Finance
Rebuilding permits in Altadena have picked up, but construction lags and financial woes loom
Seven months after a wildfire destroyed thousands of homes in Altadena and surrounding neighborhoods, about 70% of homeowners who suffered severe fire damage had neither put their property up for sale nor made a move toward rebuilding.
But a few weeks after the first anniversary of the fire, the number of people in that limbo had dropped to fewer than half, as more have taken some action toward recovery, according to data released Thursday by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute.
Though it’s the latest sign of progress in the Eaton fire’s aftermath, researchers say that recovery remains far from settled for most fire survivors, even if they’ve started on a path to rebuilding.
The data show that there has been a new wave of people starting and advancing through the permitting process, but a widening lag after that point because of, among other reasons, financing.
About 44% of homeowners have fully approved permits to rebuild, but only 30% have started construction, according to the data.
“This is the first step in a very long and extensive process,” said Gabriella Carmona, a senior research analyst at the institute and a lead author on the report. “Recovery is still very deeply uncertain for most households.”
Just under 50% of homeowners, the analysis found, still have taken no steps toward recovery.
The report analyzed data from single-family homes that were at least 50% destroyed in the fire, including building permit applications, property sale records and fire damage assessments, as well as race and ethnicity markers for potential disparities. The report did not analyze data for renters, businesses or the Palisades fire zone.
“Rebuilding activity increased across all groups, but the largest gains occurred among Black and Latino homeowners,” the report found, comparing similar data from August with February. The most recent data found that about 56% of Black homeowners had taken some step toward recovery, up from 27% in August. Among Latino households, that metric climbed to 63% as of February, compared with 35% in August.
The new data come as the Eaton fire recovery enters its 15th month. The Times last week released an analysis that found that just over half of all residences destroyed in the Eaton fire — roughly 6,000 — have filed applications to rebuild. The review also found that it is increasingly taking longer for applicants to obtain a permit, up to about 155 days.
Compared with the pace in Santa Rosa after the 2017 Tubbs fire, The Times’ analysis found rebuilding in both Altadena and Pacific Palisades was markedly slower.
Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents Altadena, called the increase in applicants “meaningful forward momentum,” but she acknowledged that means residents from about 3,000 homes still haven’t started to move forward.
“The fact that only half of wildfire survivors have submitted applications makes clear that significant barriers remain, especially financial ones,” Barger said in a statement. “Many impacted residents have taken no action to rebuild because they lack the capital to move forward — an issue exacerbated by delayed insurance payouts.”
Barger continued to call for more federal support to help finance the recovery, something that Carmona said would help homeowners who remain stalled. But Carmona also said new policies are needed to support different financial avenues for families and community members to finance rebuilding, access meaningful loans and receive full insurance payouts.
It’s still unclear when and how much Southern California Edison may pay out to fire victims — the utility has not admitted it caused the fire but says its equipment was probably associated with the ignition, and faces hundreds of lawsuits — and what nontraditional or philanthropic options might be available to families.
“Many families [are] stuck between wanting to rebuild” and not being sure “what loan makes sense or what will be available to them,” Carmona said.
Marisol Espino, who lost her home in the Eaton fire and has since become a disaster case manager with the Legacy Land Project, said these financial questions had become a game of mental gymnastics for herself and many of her former neighbors.
“A major misconception is that people can just ‘rebuild,’” Espino said. Instead, people are finding out they’re underinsured, that their insurance money is tied to their mortgage, that they don’t quality for a loan or that the loan they received has major restrictions.
“What’s happening is that people are draining their savings, they’re pulling from their 401(k)s, they’re sacrificing their retirement and their children’s future to try to get back home,” Espino said.
She understands the desire to return home, she said, but worries about the long-term stability of this next wave of homeowners trying to rebuild.
A recent survey from the Department of Angels, a nonprofit focused on fire recovery and facilitating community organizing, found that about 40% of fire survivors had taken on debt since the fire, and the majority said their mental health had worsened.
“It is a bifurcated recovery, and the No. 1 factor is money,” said Joy Chen, the executive director of the nonprofit Every Fire Survivor’s Network. She said the group had found that the people who had been able to quickly rebuild either had prefire wealth or received full insurance payouts.
Though there are financial hurdles for many, the UCLA report pointed out some positive trends when it comes to home sales: Not only are investors making up a smaller share of homebuyers in recent months, but fewer homes are also being put up for sale. Altadena locals have been extremely concerned about investors and corporations buying up homes in their relatively affordable and diverse community, especially in historically Black neighborhoods where many homes have been passed down for multiple generations.
