By Jim Carlton, Shane Shifflett and Rebecca Picciotto

MALIBU, Calif. -- High above the crashing Pacific, Roxanne White walks the burned grounds of what used to be her family's home. She stops next to a patch of bare dirt where once a long kitchen table had hosted countless Thanksgiving dinners.

"I feel we'll never do that again," White, 69, said, choking up as she stared at the remnants of a house lost in the Los Angeles fires last year that her parents built half a century ago. "I mean, not here."

White is among the majority of victims still struggling to rebuild after wind-driven fires last January tore through Southern California, killing at least 31 and destroying more than 10,000 single-family homes. The $65 billion in losses are the largest for a wildfire disaster in U.S. history, according to an estimate by reinsurance broker Gallagher Re.

Most of the homes destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades fires were in three communities: Altadena, a middle-class neighborhood on the city's east side, the tony hillside Pacific Palisades and high-end beach-front Malibu.

In the 12 months since, L.A.'s recovery has been slow and uneven. The ability to rebuild in the three areas has been determined as much by residents' wealth and insurance coverage as it has by government officials' willingness to cut red tape. The communities are governed separately -- Altadena by Los Angeles County, Pacific Palisades by the city of Los Angeles and Malibu as a stand-alone city.

The Wall Street Journal looked at more than 9,000 homes destroyed in the three communities hardest hit. Of those, only about one-third have taken permitting or other steps to rebuild, while 4% percent have sold, an analysis of property records, fire damage and permitting databases found. The rest remain much as they were after the fire debris was cleared.

Government efforts to reduce red tape in Altadena have smoothed the permitting process, making it the neighborhood with the highest proportion of lots taking steps to rebuild -- even though many of the residents are struggling to finance the work. Palisades, meanwhile, is home to the greatest share of impacted lots that have changed hands.

Coastal Malibu, with its longtime residents and singular environmental challenges of managing construction along narrow beaches and steep mountainsides, has had the hardest time moving forward. Homeowners have applied for permits to rebuild about a third of some 600 demolished homes, but only 22 have been issued, including just two on the beach as of Dec. 31.

"Things are not coming back as quickly as we would have hoped" in the Los Angeles areas, said Stuart Gabriel, director of the Ziman Center for Real Estate at the University of California, Los Angeles. It may take six years to fully rebuild when it should take three, he said.

As with many natural disasters, the fires brought to life the wealth disparities in California, especially in the pricey Los Angeles area.

The homeowners able to plow ahead generally have more money and have received more from their insurers than others. Many with lower incomes have unloaded their lots to investors.

"We know the disparities exist, but they become shockingly obvious," said Char Miller, an environmental analysis professor at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif.

ALTADENA

When Joe Ford drives to his office in Altadena each morning, he slows down to look out the window. On scorched land once covered with debris and ash, he now sees concrete foundations and wood-framed outlines of new homes.

He wishes his own Altadena rebuild would move as swiftly.

"There are some houses that are ready to put stucco on. They've got roofs and everything," said the 64-year-old, a second-generation area resident. "I just want to be one of those people."

In the mid-20th century, real-estate lenders designated lots east of Lake Avenue as higher value, which led to more luxury homes and wealthier residents. West side lots were more affordable, and in an era of rampant redlining by lenders, were open to purchases by Black families.

That is how Ford's father ended up buying their Altadena home in 1964 for $15,500. Before the fires, the value of their property had appreciated to $1.2 million, though Ford still owes nearly $500,000 on the house after his father refinanced several times.

Ford and his wife have spent much of the year fighting their insurance company for reimbursement. They have been paying $6,200 each month for both the demolished house's mortgage and the rent for their temporary housing.

Ford said their insurance carrier finally agreed to reimburse $60,000 of those costs, but that still leaves them about $20,000 underwater, including other living expenses. And the policy is set to run out in mid-January. Ford, like many of his former neighbors, is looking to buy an RV and live on his lot.

With growing financial pressure, some Altadena residents are now selling their properties, often to corporate investors, according to the Journal's analysis of property sales data.

Residents on the east side have spent the year in their own grueling hunts for available rentals and paperwork battles. They are more likely to have better insurance coverage and greater resources to rebuild than those on the west side, said Gabriella Carmona, a researcher at UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.

