Business
L.A. wildfire victims uncertain about returning to their burned neighborhoods
A new survey of victims of the Palisades and Eaton fires shows most would like to return to their old neighborhoods, but they’re worried that government officials can’t make it happen soon enough.
The vast majority of burned-out homeowners surveyed said they intend to rebuild the homes destroyed in the devastating January fires — yet half say they are unwilling to wait more than three years to return.
Urgency on all fronts is paramount to a successful revival of the lost neighborhoods, Los Angeles real estate developer Clare De Briere said.
She helped oversee the survey conducted by Project Recovery, a group of public and private real estate experts who compiled a report in March on what steps can be taken to speed revival as displaced residents weigh their options to return to Pacific Palisades, Altadena, Malibu and other affected neighborhoods.
The report was compiled by professors in the real estate graduate schools at USC and UCLA, along with the Los Angeles chapter of the Urban Land Institute, a real estate nonprofit education and research institute.
For the follow-up survey, Project Recovery tracked down nearly 350 homeowners who experienced total loss or significant damage to their properties to determine their preferences for the future. Most would like to return, but are skeptical about their chances to get back in the near future and will only wait so long before settling in elsewhere.
“For every year it takes to at least start the rebuilding, 20% of the population will find another another place to go,” De Briere said. “If that statistic is right, then after five years, you’re going to have a whole new community there, so it won’t be the same.
“You won’t have the same people remembering the same parades and the same soccer teams, or the librarian who used to have story hour in the local library. All that sort of cultural memory gets, gets wiped out,” she said.
The Project Recovery report outlines a plan to get homes rebuilt within three years after the land is cleared for redevelopment, but it requires close, constant cooperation between builders and public officials overseeing construction approval and restoration of infrastructure such as water and power.
In the recent survey, the top concern of displaced homeowners “was about the lack of leadership, both on the city and the county side to get it done,” she said.
That response came as a surprise to De Briere, who expected affordability to be the chief concern, since many homeowners are indeed worried that they won’t have enough money to rebuild the way they want.
But it typically takes up to 18 months to get a building permit in Los Angeles, a process that needs to be reduced to one to two months, Project Recovery said.
That would require using an expedited process being explored by Los Angeles officials that would allow licensed architects, engineers and design professionals to “self-certify” building plans and specifications as compliant with objective building code requirements. Artificial intelligence could crosscheck their assertions far faster than human staff would be able to do it.
Other major concerns among homeowners surveyed was that rebuilding would take too long and that their communities may never be the same.
Homeowners also worry about being in a fire zone or a landslide zone, she said.
The report authors hope that the rebuilding process will bring better knowledge about managing the ways homes interact with the potentially combustible environment around them.
“If we don’t do it differently, we’re going to have the same thing happen in Beverly Hills, and Bel Air, in Silver Lake, Los Feliz and Echo Park,” De Briere said. “This is what happens when we’re living this close to nature and we’re not managing it right.”
Other findings of the survey included:
- Two-thirds of those affected by the Palisades fire say they are uncertain they will have sufficient resources to fully cover rebuilding expenses and additional living costs that are not covered by insurance. In the Eaton fire area, 82% either do not have or are uncertain they will have sufficient resources.
- In the Palisades area, 70% of homeowners may not return if it takes more than three years to rebuild. In the Eaton fire area, 63% may not return after three years.
- A “look-alike” rebuild within 110% of their prior home size is planned by 77% of people who want to return to the Palisades fire area, while 84% plan a similar rebuild in the Eaton fire area.
- On average, homeowners in both areas expect about 70% of their rebuilding costs to be covered by insurance. On the low end of anticipated insurance support, 13% from the Palisades fire area and 19% from the Eaton fire area expect that between zero and 50% of their rebuilding costs will be covered by insurance.
- Owners estimate it will cost about $800 per square foot to rebuild in the Palisades fire area and $570 per square foot in the Eaton fire area.
- Cost is the top concern for owners in the Palisades fire area with a net worth of less than $5 million, and quality is the No. 1 concern for those with a net worth of less than $1 million in the Eaton fire area.
- More than 60% of homeowners in both areas are willing to forgo customization of their new homes if financial compromises are necessary.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
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