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.”

The Supreme Court on Tuesday extended an order blocking full SNAP payments, amid signals that the government shutdown could soon end and food aid payments resume.

The order keeps in place at least for a few more days a chaotic situation. People who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program to feed their families in some states have received their full monthly allocations, while others have received nothing.

The order will expire just before midnight Thursday.

The Senate has approved a bill to end the shutdown and the House of Representatives could vote on it as early as Wednesday. Reopening the government would restart the program that helps 42 million Americans buy groceries, but it's not clear how quickly full payments would resume.

The justices chose what is effectively the path of least resistance, anticipating the federal government shutdown will end soon while avoiding any substantive legal ruling about whether lower court orders to keep full payments flowing during the shutdown are correct.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only one of the nine justices to say she would have revived the lower court orders immediately, but didn't otherwise explain her vote. Jackson signed the initial order temporarily freezing the payments.

Beneficiaries in some states have received their full monthly allocations while in others they have received nothing. Some states have issued partial payments.

How quickly SNAP benefits could reach recipients if the government reopens would vary by state. But states and advocates say that it's easier to make full payments quickly than partial ones.

Carolyn Vega, a policy analyst at the advocacy group Share Our Strength, also said there could be some technical challenges for states that have issued partial benefits to send out the remaining amount.

An urgent need for beneficiaries

In Pennsylvania, full November benefits went out to some people on Friday. But Jim Malliard, 41, of Franklin, said he had not received anything by Monday.

Malliard is a full-time caretaker for his wife, who is blind and has had several strokes this year, and his teenage daughter, who suffered severe medical complications from surgery last year.

That stress has only been compounded by the pause in the $350 monthly SNAP payment he previously received for himself, his wife and daughter. He said he is down to $10 in his account and is relying on what's left in the pantry — mostly rice and ramen.

"It's kind of been a lot of late nights, making sure I had everything down to the penny to make sure I was right," Malliard said. "To say anxiety has been my issue for the past two weeks is putting it mildly."

The political wrangling in Washington has shocked many Americans, and some have been moved to help.

"I figure that I've spent money on dumber stuff than trying to feed other people during a manufactured famine," said Ashley Oxenford, a teacher who set out a "little food pantry" in her front yard this week for vulnerable neighbors in Carthage, New York.

SNAP has been the center of an intense fight in court

The Trump administration chose to cut off SNAP funding after October due to the shutdown. That decision sparked lawsuits and a string of swift and contradictory judicial rulings that deal with government power — and impact food access for about 1 in 8 Americans.

The administration went along with two rulings on Oct. 31 by judges who said the government must provide at least partial funding for SNAP. It eventually said recipients would get up to 65% of their regular benefits. But it balked last week when one of the judges said it must fund the program fully for November, even if that means digging into funds the government said need to be maintained in case of emergencies elsewhere.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to pause that order.

An appeals court said Monday that full funding should resume, and that requirement was set to kick in Tuesday night before the top court extended the order blocking full SNAP payments.

Congressional talks about reopening government

The U.S. Senate on Monday passed legislation to reopen the federal government with a plan that would include replenishing SNAP funds. Speaker Mike Johnson told members of the House to return to Washington to consider the deal a small group of Senate Democrats made with Republicans.

President Trump has not said whether he would sign it if it reaches his desk, but told reporters at the White House on Sunday that it "looks like we're getting close to the shutdown ending."

Still, the Trump administration said in a Supreme Court filing Monday that it shouldn't be up to the courts.

"The answer to this crisis is not for federal courts to reallocate resources without lawful authority," Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in the papers. "The only way to end this crisis — which the Executive is adamant to end — is for Congress to reopen the government."

After Tuesday's ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on social media: "Thank you to the Court for allowing Congress to continue its swift progress."

The coalition of cities and nonprofit groups who challenged the SNAP pause said in a court filing Tuesday that the Department of Agriculture, which administers SNAP, is to blame for the confusion.

"The chaos was sown by USDA's delays and intransigence," they said, "not by the district court's efforts to mitigate that chaos and the harm it has inflicted on families who need food."
Copyright 2025 NPR

WASHINGTON — Flight disruptions are likely to continue even after the government reopens , airlines and aviation regulators warned, as airlines canceled scores of flights on Tuesday.

The Federal Aviation Administration ordered airlines to reduce air traffic at 40 of the nation's busiest airports, with cuts still ramping up to 10% of flights by Friday. The agency has been dealing with persistent staffing shortages of air traffic controllers , who are required to work without pay during the shutdown, which is now the longest in U.S. history at 42 days and counting.

This past weekend, the FAA reported staffing shortages at dozens of facilities, prompting the agency to slow air traffic to relieve pressure on air traffic controllers who did show up to work. On Tuesday, airlines canceled more than 1,200 flights, according to the aviation tracking site FlightAware .

The situation seemed to be improving somewhat on Tuesday, according to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, with only a handful of FAA facilities reporting staffing shortages. But Duffy said that air traffic restrictions would remain in place until regulators are satisfied that staffing is back to normal levels.

"We're going to wait to see the data on our end before we take out the restrictions in travel," Duffy said during a press conference at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. "But it depends on controllers coming back to work."

