You knew in your heart of hearts from the very beginning.
Even as you watched those first flames take the first houses and then leap up through the canyons and down through the hillsides, through the breaks, even jumping PCH to gobble up the houses tucked next to the highway itself – those uniquely SoCal structures sandwiched between the asphalt and that big, blue Pacific surf…you knew.
You knew would never see it again, for all the gargoyle grin assurances of the mayor who couldn’t be bothered to be there when the flames broke out. For all the slickster, huckstering, faux promises of a governor faking phone calls as he skittered like a cockroach from angry, heartbroken residents who only wanted answers.
You knew.
You knew when comedian turned prophet Adam Corolla went on an epic rant from a hotel room desk, a fire refugee himself waiting on word whether he had a home or not, telling you then and there if your home was gone, it was gone for good.
Because Mayor Karen Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom, and the soul-crushing machinery of the State of California had the will and the power to ensure you would never rebuild, one way or the other.
And you knew he was right.
That sick feeling only grew as months passed. The empty words of a nervous-as-a-cat Bass, defensively deflecting Donald Trump’s directions to make residents as whole as possible as soon as possible, hang in the air still.
In hard-hit Altadena alone, the rebuilding process six months later is sucking the lives and hope out of people.
And every dime they ever had.
…Addressing the concerns of homeowners at a recent community meeting, Barger told them, “You have lost so much, you shouldn’t have to worry about permitting fees getting in the way of rebuilding your home. For most families, these fees may have exceeded $20,000. That’s a barrier we cannot allow to stand.”
The deferral of fees only applies to people who lived in their own single-family homes before the fire. It does not apply to non-owner-occupied rental properties, multi-family housing units or commercial structures.
The county estimates that if 60% of homeowners in Altadena and elsewhere in unincorporated Palisades rebuild, it would amount to $84 million in building permit fees.
Permitting is only one hurdle. For most, state and local building codes have changed in the decades since many of these homes were originally built, meaning the house has to have changes and extras that insurance covering a like-to-like rebuild does not account for.
“It adds expenses that we didn’t expect. Like, solar is required on all new builds, and so is the easement from the property line. It’s got to be five feet now and ours was only three,” says Toomey, as she stands under a backyard oak tree that survived.
“And insurance doesn’t pay for that stuff. That’s on us,” Silvernail adds.
Soil sampling is now required, and that tacks another $5000-$8000 onto the process.
The very long and tedious process, which is beginning to look as if it’s specifically designed to soak as much money out of the homeowner as possible before they give up in disgust and move elsewhere.
There has been only an unconscionable 44 building permits approved in LA County since the fires.
…But the process is still slow. As of midday July 1, 2025, the LA County Permitting Progress Dashboard showed 890 rebuild applications in the Eaton Fire area, but only 44 building permits have been issued, taking an average turnaround of about 10 weeks to get through the process.
And speed matters. A survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is people won’t move back.
“So even folks that fully intend to move back today, if this process, either through permitting or financing or insurance, takes more than three years, the percentage of people that want to move back drops to like 50%,” Kawahara says.
Those are the single-family homeowners’ travails.
Back in February, I wrote about a new Los Angeles ordinance that had come into effect, requiring low-income housing to be erected, replacing apartment buildings that were lost.
What that meant to fire victims who’d lost their rental homes was they might never have a home to return to if the landlord rebuilt their building and they now earned too much to make the qualifications for the low-income threshold.
In effect, LA County would be making them homeless.
…This also means that “affordability” is likely to be determined based on citywide median household income that is half the Palisades amount.
If all units in RSO buildings must be replaced with units affordable to lower-income households making up to about $80,000 per year for a family of four, rents would be about $2,000 per month. For the units in newer, non-RSO buildings that must be affordable to very-low-income households making up to about $50,000 for a family of four, rents would be about $1,300 per month.
Before the fire, a market-rate two-bedroom apartment cost between $4,000 and $5,000 per month, requiring a monthly annual household income of $160,000 to comfortably afford, which means that the RPO replacement requirements could significantly alter the area’s demographics — and even bar higher earning residents from renting out homes at their old addresses.
So, conceivably, if you once rented a lovely apartment in the area and this ordinance as written is in effect for the rebuild, you will now make too much money to return to your former home, even if it’s the same landlord rebuilding on the exact same address.
The state’s oleaginous chief executive delivered the coup de grâce to former renters and landlords yesterday.
In a self-congratulatory moment, Newsom grandly announced his intentions to bring ‘multifamily low-income housing development’ to Pacific Palisades, Eaton, and Altadena, creating a more ‘resilient and – keyword here – equitable Los Angeles.’
Six months after the devastating Palisades and Eaton fires, California Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled $101 million in funding Tuesday for “multifamily low-income housing development” that will “contribute to a more equitable and resilient Los Angeles.” The priority is for “geographic proximity to the fire perimeters of the Eaton, Hughes, and Palisades fires.”
Earlier this year, The Center Square broke news that California state law and a local Los Angeles ordinance require fire-destroyed rent-protected housing — which includes all apartments in the city built before October 1978 — be replaced with low-income housing. Because the affordability requirements use county-level income data, not more local incomes, definitions for “low” and “very low” income housing reflect much lower incomes than the norm for the affluent Palisades community.
“Thousands of families – from Pacific Palisades to Altadena to Malibu – are still displaced, and we owe it to them to help,” said Newsom in a statement. “The funding we’re announcing today will accelerate the development of affordable multifamily rental housing so that those rebuilding their lives after this tragedy have access to a safe, affordable place to come home to.”
Those who actually are ‘rebuilding their lives’ because of the fires are not going to qualify for what is being rebuilt.
You just knew.
What’s happening la is not normal. We have an incompetent socialist/communist mayor who spends more time protecting foreign nationals than she does on her own citizens. 39 rebuild permits for single family dwellings 6 months after the fire. pic.twitter.com/PsNHQyWSoM
— xonkd (@xonkd7) July 7, 2025
And you just know that every homeowner who finally walks away is one more chalk mark on the progressive tote board to remake an equitable city out of what they see as the privileged life in those once beloved old communities dotting the hillsides.
Someone said they would hate to assign sinister motives to all this, but it really looks bad.
I don’t have any problem assigning sinister motives to all of it, particularly knowing who the leading players are.
You cut more out of the fire fighting budget than most 3rd world countries’ military budgets, allowing your fire starters to burn down that land adjacent to Brentwood thus freeing it up for your previously blocked bid to build 1400 low-income housing units.
— Brian O’Shea (@BrianOSheaSPI) July 5, 2025
No one should doubt for a minute that this hasn’t been the contingency plan all along, for any Los Angeles area that ‘burns’ or suffers a ‘natural disaster.’ Like a fire that has no reservoir to quench the flames, or prescribed burns to mitigate them before they break out, or a fire department funded, trained, and ready to go in chaparral that burns in the blink of an eye.
When there are people setting fires in that tinder-dry wilderness constantly.
33% of fires the past six years in Los Angeles were started by the homeless. Now, think of the $2 billion that went to homeless services in LA that can’t be accounted for while LAFD got their budgets cut. @RickCarusoLA @SteveHiltonx @TheKevinDaltonpic.twitter.com/rDplkvT18j
— T Wolf 🌁 (@Twolfrecovery) April 16, 2025
You know they’re in the societal transformation business, and rebuilding your precious private homestead isn’t any part of that master plan.
You just knew what was coming.
What I don’t know is when people finally learn.
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