About six months after the Eaton Fire, a majority of lots with destroyed homes in Altadena have been cleared. But for homeowners hoping to rebuild, the hard work remains: slogging through insurance paperwork and government permits.
On Len Silvernail and Diane Toomey’s cul-de-sac near Rubio Canyon, the sound of birds now mixes with the sound of construction equipment. But that doesn’t mean rebuilding is going smoothly for them.
“This is our forever home,” Silvernail says, “and it’s been frustration after frustration after frustration.”
That’s a common feeling as the process moves from physical lot-clearing to contending with government red tape, says Tim Kawahara, the executive director of UCLA’s Ziman Center for Real Estate. “As we shift to more local government in terms of executing the rebuild, that’s where I think you’re starting to see some of the frustrations from some of the residents in both the Eaton and Palisades fires.”
California poppies bloom in what used to be the front yard of Len Silvernail and Diane Toomey’s home. Signs show that their lot has been cleared of debris and is ready for rebuilding after the Eaton Fire. Photo by Susan Valot.
Silvernail has been discouraged by the permit process. He and his wife were among the first to turn in their application to rebuild, with a goal to be back in their home by the first anniversary of the fire.
He says it started with turning in plans to the county Department of Building and Safety and having to pay thousands in permit fees that LA County officials now say will be refunded. But Silvernail says they’ve been stuck in the process.
“There’s probably five or six or seven more steps after Building and Safety,” Silvernail says, “just to get the okay to build the house back the way they want the house built.”
LA County has offered to defer and refund such fees, costs Silvernail’s insurance won’t cover. Homeowners who paid them already have been told to fill out a form for a refund, which is available online.
The City of Los Angeles has waived similar building permit fees for victims of the Palisades Fire.
County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who represents the Altadena area, says they’re working to find funding to waive the fees permanently.
Addressing the concerns of homeowners at a recent community meeting, Barger told them, “You have lost so much, you shouldn't have to worry about permitting fees getting in the way of rebuilding your home. For most families, these fees may have exceeded $20,000. That's a barrier we cannot allow to stand.”
The deferral of fees only applies to people who lived in their own single-family homes before the fire. It does not apply to non-owner-occupied rental properties, multi-family housing units or commercial structures.
The county estimates that if 60% of homeowners in Altadena and elsewhere in unincorporated Palisades rebuild, it would amount to $84 million in building permit fees.
Permitting is only one hurdle. For most, state and local building codes have changed in the decades since many of these homes were originally built, meaning the house has to have changes and extras that insurance covering a like-to-like rebuild does not account for.
“It adds expenses that we didn’t expect. Like, solar is required on all new builds, and so is the easement from the property line. It’s got to be five feet now and ours was only three,” says Toomey, as she stands under a backyard oak tree that survived.
“And insurance doesn’t pay for that stuff. That’s on us,” Silvernail adds.
Amy Bach, executive director of the consumer advocacy group United Policyholders, says usually about two-thirds of wildfire victims are underinsured, but in this case, she expects the rate to be as high as 75% to 80%.
Homeowners insurance is “aimed at putting you back in the same position as you were before the loss, but in reality, people often find that the building codes have changed since their home was built, and they literally could not put back the same house that they had,” Bach says.
Kawahara says most people believe that insurance will cover 70% of their rebuild, leaving a 30% gap. Surveys have shown that many people think they can cover about half of that gap with their own resources and financing.
“But there are also things like soil sampling now, which might be required to get your mortgage or to get insurance, and so you’re adding yet another $5,000 to $8,000 for soil sampling,” Kawahara says. “So all of these different costs are stacking up, and they’re putting homeowners who want to rebuild very much behind the eight ball with their financial ability to rebuild and move back.”
Bach says it’s only been since mid-2021 that the state of California required homeowners insurance to include a 10% rider to cover building code upgrades, but she says to cover the actual costs, that figure needs to be at least 30%.
A recent research report on the 2025 wildfire recovery, which the researchers hope can be used as a blueprint for future fire recovery, recommended local governments cut some red tape, including setting up one-stop permitting centers, and using AI software to help speed up approvals, which the county has done.
But the process is still slow. As of midday July 1, 2025, the LA County Permitting Progress Dashboard showed 890 rebuild applications in the Eaton Fire area, but only 44 building permits have been issued, taking an average turnaround of about 10 weeks to get through the process.
And speed matters. A survey of fire victims found that the longer it takes to rebuild, the more likely it is people won’t move back.
“So even folks that fully intend to move back today, if this process, either through permitting or financing or insurance, takes more than three years, the percentage of people that want to move back drops to like 50%,” Kawahara says.
Silvernail and Toomey keep coming back to their cleared lot to water the surviving citrus tree and grapevine and enjoy the flowers that have popped up, but the cost of the rebuild still weighs on their minds. Silvernail was hoping to retire by January.
“I want to have some retirement funds left, so we can enjoy the rest of our lives without being strapped down here, just trying to get back to what we had,” Silvernails says.