Noah writes about the scandal of Los Angeles’s failure to prepare for and respond to the Palisades fire that incinerated much of the city in January of this year. Mayor Karen Bass now seems to be covering up her missteps rather than trying to correct them. Meanwhile, another Palisades fire scandal unfolds in broad daylight: the incredible failure of municipal governments in Los Angeles to allow for timely rebuilding.

In the year since the fire that destroyed 13,000 homes across Los Angeles County, precisely one house has been fully rebuilt and certified for occupancy. You can see a picture of it here. The home looks lovely, aside from the fact that it’s surrounded by burned-out empty lots. It is obvious that no construction has begun on any of them.

The biggest reason why rebuilding is miserably slow is that local government makes it that way. In California — and especially in affluent communities like the Palisades — municipalities design their zoning rules and building codes to keep new construction out. Residents usually demand such restrictions, as they limit who can move into their neighborhoods and artificially raise their home values. When it’s their houses that need to be built, however, the bureaucratic hurdles they relied upon become a nightmare.

As of today, Los Angeles County has issued 41 percent of the 2,807 permits for rebuilding that residents have requested. The city of Los Angeles has approved 48 percent of its permit applications. Malibu, one of the cities hit hardest by the wildfires, has issued just 22 of the 202 permit requests it has received — with another 80 not even under review yet. Pasadena has issued 18 permits out of 61 applications.

Overall, a paltry 13 percent of destroyed homes have received rebuilding permits in nearly a year. Before obtaining a permit, developers need to pass a zoning review and then get their building plans approved for each house they plan to build. After construction ends, houses must pass final inspections to receive a Certificate of Occupancy.

Again, these processes are designed to be arduous, so it’s extremely difficult to remake them in a heartbeat for speed and efficiency. The state of California says that it has “worked to clear barriers and cut red tape” by waiving regulatory requirements and streamlining the permitting process. Yet most of the permitting necessary to rebuild happens at the local level. The very fact that the state government layered on myriad rules for homebuilders in the first place, which it can now waive, demonstrates why California is so ill-suited for a major rebuilding effort.

Los Angeles, in particular, was one of the worst metro areas in America for new housing construction in 2024, with red-state cities like Raleigh and Austin building five times as many units per capita. Its standing has probably not improved much in 2025, given that the city can’t even rebuild old homes.

Granted, it might not be a good idea to reconstruct every home destroyed in the Palisades fire, as the wooded edges of Los Angeles remain one of the most susceptible residential areas to wildfire in the country. But the county’s failure to rebuild is not a conscious decision by any thoughtful authority — in fact, officials are encouraging people to rebuild their homes exactly where they burned down. No, it’s institutional sclerosis.

Local governments in Los Angeles County want wealthy residents to stay so they can keep collecting property taxes on luxury homes. Reconstruction is in their interest. They simply cannot overcome the regulatory barriers that they themselves erected over decades to keep new houses out. That is a scandal of encumbering governance, currently punishing the privileged constituencies it was intended to profit — and a warning to other fire-vulnerable California neighborhoods with similarly prohibitive building rules.