, saying she was unavailable and that it would be a “politically motivated” attack. Her public schedule showed she planned to attend a groundbreaking of a shopping and community center in the Pacific Palisades two hours after the hearing was set to start.

Rep. Tim Burchett, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Oversight Committee's DOGE subcommittee, said she won't get off that easily.

Bass "seems intent on evading accountability, but she knows we will not let her off the hook," Burchett said at the hearing. He added that he and the Oversight Committee’s chair would "use every tool at our disposal to secure her appearance if she does not cooperate.”

House committees and subcommittees can issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to testify or provide documents.

Just before the hearing got underway, Bass called it "the latest attack on Los Angeles by the Trump Administration and his allies in Congress.”

"I don't run LAHSA," she said, adding that she was the first mayor to sit on its board and that street homelessness has dropped since she took office. The latest official count for the city showed a 8% year to year jump in street homelessness.

Bass stepped off LAHSA’s governing commission last week, after LAist reported she had missed most of its meetings since she appointed herself to it in 2023. The mayor cited “time and all” as her reason for stepping down. She continues to appoint — and has the power to remove — half the commission’s members, including its current chair.

What happened at the hearing

Much of the hour-and-a-half hearing focused on Republican members’ criticism that Democrat-led cities distribute drug paraphernalia and don’t require unhoused people with addictions to get treatment as a condition of living in publicly funded housing.

Some proposals raised Tuesday would change how money reaches Los Angeles.

Burchett said he will introduce the Recovery First Housing Act, to require federally funded housing to offer substance abuse treatment. He has also introduced a bill restricting federal housing dollars to only support U.S. citizens.

LA's fights on a national stage

Burchett noted LAHSA’s audit committee chair, Justin Szlasa — who was proactive in rooting out wasteful spending — was demoted by Stephanie Graves, a Bass appointee who has declined to give her reason for doing so. The move was first reported by LAist.

Burchett also made claims that don’t hold up. He said 50,000 people are homeless in the city with "another 75,000" in the surrounding county. The latest official count found a total of 73,000 unhoused people across L.A. County — a figure that includes the city.

Burchett also said, “ LAHSA recently doled out funds to an L.A.-area nonprofit whose CEO had just been indicted for fraud.” LAist recently investigated LAHSA’s awarding of funds to that nonprofit, Abundant Blessings, and found no indication that LAHSA awarded it any funds after the fraud indictment. However, the review did find that long before the indictment, LAHSA kept awarding millions in contracts to the group even after it was flagged internally as high-risk for failing to do its job.

Burchett, however, was correct in saying “a court-ordered independent assessment of LAHSA's finances found alarming financial control weaknesses that leave the door open to rampant fraud.”