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When Will Los Angeles Rebuild? Comparing Housing Recovery Timelines after Four Recent Wildfires [1]
['Andrew Rumbach', 'Sara Mctarnaghan', 'Kameron Lloyd', 'Aleszu Bajak']
Date: 2025-02-19
The recent wildfires in Los Angeles burned more than 11,500 homes across 60 square miles, making the fires one of the costliest disasters in US history and deepening the city’s housing crisis. State and local officials have already taken steps to speed the city’s housing recovery, but past disasters show that rebuilding can take years.
To put Los Angeles’s challenge in context, we analyzed recovery timelines for wildfires in Hawaii, Colorado, and Northern California that also destroyed significant numbers of homes across housing markets in crisis. Each of these areas had historically high prices and low vacancies at the time of the fires, causing significant displacement—especially for renters and households with fewer economic resources.
How long does it take a community to rebuild after a wildfire?
The recovery process looks similar from place to place, but recent wildfires demonstrate that the fire’s context, the way recovery is governed, survivors’ financial resources, and more will dictate rebuilding speed. In broad terms, every damaged or destroyed structure must hit three key milestones:
Debris removal. The debris that remains after a fire, including potentially hazardous waste like asbestos and lead, must be carefully removed before a property is ready for redevelopment. Building permit. A building permit indicates a property owner has successfully submitted plans for the construction or reconstruction of their home. Certificate of occupancy. This final milestone indicates that a home has been inspected, meets all relevant building codes, and is safe and habitable. A certificate of occupancy typically indicates a structure’s recovery is complete.
To show how the pace of housing recovery differs across communities and contexts, we collected property-level data from the local governments affected by four recent wildfires:
The Carr Fire (July–August 2018) damaged or destroyed nearly 1,300 homes in Shasta and Trinity Counties in Northern California, including in the city of Redding.
(July–August 2018) damaged or destroyed nearly 1,300 homes in Shasta and Trinity Counties in Northern California, including in the city of Redding. The Camp Fire (November 2018) destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in Butte County, California, including the near-complete destruction of the town of Paradise.
(November 2018) destroyed nearly 14,000 homes in Butte County, California, including the near-complete destruction of the town of Paradise. The Marshall Fire (December 2022) damaged or destroyed nearly 1,300 homes in Boulder County, Colorado.
(December 2022) damaged or destroyed nearly 1,300 homes in Boulder County, Colorado. The Maui Wildfires (August 2023) destroyed more than 2,000 homes and caused widespread destruction in the town of Lahaina.
The Carr Fire destroyed 876 homes in Shasta County (and an additional 266 in Redding, where we don’t have data), and debris clearance concluded in May 2020, approximately 21 months after the fire. Today, about 40 percent of properties have received a building permit and 36 percent have been issued a certificate of occupancy, meaning a significant number of homes in Shasta County (59 percent) haven’t even applied for a permit after 6.5 years.
The Camp Fire, which broke out just months later, remains one of the largest and most destructive fires in US history. Rebuilding data show debris clearance was completed in November 2019, a year after the fire, but that building permits have only been issued for 29 percent of properties and certificates of occupancy were issued for just 23 percent. The scale of destruction to Paradise and surrounding communities, the fire’s remote and rural context of the fire, challenging terrain, and the unavailability of skilled contractors and tradespeople, among other factors, have all made rebuilding especially challenging.
Three years after the Marshall Fire, most lots have been cleared of debris and building permits have been issued for 75 percent of the affected houses. Among those, 63 percent have been issued a certificate of occupancy. The relative quickness of the Marshall Fire recovery demonstrates the importance of streamlining permitting and other building requirements and maintaining close personal contact with survivors. It also shows that rebuilding in a major metropolitan region comes with advantages, such as a robust construction industry and a housing market that can absorb survivors awaiting permanent housing recovery.
Maui, where wildfires broke out 18 months ago, is still in the early stages of recovery. The US Army Corps of Engineers began clearing debris in January 2024, approximately five months after the fire, and completed their work seven months later. However, several hundred additional lots (17.5 percent) are still scheduled for debris clearance by private contractors. Of the 1,898 housing units destroyed by the fire, building permits have been issued for just 14 percent and only 6 homes have been rebuilt.
Besides the unique challenges that come from rebuilding in an isolated island state, numerous local experts have explained that progress is slow because of the displacement of survivors, complex and cumbersome environmental and building regulations, delayed delivery of federal resources like Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds, and the complexities that arise from the destruction of so many nonconforming buildings.
Rebuilding is only part of the story
This analysis helps us to understand the broad contours of these communities’ rebuilding progress but misses important details. Most importantly, it focuses on the recovery of structures, not people. A substantial body of research demonstrates that recovery is uneven; some groups, like renters, tend to recover more slowly and have a higher likelihood of being displaced after a disaster.
This analysis also does not detect situations where properties are selectively purchased (or “bought out”) to intentionally stop redevelopment and is less sensitive to important jurisdictional differences in recovery. For example, the Marshall Fire affected both housing-dense suburban communities—where recovery has been quicker—and more-rural and forested areas at higher risk to fires—where recovery has been slower because of differences in permitting, building code requirements, and the need for customized home designs to fit the challenging terrain.
As California policymakers set goals for rebuilding the affected areas of Los Angeles, they should track not only the speed of housing unit recovery but also the quality and equity. The aftermath of past disasters shows the importance of tracking outcomes for property and people to ensure the groups often left behind—those with low incomes, renters, people living in unincorporated areas or less resourced jurisdictions—are part of the recovery.
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[1] Url:
https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/when-will-los-angeles-rebuild-comparing-housing-recovery-timelines-after-four-recent
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