How Insurance Led Two L.A. Communities to Take Different Paths After the Fires

LOS ANGELES—The two townhouse complexes, perched on the rim of a canyon, were built in the same year, with the same floor plans and the same ’70s-style paneling that inspired their names: the Upper and Lower Woodies.

The residents watched the same deer, coyotes and woodpeckers and played tennis and swam with the same dramatic backdrop of the Santa Monica Mountains. But when all 82 units burned to the ground last year in the Palisades fire, the two communities had to decide whether and how to rebuild—and the similarities stopped.