Will There Be a Quick Reconstruction? L.A. County Homebuilding is Among the Slowest in the Country

Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to speed up homebuilding approvals to increase the chances that homes lost in the Los Angeles firestorms will be rebuilt quickly.

The governor’s order to eliminate potential state regulatory roadblocks, along with his efforts to streamline local construction permitting processes, acknowledges that getting approval to build housing in and around Los Angeles has long been an arduous, unnerving, and complicated process.

To understand how challenging new construction can be in a housing-starved area, I reviewed 10 years’ worth of building permit statistics from the Census Bureau through 2023 for Los Angeles County. The data includes all cities, unincorporated areas, as well as statewide and national figures.

The data shows that 221,700 housing units in L.A. County were permitted during the decade-long timeframe, including everything from single-family houses to apartment complexes. Only two U.S. counties had more: Harris County in Houston (337,000) and Maricopa County in Phoenix (310,400).

However, L.A. is the nation’s most populous county, with an average of 9.9 million residents over the past decade.

When considering homebuilding relative to population, L.A. issues only 22 permits per year for every 1,000 residents. How slow is that?

For comparison, in the same 10 years, California issued 27 permits per 1,000 residents. L.A. County’s rate is 19% slower than California’s often-criticized homebuilding pace.

It looks even worse when compared nationally: There were 42 building permits per 1,000 people in the U.S. between 2014 and 2023, making L.A.’s construction rate nearly half as sluggish as the typical American county.

It’s important to remember that most L.A. housing permits are acquired by real estate professionals—developers of homes or multifamily projects. These are companies with permitting experts who can navigate numerous bureaucratic hurdles.

Newsom hopes post-fire rebuilding will be quicker for individual homeowners by lowering the red tape and suspending much of the California Environmental Quality Act and the California Coastal Act for qualifying properties destroyed by wildfires.

However, the governor’s order will do little to eliminate the mountain of other obstacles victims face in trying to rebuild their lives and homes.

Getting insurance money is never simple. LendingTree estimates that 1 in 10 Los Angeles homeowners don’t have home insurance, and even homeowners with insurance may be disappointed by what’s actually covered.

Similar challenges will likely arise when it comes to government assistance.

Finally, let’s not forget the political factors that could affect how much government aid victims ultimately receive—and how quickly.

Newsom’s ambitions for higher public office will be severely tested by his ability to smooth the firestorm recovery, as much as any governor can.