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- Fewer than 40% of the 465 homes destroyed by the 2018 Woolsey Fire in Malibu have been rebuilt.
- Some property owners blame conflicting regulations and bureaucratic hurdles for development along the coastline for their struggles.
- The problems represent the nightmare scenario for those who lost their homes and want to rebuild quickly after the Palisades Fire. Gov. Gavin Newsom and others have pledged to waive some permitting requirements.
Mike and DNA Moore moved to Malibu in the late 1990s when DNA was pregnant with their first child. They raised three kids in the community, and their youngest now coaches volleyball at Malibu High School, his alma mater. Over the years, DNA has worked with dozens of local families as a physical therapist treating children with developmental disabilities. Their lives are so entwined in Malibu that when the Woolsey Fire burned down their two-story, Cape Cod-style house in late 2018, the Moores had no doubt they were going to rebuild.
“Home is where the heart is,” said DNA Moore, 53. “My broken heart is here.”
More than six years after the fire, the Moores are still waiting to move into a new house. Caught in a tangle of government permitting rules, the couple has yet to secure approval to break ground.
“Every time we submit our plans, it comes back with another half a dozen line items to address,” said Mike Moore, also 53. “When is this going to end?”
Fewer than 40% of the 465 Malibu homes destroyed in the Woolsey Fire have been reconstructed, according to city statistics. Many reasons contribute. Homeowners might be unwilling because of fire-related trauma to start anew in the same place they used to live. Some might be underinsured. One fifth of affected homeowners have not submitted any rebuilding plans to the city.
But for the Moores and many others, the problem has been navigating the web of regulations controlling what can get built along California’s coastline.
The Moores’ struggles represent a nightmare scenario for property owners hoping to come back quickly after last month’s Eaton and Palisades fires devoured more than 11,600 homes in Altadena, Pacific Palisades, Malibu and surrounding communities. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. county officials have promised to fast-track approvals for those who want to build their homes back the way they were before.
Similar promises were made in 2018. While touring fire-ravaged Malibu with Newsom and President Trump, then-Gov. Jerry Brown touted that he’d signed an executive order “to cut red tape and speed up the permit processes.”
Tara Gallegos, a Newsom spokesperson, said the governor believes regulations still slowed the recovery after Woolsey and other recent fires. Newsom’s pledged that this time will be different.
“While these regulations may be good policy under normal circumstances, this catastrophic firestorm destroyed thousands of homes in just a matter of days, and the Los Angeles community cannot afford any additional delay in rebuilding,” Gallegos said.
Still, many details for how homeowners will receive permission to rebuild remain undetermined.
Eaton and Palisades fires
The devastating fires killed at least 28 people, destroying and damaging more than 18,000 buildings valued at more than $275 billion and leaving a burn zone 2½ times the size of Manhattan.
In most of California, local governments have the authority to approve projects. Los Angeles County will handle rebuilding permits in Altadena because it’s an unincorporated area.
Along the coast, where the Palisades Fire struck, there’s another layer of bureaucracy. The California Coastal Commission oversees development near the Pacific Ocean and adds extra rules designed to protect wetlands, combat sea level rise and limit wildfire risk.
Written into state law is an exemption from coastal permitting requirements for property owners who seek to rebuild after natural disasters. The rule applies so long as the new house is no more than 10% larger than the previous one.
Malibu has a local zoning plan approved by the Coastal Commission so the city is largely responsible for permitting, including processing the disaster exemptions. Malibu Mayor Doug Stewart said that residents who have proposed new homes within the standards for the permitting waiver have faced fewer issues getting approved.
“We’re saying, ‘Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild, but don’t expand,’” Stewart said. “You’re asking what are the lessons learned from Woolsey? This is it.”
City statistics show homeowners who have tried to use the disaster exemption have fared better, but only slightly. Of these property owners, 52% have finished. More than 130 such homeowners have their houses under construction or remain in the permitting process.
Those who have wanted to build bigger homes face more arduous standards, such as approval from the city planning commission and potential appeal to the Coastal Commission. Of property owners who have taken this path, 45% are complete.
George Hauptman remains tied in knots by his situation. Hauptman and his wife have lived in Malibu since the mid-1970s when they purchased land and built a house in the hills overlooking Broad Beach. The Woolsey Fire destroyed it.
