Permitting Horror Stories 7
What happens when a city is intentionally slow with issuing hundreds of construction permits after a tragic fire?
Catastrophic fires spread through several Los Angeles County communities back in January of this year. Pacific Palisades in the City of Los Angeles and Altadena in Los Angeles County where hit the hardest, but other smaller communities, like the beach front community of Malibu, were also devastated. Yesterday, there was an article by Jeff Flemming in the Los Angeles Times that described how the City of Malibu has only issued 4 permits out of 200 applications submitted. That’s a measly 2% compared to 43% for the City of Los Angeles and 26% for Los Angeles County who have issued 801 and 577 permits respectively.
I posted this Times article onto my Facebook page and a friend asked me, “Why do I think Malibu is moving so slow?” My immediate answer is that the city probably has a parochial mindset. I can’t speak from experience because I haven’t designed a project or performed permitting services within the city limits. Malibu is a southern California beach city a few miles up the Pacific Coast Highway from Pacific Palisades. The 2020 census documents the population of Malibu at over 10,000 people and is where over 700 homes burned. This is a small, close-knit community with multi-million dollar homes on beachfront or hillside property. Because of Malibu’s exclusivity, it doesn’t allow for a quick and easy permitting process. Their slow process is on top of the already strict state coastal development zone, flood zone, earthquake zone, and hillside zone requirements.
For the fire rebuild homes that I’m currently working on in the Palisades which is a part of LA city and in Topanga which is LA County, you can build like-for-like up to 110% of square footage of the house you had, but you need to adhere to the current building codes. So if your house was built 30, 40, 50 or more years ago, it most likely wouldn’t have met current code standards.
If a homeowner decides that they want a whole new house that goes over the 110%, then they will also need to apply for a Coastal Development Permit (CDP) which will cost a lot of time and money. It’s not worth it unless you have the luxury of deep pockets and time to wait. Remember a CDP is a discretionary permit which means approval is NOT guaranteed.
Moving on. In order to get your permit approved you need much more than just architectural drawings. A boundary survey (and topographic survey, if it’s a hillside property) is required. This makes sure that the architect has correct information to make sure that the house gets rebuilt according to the correct setback distances from the property lines and where important features of the site are located. A geotechnical report is needed so the structural engineer can design the appropriate foundation based on the type of soil that makes up the property. If you have a hillside property, a civil engineer is needed for locating retaining walls, and providing grading plans, drainage plans, and locating stormwater retention basins. All of these documents are required for permitting and need to be provided by licensed engineers with each one costing thousands of dollars for their services.
Anyone who has survived a bathroom or kitchen remodel, knows all the potential pitfalls. Now imagine having to go through that entire process for rebuilding your house. As an architect who started her career working on high-end single family homes, residential architecture is a very nuanced field to work in and even more so while clients are grieving the loss of their home; wanting to get back into it a quickly as possible; and all while trying to navigate the bureaucracies of both the building department and their insurance company. In client meetings, we can quickly move from wearing the architect’s hat to a therapist’s hat, and perhaps even grief counselor’s hat. You can’t really prepare for it because of the unexpected nature of those moments.
As you can see the whole process of obtaining permits is already extremely regulated and complicated. Add in grief over losing one’s home and frustration with government agencies, it can turn into a powder keg of emotions. So when a city like Malibu intentionally slows the process of permit approvals to discourage or limit development, it may have been the right strategy for this community to control growth and to maintain its exclusivity in the past. However, now is the time for adaptability, for flexibility, and most of all for empathy to lead the way. The slow permitting process discourages disaster victims from returning to their homes by creating unnecessary financial hardship which will keep many people from returning to the place they once called home. Which makes me wonder: is that Malibu’s end game?