Too Many Cooks, Not Enough Cash: Lack Of A Master Plan Muddies Los Angeles Fire Rebuild

The fires that leveled swaths of Los Angeles in January were still smoldering when the questions first emerged: Who was in charge of rebuilding Pacific Palisades and Altadena? And how were they going to pay for it?

Several months later, a group of local politicians, business leaders and disaster relief experts believed they had answers.

They put forward an ambitious, if wonky, proposal for a new public agency to oversee nearly every aspect of the recovery. It would coordinate the reconstruction of schools and parks, redevelop hollowed out shopping centers and even help struggling homeowners rebuild their houses. The agency would pay for itself by capturing tax dollars from the revived communities.

But the plan failed spectacularly. Distrustful victims revolted, while local officials, skittish about the new agency’s power, fragmented. The state lawmaker pushing legislation to make the idea a reality abandoned it.

The abrupt collapse of the Resilient Rebuilding Authority underscored how elected officials have been unable to develop a master plan for the recovery effort and lock in adequate funding to carry it out. Nearly a year after the twin blazes claimed 31 lives and destroyed 16,000 homes, businesses, schools and other structures, local politicians have been left to pursue various solutions and homeowners to largely forge ahead on their own.

Some believe that unless more answers come soon, the consequences for survivors will be severe.

“This is a ticking time bomb,” said Assemblymember John Harabedian, a Democrat who represents Altadena. “We don’t have time to wait.”

Indeed, signs are emerging that fire victims’ struggles are worsening. A majority are depleting their savings and taking on debt, according to a mid-September survey by the Department of Angels nonprofit. More than half of residents, the survey found, had less than a year of displacement coverage remaining from their insurance or never had any at all.

Harabedian said his constituents keep asking him who is in charge and where they should go for assistance.

“You have too many cooks in the kitchen,” he said. “What’s hurt here are the victims.”

Immediately after the fires, attempts at resolving questions of leadership and money floundered. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass sidelined civic leader Steve Soboroff within weeks of appointing him as recovery czar for Pacific Palisades. And while the Federal Emergency Management Agency and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers stepped in to aid survivors and clear debris, acrimony between President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with dysfunction in Congress, has put Newsom’s $40 billion request for long-term aid on ice.

Into the vacuum stepped L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath, who represents communities affected by the Palisades fire. She gathered 20 local business, climate, development and government leaders into a blue-ribbon commission. After months of meetings, it proposed a rebuilding authority modeled after agencies created following the 1994 Northridge earthquake and Hurricane Katrina.

The powers envisioned for the authority were vast, but the group argued they were essential to spur a fast, coordinated recovery through building at scale. To guard against speculators buying up properties, the commission even suggested the authority would purchase burned-out lots from owners, reconstruct their houses and then sell them back at a discounted rate.

The authority would raise money by sequestering property taxes from wildfire areas. Run by a board appointed by state and local lawmakers, the entity also could direct additional government and nonprofit resources into the community.

Just as significant as the funding, its supporters said, was the structure the agency would provide. Other events — this summer’s immigration raids, the upcoming World Cup and Olympics — would necessarily command attention from elected officials while the recovery would need years of focus.

“What we wanted out of a rebuilding authority was a clear, designated institutional leader,” said Laurie Johnson, a former California Earthquake Authority executive who served on the commission.

The commission unveiled its plan in May in a 172-page report and then turned to state Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat who represents Pacific Palisades, to implement it. But his legislation to create the authority, SB 549, immediately faced an avalanche of hostility.

Resident groups recoiled at granting broad power to a new government agency they hadn’t asked for, proposed by leaders they didn’t trust. Fury at elected officials was growing as details trickled out about the reignition of a small fire that later turned into the Palisades blaze and absent evacuation orders in Altadena during the Eaton fire.

“Most people here are putting the blame on local leadership for the fires,” said Jessica Rogers, president of the Pacific Palisades Residents Association. “So for local leadership to try to start an authority without the input of residents is absurd.”

Allen didn’t help himself by how he introduced the idea. Because of legislative deadlines, Allen had to insert language to establish the authority into one of his existing bills. When doing so, he kept in a provision from the original bill about an unrelated expansion of low-income housing financing, a decision that added significant confusion about the authority’s role.

Misinformation and conspiracy theorizing then spread across social media, including the false claim that the government intentionally set the fires to raze the Palisades and turn it into homeless housing.

By the first legislative hearing in July, Bass and Traci Park, who represents the Palisades on the L.A. City Council, were wary, if not hostile, to the idea. Allen gave up.

“Imagine you literally just lost your house, at least partly due to government incompetence,” Allen said. “If you already were inclined to be someone to not trust the system, you’re just not in any mindset to embrace a proposal from the county blue-ribbon commission and the state senator to create a government authority that’s going to centralize power.”

No other broad-based funding or organizational effort has emerged since. Allen said he’s willing to introduce new legislation next year so long as the proposal comes from resident groups.

In the meantime, 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. Bass and Park support a similar entity for Pacific Palisades, plans for which are working their way through City Hall. But these agencies are expected to raise only a fraction of recovery costs. The authority covering Altadena is estimated to generate $500 million, for instance, while the price tag just for county public works projects in that community alone is $2 billion.

Horvath, the supervisor who was the prime mover behind the rebuilding authority, said in a statement that she’s now pushing for a dedicated entity to oversee recovery for areas under the county’s direct jurisdiction.

“I hope to see our region unify around a swift, scaled recovery response for all,” Horvath said.

But Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, seemed unenthusiastic about a new entity. Barger said that efforts needed to focus on hyperlocal needs and that setting up something else could be counterproductive.

“I don’t want to create a bureaucracy within a bureaucracy,” Barger said. “I feel that it’s redundant.”

The position appears to align with Newsom’s approach. Rebuilding authorities were not part of the recoveries from other recent blazes, such as 2018’s Camp fire in the northern Sierra Nevada, the most destructive in state history. Newsom’s office instead attempted to boost coordination between existing state and local agencies.

“We’ll keep pushing to ensure local governments have the flexibility and resources they need to rebuild stronger and more resilient,” Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said of L.A. recovery efforts.

Newsom and local leaders have contended that the biggest funding roadblock is in Washington, which they’re relying on for the majority of the dollars needed to repair medical, water and education facilities, restore local economies and provide affordable housing. Trump has floated tying strings to the money, such as changes to California’s voter ID laws, and administration officials have signaled that in general they want states to shoulder the financial burden of disaster recovery. Congress has stalled on appropriations to other states with major disasters as well.

Disputes over the roles institutions should play in rebuilding Altadena and Pacific Palisades have extended beyond government. Eaton fire survivors are suing Southern California Edison, the electric utility whose equipment likely started the blaze, with some residents asking the company to front some of the expected payout. Edison is offering residents a voluntary settlement, but only in exchange for waiving further legal liability. Further frustration has been directed at FireAid, a philanthropic effort that raised $100 million through concerts and other donations. Many survivors believed they’d see money directly from the charity. But the organization instead has given grants to separate nonprofits and other entities aimed at helping those on the ground, saying it was ill-equipped to identify the needs of individual survivors.

Even those who opposed the rebuilding authority believe that more local investment and coordination was needed. Rogers, the leader of the Palisades resident group, worried the neighborhood’s senior citizens and condominium, apartment and mobile home residents — more than 1,300 multifamily units and mobile homes were destroyed in the blaze — wouldn’t be able to return without greater assistance than is available now.

“You can’t rebuild this community without funding,” she said. “It has to come from somewhere.”