City Committee Hears Heartbreaking Tales of Loss From Homeowners Whose Insurance Doesn’t Cover the Cost to Rebuild

Many Pasadena residents who lost their homes in the devastating Eaton Fire are facing the stark financial reality that their insurance coverage falls dramatically short of rebuilding costs. During Tuesday night’s Economic Development and Technology Committee meeting, local fire victims shared deeply personal accounts of the stress and financial strain they experienced during their displacement, highlighting a crisis that threatens to permanently alter the community’s landscape.

Longtime Pasadena resident Susie Rhodes told the Committee many local homeowners filing claims are receiving approximately $600,000 in insurance settlements, an amount vastly insufficient to rebuild their destroyed homes.

“None of us have enough,” Rhodes emphasized. “None of us should have to go into debt to rebuild.”

The Eaton Fire, which ignited on January 7, destroyed about 185 structures within Pasadena city limits, primarily in the Upper Hastings Ranch area.

Residents describe a nightmare of constant relocation after the fire, with some families like Rhodes’s moving seven times in the first month after losing their home.

Natalie, another affected homeowner who had bought her house just six months before the fire, spoke about the myriad additional financial pressures. Among them: new building requirements, including mandatory fire safety upgrades and potential soil testing, further increase reconstruction costs beyond insurance payouts.

City officials are currently considering various fee reduction strategies to support residents. The latest proposal includes reducing plan check and permit fees, with the potential to waive some charges entirely.

Councilmembers said they want to help. Committee Chair Tyron Hampton said the city is committed to helping residents “come back to their communities as quickly as possible.”

The insurance shortfall is particularly devastating for long-time residents like Totress Beasley, who reportedly paid off her home’s mortgage just one day before it burned down. As a city employee and senior citizen, Beasley personifies the toll of this disaster. She told Committee members about the community’s urgent need for support.

City staff report they are focusing on providing immediate, defined fee reductions to minimize financial burdens on fire victims, differentiating Pasadena’s approach from other jurisdictions that are deferring fees. Proposed relief includes a 50% reduction in plan check fees for homes utilizing pre-approved standard designs available through partners like the Foothill Catalog Foundation, which could reduce the fee for a 1,900 square foot home from $8,107 to $4,056.

Additionally, city staff recommend reducing the Construction and Demolition performance deposit to a flat rate of $2,000, a significant reduction from its typical calculation which can be as high as $12,000 for a 1,900 square foot home, and is largely refundable. This specific reduction alone would provide a 28% overall fee reduction for those not using standard plans.

The committee also discussed waiving other city fees such as the construction tax, general plan maintenance fee, and technology fee, which are categorized as not representing direct staff costs and typically go to the city’s general fund rather than the restricted building fund. Waiving these three fees plus reducing the Construction and Demolition deposit to $2,000 could result in an overall fee reduction of approximately 60% for applicants, bringing the total cost for a 1,900 square foot home from $36,216 down to $14,536. If standard plans were also utilized in this scenario, the total fee could be reduced to just over $10,000.

Staff are not proposing reductions for the city’s building permit fees (approximately 18.2% of total fees) as these cover direct staff costs for processing permits, inspections, and monitoring, representing a cost recovery service. The city is exploring the possibility of extending plan check reductions beyond standard plans to “like-for-like” rebuilds (defined as up to 10% or 200 square foot additions).

The Economic Development and Technology Committee decided to recommend bringing a comprehensive fee reduction proposal to the full City Council on July 14, with the ultimate goal being to waive all legally permissible fees for affected owner-occupied residents to the maximum extent possible.