As Los Angeles recovers from the most destructive wildfires in California history, local officials are considering a strategy to speed up and simplify the rebuilding process.
The city council voted unanimously to approve researching the impact of a self-certification building permit program that would allow developers, registered architects and engineers to sign off on their own plans and break ground on projects at will, with city officials inspecting projects during and after construction.
Allowing developers to self-certify would "have massive implications for the city's ability to handle its workload," said Mott Smith, CEO and cofounder of Amped Kitchens and principal of Civic Enterprise, an urban infill real estate development firm.
"Instead of having the city spend six months reviewing the simplest projects and forcing builders to pay carrying costs while they mess around with the plans, we need a much more efficient way to review and improve things," Smith, also vice chair of the City of Los Angeles Small Business Commission, told CoStar News.
Los Angeles could join several other cities with similar self-permitting regulations, including Phoenix, Chicago and New York City. A smaller city within Los Angeles County – Bellflower – recently proposed offering developers self-certification capability in exchange for reducing height and density in some multifamily developments.
While officials note the motion could clear development hurdles in the wake of the fires that destroyed more than 11,000 structures, it could also present financial risks for developers, as owners are on the hook to fix any mistakes city inspectors catch after construction starts.
Accelerating the process
The motion passed last week instructs city staff to draft a report on how self-permitting, also known as professional permitting, would affect the development process in Los Angeles and share details on the findings in the coming weeks.
Even before last month's wildfires caused some $30 billion in damage, Los Angeles faced a shortage of affordable housing exacerbated by long permitting delays. The city is tasked with adding 450,000 new homes by 2039 as part of increasing statewide affordability problems, with Los Angeles counting rents that are more than 30% above the nation's average.
Over the past four years, the median time required to get a permit approved to construct a multifamily project in Los Angeles was 10 months, according to real estate data firm ATC Research. One of the bottlenecks is the so-called "plan check" where city officials make sure proposals comply with city rules, according to Nithya Raman, the council member who introduced the self-permitting motion.
“Right now, about half of the planning department’s work is tied up in permit approvals that are for relatively simple projects,” she said at a city council meeting last week. “All of these don’t need the eyes of our bureaucracy.”
Today, 59% of such plan checks are for single-family home remodels, additions and new construction, Smith said. Another 27% are for commercial projects, predominantly interior remodels and tenant improvement projects. The self-certification program could apply to those proposals, potentially clearing more time for city officials to prioritize "the complex projects that really need city attention," Smith said, such as new homes and businesses in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood affected by the fires.
Guardrails should be included in any final legislation to avoid costly mishaps, said CoStar Senior Director of Market Analytics for Los Angeles Ryan Patap.
Private partnership
Self-permitting is not unprecedented. Phoenix launched a program in 2010 that applies to most buildings and has cut permit review times and reduced staffing needs. Still, the program has not seen as many self-permitters as expected, while critics of a similar program in New York City blame collapsed buildings and other construction issues on self-certification.
Closer to home, San Diego has a self-certification option for solar installations and office remodels. The LA County city of Bellflower has allowed self-permitting for all development for the past decade, while city officials in Beverly Hills recently proposed self-certification in exchange for reducing height and density in some multifamily developments.
Smith called self-certification "the lowest hanging fruit of all," when it comes to cutting red tape.
The process usually applies to proposals with straightforward design and engineering requirements, Smith said. For simple projects, the most important checkpoint for code compliance is during inspection.
"Where the rubber meets the road is when the inspector is in the field saying, your studs aren't spaced properly or I don't like the bolts that you use and I want you to change them out," Smith said.
"If we use this opportunity to fix our system for all its worth, we will get a city bureaucracy that is a partner with private industry rather than an adversary," Smith added.