In August, about two-thirds of the sales of fire-damaged homes were made by investors — defined as limited liability companies, corporations or family trusts associated with real estate investment activity — but by the one-year mark, that share fell to about 59%, according to the report.
New listings in the fire zone also have slowed down, with only about 1% of severely fire-damaged homes up for sale in February, down from about 2% five months prior.
“In general, sales have been lower” than expected, Carmona said. “We had the biggest spike in the first couple months. … There really hasn’t been a massive uptick in sales since.”
And although much remains uncertain about Altadena’s recovery, the markers of progress do provide some hope, said William Syms, the executive director of the Legacy Land Project, which was founded in the wake of the Eaton fire to provide direct assistance to residents in need. His nonprofit is one of dozens that make up the Eaton Fire Collaborative, helping to provide residents with an array of resources they need to move forward, including case management and financial support.
“The outreach that’s happening, the conversation and events and the collective power of community is working,” Sym said. “I think more people realize that it’s possible to rebuild — and while it’s expensive and costly, together we’re going to make sure that anybody who wants to get home can.”
That includes Espino, who said Habitat for Humanity recently had found a way to help finance the rebuild for her multigenerational family.
“We’re moved on to the next phase,” Espino said. “We’re trying to get all of us together, back home.”
WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent winces at the allure of easy money — whether it’s lottery tickets, buy now, pay later loans or the promise of a crypto windfall — warning that the get-rich-quick mindset often leads Americans farther from financial stability, not closer to it.
“There are a lot of young people, mostly young men, going to blue-collar construction jobs, playing the lottery. It drives me crazy,” Bessent said in an interview.
”The best thing you can do is not play the lottery,” he said — rather, people should invest and “then watch it grow.”
Bessent spoke to The Associated Press about the basics of building a workable budget and saving for the future at the tail end of Financial Literacy Month, an initiative the billionaire hedge fund manager has made a priority since joining President Donald Trump’s administration, driven by a childhood marred by poverty.
Former Treasury Secretaries Hank Paulson and Tim Geithner were known for helping navigate the U.S. out of the global financial crisis. Steven Mnuchin made his mark designing and promoting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and Janet Yellen was the only person to also head the Federal Reserve and the Council of Economic Advisers. But Bessent’s passion for meeting with community bankers, retirees and schoolchildren to talk about how to budget, save and manage debt is what he hopes, in part, defines his legacy.
His push to promote financial literacy comes as Americans grapple with the cost of housing, groceries, energy and everyday items and are skeptical about the Republican administration’s performance on the issue. The latest AP-NORC poll data shows Trump’s approval rating on the economy dropped from 38% in March to 30% in April.
The nation is enmeshed in record levels of debt, which surpassed $39 trillion in March, and critics wonder how Bessent can persuade Americans to save for their futures when the government itself is drowning in debt.
“The Trump administration in particular has a problematic record on cutting taxes without offsets and growing spending,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
A billionaire with humble beginnings
Bessent, 63, made his money through a long career in hedge funds, including working with George Soros, a financier and philanthropist whom Trump and other Republicans have vilified. Bessent was famously involved in the Soros firm’s 1992 currency speculation against the British pound tied to Black Wednesday, which generated massive profits. Bessent later launched his own hedge fund called the Key Square Group.
But he often talks about his humble beginnings in rural South Carolina, not far from Myrtle Beach, where at the age of 9 he got his first jobs as a busboy at a cafeteria and hustling to set up chairs and umbrellas on the beach. His father, a real estate developer, had lost generations of Bessent family wealth by overleveraging his obligations.
Bessent wanted to attend the U.S. Naval Academy in 1979 but was barred as an openly gay applicant. That also shut the door to joining the foreign service.
He went to Yale University, where his former professor David Darst recalled teaching him about new financial instruments in capital markets. Darst described Bessent as a “guy who’s working at the highest levels, but he’s interested in people learning the ABCs of finance.”
In 2025, Bessent became the nation’s first openly gay treasury secretary. “I sit here knowing that President Trump chose me because he believes I’m the best candidate, not because of my sexual preference, not because treasury secretaries with green eyes do better,” Bessent said at his confirmation hearing.
After reaching public office, one of Bessent’s first actions was relaunching Financial Literacy Month at the agency.
“Wall Street has grown wealthier than ever before, and it can continue to grow and do well,” Bessent has peppered into various speeches over the past year, insisting that his work in the Trump administration is “focused on Main Street.”
During a roundtable with community financial institutions at the department — one of several such events Bessent hosted last month — he listened to bankers express concerns about the a surge in sophisticated fraud schemes targeting customers and their efforts to get high schoolers interested in saving.
