A Year and a Half On, LA's Fire Rebuild Is Still Barely a Rebuild

The most important story in Los Angeles is still the slowest one. Eighteen months after the January 2025 fires destroyed more than 16,000 structures — with property and capital losses estimated as high as $131 billion — the recovery numbers remain sobering: as of early this year, more than 70 percent of displaced residents were still displaced, per reporting by Grist.

There is real motion. CalMatters reports local agencies have approved roughly 3,000 rebuilding permits — moving about three times faster than pre-fire permitting — and the state has put $2.5 billion toward relief and recovery, alongside suspended environmental review and fast-tracked approvals. The Milken Institute has a clear-eyed one-year retrospective on why speed at the permit counter can't fix a broken insurance market, labor shortages, and construction costs.

The permitting reforms are genuinely working, and they prove something this city has resisted admitting for decades: the process was always the choke point. The question worth keeping on the front page is whether the emergency-only version of a functional permit office becomes the permanent one. If a permit can move three times faster after a catastrophe, it could have moved that fast before one.