California’s ‘Lightning Speed’ LA Fires Rebuild Moving At Snail’s Pace

Five months after fires ravaged Los Angeles, Democratic leaders’ promise of “lightning speed” rebuilding has yielded only sluggish progress with few permits issued.

The January blaze destroyed over 16,000 structures across Los Angeles County and the cities of Los Angeles, Pasadena and Malibu. Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Gavin Newsom promised swift recovery, but bureaucratic delays are hindering the process, with only 3.7% of permit applications submitted to Los Angeles County being approved to date.

“It’s just a culture of bureaucracy,” Steven Greenhut, the director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Free Cities Center, told the 🏢Daily Caller News Foundation. “Doing anything in this state is just so difficult that you can’t just wave the magic wand and have that whole process go away.”

Los Angeles County, which oversees rebuilding in unincorporated areas like the neighborhood of Altadena and some areas that burned in the Palisades Fire, has issued only 31 permits of the 837 applications received as of June 17, according to the county’s permitting dashboard. The dashboard currently tracks residential permits for single-family homes, multi-family residences, and accessory dwelling units and may exclude other permits such as those for commercial buildings or garages, a county public information officer told the Daily Caller News Foundation