“It could be as simple as a 14-year-old starting a savings account and watching interest compound at 4% a year,” said Thomas Fraser, CEO of First Mutual Holding Co. in Lakewood, Ohio, who attended that roundtable.
Promoting financial literacy to young people
Bessent is not a newcomer to preaching financial literacy. Geoff Canada, president of Harlem Children’s Zone, has known Bessent for 30 years and said the treasury secretary has mentored one of the program’s scholars for more than a decade. Canada said Bessent has a “deep understanding that financial literacy is essential for fostering real social and economic mobility for America’s children.”
He said Bessent “has championed this issue long before joining the administration, and I know it remains a top priority.”
A conversation with Bessent about financial literacy inevitably turns to Trump Accounts — the financial vehicle meant to give $1,000 to babies born during the Trump administration. That money is then invested in the stock market by private firms, and the children can access the money when they turn 18.
Bessent said he thinks it will encourage a generation of young people to care more about investing as it shows them “the power of compounding, because that money is locked up for 18 years.”
But Bessent said people of all ages and income brackets could be better at managing their money. “There’s a narrative that doctors are famously terrible at finance,” Bessent said.
Critics of the treasury secretary’s approach argue that the problem is less about Americans not knowing how to invest and more about people not having enough spare income to do so, as the cost of living has steadily increased and the war in Iran has driven energy prices higher.
“You cannot preach penny-pinching while making it harder for Americans to pay their grocery, utility and healthcare bills,” said Emily DiVito, senior adviser for economic policy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative. “If Secretary Bessent is serious about advancing financial literacy, he should focus on lowering the cost of living for working families.”
Rising debt in the foreground
Bessent’s desire to see Americans invest wisely comes as the U.S. debt has reached record levels — and the trajectory of those increases is a cause for concern for budgeting experts.
The U.S. national debt hit $37 trillion in August and then $38 trillion just two months later. Now, it’s at $39 trillion and has surpassed the size of the economy.
Budget advocate MacGuineas warned that the long-term trend of borrowing more and paying more in interest will force Americans to face tougher fiscal tradeoffs ahead.
She praised Bessent for having the goal to cut deficits in half and bring them down to 3% of gross domestic product but said ”it’s going to take a combination of spending reductions, revenue increases and economic growth” to get there.
The Treasury argues that the federal deficit decreased during Trump’s first year back in office and that the provisions in Republicans’ tax cuts law have put money back in Americans’ pockets.
“It’s hard to disagree with the fact that we need more financial literacy in this country,” MacGuineas said. “The bigger picture, of course, is that we should also probably give a financial literacy class to our lawmakers.”
SAN JOSE, Calif. – A San Jose high school is taking a leading role in redefining vocational education as one of the first schools in the nation to pilot a new suite of Advanced Placement courses focused on real-world financial and professional skills.
Closing workforce readiness gap
Dig deeper:
The East Side Union High School District has partnered with the College Board to launch the AP Career Kickstart program. The initiative currently features two primary courses: AP Business and Personal Finance and AP Cybersecurity. Unlike traditional AP classes that focus primarily on academic theory, these courses are designed to blend academic rigor with practical professional skills, allowing students to earn college credit alongside industry-recognized credentials.
Students at Silver Creek High School will be among the first to test the program out. which arrives at a time of growing concern regarding student readiness for the modern economy. According to “The New Hire Readiness Report 2025,” a study conducted with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 84% of hiring managers say most high school students are not prepared to enter the workforce. Furthermore, 96% of those managers identified financial literacy as an essential skill for young professionals.
“Every day I hear, ‘How are we going to use this in the real world?’” said Jeff Smith, a teacher at Silver Creek High School. “Everything that we teach [in this program] has real-world applications.”
Student innovation
Why you should care:
Students involved in the field test are already seeing tangible results. Senior Ethan Nguyen has used the curriculum to work with multiple businesses on website and mobile application development. Another student, Celina Tran, developed a financial literacy app called “Revenue,” which uses a gamified experience to teach teens money management. That work has already earned both statewide and national awards.
“It creates just a generous amount of pride in seeing the kids apply what they’re learning,” said Imani Butler, a business design and technology teacher at the school. Butler noted that the curriculum addresses a long-standing gap in secondary education, adding that many adults often wish such practical financial training had been available during their own school years.
National expansion
Big picture view:
The AP Career Kickstart courses will be available to students nationwide over the next year. Parents and students interested in the program are encouraged to visit the College Board website for more details on local availability.