Even when those restrictions are lifted, it may take several days for airlines to return to normal operations.

"It's gonna take a bit to unwind," said former FAA administrator Randy Babbitt in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered.

"The airplanes are in the wrong cities and so forth. They're going to have to sort all that out as well. So a good deal of the responsibility will be the carriers getting their schedules and the aircraft and personnel back in the right positions to resume normal flying," Babbitt said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Tuesday that airlines may have to "stop flying" if Congressional lawmakers don't vote to end the government shutdown.

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Seth Wenig

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An aviation industry trade group, Airlines for America, also warned that it will take time for carriers to get back to normal.

"Airlines' reduced flight schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens. It will take time, and there will be residual effects for days," the group said in a statement.

The FAA argues the flight restrictions are necessary to keep the system safe while fewer air traffic controllers are showing up to work during the government shutdown. Some of those controllers have taken on second jobs during the shutdown, and many have called in sick.

But to the Trump administration's critics, the move appears to be about more than just safety. Some Democrats argue that the cuts were a political ploy to raise the pressure to end the government shutdown.

Secretary Duffy rejected that charge on Tuesday, saying the administration was responding to real concerns from pilots and mounting concerns about increasing loss of separation between aircraft.

And he warned of even bigger disruptions ahead if lawmakers do not vote to end the shutdown .

"You may find airlines that stop flying, full stop," Duffy said in Chicago. "You might have airlines that say, we're going to ground our planes, we're not going to fly anymore. That's how serious this is."
Copyright 2025 NPR

Los Angeles billboard culture is memorable, to say the least.

Our attorney billboards have inspired Hollywood . Creative STD prevention ads have reminded people about safety in weirdly direct ways. Even upside down “ Call Jacob ” and “ hate vegans ” billboards have left a confusing impression.

In a world of drab advertisements, every so often the cream of the crop rises to the top. LAist 89.3’s AirTalk unpacked some of those iconic memories recently. Here’s what listeners shared.

Billboards for music

Billboard for Beatles Abbey Road record circa 1969 on the Sunset Strip.

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Courtesy Robert Landau

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Robert Landau, photographer and author of Rock ‘N’ Roll Billboards of the Sunset Strip , has spent years documenting these scenes. He says you have to be clever to plant a seed in drivers’ minds in only a few seconds.

“ We’re such a car-oriented culture that we take this advertising form of billboards and maybe raise it to an art form,” he told host Austin Cross.

One that he remembers vividly is the Beatles’ Abbey Road billboard in 1969.

He said this period was about rock ‘n’ roll music. The bands he listened to were depicted on what he called artistic, almost non-commercial billboards on the Sunset Strip.

“[It created] almost a drive through gallery at that time,” he said.

Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”

Sam, a listener from Atwater Village, called to share one billboard that lives rent free in his mind.

“ If you traveled in Hollywood on Highland, anytime in the early two thousands,” he said, “you saw the billboard for the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room.”

The billboard was up for years and had little information about what it was actually about. A black-and-white Wiseau stared down passersby next to directions to call a number on the billboard to “RSVP.” (To the movie? A meeting? Who knew.)

It became a sort of local mystery while the movie reached cult-like status .

The Angelyne campaigns

Another one L.A. won’t soon forget is model Angelyne’s plethora of billboards that have dotted the skyline for decades. Yes, decades .

Michael in Studio City said he’s always found the billboard queen entertaining. They’re known for being bright pink and showing Angelyne, usually in a suggestive or sultry pose, alongside just her name.

“I was confused about what necessarily she was going for other than notoriety,” he said.

We could go on forever about L.A.’s hodgepodge of excellent billboards. What’s one that sticks out to you? Send your thoughts to chernandez@laist.com and we may follow up.

This  story was originally published by Boyle Heights Beat on Tuesday.

Residents of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles are invited to join Metro’s community working group to provide input on a series of projects aimed at decreasing pollution and improving streets for pedestrians and cyclists.

The effort is part of the Long Beach-East Los Angeles Corridor Mobility Investment Plan, a $4 billion initiative that includes more than 200 projects and 15 programs that prioritize transit, walking, biking, safety and cleaner air.

It spans 18 cities and three unincorporated communities from Long Beach to East LA along the I-710 corridor. The plan includes an initial $743 million from the previously canceled I-710 freeway expansion project.

Who can join

The working group will be made up of 30 people who will represent their community by serving a two-year term. Working group members may be eligible for compensation at a rate of $150 per meeting, earning up to $4,300 per Metro fiscal year, according to Metro .

“We want residents, community members, family members, students, mothers, fathers, grandmas that can come and represent their community … to help us set the priorities,” said Patrick Chandler, a Metro spokesperson.

Chandler said the hope is working group members then can inform their neighbors, “so they are aware of what their concerns are.”

“We know that especially for Boyle Heights, with the East LA interchange … we want to go in a direction that is equitable, that is community driven,” he added.

How to apply

Applications are due Nov. 14 and can be completed online in Spanish or English . To request a paper application, you can email 710corridor@metro.net. Selected members will be notified in December.

Frequently asked questions about the project are available in English and Spanish . To learn more, visit: metro.net/lb-ela-cp-hub.