Chapter 1: What was the impact of the California fires on home values?
A year after the California fires, I speak to a neighbor who had to sell and another neighbor who's partly rebuilt. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. Let's start with a number from UCLA, $27 billion. That's the value of all the homes wiped out by the California wildfires a year ago. That's the typical cost of those homes before the fires, multiplied by the more than 12,000 homes gone.
Now, this week here, I'm taking those big numbers and bringing them down to street level. A street in the community of Altadena, 20 minutes northwest of downtown Los Angeles. On a single block, 15 houses were total losses. Now, one of those 15 was my house, but I wanted to hear from my neighbors.
Yeah, so we were a total loss, a grounder, as they call it.
Louis lived on my side of the street, South Corner.
We had a couple of oak trees that survived in the back, but other than that, it was totally just burnt to ashes.
When the initial shock of escaping flying embers morphed into talk of what's next, Louis and his wife were all in, gung-ho.
My wife and I decided that we were committed to rebuilding, and... We went pretty full throttle and just dove into this unknown world for us, you know, architecture and design and building.
The planning department would let you go 200 square foot bigger.
We found an amazing architect who happened to be a good friend.
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Chapter 2: How did families cope with the aftermath of losing their homes?
It was to the point her neighbors threw her a party to use magic markers to write hope and love tidings onto the bare wood.
You can see there's messages like here, may God bless your home. There's one, congrats, welcome home. And it was just a celebration of new beginnings. So all of the positive messages will live within the walls of my home forever.
Erica's strategy was to get moving, even with the all-out push for insurance money in progress. The contractor she had, she also paid a project manager to get those plans through the often confused county permitting process before the expected onslaught of new building applications.
I started relatively early, so I got the jump in ahead of time.
Actually, one year later here, the onslaught of building has yet to come. Across Los Angeles County, encompassing most of the two biggest fires, 1,200 building permits have been approved so far, with rebuilding actually in progress on less than half of those, or 527 properties.
On my street, among those 15 grounders, as he called them, there are also 10 homes left standing, but in the path of all that toxic smoke and soot. That's a particular insurance nightmare I'll explore later this week. And you can watch my video series with Teachable Moments from my burned street. Instagram is one place to see it. Our handle is Marketplace APM.
And later today, my colleague Kai Risdahl talks to the owner of Two Dragons Martial Arts, where the owner is done with renting after the fire and is working to buy the lot from her landlord. That's on many public radio stations or from Marketplace.org. A private sector survey of payrolls out this morning finds just 41,000 jobs were added in December, according to ADP.
Let's consult Susan Schmidt, portfolio manager at Exchange Capital Resources. Good morning. Good morning. Less than expected, 41,000 seems a little meager for the month.
Not that meager. Remember, last month was negative. So at least now we've got an add to the job number.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did families face while rebuilding after the fire?
The S&P is little changed at the moment. The Nasdaq is up 4 tenths of a percent. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning Report. From APM American Public Media. Hey, it's David Brancaccio, host of the Marketplace Morning Report. It has been one year since the costliest set of wildfires in California history, U.S.
history, and by at least one calculation, the history of the world. Sixteen thousand structures were destroyed, most of them homes. I can quote you figures about insured versus uninsured losses measured in billions. But as people in the fire zones face year two, we go from macro to micro. I'm checking in with the neighbors on one street in Altadena where 15 homes were destroyed on a single block.
These are my own neighbors. I lost a home on that street too. Join us for on-the-ground reporting as we hear from people still dealing with insurance, getting permits, finding contractors. One guy had to go through 30 contractors to find one with the right skills he could afford. Plus, for most, rebuilding is taking years. How do people find the money to live elsewhere?
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