The Palisades Fire displaced most of the roughly 11,000 households in Los Angeles’s Pacific Palisades community almost overnight. The PPCC’s rebuilding committee wanted to reach as many of them as possible, to inform the city, county, and state’s recovery efforts.

“The council wanted to hear from everyone—not just the loudest voices—to understand the range of experiences and rebuilding priorities of a diverse community,” said Joy Moini, associate director of Socioeconomic & Global Research at NORC, who lives in Los Angeles and became our on-site liaison with the council. “People often think of the Pacific Palisades as homogeneous and wealthy, but there are renters, older residents, and people who inherited homes but don’t necessarily have the resources to rebuild, and face serious, compounding barriers to doing so.”

To reach this scattered population, we undertook an intensive locating effort. It combined U.S. Postal Service delivery-sequence files, voter records, and commercial databases with geographic information systems to verify addresses within the fire zone. Our approach helped us build a comprehensive contact list of approximately 10,000 Pacific Palisades households, an unusually high number for a population struck by a geographic disaster. To fill any gaps, we worked with the PPCC to publicize the survey through its social media channels. The result was a probability-based response from 1,265 verified residents.

Because residents were wary of post-fire scams, we co-branded the survey with the widely known PPCC. Council leaders also signed invitation letters, served as public spokespeople, and helped us tailor survey questions to the community. Once we had our sample, we held six 60-minute focus groups, each with six to eight community members. The groups were organized by profile—homeowners with destroyed properties, renters, households with children, older residents, and others. Those conversations surfaced issues most likely to shape recovery decisions and directly informed the subsequent survey.

We offered all survey respondents a five-dollar incentive, which they could keep or direct to a local charity. This gesture built trust by showing that we were contributing something to the community, not just extracting data from it.

Seventy-one percent of single-family homeowners reported being extremely or very concerned that insurance would not adequately cover repair or rebuilding costs. About 4 in 10 cited the cost of repairs, insurance-related issues such as coverage gaps or claims delays, and environmental hazards—including smoke damage and soil contamination—as chief barriers.

Roughly half of all residents said they are not confident that their neighborhood’s air, soil, and water are safe. About 60 percent said environmental concerns have a great deal of influence on their decision to return, repair, or rebuild. When asked whose assurances would matter most to them, residents ranked independent scientists above government agencies, with 83 percent calling independent scientific assurance “extremely” or “very” important.

When asked to name the most important repairs and improvements for the community’s future, roughly two-thirds chose upgraded water infrastructure to support firefighting needs, with 96 percent desiring reliable fire hydrants. A vast majority also cited the need for buried power and utility lines (80 percent) and improved evacuation routes (79 percent).

A significant number expressed little or no confidence in government officials leading such efforts. When asked who should lead them, residents want community involvement. Thirty-seven percent chose a partnership between local government and trusted community organizations, and 28 percent preferred a proposed community-based independent rebuilding authority.

“Over the course of the research, we saw that Palisades residents wanted the community’s voice heard at every stage of the rebuilding process,” said Jennifer Benz, senior vice president of NORC’s Public Affairs & Media Research department. “They wanted to see community representation in the rebuilding effort, and many residents were willing or open to considering funding a local rebuilding authority to oversee the effort.”

A follow-up survey that tracks community sentiment over time is the third phase of our study and will launch later this year.

Our initial report has been distributed to Los Angeles city council members, county supervisors, and state legislators in Sacramento. The PPCC will share the follow-up survey with them to provide further credible, resident-driven data to help inform their decisions.