Editor’s Note: This interview taped a few days before the government announced it would reopen after a shutdown that lasted 44 days. We opted to keep the references to the shutdown in the interview to illustrate its impact on the rebuilding process. Talk to anyone in Altadena and they’ll tell you they loved living there before the fires. It was their paradise, their Shangri-La, their little slice of heaven. It’s been repeatedly described as a  diverse place where people from all sorts of different backgrounds found a home. But it remains to be seen how much of that can come back.
Ten months after the January fire, about two-thousand rebuilding applications have been submitted to L.A. County and, of those, a little more than a quarter of them have been approved. At the time of this recording, about 250 homes were in active construction.A big problem in Altadena?  Building a brand new house is going to cost a lot more money than what insurance will cover.Guest: Kathryn Barger, Los Angeles County Supervisor, 5th DistrictAltadena Recovery Info: https://recovery.lacounty.gov/altadena/
Permit Fee Waiver / Refund Request: https://planning.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Permit-Fee-Waiver-Refund-Form_fillable.pdf
Tune in to Altadena Community Meetings on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLblXY1FEJmYjEQc2Z0u_8cP2RZp_foSF7