VX News is the editorial voice of the annual VerdeXchange Conference, featuring in-depth interviews with industry leaders and policymakers driving innovation in clean energy, water, transportation, and climate policy.
Two cities burned in LA fires settle YIMBY lawsuit
VX News here excerpts a CalMatters’ Ben Christopher feature that reports: homeowners in Malibu and Pasadena, who saw their neighborhoods burn in the Eaton and Palisades fires last year, will soon be able to build up to four units on their properties now that the two fire-scarred cities have settled a lawsuit brought by pro-development activists. In the settlement: both Malibu and Altadena agreed to repeal their local anti-duplex ordinances suspending SB 9 in post-fire very high fire hazard severity zones and accept all pending and future applications filed under the law. That five-year-old housing law makes it easier for single-family home owners to divide up their parcels and build duplexes on each lot, potentially allowing as many as four small units where local rules once allowed only one. Find the CalMatters original, here.
The Cost of Waiting: Larry Kosmont on PCH, Disaster Recovery Districts, and the Infrastructure Gap
Recovery does not begin with rebuilding structures. It begins with rebuilding the infrastructure that makes communities worth returning to – streets, sewers, water, power, and the systems that make a place livable and investable.
That is the argument Larry Kosmont, Chairman & CEO of Kosmont Companies, brings to VX2026. With the debris removal phase of the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton Fires now complete, and an estimated $76 to $131 billion in property and capital losses still looming over Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena, the question is no longer whether to rebuild…it is whether the financing infrastructure can move fast enough to make rebuilding possible.