It has been more than a year since Jeremy Padawer’s home in the Pacific Palisades was destroyed by fire and not a single brick has been laid in the rebuilding process.
The toy-company entrepreneur is poised to apply for his construction permit and optimistically hopes to return to a new house by the end of 2027. He considers himself one of the lucky ones.
Twelve months on from the most destructive fire in Los Angeles history and barely a handful of properties have been rebuilt in the wealthy neighbourhood. What was one of the most desirable places in the country remains scarred by empty lots and charred buildings.
The picture is almost as bleak on the other side of town in Altadena, where the Eaton fire rampaged at the same time as the Palisades blaze and wreaked similar destruction.
In Altadena, residents have complained that red tape has hindered the reconstruction of their incinerated homes.
Local and state officials promised to streamline the process to make rebuilding as painless as possible. Padawer, a member of the They Let Us Burn campaign group, said that vow was never fulfilled.
“There’s a lot of red tape and it comes in different forms,” he said. “They’re still charging people property tax, even where the lot burned down. And they’re still charging people for permitting, which is an absolute joke.”
The fires, which began on January 7, left 31 people dead and destroyed about 13,000 homes and other residential properties. The breadth of destruction was immense and left communities with a daunting rebuild.
Even celebrity homes in the star-filled enclaves of Malibu and the Palisades remain in ruins. The $6.5 million house belonging to the actors Adam Brody and Leighton Meester burnt in the Palisades and is still a charred wreck.
Adam Brody and Leighton Meester were among the Pacific Palisades residents who lost their homes
Sir Anthony Hopkins’s Palisades estate was gutted by the flames. Rebuilding work is yet to begin.
Anthony Hopkins’s home in Pacific Palisades was also reduced to rubble
The comedian Billy Crystal had lived in his family home for almost 50 years. There was little left of it once the fires were extinguished and the plot is still empty.
Billy Crystal’s Palisades home after the fire
John Goodman’s Palisades home was razed to the ground by the blaze.
Recent pictures show the site has been cleaned up and building work appears ready to commence, suggesting the 73-year-old actor is preparing reconstruction.
Mel Gibson was in Austin, Taxas preparing to record a podcast with Joe Rogan when he discovered his Malibu house had been destroyed. Pictures suggest he is preparing to rebuild on the site.
Mel Gibson’s destroyed home
Miles Teller, the Top Gun: Maverick actor, also lost his property in the Palisades fire. The empty lot appears to have been cleared of hazardous material but a rebuild has not started.
Miles Teller’s house and burnt-out pool
And Paris Hilton’s coastal Malibu mansion was lost in the flames, with the socialite saying she watched it burn live on television. It does not appear as though reconstruction is under way on the site.
Paris Hilton’s house in Malibu was destroyed in the fires
While it is unclear if celebrities have been battling the same obstacles as their non-famous neighbours in attempting to rebuild, that so many of their properties remain empty lots illustrates the difficulty of construction even for those with massive resources.
Homeowners had to ensure their properties were clear of hazardous material before a shovel could be put in the ground — a process that took many months.
Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, has called for a law exempting fire victims from construction permit fees in a move that could save applicants tens of thousands of dollars. The Los Angeles city council, which has faced financial problems, has yet to make a decision on the fees.
Bass has touted the speed of the rebuilding process. “This is one of the fastest recovery and rebuilding efforts that the state of California has ever seen,” she said.
However she acknowledged that a full recovery would be a “long-term, multi-year effort”.
“I remain committed to continuing to use the full-force of my mayoral power to restore the Palisades community and return families home as quickly and safely as possible.”
Padawer, 52, who lived in the Palisades alongside his wife and teenage daughters, disputes the mayor’s claim that the rebuild has broken records.
The remains of Padawar’s home
JEREMY PADAWAR
He has rented a property in nearby Santa Monica while he waits for his home to be rebuilt. Unlike many of his neighbours Padawer had no problems with his insurance company, which paid out his policy in full. However he still faces a three-year wait to return home.
“We’re essentially building the same house that burnt down,” he said. “So you’d think we’d get a rubber stamp. We’re hoping the permit takes 90 days or less, but who knows?
“It could be the end of 2027 that we move back. So that would be three years from the fire. But please keep in mind that our situation is the absolute best it could be. I’ve had a great career, I had great insurance.”
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Patricia Lewin, an 85-year-old retired physician originally from the UK, had lived at her Palisades home for almost 50 years before it was destroyed in the fires.
It took almost a year for her insurer to pay up, delaying her rebuild. She is replacing her old house — where the late Hollywood actor Anthony Quinn once lived, with a prefabricated property.
“Not that it’s any cheaper than a regular build,” she said. “But I’m hoping it’ll be quicker and there will be less for me to do.” She does not expect to move in until the summer of 2027.
Lewin echoed a common complaint among fire victims that the process to rebuild is difficult to understand and the complexities of the various regulations is only grasped by experts.
“I feel it’s very confusing,” Lewin said. “I’m hoping that the company [providing her prefab] will know what to do and they’ll tell me, because I have no idea.”
Lewin, who is temporarily living in Culver City, is still paying property taxes on her vacant lot. She has called for the tax to be abolished and, along with many of her neighbours, believes that the construction permit fees should also be waived.
The uneven recovery across LA can be partially explained by the different jurisdictions. The Pacific Palisades is run by the city of Los Angeles, Altadena by the county and Malibu is a standalone city.
More than 1,400 rebuilding permits have been issued for the Palisades and more than 400 projects have begun construction, according to official figures. Of those, only two homes have been fully rebuilt and one of those was a show home from a developer.
In Malibu, where almost 600 family homes were destroyed by the Palisades fire, only 22 building permits have been approved, the city’s rebuild dashboard showed. Altadena’s recovery is further along. Construction has been completed on seven residential properties, while more than 500 are currently being built.
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Professor Megan Mullin, the faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, said that in many areas the official response to the disaster has been a “qualified success”.
“There are some things going about as well as we could expect, given the scale of devastation,” she said. “The city and the county have been doing their best to facilitate a permitting process that moves as quickly as we could expect, given the capacities of these local governments and the complexity of the task.
“That is not to say that it’s moving perfectly. The frustrations that people are feeling are real.”
But even once the effort is over, Padawer fears the Palisades will not be the same place once the rebuild is finally complete.
“The longer they wait to do things that empower people to build back faster,” he said, “the more disastrous this whole situation is getting.”