Resources about the Los Angeles Fires

This page will be updated periodically as I collect and develop more resources about the LA Fires and fire recovery in general.

This is not legal advice or financial advice for your specific situation. This is for general information based on anecdotal experiences.

Resources:

January 28, 2025:

LA fire victims are starting to ask me questions in the comments on social media, and in my inboxes. So I’m posting here to share some thoughts and resources.

I’ve been pretty quiet on this subject on most of my social media channels because those channels tend to encourage content that is broadly entertaining and appeals to a wide audience. And I don’t want to make entertainment videos about this event and the recovery - I want to help people quietly and quickly.

So this is the page where you’ll find a list of resources and a log of what I’m working on, in case it’s helpful. I’ll put the most important stuff up top. And then below that, there will be a chronological feed of updates, for as long as that seems helpful to do.

Broadly speaking, I think that it’s NOT helpful for me to speculate about what might happen in the future of LA’s recovery. At this time, we have very limited information. It is more helpful to homeowners for me to do two things:

  1. Advocate with policy makers for the best policies possible in the future

  2. Share what happened in past recovery efforts like the Tubbs fire in Sonoma County

These two things actually turn out to have a lot of overlap.

Today, I’m adding links to two policy documents for any policy makers or city and county staff thinking about this subject.

Rebuilding After Fire: Lessons Learned from Sonoma County. The first document is a deep dive that Casita Coalition put out after working with The ADU Center based in Sonoma and Napa as well as PRMD Sonoma (the unified permit desk for Sonoma County). Sonoma’s rebuild efforts are largely seen as a success story so that’s a very interesting read.

Policy Memo: LA Fires and Impacts on Housing. The second document is from YIMBY Action and YIMBY Law and doesn’t restrict itself to the past experience after Tubbs. It contains policy recommendations for the city of Los Angeles and other jurisdictions.

Right now, my to do list for future posts is to conduct some interviews about how things shaped up for homeowners in Sonoma and how this might inform homeowners in future fires like Palisades, Eaton, and others. In particular, it seems like the current policies in place for streamlining rebuilds at the city and state level are focused on rebuilding similar structures to what existed before. While Sonoma saw a lot of benefit to safety and housing by allowing people to rebuild with ADUs and additional units, when it was safe to do so. I want to chat with Tennis Wick from PRMD, Scott Johnson from Napa Sonoma ADU Center, and some of the city managers. I will try to reach out to a few homeowners I know personally, but I’m sensitive about cold calling people to talk about one of the most traumatic days of their lives. So if you want to talk to me, please email ryan@how-to-adu.com

A couple notes that I think are always worth repeating: Removing the debris from fires and mudslides will take a long time for a lot of properties so this isn’t a topic that you just cover completely in one sitting. Additionally, there are a lot of bad faith players that swoop into disaster zones and take advantage of people in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Please be careful out there. When people are under the stress and exhaustion of losing part or all of their home, they have to be extra vigilant about making important decisions! The bad guys will try to take advantage of people — don’t fall for it.

Ryan O'Connell