David Grant, an artist who lost his house on the east side, expects to break ground on his new home by the end of January. His insurance should cover most of the rebuild, which includes pricey fireproof features. He was approved for a loan to pay for the rest, though he doesn't like taking on new debt at 63 years old. He and his partner have covered the cost of their nearby rental with insurance money.

"It's more expensive and it is slower," Grant said of the rebuild. "We want to build a house for the future."

Los Angeles County coordinated various departments to create a one-stop shop for permitting, waived some permitting fees and established preapproved home designs for faster reviews. On average, Eaton fire permit reviews take 31 business days, according to the county, compared with the standard four to six months.

"I don't take my eye off of it," County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who oversees Altadena, said of permitting. "What we have done is working."

Many residents haven't made any decision at all. Roughly 60% of Altadenans haven't taken any steps to either start the rebuilding process or list their home for sale, the Journal's analysis found. Permitting data for Altadena runs through Dec. 31, while sales data for all the communities are as of the end of August, the most recent available from the county.

Marisol Espino is among these residents in limbo. Before the fires, she lived on the west side with her 85-year-old father, her son, her sister and her sister's children. When their home burned, the family had to disperse to different rentals, so they now pay double to cover housing and bills.

As of September, about 35% of Altadena residents had either already run out of displacement coverage, or they expect to sometime this year, according to a survey released in October from the Department of Angels, a wildfire recovery group.

Espino, a single mother whose insurance coverage is far below what she needs to rebuild, has considered financial assistance from Habitat for Humanity or a payout from Southern California Edison, which was sued by the Justice Department on allegations its faulty equipment sparked the Eaton fire.

Espino said the offers are pennies compared with what she needs. "We have no idea what to do," she said.

PACIFIC PALISADES

The only remnant of Karee Rowen's Pacific Palisades home was her washing machine. Fire hydrants went dry or lost pressure during the Palisades fire, turning homes like hers into fuel for the inferno.

"The place is see-through, it's just gone," Rowen, a real-estate agent, said. "What's very frustrating is that it was preventable." A nearby high-end shopping center is still standing after a billionaire developer hired private firefighters.

Twenty or so of Rowen's friends swap stories about their rebuilds in a group chat. About half of them have pulled permits from the city and are in various stages of planning and building, but Rowen so far has held off. She is one of more than 3,000 single-family homeowners in the elite enclave devastated by the fire who lost their homes and haven't yet applied for a permit to rebuild as of Dec. 16, the Journal's analysis shows.

"It's very scary because I don't want to get half way through this and realize it's gonna be too expensive," said Rowen, who now lives in a Century City rental miles from her burned home. "I think I know what insurance is going to pay me, but it's not in my bank account."

She expects that rebuilding will ultimately cost more than what her insurance will cover, though just how much more is a moving target.

Rowen plans to dip into her savings to cover the difference. She has already hired an architect and a contractor and secured estimates of between $800 and $1,200 a square foot.

Though nearly 400 projects are already under construction, according to city officials, residents like Rowen and businesses are confronting the difficult economic and bureaucratic realities of rebuilding. "This recovery is not moving forward," said Pacific Palisades-Malibu Chamber of Commerce CEO Maryam Zar.

Many of the structures were built more than 60 years ago with smaller footprints. Some commercial owners' businesses aren't economical unless they build back bigger and plan for higher density, she said.

Projects being rebuilt at a much greater scale than the original structure aren't fast tracked, under state rebuilding rules being followed in all three communities.

Meanwhile, homeowners who can't afford to rebuild are selling to wealthier buyers, who sometimes purchase multiple plots and plan to build bigger houses, Rowen said.

For homeowners who do rebuild, finding an insurance policy is likely to be fraught.

Before the fires, State Farm dropped policies of 9,500 property owners whose homes later burned. A moratorium introduced after the fires on companies dropping properties from coverage expires this month, and private insurers could further reduce exposure to wildfire-prone areas.

The city itself is grappling with the competing financial demands of speeding recovery while needing to fill its coffers. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass temporarily waived permitting and review fees in April, though the city council is still debating whether to make those cuts permanent, citing a general fund that is stretched thin. Such fees typically add tens of thousands of dollars to homeowners' costs.

The city also lacks a comprehensive long-term rebuilding plan, unlike the county government, which permanently waived permit fees for wildfire rebuilds and created a specialized financing district to help rebuild and harden infrastructure and implement other strategies to mitigate fire damage.

