Los Angeles City charges fees for every aspect of home construction.
The January 7 Fires destroyed 11,000 homes with 6,837 in Pacific Palisades and 4,356 in Altadena.
“They want us to rebuild? The City has to help. They could waive the construction fees. Most of us are not rich, I have a mortgage on the house that burned. Fair insurance is not covering the rebuilding costs. Where am I supposed to get the money?” a resident asked. “And it was not my fault my home burned. It was the City’s.”
Now as residents are contacting architects and contractors about rebuilding, they are waiting for Bass to exercise her emergency powers to waive permit and building fees.
At L.A. Mayor Bass’ weekly meeting on April 8, “L.A. Strong Return and Rebuild” the question about waiving fees was asked for the third week in a row. Jenny Delwood, Bass’ Chief of Staff, answered “We are in the process of deep analyzation of the fees. We are analyzing from every legal angle.”
It has been estimated that the fees for a modest one-story, three-bedroom house would net the city about $40,000. If there are 6,837 homes that need to be built in the Palisades and one assumes the city could net about $50,000 per home that is about $340 million in income for a city that has a deficit of nearly $1 billion.
Twice over the last month at press conferences, this editor has asked Bass when she will waive construction fees. Both times she said that she was looking into it, but legally she couldn’t waive them all, but never specified to this editor which fee the City could not waive.
There are no standard permitting fees in the City. Permit fees are based on square footage and a valuation amount.
A new building permit: $5,550 (residents are only building new because the old one burned.)
Electrical: $1,443
HVAC: $800
Plumbing: $1,443
Plan Maintenance: $110
EQ Instrumentation: $364
Green Building $190
DSC Surcharge: $288.98
Sys. Surcharge: $577
Planning Surcharge: $339
Planning Gen Plan Maintains Surcharge: $146
School District Residential: $28,969 (That’s figured at $4/square foot.)
Dwelling unit construction tax: $200
Residential Development Tax: $300
Ca. Bldg. St. Commission Surcharge: $52
Other fees not included are grading, a soil review would be about $1,000 (expedited would cost more) and would assume one review with no comments from the City, otherwise it could be more.
Various clearance reviews are not included in the building plan check fees, such as low impact development (LID), cross connection reviews, roof drainage and sewer connection fees. Some projects would also include retaining walls, pools and zoning administrator requests, which means more fees. (And if one pays with a credit card an additional 2.7 % service fee is added.)
“Waiving the fees would be a nice gesture from the City,” said Ron Radziner, Architect and Co-Founder of Marmol Radziner.
This editor’s relative put it more bluntly. “It’s criminal. First the City lets the town burn down by not having an adequate fire response and now they are charging people to rebuild.”
That thought is shared with most Pacific Palisades residents. “We are not responsible for our homes burning, we don’t have enough money to rebuild, the least the city could do is waive the fees.”
Architect Andrew Pedrick of McTigue Architects, who is working with several Palisades residents said that City could help residents by: 1) Waiving all fees, 2) Waiving all fees for 110 percent like-for-like projects, and 3) establishing published fixed fees for rebuilds that exceed 110 percent.
Pedrick also suggested the rebuilding process could be speeded up with a faster intake process and response. That within five days of plan check uploading there should be an issued conformance review, clearance fees and first round comments. That a review (after Intake Response), should happen within 15 business days, by proceeding with review and then issuing second round interagency comments.
The state also shares fault. People were not able to adequately cover their homes with fire insurance and are not able to rebuild at current construction costs.