It has been 10 months since the wildfires in Los Angeles ended. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have been running around bragging about what a great job they are doing in the rebuilding process. But the city has rebuilt a total of one home.
And that one does not even count.
Last Friday, Bass proudly announced that “the first home has officially been issued its Certificate of Occupancy,” which is the “final step in the rebuilding process” and “a major milestone in the City’s recovery effort in Pacific Palisades.” Everyone did a victory lap for this wondrous moment of cooperation and disaster recovery, proving that Democratic governance truly works in California.
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The problem here is that the rebuilt home in question was not lost in the fires. According to property records, the homeowner requested a demolition permit in January, just before the fires started. The entire plan for the house was to be torn down and rebuilt. If the fires had never happened, this house still would have been destroyed and rebuilt — the only difference is that much of the demolition was done by Mother Nature for free.
Pull up the Los Angeles County rebuilding dashboard, and you will see that this remains the only house that has been rebuilt after the wildfires. Another 371 remain in construction, and roughly 1,100 that have submitted full building plans are still waiting for a permit. Los Angeles has been so quick to declare victory in the fire rebuild that it included a house that was always going to be torn down and rebuilt because, otherwise, Los Angeles leaders have nothing to show five months later.
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Meanwhile, Newsom is campaigning to be the next president, declaring that, while President Donald Trump “turns his back on LA fire survivors,” he is “creating more flexibility for recovery and rebuilding.” Newsom and Bass have spent the last 10 months bragging about cutting red tape and speeding up the recovery process, and they still have zero houses to show for it. They are both trying to claim a political victory, rather than ensuring that houses are rebuilt after a fire that spread out of control due to the incompetence of their administrations.
There is no victory to be had in the Los Angeles rebuild, no matter how much Bass and Newsom want to put it behind them. Their failures led to this situation, and they are eager to claim they have fixed it without actually doing anything, so they can move on and focus on their political ambitions.