City appears to jump the gun on 100-permit milestone
By Judy Abel · Sun Sep 27 2026
Permits and certificates of occupancy lag behind Woolsey rebuild
On Sept. 14, the City of Malibu launched a PR blitz celebrating the issuance of the 100th building permit for the Palisades Fire rebuilds. This included a press release, accompanying video, a presentation at that evening’s City Council meeting, social media postings, and an op-ed by the city’s Community Development Director published in last week’s The Malibu Times. The city’s Sept. 14 posting stated, “the City has issued its 100th permit allowing a property owner to begin reconstruction,” described as a “major milestone.” The posting continued, “In an emotional moment at the City Council meeting at City Hall on Sept.14, the milestones were announced to the Council and the public.” City Manager Joe Irvin was quoted, “reaching 100 permits to begin construction shows that rebuilding is moving forward throughout our community.” Community Development Director Yolanda Bundy stated, “We celebrate the 100th homeowner who has reached the point of being able to begin construction.” The city’s rebuilding program was described as “a streamlined path through the planning, permitting, construction and inspection process.” Readers can view the full statement at malibucity.org/m/newsflash/home/detail/2155
But had 100 permits actually been issued as of that date? A review by The Malibu Times suggests that the answer is no, and that the city had previously been alerted to misleading definitions in its data reporting, where permits are counted as “issued” before they are in fact issued.
While the Sept. 14 Malibu Rebuild Center dashboard did show 100 permits issued at that time, one of the continuing frustrations for local residents is that while the dashboard maps each rebuild property that is under planning review, receives planning approval, and has submitted for plan check, it does not identify the specific properties for which building permits have been issued, providing only an unverifiable total. As of Sept. 16, the Malibu Rebuild Task Force’s Permit Tracker had shown only 96 homes permitted. When asked to explain the discrepancy and to provide the 100 addresses, the city simply replied: “It [the Rebuilds dashboard] is updated by the City's permit technicians at City Hall, who enter the permit information on a daily basis based on the development database. So that is accurate and up to date, reflecting actual permits.” When again asked to provide a list of the 100 homes permitted as of Sept. 14, the date of the announcement, so this assertion could be verified, the City’s Public Information Officer failed to do so.
By Sept. 17, the Malibu Permit Tracker showed 100 permits issued. So was it just a timing issue in the data moving from the Rebuilds Dashboard to the Permit Tracker? The problem is that multiple addresses identified on the Sept. 17 Permit Tracker as having their permits issued had not had their permits issued by Sept. 17, never mind Sept. 14. Quite simply, without the permit actually having been issued, the owner could not begin construction. Exactly how many of the 100 did not have issued permits. The precise number cannot be determined unless the city reveals which 100 parcels it was counting in its Sept. 14 announcement.
Rebuild Zone Captain and Malibu City Council candidate Danny Smith stated:
"One of the things that surprises many is the delay between being approved by plan check and actually having a permit in hand. This can often be a multiple-week process, which can frustrate an eager applicant who has already endured so much delay. Nevertheless, I believe some if not all, of this added time is unavoidable. If the city could do one thing better here, it would be to avoid counting chickens before they hatch and to wait to share the good news of a permit being issued until, well, the permit is actually issued. But they have the headwinds of bad press to deal with and are understandably anxious to publicize their successes.”
Malibu Rebuild Task Force member Jo Drummond recalled the city setting a goal in September 2025 — with only two permits issued — of 100 permits by the end of 2025. “It was supposed to be 12 months to issue 100 rebuild permits, but it took 20 months, and that’s a failure and puts us behind Woolsey numbers.”
A review of the pace of permit and certificate of occupancy issuance post-Woolsey validates Drummond’s assertion. The Malibu City Manager Update for June 5, 2020, reported Woolsey rebuild permits already issued for 102 single-family dwellings as well as a 12-unit apartment complex, with four single-family homes completed by that date. The same period of time post-Palisades would bring us only to Aug. 5, 2026. In other words, the 100-permit milestone was reached in Woolsey more than a month earlier, despite the city at that time having been in COVID lockdown for nearly 80 days.
The hard work of the rebuilding staff and the extraordinary efforts of Yolanda Bundy are not in question, and they should be applauded for their achievements. Additionally, the homes destroyed in the different fires present unique geologic and engineering challenges and so do not lend themselves to easy comparisons. Nevertheless, it appears the City Council was provided inaccurate information by staff at its Sept. 14 regular meeting. In preparing for the next major conflagration — a certainty given Malibu’s long history — the pace of rebuilding and the impediments to permitting must be reviewed and reconsidered with unflinching attention to accurate data. Each day without permits represents another day of displacement, carrying costs, housing expenses, and diminished community for the fire victims, local schools and businesses, and Malibu at large.
A fire victim who requested anonymity over concerns of further delays and “slow walking” of their own rebuild said, “I call it the Malibu Rebuild Prevention Center. This is not a time for celebration and self-congratulation. It’s a time for humility and reflection on a systemic failure on a scale exceeding even that of the Woolsey rebuild.”