California Leaders Promised Fire Recovery In Record Time. Los Angeles Isn’t Seeing It.

Soon after wildfires leveled two Los Angeles communities last year, public officials touted the record-setting speed of the recovery. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said it was happening “faster than ever before.” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass boasted it was “on track to be the fastest in California history.”

That’s no longer true.

A POLITICO analysis of local permitting data found just 34 homes have been built in Pacific Palisades and Altadena in the 15 months since the blazes, a figure that trails the rate of construction following two recent, similarly destructive fires in Northern California.

The review also determined that owners of fewer than half of the 9,900 lots on which homes were destroyed have applied for permits for new houses.

The data show what residents and policymakers alike have increasingly feared is the case: Los Angeles is falling short of early expectations for rapid rebuilding, as frustrated wildfire survivors continue to confront barriers to returning home.

“There’s certainly no chance of them being this outlier of fast recovery,” said Andrew Rumbach, who studies disasters as a senior fellow at the Urban Institute. “It’s not physically possible at this point.”

The Palisades and Eaton fires, which ignited within 24 hours of each other in January 2025, ravaged two distinct areas of Los Angeles, killing 31 people and destroying over 16,000 homes, businesses and other structures. The blazes largely erased Pacific Palisades, an affluent, coastal neighborhood in the city, and Altadena, a more middle-class community in the county’s foothills.

Residents want to come back. Nine in 10 wildfire survivors intend to rebuild, according to a January survey by Department of Angels, a nonprofit formed to support Los Angeles fire victims. Yet those surveyed said soaring construction costs — estimates vary widely from $450 to $1,500 per square foot — and delayed or insufficient insurance payouts were preventing them from doing so. Residents cited feeling overwhelmed or confused by the process as another hurdle.

“It’s like being stuck in a spider web,” said Angela Giacchetti, an Altadena resident and Department of Angels executive who helped design the survey. “All these interlocking issues.”

Despite these challenges and the sluggish start, the POLITICO analysis indicates the recovery could eventually be robust. Residents are filing new home applications at a healthy clip, including more than 300 between the two communities in March.

And collectively the city and county of Los Angeles have approved owners’ applications to build on about 2,100 residential properties — the majority of the permit requests they’ve received.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, said she has no concerns about the pace of recovery. The current rate of construction is solid, she said, and not so fast that it overwhelms the community.

“I want to see Altadena rebuilt tomorrow,” Barger said. “But I have to respect that what I want and what can be done are two different things.”

Barger and other elected officials, including Newsom, Bass and President Donald Trump, have promised to streamline the process of getting people back into their homes, taking sweeping measures that aim to speed permit processing. Along with hastening residents’ return, political leaders also are feeling unspoken pressure to revive the areas before Los Angeles receives worldwide attention as host of the 2028 summer Olympics.

Acrimony between Trump and Newsom, fractured local politics and mistrust from residents due to failures that worsened the fires have hampered recovery efforts. Recently, however, political infighting has lessened. Newsom, Barger and Bass have praised working with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin, who Trump named as his Los Angeles rebuilding czar in January. Last month, Trump pledged on social media to take insurance companies to task over failures to approve payouts — an issue long cited by Bass and Barger.

The EPA is preparing a list of problem insurers per Trump’s directive, said Daniel Gall, an agency spokesperson.

“We are also continuing our work with our local partners to get permits out the door as expeditiously as possible,” Gall said.

Newsom and Bass often have touted the speed of Los Angeles’ recovery. And at first, a record pace of debris clearance supported their claims.

But POLITICO’s analysis shows rebuilding has fallen behind the rate of construction in Santa Rosa, the wine country city affected by the 2017 Tubbs fire, and in Paradise, the Sierra Nevada town wiped out by the 2018 Camp fire.

The contrast is more striking given Los Angeles’ position as a national economic engine with substantial capital, labor and infrastructure advantages over Santa Rosa, an urban area a fraction its size, and Paradise, a small rural community far from a city center.

“The fact that we only have 10 certificates of occupancy and that pales in comparison to almost every other fire, that would have come as a surprise if you had told people 15 months ago,” said Maryam Zar, founder and president of Palisades Recovery Coalition. “I think people would have been like, ‘No you’re wrong. We’re going to build this back in two or three years.’”

Tara Gallegos, a Newsom spokesperson, said that the governor has issued numerous executive orders to accelerate the process in Los Angeles and continues to identify barriers to construction, while noting that local governments are responsible for approving permits.

