In the days immediately after last January’s Los Angeles firestorm, state lawmakers and civic leaders promised to turbocharge the rebuilding effort. For California, where the permitting and construction of homes is infamously slow and costly, the scale of destruction stood as a singular challenge.
A year later, the charred homes, the melted appliances and the toxic ash have mostly been removed, the dirt beneath scraped and then carted away. Many of the residents whose houses were spared have returned. Permits for reconstruction have been filed, architects and contractors hired. Battles with insurance companies, utilities and banks persist, vacant lots and blackened trees abound, but look around and — here and there — you’ll find new construction.
As of this week, more than 2,600 residential permits have been issued between the Palisades and Altadena — roughly one for every five of the nearly 13,000 homes lost. Another 3,340 are under review.
For many displaced and traumatized homeowners, that represents an intolerably slow return to what was. But by historic standards, the Los Angeles recovery has been on the speedy side so far.
In a press release commemorating the first anniversary of the disaster, Gov. Gavin Newsom lauded the permitting figures as “historic.”
Last year local governments — the City and County of Los Angeles, as well as Malibu and Pasadena — issued permits for single-family homes and accessory dwelling units “three times faster” than they were in the five years leading up to the fire, the administration noted.
Rebuilding after disaster is almost always a grueling, slow process. Of the more than 22,500 homes destroyed in five of California’s most destructive fires between 2017 and 2020, fewer than four-in-ten had been rebuilt by 2025, a Los Angeles Times analysis from late last summer found.
A year after major fires ripped through Maui, Paradise, Redding and the outskirts of Boulder, Colo., 2%, 3%, 15% and 30% of the destroyed homes, respectively, had been permitted for reconstruction, according to a separate Urban Institute analysis.
Based on the pace of permitting, Los Angeles’ reconstruction is on a relatively fast track. But freshly-pulled permits aren’t completed homes.
“People can pull permits, but you know, if they don't have their costs sorted out — we've had folks abandon their plans,” said Devang Shah with Genesis Builders, which is selling pre-approved, fixed-priced rebuilds in Altadena. Using permits as a metric of progress may be premature, he said.
Some of the speedy progress that Los Angeles has seen may be due to regulatory changes imposed by fiat in the aftermath of the fire. In early 2025, both Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass mandated speedier permitting of like-for-like rebuilds — construction that stuck to the rough dimensions and design specification of the home that was there before. Los Angeles county rolled out a self-certification building plan approval pilot program for certain simple projects. Newsom waived building code requirements intended to ease the cost of reconstruction.
“We’ve got planning approvals in three days that would have normally taken three months,” said Tim Vordtriede, an architect who also lost his home in Altadena. The county has “done a remarkable job at making things as efficient and streamlined as a bureaucratic entity can.”
In the weeks after the fire, Vordtriede co-founded the Altadena Collective, a network of designers and architects that provides discounted design services, permitting advice and contractor recommendations to local survivors. He and his co-founders Chris Driscoll and Chris Corbett have also launched a nonprofit called Collective OR that is meant to represent inexperienced and anxious homeowners in negotiations with builders and architects.
It's impossible to say, ‘they were here by this date so we should also be there.’ The data set is just too variable.
— Colette Curtis, recovery and economic development director, Paradise
The pace of reconstruction may simply benefit from the fact that it’s taking place in Los Angeles County: A mammoth economic hub flush with financial resources and political connections.
“We have access to a really good supply chain, there’s a lot of capital, there’s a lot of infrastructure,“ said Ben Stapleton, director of U.S. Green Building Council California.
That’s in contrast to a town like Paradise.
Since the majority of homes were destroyed in the 2018 Camp Fire, fewer than one-in-five have since been rebuilt, said Colette Curtis, the Butte County town’s recovery and economic development director.
She cautioned against comparing the pace of rebuilding efforts across communities struck by disaster.
“It's impossible to say, ‘they were here by this date so we should also be there,’” she said. “The data set is just too variable.”
Paradise, a remote town with relatively low income, lacked the local services and philanthropic draw of places like Lahaina and the Palisades, she said. But lower land values and the fact that displaced homeowners haven’t had to compete with investors setting aside new units for tourist rentals was a net positive.
Another thing that may give Los Angeles a leg up: It’s a region that’s also heavy on expertise.
At around the same time that Vordtriede was setting up the Altadena Collective, nearby architect couple Cynthia Sigler and Alex Athenson launched the Foothill Catalog, a packet of ready-made architectural and structural plans that have been pre-approved by L.A. County.
With roughly 15 projects either under construction or gearing up to break ground, Athenson said the pre-approval process can shave at least 10% off the total development cost of a custom single-family home.
That’s in part by trimming the approval process. But that's also because prior to the fire, a "custom single-family home" in ALtadena was a luxury product.
The local industry is “set up to serve that client who is building their dream home from scratch, with a very large if not unlimited budget,” said Athenson. Long-time homeowners displaced by fire, many of them on fixed incomes, represent a very different kind of buyer.
As builders, designers and policymakers scramble to rebuild in faster, cheaper and more fire-resilient ways, they may stumble upon a solution that could be of use long after the last home is rebuilt in Altadena, he added.
“Ultimately, we're providing a system for more efficient, affordable housing development,” said Athenson. “I'm excited about proving it in Altadena, and then seeing where it goes beyond.”
So far the county has approved more than two dozen of the catalog’s plans. Athenson said they are now discussing rolling out a similar batch for the Palisades with the City of Los Angeles.
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
