Nearly four months after a wildfire tore through Pacific Palisades, destroying hundreds of homes and leaving families scattered across Southern California, state and local officials are warning that rebuilding efforts are on the verge of being severely delayed due to a critical shortage of skilled labor and major logistical barriers limiting site access.
Speaking at the 2025 Luskin Summit last week held at UCLA, developers and county officials outlined the steep challenges facing the recovery, warning that without bold coordination and a shift in planning strategy, only a fraction of residents may be able to return to the fire zone in the foreseeable future.
“You are not dealing with one master-planned community or a few major developers,” said Randy Johnson, Managing Director at RSJ Development Services. “This is 5,000 separate property owners. It’s going to take embedded labor, localized logistics and a whole new way of thinking to get anything close to the scale of rebuilding that is needed.”
While cleanup efforts have moved at what speakers described as a record-breaking pace with the US Army Corps of Engineers projected to complete debris removal by the end of the year, the next phase of the recovery is proving far more complicated. Contractors are reluctant to take on work in the Palisades, where narrow canyon roads and difficult terrain make material delivery slow and expensive. Construction crews are already stretched thin across Los Angeles County, and convincing them to take on complex jobs far from established hubs is proving difficult.
“Getting a concrete truck up to the Palisades is not easy,” Johnson said. “It took me two hours the other day to get from the village to the 405. That’s seven miles. Now imagine that with hundreds of construction vehicles. It’s a logistical nightmare.”
To overcome these hurdles, developers are proposing what amounts to a wartime rebuilding strategy. Crews may need to live on-site, batch plants may be temporarily installed in the canyon and concrete and framing teams embedded for weeks at a time to reduce traffic flow and accelerate progress. Still, even with those measures, questions remain about how many homeowners can actually afford to rebuild.
“There are a lot of people who are underinsured,” Johnson said. “We’re talking about families who got $600,000 from the FAIR Plan and had homes worth double or triple that. They don’t have the capital to close the gap.”
Philanthropic backstops and public-private partnerships are being explored, but no comprehensive financing model has yet emerged. Kevork Zoryan, Managing Partner at Arselle Investments and co-author of a recent recovery blueprint, said the gaps in funding are so large that traditional tools like tax increment financing and community facilities districts will not be enough.
“You’re going to need federal grants, state subsidies, philanthropic contributions and creative financing just to get to baseline,” Zoryan said, adding, “And you need to accelerate those dollars now. Because once someone has been living outside their old neighborhood for a year or two, the odds of them coming back drop dramatically.”
The concept of a single-trench infrastructure rebuild, combining power, sewer and water utility upgrades into one unified effort, was held up as a rare bright spot. Officials said Governor Gavin Newsom’s emergency order exempting such projects from environmental review requirements could save months or even years. But that plan also hinges on tight coordination between multiple jurisdictions, including Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Edison, mutual water companies and local sanitation districts, many of which operate on different timelines and funding cycles.
“The trench is the only thing that unlocks everything else,” said Anish Saraiya, Director of Alternative Recovery for LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger. “But if you don’t have the utilities at the table, aligned on scheduling and scope, it falls apart.”
Saraiya added that Barger has convened utility leadership for a high-level meeting to set expectations and secure commitments, calling the need for coordinated action “urgent and non-negotiable.”
Even if trench work proceeds, the city’s own permitting process threatens to become a choke point. Los Angeles currently plans to process rebuilding applications through its normal procedures, which developers warned could create a severe backlog. One proposal now under discussion would allow for self-certification of permit applications and inspections, a model used during the COVID pandemic to expedite residential construction. Such a move would require City Council approval and could face resistance from labor unions and community groups.
“There’s a bill in Sacramento that would allow for self-certification, but it’s stuck in committee,” Johnson said. “We need it passed. A typical house has ten to twelve inspections. Multiply that by a thousand homes and we’re looking at fifteen thousand inspection visits.”
Local developers say the only way to overcome both permitting delays and workforce shortages is to involve large-scale production homebuilders, including Lennar and Toll Brothers and leverage their supply chains to bring down costs. A proposed Builders Alliance would unite custom and semi-custom contractors with these larger players to share labor and materials. Still, the effort hinges on homeowner buy-in.
“This isn’t just about policy or logistics,” Johnson said. “We have to earn the trust of families who’ve lost everything. We need to show them that coming back is possible.”
Whether that happens remains unclear. Some estimates suggest that only 25 percent of affected Palisades residents will ultimately return, despite early surveys indicating that as many as 80 percent want to.
“There’s a big difference between wanting to come back and being able to afford to,” Zoryan said.
With wildfire season already approaching and rebuilding timelines still in flux, officials say the next few months will be critical. Without rapid agreement on labor planning, utility coordination and financing strategies, the vision of a rebuilt, resilient Palisades may remain out of reach for thousands.
