The City explained the simplicity of the building process.
Last night, September 17, 2025, a webinar “Return and Rebuild” was hosted by the City of Los Angeles, the Office of Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Traci Park, to explain the ease and simplicity of obtaining a building permit.
According to Pali Builds, a website hosted by two Palisadians general contractor Kambiz Kamdar and software developer Frank Renfro, there were 75 new building permits issued in August.
“As of August 31, we have a total of 179 new home building permits issued since the fire. (Excluding permits originating pre-fire.),” Kamdar and Renfro said.
There were about 5,419 homes lost in the Palisades Fire. That means permits have been issued for about three percent of the homes destroyed. click here.
On numerous occasions Councilmember Traci Park and Palisades Recovery Coalition founder Maryam Zar have said that the Palisades is going to be one of the biggest construction projects in California and have worried about the number of workers and the material being transported in and out of the town.
So far that fear has largely gone unfounded, with only sporadic homes going up in different neighborhoods.
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass is being hammered in social media and by other perspective Mayoral candidates for the lack of rebuilding after the fire.
It seems that the City thinks that if there is a lack of rebuilding, it can only mean that residents don’t understand the permitting process, which is not the case.
According to Marmol Radziner architect Bernardo Teran” We submitted the permit drawings and application on June 2 and received our ‘Ready to Issue’ status on July 25. This seven-week timeline included addressing one round of plan check corrections as well as our departmental clearances. In our experience, the process was certainly faster than we would expect for a new residence outside of the fire rebuild area.”
Teran said, “For context, a new single-story residence of the same size and complexity, is not in a hillside zone, has no special planning or homeowners association reviews, or Bureau of Engineering issues we would expect this process to take three months.”
With “the eligible project route and proposed a relatively simple design, the Mayor’s executive orders were especially helpful in streamlining the process,” Teran said. “Reducing the number of departmental clearances and allowing the project to proceed without a soils report made a difference. In addition to this, the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety consistently prioritized our application and stayed in touch with us by phone to help resolve any questions or issues quickly.”
Kambiz told CTN that last night’s webinar was basic and fine for the novice homeowner.
But, “The process is still broken,” Kambiz said, “Everyone faces different scenarios and roadblocks, and what’s missing is a true one-stop shop where Palisadians can get answers in one place. If there were a dedicated center with all the key departments—grading (bonds, etc.), LAFD, and others—available and accessible, residents could resolve issues quickly and keep their projects moving forward.”
He said that an added benefit would be “the average time to pull a permit could drop from 70 days to under 45 days because corrections and clearances could be handled on the spot.”
Reza Akef of Polaris Homes, a 14-year Palisades contractor, questioned the purpose. “The City’s webinar last night ignored every issue that boots on the ground builders and architects have experienced in the past four months.
“Unfortunately, many of us in the community offered our time and expertise to help organize this webinar to be better and provide real solutions for some of the tough issues causing major delays for homeowners,” Akef said. “We were not included.”
He added, “Whether you have a flat or sloped lot, grading is a HUGE delay issue and at this point LADBS doesn’t care to take action. The Mayor even acknowledged this fact in her introduction but LADBS sugarcoated the process and has refused to respond to our requests to make the process better.”
From this editor’s and other residents’ experiences, rebuilding is more than permitting. Money, insurance, construction costs and whether seniors wanted to rebuild and return are also major factors in deciding on construction. Those issues are not being addressed.
We are being gaslit by them. There are tons of problems that the city will not address. They decide to give us a tiny little something and it’s a webinar that any architect or builder has the information already. “Here peasants take this.” Meanwhile Bass goes on, makes up inflated permit numbers and then makes it political and invokes the President. It’s embarrassing. All the employees on the zoom thank her for being a great leader, I want to vomit. Bass says 220 are under construction, that’s a lie. She is delusional and will never take accountability for the fire or the issues with the rebuild. The city does not care, we are not being heard, and our needs are not being met.
I think every Palisadian knows that LA City is broken, incompetent or corrupt.
You can get a straight answer, the responses change by the time of day or day of the week.
The majority of permits issued are for grading and the City is COMPLETELY UNABLE to ensure that the contractors comply with the requirements! We are constantly battling soil dust from contractors that do not use water spray to wet down the work area. The ONLY method to contact Building and Safety, who are responsible for monitoring the contractors, is via 311 which in itseself is a FARCE. If you call, there is no one to take your call. If you use MyLA311 app it goes nowhere. They open the case, the CLOSE the case without doing ANYTHING.