LOS ANGELES (MSI) — On the first anniversary of the Palisades and Eaton wildfires, the pace of rebuilding in the Los Angeles area remains slow, with fewer than a dozen homes rebuilt in Los Angeles County since the fires began Jan. 7, 2025. The disaster killed 31 people and destroyed about 13,000 homes and other residential properties after burning for more than three weeks, with cleanup efforts taking about seven months.
In Pacific Palisades, and in Altadena in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, dirt lots and damaged properties still line the streets. In Malibu, foundations and concrete piles rise out of sand where beachfront homes once stood. Neighborhoods are described as pitch black at night where few streetlamps have been replaced, and even homes that survived have not always been inhabited as families work to clear toxic contaminants left by the fires.
While many households have waited for insurance to provide enough money to start rebuilding, some relief groups are stepping in to help, though progress is described as uneven and often slow. For Ted Koerner, an exception has come earlier than for most homeowners. Koerner said his Altadena home was reduced to ash and two chimneys, and that his insurance payout was tied up, prompting him to liquidate about 80% of his retirement holdings to move the process forward.
Koerner, who is 67, said he secured contractors quickly and moved through the rebuilding process. Shortly before Thanksgiving, he was among the first to finish a rebuild after the fires. He linked his decision in part to concern for his 13-year-old golden retriever, Daisy Mae, saying months of waiting could put the dog’s health at risk before a new home was ready.
“That’s the only way we were going to get it done before all of a sudden my dog starts having labored breathing or something else happens,” Koerner said.
Once construction began, his home was completed in just over four months, and Koerner said Daisy Mae is back lying in her favorite spot in the yard under a 175-year-old Heritage Oak. “We made it,” he said.
Many fear they can’t afford to rebuild even when insurance is available. Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, said homeowners are often left confronting large gaps between insurance payments and what it takes to rebuild and/or remediate homes. Chen said households worry about getting started and running out of money.
The article says about 900 homes are under construction and potentially on pace to be completed later this year, but that many homeowners remain stuck while they decide how to fund rebuilding. It also reports that more than 600 properties where a single-family home was destroyed have been sold, citing real estate data tracker Cotality. Separately, the Department of Angels, a nonprofit formed after the disaster to advocate for recovery efforts, found that by December less than 20% of people who experienced total home loss had closed out their insurance claims.
Chen described widespread dissatisfaction among insured residents, saying about one-third of insured respondents had policies with State Farm or the California FAIR Plan, and that many cited burdensome requirements, lowball estimates and dealing with multiple adjusters. In November, Los Angeles County opened a civil investigation into State Farm’s practices and potential violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law. State Farm spokesperson Tom Hartman said in an email that the company has addressed more than 13,500 claims and issued over $5 billion in payments, and called the investigation a “distraction.”
For some, the insurance hurdles are paired with other barriers to rebuilding. Jessica Rogers discovered after the Palisades fire that her coverage had been canceled, according to the article. Rogers, a mother of two, said her fallback was a low-interest Small Business Administration loan, but she described the application process as grueling and said her approval for $550,000 came through last month after she lost her job due to the fire and had her identity stolen.
Rogers is now executive director of the Pacific Palisades Long Term Recovery Group, and the article says she is still weighing how she will cover the remaining costs. She asked, “Do I empty out my 401(k) and start counting every penny in a penny jar around the apartment?”
The rebuilding delays also reflect the displacement facing renters and other residents, the article says. Rogers estimated that there are hundreds of people in Pacific Palisades who are “stuck dealing with FEMA and SBA and figuring out if we could piecemeal something together to build our homes.” The story also describes lingering trauma and says Rogers continues to find herself crying at unexpected moments.
The limited rebuilding a year after the fires echoes a similar recovery pattern after a Dec. 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colorado and destroyed more than 1,000 homes, the article says. Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at Urban Institute, said that at the one-year mark many lots had been cleared and many residents applied for building permits, but that around the 18-month mark is when progress typically shifts from handfuls to hundreds of homes rebuilt.
Rumbach also warned that the second year of recovery can expose inequities, saying it becomes a central question “Who’s doing well and who is really struggling and why?” He pointed to concerns that some neighborhoods and types of people or properties lag further behind.
That concern is present in Altadena, where, the article says, aspiring Black homeowners have drawn long-term interest while facing redlining and other discrimination in other Los Angeles-area communities. It cites that in 2024, 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes, nearly twice the national Black homeownership rate. It also references research by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute that, as of August, seven in 10 Altadena homeowners whose property was severely damaged in the previous year’s wildfire had not begun taking steps to rebuild or sell their home, with Black homeowners described as 73% more likely than others to have taken no action.
For some residents, the rebuilding effort continues even while they live elsewhere. Al and Charlotte Bailey have been living in an RV parked on the empty lot where their home once stood, paying for their rebuild using insurance payout funds and a loan. The article says they are also hoping to receive money from Southern California Edison, citing several lawsuits claiming the company’s equipment sparked the wildfire in Altadena.
“We had been here for 41 years and raised our family here, and in one night it was all gone,” Al Bailey said. “We decided that, whatever it’s going to cost, this is our community.”
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