Los Angeles Fire Victims Not Confident in Government Help

Most Palisades and Eaton fire victims would like to return to their homes, but they think the government is failing to make it happen quickly.

That’s what a group of local real estate experts found in a survey asking wildfire victims about their next move, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Project Recovery, an association of professors in the real estate graduate schools at University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, with help from the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute, released a report in March outlining plans to get homes rebuilt within three years after the land is cleared. The follow-up survey, released May 27, polled nearly 350 homeowners who experienced total loss or significant damage to their homes.

The vast majority of those polled — 78.5 percent in the Palisades and 89.2 percent in the Eaton fire zone — intend to rebuild their homes. But 70 percent of Palisades respondents and 63 percent of Eaton fire victims said they may not return if it took longer than three years to rebuild.

For those whose primary residence was in the Palisades, the biggest concern was the “lack of leadership” from city and county officials to complete recovery and rebuilding. Project Recovery’s plan would require government agencies to work quickly in tandem with residents to move along reconstruction efforts, including allowing those affected to self-certify their properties.

As time goes on, however, fewer residents are willing to wait it out.

“For every year it takes to at least start the rebuilding, 20 percent of the population will find another place to go,” Claire De Briere, a founding partner of Catalyst Property Company who helped conduct the study, told the Times. “If that statistic is right, then after five years, you’re going to have a whole new community there, so it won’t be the same.”

It typically takes 18 months to get a building permit in Los Angeles. The latest numbers from the city’s permitting progress dashboard show that 14 rebuilding permits have been issued in the Eaton fire area and just one in the Palisades. The Eaton fire destroyed approximately 9,400 structures and the Palisades blaze claimed more than 6,800, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

— Chris Malone Méndez