L.A. County says state housing laws stand in way of rebuilding. Advocates disagree

A request by L.A. County officials to temporarily waive state housing laws as residents rebuild in fire-ravaged swaths of unincorporated areas drew the ire of housing advocates, who accused the officials of skirting efforts at boosting affordable housing.

County Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Lindsey Horvath, who represent districts blackened by this month’s wildfires, put forward a motion Tuesday with 41 steps they want department heads to take to speed up the recovery process.

That included an ask to Gov. Gavin Newsom to temporarily exempt the county from some of the state’s most significant housing laws intended to speed up the creation of affordable housing, including parts of Senate Bill 330, aimed at preserving affordable housing, and the Density Bonus Law, which encourages developers to build new units.

Amy Bodek, head of the county planning department, said she believed the state laws could end up hampering recovery, incentivizing density at the expense of homeowners looking to rebuild what they had.

“In order to provide the community the ability to return and not face immediate displacement, we understand the need to pause some of these policies,” she said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting, adding that she wanted to ask for a five-year waiver for unincorporated areas, which include Altadena and some of the communities burned by the Palisades fire.

“We are not antihousing,” she said. “To say that we are antihousing is someone that’s not been paying attention.”

At the meeting, housing advocates contended that the county‘s waiver proposal would slash too many restrictions, bypassing laws aimed at solving the region’s affordable housing crisis.

“This is just totally going in the wrong direction,” said Nolan Gray, senior director of legislation and research for California YIMBY, noting that the laws have spurred the construction of thousands of affordable units across the state. “There’s so much in here that has nothing to do with helping people rebuild.”

Chris Elmendorf, a law professor at UC Davis who studies California housing law, said the county was too broad in requesting a waiver in undefined “fire impacted communities.”

“If the goal is to get people back to their communities as fast as possible, shouldn’t the goal be to build as much housing in those communities as fast as possible?” he said.

Barger, who represents Altadena, said the accusation that the county was uninterested in ramping up housing “could not be further from the truth.”

Bodek said it was unclear whether the governor would agree to the county’s waiver request, but she hoped the letter would be a starting point for conversations with the state.

The remarks came as part of a larger discussion over how the county should prepare for an influx of new buildings in areas reduced to rubble. Bodek said the planning department, which is responsible for permitting in unincorporated L.A. County, is expecting as many as 8,000 permit applications from homeowners wanting to rebuild after the Eaton fire and 600 from the Palisades fire.

Without beefing up staffing, she said, “it is going to be breaking our department.”

Mark Pestrella, the head of the county public works department, said his agency was similarly preparing for a mammoth undertaking in repairing utilities in fire-scarred areas.

“A small public works department needs to be created in particular for the Altadena area if we are to meet the needs of the community to rebuild,” he told the supervisors Tuesday.

The repairs and rebuilding are likely to cost the county billions of dollars, much of which county officials hope will come from the federal government. On Tuesday, the White House said it would freeze trillions in federal grants and loans that don’t align with the Trump administration’s priorities. The order was quickly blocked by a federal judge.

“We are very concerned about that,” said Fesia Davenport, the county’s chief executive. “We do need to know what the exact impact will be on the county.”