Palisades community leaders pitched a series of ideas to coordinate recovery efforts to City Councilwoman Traci Park, who represents the area, and the mayor's chief recovery officer -- who resigned in April and hasn't been replaced. Few have been adopted so far.

The city is still waiting for a recovery road map from a consultant hired in June to develop the master plan. "Folks are really desperate for this information," Park said in an interview.

Recently, Rowen was approached by a neighbor seeking to buy her lot and offering to pay well. So far she has decided not to sell. "I loved it there," she said.

A spokesman for Los Angeles referred to Mayor Bass's calls for insurance industry reform and fee waivers.

MALIBU

Few scenes were more surreal after the firestorms than the miles of blackened homes along Malibu's world-famous beachfront.

A year later, the rubble has been mostly cleared away, leaving exposed pilings jutting from the sand as property owners struggle to navigate a permitting process complicated by the area's wilder, mountainside landscape prone to mudslides and beach erosion. At the same time, its older infrastructure, such as water lines and septic systems, needs to be upgraded to current codes.

The fire torched 330 homes along the beach and an additional 267 on the hillside neighborhoods above, an area that was still recovering from the 2018 Woolsey Fire.

Some victims organized the Malibu Rebuild Task Force -- with its own podcast -- to help expedite the area's rebuild.

Malibu city officials welcomed the help and appointed Abe Roy, a contractor who lost his home on the Big Rock mesa, a neighborhood known for its proximity to mountain trails and views of Santa Monica Bay, to the new position of Rebuild Ambassador in May. He resigned five months later, frustrated that the city was moving too slowly.

Malibu Mayor Marianne Riggins said the city has simplified the process, such as by establishing a rebuild center for victims.

She said Malibu's location at the base of coastal mountains requires the city to safeguard homes from hazards such as landslides and tidal erosion, which takes additional time. Community development director Yolanda Bundy said work was also slowed by two large mudslides last February.

"Is this where I want to be? No," Bundy said. "For us, it's the many complexities we are facing."

Bundy and the mayor led a driving tour of the shattered coastline, stopping at one property where the destruction of a home revealed a sea wall below with a pre-existing sinkhole. Bundy said the problem has complicated the rebuilding by the homeowners.

Danny Smith and his wife, Katherine, started the process early, taking original plans for the three-bedroom home they lost on La Costa Beach to the city in February. Issues that weren't a problem when the home was built in 1974, such as its height and its closeness to the ocean, threw up roadblocks.

"They said, 'No, no, no, you can't build like that anymore," said the 43-year-old Smith, sitting in a Malibu eatery known for its celebrity sightings.

The couple was also told they would need to put in an advanced septic system at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars. They ended up selling their lot for $5 million, far less than the $8 million they had paid two years before the fire.

City officials in December said the advanced septic systems were no longer required, after determining advice to do so from the state was incorrect.

Tensions flared in a Dec. 8 Malibu City Council meeting, where more than a dozen residents brought in signs opposing a proposed cap on the size of beachfront homes -- a move to keep more mansions out. The proceedings started upbeat with the room singing a happy birthday song to Dick Van Dyke, who though not at the meeting is a longtime Malibu resident who turned 100 days later.

As the meeting proceeded, speakers called the cap unnecessary and potentially harmful to property values. Some attendees waved their arms in silent applause, since clapping was discouraged.

"It's casting a pall on the real-estate markets, and it's causing people who need to sell and live somewhere a lot of problems," 41-year-old Darren Graves, who wants to rebuild his family's beach home, said from a lectern. The council didn't act on the proposal. Total home sales fell 27% in 2025 from the previous year, one of the biggest drops in decades, according to an analysis by Malibu broker Robert Edie.

Some residents are going to rebuild, no matter what. "I can't wait to see the hummingbirds again, look at the ocean and go on my hikes," said Ricki Lake, the actress and talk show host, who plans to replace the bluff-top home she and her husband lost.

White hasn't decided yet what she's going to do. She and a sister inherited the home and have already faced obstacles, including having to replace a two-inch water line that runs more than 300 feet along the driveway at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The property still has incredible views, including of Carbon Beach -- the so-called "Billionaires' Beach" where Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison has a big mansion left intact near burned lots.

"The bitter part," she said, "is the question for my sister and me: Is it worth the time and stress to spend the next five years trying to rebuild?"

Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com, Shane Shifflett at shane.shifflett@dowjones.com and Rebecca Picciotto at Rebecca.Picciotto@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 05, 2026 21:00 ET (02:00 GMT)

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