“Each disaster and recovery is unique, but the state will continue to support local communities to recover and rebuild as quickly as possible,” Gallegos said.

Dramatic differences in how rebuilding played out over time in Paradise and Santa Rosa underscore the uncertainty of outcomes in Los Angeles. Less than 30 percent of the homes destroyed in Paradise were rebuilt within 6.5 years of the Camp fire, according to a 2025 Los Angeles Times investigation, a percentage already eclipsed by permit applications in Altadena and the Palisades. By contrast, more than 80 percent of destroyed homes in Santa Rosa had been rebuilt 7.5 years post-Tubbs fire, the Times found, and the Northern California city’s rate of permitting far outpaced where the two Los Angeles communities are now.

Within Los Angeles, the recovery is diverging in key ways. Owners of about 1,300 more residential properties in Altadena than in the Palisades have filed for rebuilding permits, the POLITICO analysis found. And more than a third of permit requests in Altadena include plans for at least one secondary unit, such as a casita or above-garage apartment, the data show, indicating that residents are planning to add more homes on their lots than were there before the fires.

No consensus has emerged to explain the application gap between the two areas, which contrasts with the conventional wisdom that richer communities will rebuild more quickly. In Santa Rosa, a similar counterintuitive pattern emerged. There, residents of a flat, middle-class subdivision had topographical and insurance coverage advantages over their wealthier counterparts in the hills and rebuilt faster.

Zar, the Palisades leader, theorized that Palisades residents' greater resources could afford them the luxury of time. She knows groups of residents who have moved together to other areas of Los Angeles and now are reluctant to disrupt their families and community networks again.

“In the Palisades, people seem to have found a way to displace somewhat comfortably,” Zar said. “They don’t have that urgency of, ‘Restore me fast.’”

While Altadena survivors are filing more applications, Palisades property owners are getting their projects approved more quickly. The median processing time for a new home permit in the Palisades is less than three months compared to five months in Altadena. (Multiple factors contribute to this rate, including inspector reviews and how long it takes residents to respond to corrections.)

So even though more people have applied to build in Altadena, the faster pace of approvals in the Palisades means in each community, owners of roughly one-in-five properties with destroyed homes have been authorized to begin construction, POLITICO found.

Bass believes that the speed with which the city is greenlighting permits shows its processes are working. She again pointed to payment delays and claim denials by insurers as the largest barrier to recovery.

“Now it’s time for these companies to step up to the plate so that Palisades residents can afford to rebuild,” said Paige Sterling, a mayoral spokesperson.

The insurance issue, as well as similarly thorny cost and funding problems, do not have simple solutions or definite timelines. The California Department of Insurance and Los Angeles County are investigating alleged improper practices by State Farm, the firm Trump called out by name in last month’s social media post. The company, which has the most residential policies in the state, has denied wrongdoing.

For fire survivors looking to save money and reduce complexity, some groups have developed pre-approved architectural designs, and large homebuilders are offering standard floorplans — options credited for speeding Santa Rosa’s recovery. But Los Angeles homeowners may not want them. Barger said that many of her constituents in Altadena prefer custom houses that reflect personal preferences and their community’s historic character.

Altadena survivors expect to receive a payout from Southern California Edison, the utility whose transmission line was the likely cause of its fire. The company is offering to settle with affected residents as litigation winds through the courts. Rebuilding applications jumped in Paradise when residents there received settlement payments from similar litigation against Pacific Gas & Electric, which was responsible for the Camp fire.

Politically, the largest unresolved question is Newsom’s request for $33.9 billion in federal long-term disaster relief for rebuilding homes, businesses and damaged infrastructure. There’s been no movement publicly by the White House or Congress to allocate the dollars.

Recovery experts cautioned that it remains premature to assess the ultimate trajectory of Los Angeles’ rebuild. But early action matters. Many survivors will begin to lose insurance coverage for additional living expenses over the next year, meaning that unless they’re in a new home, they may have to pay rent for their temporary residence, the mortgage on their destroyed property as well as covering any gaps in rebuilding costs. The Times found that in the wake of the Tubbs, Camp and other recent California wildfires, home completions peaked between two and three years afterward regardless of how many houses were rebuilt.

“We should be learning from every fire and making progress on timelines and getting funds to the people who need it,” said Joy Chen, an Altadena resident and executive director of the nonprofit Every Fire Survivors Network. “To the contrary, things are going even more slowly.”