By Sarah Barr and Margot Langstaff
At the crossroads of fire recovery and climate adaptation, zoning and planning debates in the Palisades chart the future of resilient development.
This article is part of a special series on the Los Angeles wildfires, written by guest contributors Sarah Barr and Margot Langstaff. Read the other two articles in the series here and here.
On November 23rd, the Pacific Palisades reached a significant milestone: the first home rebuilt after the January 2025 wildfires received its certificate of occupancy. No one will be moving back in, though. The four-bedroom house, a significant size increase from the one that burned, is owned by developers and will be on the market after an opening ceremony on December 6th. Los Angeles’ Mayor Karen Bass touted the home completion a major success, setting off yet another wave of community outrage. What once felt like a recovery that could establish exciting new governance models and a more prepared, climate resilient city has devolved into a long line of political failures, finger-pointing and concessions.
As construction slowly gets underway, a clearer picture of the few successes, many failures, and ongoing challenges is emerging.
From February through early summer, the government coordinated a series of executive orders, removing bureaucratic processes and touting the fastest recovery in state history, while laying the groundwork for a long term strategy. The orders signaled a coming overhaul across city agencies to ensure the charred neighborhoods would be rebuilt more sustainably and hardened for a changed climate. In early June, the cracks began to show when the deadlines for Los Angeles agencies to release their respective resilience plans came and went. Without a comprehensive plan, the coordinated effort started to drift. By late July, the government’s plan for a centralized Rebuilding Resilience Authority (RRA) with the power to raise large amounts of capital, buy and repurpose land, and streamline rebuilding, was stalled indefinitely by community skepticism. The Blue Ribbon Commission Report, spearheaded by County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath and UCLA, remained nothing more than recommendations. The Palisades Recovery Coalition, a grassroots effort with close ties to the Pacific Palisades Community Council (PPCC) and increasingly irate at the state of the response, released its own plan.
By October, when the LA Fire Department released its damning after action report, it only served to confirm what everyone already knew of the evacuation chaos, communication lapses, and water system failures. Trust in the government’s capacity to steer the recovery took another hit.
Without the RRA or an adopted plan, there is a governance and funding gap. As a partial solution to the funding challenge, the county is creating two smaller financing authorities — one for Altadena and the other for the unincorporated neighborhoods affected by the Palisades fire — to capture property tax dollars for infrastructure repairs. Mayor Bass and City Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Palisades, support a similar plan for Palisades. However, none offers the financing capacity to cover the full cost of recovery.
Government officials have been focused on either undermining or placing blame. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, came out against recommendations in the Blue Ribbon Commission Report, an effort spearheaded by fellow county board member Lindsey Horvath. Meanwhile, Governor Newsom has been busy laying the blame with Washington. Frustrated with the local situation, PPCC leaders took their concerns all the way to Washington, calling for an intervention due to local incompetence.
In November, members of the PPCC Rebuild Committee testified to the Special Committee on Aging to call for a resident-led recovery authority supported by federal funding not filtered through the City of Los Angeles. In their eyes the city has failed on many accounts: slow, inaccurate, and opaque planning; failure to assess infrastructure needs; political dysfunction and fragmented authority; and inability to waive fees or fund reconstruction. They were left with no other option.
Without a plan in place, what is the state of the rebuild
A series of rebuilding workshops led by the Palisades Recovery Coalition is the closest thing to a plan that remains. With no centralized authority to oversee the rebuild, individual preferences and opinions about how to rebuild have taken precedence. Some residents, fed up with how slow-moving the process has been, are taking rebuilding into their own hands, piloting new fire-resistant materials like concrete. Other residents want to push community independence and individual choice further, and have called for complete independence from the county to create and actualize plans.
One of the few resilience efforts that has taken hold is the modernization of LA’s water infrastructure. Likely influenced by the visibility of the failures, the LA Department of Water and Power (LADWP) is enhancing the water regulator and distribution network in the Palisades. They are also devising plans to repair the electrical system that failed in January and have committed to undergrounding utilities wherever possible. The city also plans to increase water capacity, but nothing has progressed beyond the planning stage.
Though there is no centralized plan or financial support, construction is progressing. According to the mayor’s office, 340 rebuilding projects are underway, meaning about 30% of the destroyed structures are now under construction. This is an increase from October when the city reported “nearly 300 homes [were] confirmed to have started construction.” At that point 1,075 rebuilding plans had been approved.
Families are struggling, though. Many have run through their savings and in some cases are even taking on debt. The median net loss is $200,000, while the mean is $870,000. For those in the lowest household income brackets under $100,000, 20% of families have cut back on food and 18% have skipped medical care.
Insurance is one of the most significant factors driving the slow construction and individual financial ruin. This month, State Farm, one of the largest home insurers, said that it has received more than 13,500 claims and has paid nearly $5 billion. With the FAIR plan poised to implement rate hikes across the state, the government is doing everything possible to ensure people remain insured at affordable rates. Though, their efforts will not solve the immediate crisis. SB495, which takes effect in January of next year, requires that insurers pay survivors of future wildfires up to $350,000 without needing an itemized claim. However, it does nothing to help families figuring out how to rebuild now.
These barriers may prove insurmountable for some and raise urgent questions about who will take their place. After all, the first completed home was built not by a family but by developers. No numbers are available for the Palisades, but in Altadena, investors have bought two-thirds of the single-family homes sold with severe fire damage.
This is not the first article to question what the future of the Palisades will look like. Developers and real estate agents are eager to see what price new builds will fetch, confident that despite the risks, the Palisades will remain the Palisades, with homes selling for upwards of $15 million. While they will come with more protective zoning measures, it is no guarantee of survival when the next fire spreads. Plus, the failure of the government to carry out a coordinated recovery underpinned by a long-term mandated resilience strategy may deter people from returning. Though, only time will tell whether people choose to come back despite the known climate risks and government failures.
However the coming months and years play out for the Pacific Palisades and broader Los Angeles, the widening split between politicians and local communities seems a warning to us all of the funding and governing challenges we face living in a time of extreme climate events.