The 2020 CZU Lightning Complex Fires destroyed thousands of homes in the Santa Cruz mountains, a "wilderness" area that has been filled with mountain homes

Many (most) have not yet had permits issued for rebuilding, most commonly because the owners can not meet, or are unwilling to meet, the standards for septic systems.

There have been decades of higher standards for all sorts of code. Nothing nearly as stringent for multifsmlt housing, a code which makes housing six times safer than single family housing. But still strict enough that four decades of no-growth policy left most people completely unaware of how hard it is to build housing.

And the state and country are happy to leave them hanging indefinitely. property seizure via regulation.

As somebody who would like to swim in the San Lorenzo River with my children, I'm not super enthusiastic about allowing them to continue to pollute the river.

It may be that the septic regulations are excessive, but oddly I've never heard anybody argue that the regulations are unnecessary, they just argue that they don't want to follow them because they didn't have to in the past. I'd be a bit more sympathetic to the mountain folks if they had an argument that the regulations were incorrect.

The real property seizure is what's happening to the public land so that people can live for cheap and not cover their own pollution. People still have the land. Though if they want to try to overturn Euclid v. Amber and make zoning illegal, I'm there to help them! Necessary environmental regulations are not something I want to overturn, however.

That is indeed the conflict. IDK if the regulations are unnecessary to maintain a swimmable river either.

however, it is undeniable that there was a change in regulation and restriction, even if that is going from a river quality is optional to the priority.

Beneficiaries are happy to benefit, and if that takes away powers and property from others, so be it.

This is the dynamic that I am highlighting.

"almost a year" isn't a very long time for West Coast permits

The duplex I'm in took... 4-5 years of permitting? Something like that.

Totally insane waits, I agree.

Yes.

https://recovery.lacounty.gov/rebuilding/permitting-progress...

2162 permit applications received; 1916 applications have full plans submitted. 534 permits issued so far.

I bought some furniture from a guy in Ben Lomond and he told me that after the CZU fires, permitting was the bottleneck for most folks, to the point that even four years after the fires some people still were waiting. It's insane. IMO the bottleneck here is likely staffing. If someone wanted to streamline this they'd actually allocate some emergency funds statewide for this.

We really need to focus on streamlining and automating the process rather than hiring more government employees. Every county should be forced to use a single standardized API for permit applications. And if an application isn't denied within 30 days then it's automatically approved.

literally any attention on this problem would be a tremendous improvement.

I mean, it was 16,000-18,000 homes that were destroyed? That's a hell of a lot when you consider that all the other new builds are still in the queue to be permitted too.

Sure! But you could treat it as an emergency and staff up. It could even be through a mutual aid system the way utilities team up to do repairs after disasters, borrowing permitting experts from other jurisdictions.

>borrowing permitting experts from other jurisdictions.

I don't think those people exist... State/City budgets have already been cut lean on this stuff and most places that aren't in the middle of a disaster are many months behind as it is.

The cost of permits alone would easily pay for the extra staff and overtime. Most places in California charge what, $1-3k per house?