Karen Bass Order Tackles Several Permitting Obstacles

Hot off her publicized meeting with President Donald Trump, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is taking a swing at one of the city’s most persistent development bottlenecks.

On Monday, Bass signed an executive order aimed at overhauling the city’s notoriously slow permit approval process in a move designed to accelerate housing production and business openings as officials grapple with both a deepening affordability crisis and a massive wildfire recovery effort, Realtor.com reported.

Bass blamed the city’s housing crisis on “a development permitting process that is too often fragmented, unpredictable and uncoordinated across departments,” creating “a barrier to development.”

The mayor’s executive order expands the city’s library of pre-approved housing plans, allows artificial intelligence to expedite permit review and connects different agencies involved in permit reviews under one system. The order also expands an online self-certification permitting program for commercial permits in an effort to make it easier to open a business in the city. In addition, it delineates new timelines on many of the steps in permit review, which could keep permits from compounding across different departments and slowing down the timeline for building.

The reforms come a week after Bass and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger met with Trump to discuss wildfire recovery. The president has publicly criticized the city’s pace of rebuilding following the Eaton and Palisades fires, which burned nearly 40,000 acres across the region in January 2025.

The president and mayor “had a productive discussion on the Palisades disaster recovery,” a White House official said of the meeting. “President Trump and his administration remain committed to helping the people of California recover from the Palisades wildfires, but also expect state and local officials like Mayor Bass to swiftly enable and facilitate reconstruction.”

The president previously issued his own order seeking to federalize parts of the rebuilding process and cut through local red tape. Bass framed her order as a response to longstanding dysfunction at City Hall, saying delays in permitting predated her administration but have become untenable amid mounting housing demand and pressure from displaced residents still waiting to rebuild.

At the same time, state lawmakers are debating reforms to the fire insurance industry that they hope will help consumers having to deal with the process in the wake of the fires, according to Realtor.com. Legislators are also considering other options to try to meet the housing crisis head-on, including relaxing restrictions around factory-built housing, which could speed up construction timelines.

— Chris Malone Méndez