As rebuilding efforts continue in Altadena after January’s deadly wildfires, some business owners expect they’ll be left out in the cold.
The commercial property owners have had mixed success navigating the web of the insurance process in California, Bisnow reported. Some said that they’ve learned the limits of just how much insurance will cover, and as a result, some have modified their rebuilding plans due to lack of funds.
So far, insurance companies have partially paid 35,214 of the 38,120 claims filed by homeowners and commercial property owners in the wake of the fires, according to the California Department of Insurance.
“I’m a small-business person. This is what we do. But it is daunting, scary,” Café de Leche co-owner Matt Schodorf told Bisnow.
William J. Galloway Jr., who owns two commercial multitenant buildings that burned down, is a claimant in the Department of Insurance’s investigation into State Farm’s handling of residential and commercial claims after the blazes. That investigation came after State Farm, Mercury, Farmers and several other insurers were sued over an alleged price-hiking collusion scheme that began before the fires and became more pronounced in the months afterward.
Galloway waited months for his claim to be approved and has since received only a partial payout. “I’m on hold,” he said of the financial trickle. “In the meantime, I work at other things to try and move forward.” If he could travel back in time knowing what he does now, he would make sure he was more completely insured for the worst-case scenario, he told Bisnow.
“I’d always look at a total loss situation when I’m looking at insurance policy,” Galloway said.
“But I express that term ‘total loss’ because most people don’t think about a total loss. They don’t think about leaving to go to work in the morning and coming home and the house being completely gone.”
Schodorf and Galloway plan to rebuild in Altadena. They’re currently waiting to get final estimates from contractors on how much a full rebuild will cost. “That whole number is, it’s obviously the important number, because then I think that I can start really working on what I can do and can’t do,” Galloway said.
Cleanup efforts continue in Altadena, but commercial property owners were excluded from receiving any help from the federal government. The Federal Emergency Management Agency authorized the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to remove debris from homes, public buildings and places of worship, but their plan excluded commercial properties, saying it was “the responsibility of the property owner.”
Nearly six months after the fires, Los Angeles County has issued just 41 rebuilding permits in the Eaton fire burn zone out of 869 applications received, according to the county’s permitting progress dashboard. Only one has been issued in the Pacific Palisades.
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