By Jorge Casuso
January 12, 2026 -- One year after fire devastated Pacific Palisades, displaced residents are still waiting for long overdue financial help and greater government certainty.
Last Wednesday, nearly 1,000 residents descended on the charred remains of their once idyllic community to express anger, heartbreak and frustration aimed at local and State officials.
Their hopes dashed by meager or delayed insurance reimbursements and an unresponsive government bureaucracy, they came armed with a blunt message on t-shirts and signs -- “They let us Burn” and “Fix the Red Tape."
Six months after Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order to fast-track rebuilding homes and schools by suspending local permitting laws and building codes, little progress has been made.
Of the approximately 13,000 homes destroyed in last January's Palisades and Eaton fires that raged for more than three weeks, fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt, the Los Angeles Daily News reported last week.
In Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas, L.A. County had issued rebuilding permits for only 686 of the approximately 6,800 destroyed homes and businesses as of December, according to LA City data cited by the New York Post.
The dearth of permits comes nine months after LA Mayor Karen Bass announced an emergency executive order suspending the collection of rebuilding fees for Palisades fire victims.
The executive order "directs city departments to refrain from collecting permit and plan check fees" pending City Council’s adoption of an amendment to waive the fees.
“City leadership must work together to remove these barriers, and today’s action provides immediate relief for residents while expediting the process for City Council to waive these fees,” Bass said in a statement.
On December 2, however, the City Council delayed voting on the fee waiver, sending the item back to the Budget and Finance Committee for more analysis after being informed the City would lose between $86 million and nearly $280 million.
"For now, some fees remain temporarily suspended under a mayoral executive order," the Los Angeles Daily News wrote after the vote.
"(B)ut without a permanent ordinance, homeowners and landlords rebuilding after the disaster still don’t know how much they will ultimately owe," the paper noted
Meanwhile, insurance companies have been slow to process claims or issue checks, which residents say often don't come close to covering the damages inflicted by the costliest fire in the nation's history.
By December, less than 20 percent of those who lost their homes in the fires had closed out their claims, according to a survey of 2,335 "fire-impacted residents" taken nine months after the fires.
The survey by the Department of Angels, a nonprofit group formed to advocate for fire victims, concluded that "for many homeowners, navigating insurance claims has become a significant barrier to recovery."
While California received $5.3 billion in aid from FEMA to clear debris and support businesses, Newsom has made four unsuccessful requests to the Trump administration and U.S. Congress for an additional $40 billion.
A quarter of the supplemental appropriation -- $9.9 billion -- would fund "the rebuilding of schools, childcare centers, homes, and vital community facilities," according to Newsom's office.
But it appears the money -- which Newsom again requested in December -- will only be released with safeguards after California's projected $18 billion deficit and checkered spending history.
Last month, the New York Post reported that U.S. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who is leading an investigation into the Palisades Fire with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), "is entertaining the idea of a special master to oversee fire aid to California.
"Like the special master who oversaw the 9/11 Victims Compensation Fund, this one would ensure any federal money gets spent properly," the paper reported.