The Source: Interviews with College Board team and Silver Creek High School staff.
Canada is to establish a new and powerful law enforcement agency to investigate financial crime, in stark contrast to the US, where weakened federal investigators have struggled to pursue fraudsters and the White House has pardoned convicted money launderers.
A bill to create the Financial Crimes Agency (FCA) completed its first reading in parliament this week. The legislation was introduced by the governing Liberals and with their parliamentary majority, the party is likely to move it through both levels of government quickly.
The new agency, tasked with investigating and prosecuting financial crimes, is the result of a public inquiry that found Canada lacked a cohesive strategy against money laundering, placing it behind its international peers.
Jessica Davis, a former intelligence analyst with Canada’s spy agency who focuses terrorism and illicit financing, said: “The fact we’re actually seeing the creation [of a] new enforcement agency is a meaningful investment and hopefully signals the understanding of the seriousness of the challenge.”
In addition to a new law enforcement agency, Canada will ban cryptocurrency ATMs, which officials say have been used by scammers to defraud victims and by criminals to launder the proceeds of crime. Canada has nearly 4,000 cryptocurrency ATMs, the most per capita in the world.
For more than a quarter of a century, the financial transactions and reports analysis centre (Fintrac) has functioned as Canada’s financial intelligence unit. Last year, the agency uncovered $45bn in transactions from money laundering, counterterrorist financing, sanctions and evasion disclosures.
“It’s a figure that could be too high or far too low – we just don’t fully know the scope of financial crime in this country,” said Davis, who runs the consulting firm Insight Threat Intelligence.
Fintrac does not track and arrest criminals, instead handing off its investigations to the police and prosecutors. Under the new legislation, the newly formed FCA will investigate and prosecute – a move that lessens the scope and mandate of Fintrac and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the country’s federal law-enforcement authority.
“The challenge for the RCMP is that it has been unable and unwilling to actually investigate and sustain investigations related to financial crimes,” said Davis. “There is a lack of funding, a lack of skills, lack of resources and a lack of political will. But financial crimes investigations are long, complex and require sustained resources, which I’m hopeful we’re now going to see put in place.”
A 2024 report on the scale of financial crimes estimated that more than US$3tn in illicit funds had moved through the global financial system in the previous year. Among the largest culprits were money laundering for human and drug trafficking, as well as terrorist financing. A 2024 report from the US treasury department found those efforts had had “devastating economic and social impact” on citizens.
The Canadian effort marks a stark contrast to the approach taken by the current US administration to the scourge of financial crime. Donald Trump’s government issued a high-profile pardon of Changpeng Zhao after the self-styled “king” of cryptocurrency pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. His company, Binance, had been ordered to pay a record $4.3bn penalty for its role in facilitating terrorist financing.
In a January letter to federal watchdogs, senior Democrats called for an investigation into Trump’s decision to shift more than 25,000 personnel away from investigating fraud, tax evasion and money laundering in favour of immigration enforcement.
“The Trump administration is letting white-collar criminals off the hook for all kinds of wrongdoing,” senator Elizabeth Warren, from Massachusetts, said in a statement. “Instead of protecting American families from fraud and predatory behaviour, the administration is diverting resources to pursue its inhumane immigration agenda. Nobody is above the law, and the Trump administration needs to stop treating white-collar criminals with kid gloves.”
“Canada and the US are diverging,” said Davis, adding that the US was still “far ahead of us in terms of its ability to prosecute and invest, investigate and prosecute” financial crimes. “We’re still playing quite a bit of catchup now. Hopefully Canada will shore up our own abilities to protect Canada. Because the things that happen in the US do tend to happen in Canada. And so this new agency is a bulwark against that.”
The creation of a new law enforcement agency was applauded by anti-corruption groups. Salvator Cusimano, the executive director of Transparency International Canada, said: “The [Canadian] government is proposing an ambitious but realistic mandate for this agency, which bodes well as a much-needed first step in improving our enforcement of financial crimes.
“Once established, the agency must coordinate closely with other enforcement and regulatory agencies across the country, and build on their efforts, if it is to achieve its potential.”
It is unclear how easily the agency will work alongside the RCMP, where it will be based and whether it will draw key resources from other units.
Davis said: “This agency is going to matter to Canadians because when you start to combine things like economic pressures, the cost of living and really difficult sort of existence for everyday people, we start to have less tolerance for people making money off of us.
“This is a massive and necessary investment for Canada. But we’ll also have to keep pressuring the government to continue to fund it, continue to prioritise it, to actually get some of those outcomes that we’re looking for.”
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