They pursued a disaster relief waiver and have now fully rebuilt their home down to bolting in the numbers in their address above the exterior entryway. Yet the city has not issued a certificate of occupancy for the Hauptmans to move in. New fire codes required them to provide more water storage at this house than the previous one. So they bought a bigger water tank, and put it where it best fit. But the city told him the spot straddled the property line with his neighbor. After Hauptman hired a surveyor to prove the tank was on his land, the city said its location still violated setback restrictions.
Hauptman refuses to apply for a potentially costly and time-consuming zoning waiver for the tank. He and the city are at a stalemate.
The process, Hauptman said, has made him feel like “an eddy in a river.”
“You just circle around and circle around and circle around,” said Hauptman, 77. “We’re older people and these things just drive you crazy.”
Without a permit for their fully rebuilt home, the Hauptmans have been living in a nearby studio apartment and staying at their new house “a little more often than we should.”
In Seminole Springs Mobile Home Park, 110 homes burned a year ago in the Woolsey fire. But victims have barely set foot on the road to return.
The Moores’ property sits on a hillside across Pacific Coast Highway from Point Dume. To meet current fire codes, they’ve been told they need to widen their driveway. Doing so would expand their home’s footprint into a designated environmentally sensitive area, which requires extra scrutiny under coastal regulations. They also want to install a pool next to their house that could serve as a source of extra water in case of another fire. Like the driveway, that idea has stalled in permitting.
The couple has pleaded their case over emails with city officials. In the fall, interim Planning Director Maureen Tamuri apologized for what they were going through.
She cited a staffing shortage and coastal regulations for tying the city’s hands.
“Sorry it has been such a difficult process for you,” Tamuri wrote to the Moores. “I have worked for 36 years now in govt. and I have never seen a City with these complexities, and with so little authority vested in the Director because of the Coastal Plan. It’s a real outlier.”
Stewart said homeowners like the Moores and Hauptmans have faced permitting issues because they went beyond a simple rebuild of their home.
“It’s not the same house,” Stewart said. “You’ve got a swimming pool going in. As you look at all the exceptions, it starts to add up and you go, ‘It’s not a rebuild.’”
Property owners and developers have long bashed the coastal regulations as onerous with or without natural disasters. When meeting with local leaders in Los Angeles after the fires, President Trump said the Coastal Commission was considered the hardest agency in the country to secure permits.
“I’m not going to let them get away with their antics,” Trump said. The president said that he would “override” the commission for rebuilding efforts, but has not provided any further details.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed an executive order suspending parts of the Coastal Act and the California Environmental Quality Act to aid homeowners rebuilding after losses in last week’s wildfires.
Before Trump’s statement, Newsom issued an executive order on easing coastal regulations. The governor’s order largely restated the natural disaster exemption already in the law.
The Coastal Commission published information for rebuilding homeowners that said like-for-like disaster rebuilds were free from coastal permitting rules because of the existing law and the governor’s order. Newsom responded by calling the commission’s guidance “legally erroneous” and issued another executive order. This one said that property owners didn’t need an exemption to rebuild their home as it was before, but rather that the coastal rules didn’t apply at all. The commission removed its guidance from its website.
“We have a limited role clearly,” said Coastal Commission Executive Director Kate Huckelbridge at an agency meeting last week.
How all this is going to work remains unclear. Some government entity will still need to decide if a homeowner’s rebuilding blueprints fit within the waiver provisions, let alone how to handle related issues, such as the enhanced fire codes ensnaring the permits of the Hauptmans and Moores. Complicating the situation is that, unlike Malibu, the city of Los Angeles does not have a local zoning plan approved by the commission. That means, under normal circumstances, the city’s permitting decisions in Pacific Palisades could be appealed to the agency.
The Palisades Fire has further delayed the Moores’ permits. In the aftermath of the blaze, Malibu officials canceled a city biologist’s planned visit to assess the plants on the site. The couple said they’re exhausted from years of bouncing between living in short-term rentals and Airstream trailers on their land.
“We’ve been waiting so long,” DNA Moore said. “I want my house. It’s wrong I still don’t have it.”
Times staff writer Ben Poston contributed to this report.
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