Why Is LADBS Changing the Rebuilding Rules? And Why Won't the Mayor Take Action?
Dear readers, PLEASE read this letter from displaced Palisades homeowner Andrew Halpern.
In part:
First, L.A. Building and Safety still remains weeks away from the ability to share approved codified instructions on how rebuilders can move forward within compliance. They have been and remain waiting for clarity from your office before they state any instructions.
Second, and most catastrophic, is that the City has not yet eliminated the massive fees required for requisite building permits. At the meeting with a City Plan Checker yesterday, we learned our permitting could exceed $70,000. If this holds true, this could render our ability to rebuild as a non-start.
Next, appallingly, we learned that despite the repeated statements from your office that grandfathered setbacks would be allowed, the City is apparently back peddling on this promise. In our case this means we have, with the City’s implied direction, already wasted our limited dollars replanning our existing house.
The City has promised to streamline and fast-track rebuilding. That sure doesn’t seem to be the case.
Halpern’s family, like so many others affected by the fires, was underinsured, which means they are working with limited funds. I don’t know what their budget is, but I suspect there are displaced households whose rebuilding budgets would be strained even further by permitting costs. (No, not EVERYONE in the Palisades is obscenely rich. Many of the longtime homeowners were not. In fact, one of the lost houses previously belonged to a relative who bought it decades ago for an amount low enough to shock anyone. And let’s not forget that two mobile home parks, a rare source of relatively affordable housing, burned.)
The Palisades and middle-class Altadena are seeing a flood of empty lots for sale, whether it’s due to insufficient insurance, elderly owners not wanting to spend the next several years building, or other reasons. I strongly suspect some sellers simply don’t have the bandwidth to jump through the City’s many hoops on top of work, childcare, or whatever else their daily lives involve. Or the budget to pay for rebuilding while having to rent a temporary home elsewhere.
Talk to anyone who isn’t a professional developer and has tried to rebuild or to make significant necessary repairs. It’s costly, time consuming, and the city isn’t known for being any good at communicating…let alone cooperating.
It has been TWO MONTHS since Governor Newsom issued Executive Order N-4-25, suspending Coastal Act permitting requirements and CEQA review. The whole point of doing that was to make rebuilding faster and easier. It apparently isn’t working in Los Angeles.
While such requirements generally exist for a reason, and while I am not a fan of cutting corners (and fire cleanup is no joke), inconsistency and red tape are not the answer either.
Home builder Alexis Rivas reports that 38 DAYS have gone by with NO permit issued for a “pre-approved” ADU under 800 feet in the Palisades. Obviously, Rivas knows a lot more about building than I do.
Scrolling back a bit on Rivas’ X account revealed the following insights:
Bureaucratic BS, indeed. Coming WEEKS? Is the Mayor waiting for a written invitation to fix this, or what?
And, from day 31:
A MEMO? ARE YOU $#%@ING KIDDING ME?
And finally, from Day 37:
Precisely.
If Rivas, an experienced professional, is having this much trouble, what hope is there for anyone else who wants to rebuild their destroyed home?