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- Trump administration officials provided more details about a new effort to supersede permitting for wildfire rebuilding in Los Angeles, allowing builders to bypass local building departments through self-certification.
- Local and state officials say funding and insurance delays, not permitting, are the real obstacles, with 53% of residents unable to move forward financially.
- More than 3,170 rebuilding permits have already been issued, with county reviews typically completed in 31 business days.
In a visit to Pacific Palisades on Wednesday, top White House officials vowed to take over and speed up building permitting, a core state and local function, for rebuilding after the Los Angeles County wildfires.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin and Small Business Administration Administrator Kelly Loeffler also held a discussion with Palisades fire victims and met with Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger in a closed-door meeting about how to hasten rebuilding and address issues such as insurance payouts and wildfire prevention.
“Our conversations with Mayor Bass and Supervisor Barger about accelerating the rebuilding process in Los Angeles were productive,” Zeldin said. “Administrator Loeffler and I, on behalf of President Trump, asked these local elected officials to join us in this urgent effort, and I am hopeful great progress will be made in the days and weeks ahead.”
The visit followed a Jan. 27 executive order signed by President Trump to allow victims of the Eaton and Palisades fires to go around “unnecessary, duplicative, or obstructive” state and local permitting processes.
Instead of going through the usual regulatory process, residents using federal emergency funds to rebuild would have to certify compliance with local standards.
Instead of going through building departments, such as the city of Los Angeles for the Palisades, or the county for Altadena, builders can instead “self-certify” that they have complied with state and local health and safety standards, if they are using federal emergency funds to rebuild, the order says.
The Small Business Administration has already launched a self-certification tool online, available to applicants who have been waiting more than 60 days for a building permit.
Loeffler said the “check and balance” will come from city and county inspections that must happen before a property is certified for occupancy.
Neither official could immediately recall another instance of the federal government preempting state and local permitting processes for disaster recovery, with Zeldin noting that “nothing like [these wildfires] has ever happened before.”
The visit underscored diverging narratives about the rebuilding process in Los Angeles. While Trump described it as a “nightmare of delay, uncertainty, and bureaucratic malaise” in his executive order, state and local officials said construction is underway and permitting is not the issue.
“Both administrators were engaged — sharing the President’s concerns while also listening to what I am seeing on the ground in Altadena,” Barger said in a statement to The Times. “I emphasized that 53% of impacted residents have taken no action to rebuild, not because of permitting delays, but because they lack the capital to move forward — an issue exacerbated by delayed insurance payouts. Many families have not submitted plans or entered the County’s rebuilding pipeline and are now facing a serious financial crisis.”
She added that the county’s current timeline for completing permit reviews is 31 business days.
Bass, who is facing renewed scrutiny after an analysis of the Palisades fire response was watered down, told The Times the meeting was “productive and a good opportunity to share how we’ve cut red tape and sped up the permitting process to get people back into their homes.”
The discussion included the city’s restoration of utilities in record time, the simplification and speeding up of permitting, and the active construction of nearly 500 homes in the city, Bass said.
But she also expressed the need for more funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to rebuild critical infrastructure, and called on President Trump to convene executives from insurance companies and banks to support fire victims.
“The insurance industry must fully cover wildfire losses and extend rental assistance. And the banks have to extend mortgage forbearance by three years, tacking it onto the end of the mortgage duration, and create a fund to provide no-interest loans to fire survivors,” Bass said. “This sort of collaboration between the city and the federal government can improve the rebuilding process and bring people home faster.”
The pace of permitting in Pacific Palisades and Altadena has been slower than it was in Santa Rosa after the Tubbs fire, and faster than Paradise after the Camp fire, according to an preliminary analysis by The Times.
Last month, on the first anniversary of the fires, a bipartisan delegation of California legislators also penned a letter to Trump calling for additional federal support.
A December analysis by The Times found that permitting has gained momentum after a slow start, with the pace slower than after some disasters in the state, and faster than others.
As of Wednesday, more than 3,170 rebuilding permits have been issued in the fire areas, according to city and county dashboards.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a post on X following the executive order, that hundreds of homes are under construction, and that permitting timelines are at least twice as fast as before the fires. He said the president continues to withhold a federal aid package that would help families rebuild.
“The Feds need to release funding, not take over local permit approval speed — the main obstacle is COMMUNITIES NOT HAVING THE MONEY TO REBUILD,” the governor said.
But Zeldin used the opportunity to take jabs at Newsom, describing his approach to federal funding requests as “flawed.”
“The whole ask has been completely stepped on by the governor’s effort to campaign for president — to try to lob 11 insults a day and somehow fit in an ask for tens of billions of dollars in the middle of it,” he said. “It’s just not a good strategy.”
He declined to say whether additional funding would come from Congress, or how much.
Some Palisades residents said they would welcome whatever support they can get. Among them was Abby Waldorf, whose parents both lost their homes in the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park during the Palisades fire.
Waldorf said mobile homes don’t qualify for many city and state recovery programs, such as mortgage relief and disaster recovery aid, so they are “most at risk of not coming back.”
“Our community is very supportive of anyone that will help us move back quickly,” she said, “and at this point we haven’t seen that happen at the city, county or state level yet, and so anyone who can come in and do the job is welcome.”
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