The Staggering Weight of “Usual”
We’ve seen this before: after disasters like Maui’s fires, communities spend years drowning in paperwork, contractor shortages, and piecemeal rebuilding, leaving families stranded. “Business-as-usual” isn’t just slow; it’s a rigged game. It assumes stable labor, willing insurers, and predictable supply chains. None of these exist in today’s LA. To pretend otherwise ignores the ash at our feet.
“Importantly, based on lessons learned from rebuilding and recovery efforts from other natural disasters, it is clear that rebuilding through ‘business-as-usual’ channels is impractical, if not impossible.”
— Project Recovery, Urban Land Institute
Labor’s Perfect Storm
Skilled construction crews—already scarce—are now paralyzed. Fear of raids drives workers underground. Aging tradespeople retire without replacements. Meanwhile, rebuilding demands more hands than ever to install fire-resistant systems and solar panels. The old model—counting on lone contractors to magically find workers, is fantasy. We need systems that don’t rely on unwilling heroes.
Materials: Volatility as the New Normal
Costs for essentials like lumber and insulation swing wildly. Tariffs loom. Opportunistic price hikes exploit desperation. Yet fire-prone zones require specialized materials that outperform standard options. The traditional approach, every homeowner haggling alone, only fuels chaos. When scarcity rules, collaboration is the only counterforce.
The Unignorable Upside
High-performance homes aren’t a luxury—they’re a lifeline. Imagine structures that actively resist fires, clean their own air during smoke storms, and power themselves off-grid. This isn’t hypothetical tech; it’s proven science. But “business-as-usual” treats it as a boutique upgrade, not the baseline. That mindset is obsolete.
“….a suite of financial programs, building techniques, and incentives seek to increase homes’ resilience and energy efficiency, leading to decreased ownership costs, decreased insurance premiums, and greater long-term sustainability of new housing, both single-family and apartments. This includes the use of the FORTIFIED standard for new homes, Passive House Institute of the U.S. (PHIUS) standard, and programs from state utilities…”
— NATIONAL HOUSING CRISIS TASK FORCE: STATE AND LOCAL HOUSING ACTION PLAN
The Mandate for Radical Reinvention
These crises converge into one truth: We cannot rebuild a fire-ravaged city with systems designed for calm, predictable times. The labor chaos, material rollercoaster, and climate urgency demand entirely new frameworks—where speed comes from standardization, resilience comes from design, and fairness comes from collective action.
“The City of Los Angeles should continue to implement with urgency the Mayor’s Executive Order No. 5 which fast-tracks voluntary all-electric rebuilds, by directing the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) to provide additional assistance, education, and incentives to architects, engineers, contractors, and homeowners to build all-electric and other high-performance homes that provide resilience benefits (e.g., distributed energy resources, Passive House).”
— BLUE RIBBON COMMISSION ON CLIMATE ACTION AND FIRE-SAFE RECOVERY, Final Commission Recommendations and Action Plans
BuildLA Initiative: Turning Mandate into Momentum
This is where BuildLA Initiative steps in. They hold firm to the new and reject incremental tweaks. Instead, they’re building coalitions that:
– Replace fragmented bidding with factory-produced, fire-smart home components.
– Pool community buying power to stabilize material costs and access innovation.
– Train locals as specialized rebuilders—turning victims into skilled partners.
– Treat high-performance homes as the default, not the exception.
Their role isn’t to prescribe—it’s to orchestrate the change we can no longer avoid.
The Core Shift
This isn’t about technical specs. It’s about recognizing that clinging to broken systems is the real risk. BuildLA Initiative is advocating for something bigger: the courage to say, “What got us here won’t get us there—and we’re ready to build what will.”
“The old playbook rebuilds vulnerabilities. We’re writing a new one—where every restored home makes the whole community stronger.”
— BuildLA Initiative Ethos
