More than a year after deadly fires hit Los Angeles, residents are still struggling to rebuild their homes, citing permits, insurance and financial holes.
The Palisades and Eaton fires started in January 2025 and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and burned more than 80,000 acres, according to official reports.
The city of Los Angeles has received 3,561 permit applications and issued 1,939 permits for 844 unique addresses as of Feb. 21, according to the LA Strong return and rebuild website. The data is updated hourly by the Los Angeles Department of Public Safety, according to the page.
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There are currently 1,189 applications pending and 2,372 plans approved as of Friday.
Palisades residents like Michelle Bitting, whose home was destroyed in the fires, say there’s a “fatigue factor” in the ongoing process.
Bitting said she had “good experience” with insurance, but they had difficulty getting a permit for the reconstruction. She said she and her family were “leading the way.”
An aerial view of homes burned during the Eaton Fire, January 21, 2025, in Altadena, California. (Mario Tama/Getty Images/Getty Images)
‘Our trenches [were] We’ve had two rainstorms now, we’ve covered them up, they’ve been taken out again… They’ve been telling us every day for two months now about getting this permit,” Bitting said.
Mychal Wilson, a whistleblower attorney and Palisades resident, echoed a similar sentiment regarding the permitting process.
“Permits have been issued and it takes anywhere from 30 days to six months, but some of that is at the homeowner’s expense,” Wilson said. “You go through the design and then you say, ‘Well, wait a minute. I want to increase the square footage… I think there’s a problem in the permitting process that has slowed things down.'”
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The Los Angeles City Council voted unanimously to waive permit fees for residents affected by the Palisades and Eaton fires.
The motion, which passed Feb. 3, waives plan review and permit fees “for all construction, regardless of rebuild/repair scale, only up to the amount attributed to 110% of the original footprint.”
A view of a fire-ravaged beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean due to the Palisades Fire, January 12, 2025, in Malibu, California. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images/Getty Images)
Part of the motion asks that the city comptroller establish a “subsidy for wildfire emergency permit costs in the general city purposes” and would “appropriate $10 million from a temporary revolving loan from the Building and Safety Building Permit Enterprise Fund,” which would then be repaid with interest.
This resolution waives fees for all structures, including single-family homes, duplexes, accessory buildings, multi-family dwellings, and commercial properties.
In an Instagram post, Park thanked the city manager for reviewing the proposal since it was initially only intended for single-family homes.
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“That wasn’t good enough, and we weren’t going to leave our small businesses, our renters, our seniors and our apartment complexes, or our families in the mobile home parks,” Park said in the post.
She said that passing this motion “[removed] the barriers that prevent so many people from being able to begin the process of rebuilding and returning home.”
“Now that the recovery reports are in, we are focusing on the bigger picture that will accelerate reconstruction,” Park continued in the statement.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump tour a fire-damaged area in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 24, 2025. (Mandel Ngan/Getty Images/Getty Images)
The current state of reconstruction in the city has drawn criticism from the federal government. President Donald Trump has issued an executive order directing the federal government to step in to take over rebuilding efforts in Los Angeles.
“I think it’s great because the federal government and FEMA haven’t really helped anyone yet…and it’s not just in the Palisades, it’s just part of the policy and administration now,” Wilson said. “The problem is that it’s FEMA and they’re more concerned about the big picture, while the local government is the one that can really enforce the permits, for example.”
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Park said an upcoming town hall will allow residents to immediately assess what should be included in a “long-term recovery plan.”
“This must remain community-driven – and it is the government’s job to pave the way, not get in the way,” Park said.
