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President Donald Trump’s executive order taking over rebuilding permits in LA is a welcome sign that our federal government has not left fire victims behind.
It represents a bold commitment to help us rebuild our communities — and that makes us hopeful.
The executive order has, inevitably, provoked strong reactions — for, and against.
Some see it as federal overreach. Others welcome it as a long-overdue show of urgency.
Regardless, the truth is that permitting is only one obstacle to the recovery of our community.
If the team from Washington, DC, arrives expecting to find the main bottleneck at the LA Department of Building and Safety, it may discover otherwise.
The city has made and largely kept one singular promise since the fire: permits will move more quickly than they have in the past (as slow as that has been).
For example, environmental reviews have been suspended for many rebuilding applications.
The real problem, as Trump is about to find out, is a lack of vision, organization, and money.
The State of California, for example, has yet to provide direct rebuilding funds to homeowners.
And LA has failed to establish a government body — a recovery authority, or a resilience district — with the authority to raise money, fix infrastructure, and stabilize construction costs — more than a year after the fire.
The city council, for example, has been sitting on a motion to create a Climate Resilience District since the week after the fire.
Don’t let that name throw you off: the purpose of a climate district is simply to access money set aside by the state to make our communities more resilient to natural disasters.
Mayor Karen Bass has done nothing to move that along. The city’s posture has effectively been: build when you can — if you can — and good luck.
That is not recovery. That is not a strategy.
Pacific Palisades matters, because it is not just another neighborhood.
Founded in the 1920s, our community holds an outsized place in LA’s cultural identity.
Early Western movie lots operated here. One of the region’s first piers extended off our coastline. European refugees fleeing Nazi persecution settled here.
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President Ronald Reagan made Palisades his home before leaving for the White House in 1981.
Pacific Palisades is not just the stereotype of a “rich area.” It includes retirees living on fixed incomes. It includes mobile home residents, whose communities date back to the 1950s.
It includes young families forced to uproot school-aged children to flee burning neighborhoods. They worry about returning to streets that are only partially rebuilt, and barely recognizable.
As LA prepares to host the World Cup, next year’s Super Bowl, and the 2028 Summer Olympics, Pacific Palisades will be part of the global face of our city.
That is why we cannot fail.
“Permit quickly” is not enough — not when our streets buckle under heavy construction traffic; not when there are only two roads into town; and not when labor and material costs are rising faster than insurance proceeds can keep up.
The federal government does have a role to play — beyond permits.
At the Palisades Recovery Coalition, we have urged state leadership to consider legislation that captures a portion of the unexpected sales tax revenue California will receive from the massive volume of building materials purchased during this recovery, and reinvests that money directly back into the community.
Those funds could be used to purchase materials in bulk and to stage them locally, helping make building affordable again.
We qualify for state money under a wildfire prevention referendum, Proposition 4, that passed just before the fire. But none of it is moving yet.
All of this means that our president, the Builder-in-Chief, has a role to play. Federal relief and community block grants can change the game.
Perhaps the president and his team on the ground in Pacific Palisades will find that permitting isn’t the primary issue. Leadership and focus are what we need.
Bring those to the table, please, Mr. President.
Maryam Zar is the founder of the Palisades Recovery Coalition and writes in her personal capacity.