January’s Eaton and Palisades wildfires damaged or destroyed more than 16,000 properties in Los Angeles, making recovery a daunting effort. Yet experts see a potential bright spot that could speed things along: reforms to L.A.’s infamously slow and disjointed permitting process.
“I am establishing a self-certification program to reduce redundancy in the permitting process,” announced L.A.’s mayor, Karen Bass, in her State of the City address at City Hall on April 21, 2025. If successful, a professional program of this sort could expand beyond fire recovery, she said, and address barriers to development that compound L.A.’s broader housing crisis.
Although land use experts have been urging permitting reform for years, “professional self-certification [makes] a lot of sense to the city” now, says David Waite, a partner at the law firm Cox, Castle & Nicholson, because L.A. is trying to bridge a nearly $1 billion budget shortfall. Waite led the self-permitting section of Project Recovery, a report—developed by ULI Los Angeles, UCLA, and USC—that provides actionable recommendations to expedite recovery from the fires.
Mayor Bass announced 1,650 layoffs, including in the City Planning, Bureau of Engineering, and Building and Safety departments, the latter of which is probably responsible for carrying “the baton forward” to implement permitting reform, Waite says. Self-certification would ease those departments’ workload, as well as that of homeowners and builders.
“There’s about 13 different departments that go through the plan check process . . . sequentially,” Waite says. “If there’s a change by one department, a so-called late hit, then it has to go . . . through review a second time.”
Project Recovery’s authors recommended that the city streamline the entire process into one coordinated review. They warned that rebuilding could be delayed by years if such a program wasn’t implemented quickly.
For a single-family home, L.A.’s permitting process takes more than a year, under normal circumstances. With 13,000 households displaced by the fires, the circumstances are far from normal. Experts anticipate that once the application process ramps up, residents will submit 250 to 300 permits per month in each of the fire zones, which would overwhelm the current system.
“There’s a tidal wave coming that no one is going to like,” says Nelson Algaze, CEO of the architecture firm SAA and an author of the self-permitting section of Project Recovery. “Every day of inaction multiplies opportunity costs.”
What is professional self-certification?
A professional self-certification program would allow licensed architects and engineers who meet specific criteria, such as a clean record and a length of experience yet to be determined, to bypass the prolonged plan review process and obtain permits in just a few days—as long as the submitted project is relatively straightforward. If projects don’t comply with permitting requirements, approval could be revoked later. Advocates argue that this approach formalizes a responsibility these professionals already assume, thus streamlining an inefficient system.
“When we get a building permit, and the city misses something, and [there’s] a big fat error, we own the problem,” Algaze says. “The city doesn’t own anything. So, this approval process that we put ourselves through is a stupid rubber stamp.”
Implementation is still a big question mark
The mayor’s announcement was light on details about how the city and county will implement self-certification.
“Getting it right in terms of the implementation and execution is going to be really important in the days and weeks ahead,” Waite says.
The likely next step, he says, is for the Building and Safety Department to present a proposed ordinance to L.A.’s City Planning Department and City Council.
“Hopefully, Building and Safety will move quickly with the recommendations and . . . be able to actually prepare a draft ordinance in short order,” Waite says.
If permitting reform isn’t implemented quickly, displaced residents could decide not to return to their neighborhoods. Some could leave L.A. altogether. The period that people are willing to wait tends to max out after several years.
“Certainty, with respect to time, is really important, so families can plan when they can return and rebuild,” Waite says. “It’s really important that there be a degree of certainty, so that they can replan their lives and maintain stability.”
This article is part of a series examining topics in the Project Recovery report. Join us next Friday for a new installment.
Related reading:
● Holding on to Altadena: Rebuilding to Preserve Housing Wealth
● January 2025 Economist Snapshot: Los Angeles Wildfires Recovery Will Be Costly and Lengthy
