FEMA Declines to Lease Apartments for LA Wildfire Survivors

After natural disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency often leases apartment buildings for survivors — but not in Los Angeles County, where wildfires torched 13,000 homes.

Federal and state disaster officials didn’t jumpstart the program after the January firestorm, saying the rental market had sufficient housing for those who lost their homes, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Now local and national advocates are questioning the decision, saying survivors are falling through the cracks.

Since her Altadena rental home burned, Tamara Johnson has hunted for an apartment from San Bernardino to Oceanside, with no results at finding housing that would accept her FEMA assistance. She slept in her van. When a truck totaled it, she crashed in her rental car.

“I’m going through all this,” Johnson, 62, told the Times. “And I just came through a disaster.”

There could have been an easier path to long-term housing.

After major wildfires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and other cataclysmic events, FEMA often directly rents apartments for disaster survivors who can’t find a place on their own.

But FEMA never implemented the program in Los Angeles.

Federal and state emergency officials said they haven’t launched the program, known as Direct Lease, because it’s not needed. Their analysis of available apartments in L.A. County shows more than 5,600 listed at prices within the limits of FEMA reimbursements.

A FEMA spokesperson said that while the agency understands that individual survivors are facing hardships, state and federal data show rental housing is accessible. Evidence from disaster-affected households supports that view, she said.

“The number of applicants eligible for and requesting continued FEMA rental assistance remained comparatively low, suggesting that, on a broad scale, many eligible survivors were able to find housing solutions within the available rental market,” the spokesperson told the Times.

“The data does not support a rental shortage,” added Monica Vargas, spokesperson for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

The policy baffles national and local disaster relief advocates, who say the public agencies are overlooking national precedents and local needs.

Heavenly Hughes, co-founder of My Tribe Rise, a nonprofit based in Altadena, said she believes there are potentially thousands of Eaton fire survivors with insecure housing like Johnson, including those doubling up with relatives, sleeping on couches or packing into hotel rooms.

Local agencies, she said, are straining to keep up with demand.

“If these agencies are set up to show compassion and care, to have these people have some type of normalcy, the first part would be helping people find housing,” Hughes told the Times. “It’s sad there has to be this much talking when they should know we need it.”

— Dana Bartholomew