It\u2019s been nearly 600 days since the L.A. fires became one of the most destructive in U.S. history, yet the federal government has still not appropriated more than $15 billion in long-term recovery funds to help survivors get back home. That\u2019s longer than the previous record of 500 days survivors of the Maui fires had to wait, according to\u00a0After the Fire USA.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aIt\u2019s really like nothing we\u2019ve ever seen before,\u201d said Jennifer Gray Thompson, the nonprofit\u2019s founder and CEO.<\/p>\n
Deep partisan divides and repeated government shutdowns under the Trump administration have been major causes for the delays, officials say.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisaster relief should not be a political bargaining chip\u2014but that\u2019s exactly how the Trump administration has made it out to be,\u201d Sen. Alex Padilla said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The state has also lagged, with $2.5 billion in recovery funds only just starting to be released,\u00a0according to reporting by NBC4.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, L.A fire survivors are facing\u00a0massive financial gaps to rebuild, on average between $200,000 and $500,000, even with insurance. And as temporary housing insurance dissipates, many are now being forced to decide whether they can afford to rebuild at all.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThe community is struggling and is fighting to come back\u2014and determined to come back \u2014but we are really lacking the state and federal support that is necessary to help get us there,\u201d said Sam James, a sixth-generation Altadenan whose family lost multiple generational homes in the Eaton Fire.<\/p>\n
James founded the Altadena Recovery Team, now called\u00a0A Resilient Tomorrow,\u00a0to support fellow survivors in lieu of reliable government and insurance-funded safety nets.\u00a0Multiple local creative financing efforts\u00a0are also cropping up more quickly feed that gap.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe delay is just really hard to rationalize given how much need there truly is on the ground,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
In recent months, delegations of\u00a0local officials\u00a0as well as\u00a0Eaton and Palisades fire survivors\u00a0have traveled to Washington, D.C. to speak with lawmakers about the much-needed federal funds, which experts say can often be used to fill such gaps in finances.<\/p>\n
In June, the White House\u00a0requested more than $85 billion\u00a0in supplemental funds, primarily to support the war on Iran. The next month, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger\u00a0sent letters\u00a0to the Senate Committee on Appropriations urging disaster needs be included in such requests.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s on D.C. to begin to move the narrative from an ask to a make it happen,\u201d Barger told LAist.<\/p>\n
Four U.S. senators from states affected by recent disasters\u2014including two Republicans from Utah and North Carolina, as well as California senators Padilla and Adam Schiff\u2014sent\u00a0a letter\u00a0in July expressing their concern that no disaster funds were included in the White House\u2019s supplemental appropriations request.<\/p>\n
The senators\u00a0called the omission\u00a0an effort by the Trump administration to punish Los Angeles and the state of California.<\/p>\n
Gov. Gavin Newsom has requested\u00a0more than $10 billion\u00a0for what\u2019s called \u201cCommunity Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery,\u201d which can help survivors finance their rebuilds, as well as help local governments rebuild infrastructure, such as water systems, community centers, roads and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the largest bucket of money any community receives in order to recover after a disaster,\u201d said Thompson, from After the Fire USA. \u201cIt can really help fill the gaps that people need to get home.\u201d<\/p>\n
On average, the wait for such funds\u2014from appropriation to allocation\u2014is two years, Thompson said. Yet it\u2019s been nearly two years since the L.A. fires, and the funds have yet to be appropriated at all.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Erin Stone is the Climate & Environment Senior Reporter at LAist<\/a>,\u00a0where this article originally appeared on August 27. Photo by Chuck Larsen\/Palisadian-Post.<\/p>\n Join the discussion: Comment anonymously in Your Two Cents\u2019 Worth<\/a> or submit a letter to the editor by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been nearly 600 days since the L.A. fires became one of the most destructive in U.S. history,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":451998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,52,51,47,50,49],"class_list":["post-451997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/451998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}