Bureaucracy holds back Los Angeles’s wildfire recovery

The Washington Post ^ | 10/18/2025 1:45 p.m. EDT | Editorial Board

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Politicians promised regulatory reform after the blazes but delivered administrative purgatory.

In the aftermath of January’s devastating wildfires in Los Angeles, which killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 homes and buildings, leaders vowed that they wouldn’t allow the labyrinth of local bureaucracies, so entrenched in California, to slow down recovery efforts.

Nine months later, they’re falling woefully short of delivering on their promises.

The city of Los Angeles has issued just 782 rebuilding permits, out of 1,843 applications. The county’s numbers are even worse: 568 of 2,200. In both jurisdictions, the process to greenlight rebuilds — even for homes that will be essentially unchanged from their previous designs — drags on for months.

That’s an agonizingly long time for residents looking to get their lives back to normal, especially since many of them are living in alternative housing that their insurance companies will not cover indefinitely.

Officials in Los Angeles and California insist they have tried to speed things up. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) issued multiple executive orders to suspend onerous environmental laws for wildfire-affected properties and to accelerate infrastructure reconstruction in ways that protect equipment from fires. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass (D) attempted to bypass her city’s onerous review process for “like-for-like” rebuilds and create a “one-stop” center where the city’s departments can coordinate.

These measures produced relative successes. Permitting to rebuild on properties that burned down has moved significantly quicker than L.A.'s normal process. And officials deserve credit for removing nearly all the debris within months, despite initial estimates that it could take over a year.

Still, residents and architects complain that their plans are languishing in red tape for far longer than elected officials promised. It turns out...

[MtnClimber]

It is not Bureaucracy, it is intentional.

[RetiredTexasVet]

Boom. Yep. Can see high rise condos and spas taking over Malibu and 15 minute city high rise ghetto apartments over Palisades.

[rlmorel]

You took the exact words right out of my keyboard.

[Professional Engineer]

Queue Gomer Pyle...

[Lockbox]

Sad to tell you it is the Bureaucracy, and it is not intentional. This is the deal politicians have struck with the bureaucrats. You work on our campaigns for free, you push to get out of the vote for free, you fill out the fake mail in ballots, and government will pay you to do a job without management oversight.

[AuntB]

5 years since Almeda.
Know what the best I have been offered?To Rent a 550sq ft apartment. We are not going to be allowed to rebuild. Dense cheap tiny housing is replacing all our homes.

[RetiredTexasVet]

since many of them are living in alternative housing that their insurance companies will not cover indefinitely.

Boom. That’s the plan. Run them out of money living in temporary housing and spending all their money which will eventually prohibit them from having enough funds to rebuild. State and State sponsored vultures will then swoop in and buy up all the properties. Look at what happened in Hawaii.

[blackdog]

There is no bureaucracy. It is individuals manipulating money for alternative uses. Arrest them. Prosecute them. Incarcerate them. All on federal charges. The state will defer any prosecution, by design.

[jmaroneps37]

Totally wrong unless you want to count to Sierra Club as braucracy.

[17th Miss Regt]

G*d d**n Donald Trump and the Republicans for their standing in the way of a bureaucracy trying to get things done efficiently and quickly!

[Parley Baer]

It should read “Democrats hold back Los Angeles’s wildfire recovery”.