Why after the fires are so long that it is restored

This story originally Appeared in VOX and is part of the cooperation of the weather desk.

Following the fires in Los Angeles in January-some of the most expensive and destructive streams in history-one of the first things that California Governor Gavin News did, is an executive signature that suspends environmental laws on reconstruction.

The idea was that by ignoring the regulations and investigations under the California Coastal Law and the California Environmental Quality Law (CEQA), homeowners and builders could start cleaning, placing walls and bringing people to home faster.

But this raised a fundamental question for housing fans: Can California do something similar to the whole state?

Earlier this month, the News Zeg was taken a step in this direction and signed two bills that exempt most urban housing from environmental investigations and make it easier for cities to increase regionalization laws. The Newsom also signed another executive order, which would suspend some of the local licensing rules and construction codes for firefighting communities aimed at speeding up the reconstruction.

Housing reforms cannot be done soon for the city of angels. By Santa Anna, with the power of a stormy storm on an unusual landscape and lawn, the fires torn through LA were set on fire to about 48,000 hectares and damaged or destroyed more than 16,000 structures, including more than 9,500 single -family houses, 1200 dongles.

Los Angeles is an important case for housing for the whole country, an experiment as to whether the government-controlled Democratic government can coordinate its contradictory political bases-environmental groups, housing defenders-with disappointing need to more homes. Some observers have been seen as a sign that the state of Golden was eventually seeing light by revising the government’s environmental law.

But despite the calm rules, progress in LA has been lean. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 800 homeowners in areas affected by the fire have requested the reconstruction of permits on July 7. However, less than 200 green lights received. The city of Los Angeles takes about 55 days on average to approve a fire reconstruction, and the wider part of Los Angeles lasts even longer. (The city of Los Angeles has a dashboard to track licenses in illegal areas.)

“The LA process is very slow, so it is not surprising,” said Eliza Paster, a management partner at Rand Paster Nelson, a Los Angeles -based company specializing in land use law. “Illegally, we have heard that many people have decided that they do not want to go through the reconstruction process in LA because it is very heavy.”

Now, half a year after the death of Embers, it is clear that changing the rules is not enough. CEQA fans say that the 55 -year law is really a hook for larger and unbearable housing problems. Other factors, such as expensive building materials and lack of labor, increase housing construction costs regardless of the permissible speed. And some environmental groups are concerned that rush to rebuild everything, because it can recreate the conditions that have led to prosperity in the first place, a dangerous view in an area where the dangers of fire are just growing.

How CEQA reforms can and cannot help the damaged communities of fire

CEQA is one of the environmental rules of the California tent signed in 1970 by the governor of Ronald Reagan. This requires that state and local governments are prevented by any potential environmental damage from a construction project, such as water pollution, threats to endangered species, and later greenhouse gas emissions. Developers need to disclose these issues and take steps to prevent them. The law also allows the general public to endure new developments.

In the following years, CEQA has been recognized as an obstacle to new construction. Many critics see it as a pessimistic tool to prevent the construction of new housing in wealthy societies, even called to challenge the closure of new highways and parks for environmental reasons. This is one of the “abundance” movement that supports the cutting of red strips to build more homes and clean energy.