Facing dwindling — or already dried up — insurance payouts and increasingly expensive rebuilding estimates, Los Angeles County’s fire survivors appear to be headed for the most urgent and existential financial crisis yet in their recovery, according to a survey taken 15 months after the January 2025 firestorms.
The report released Thursday by the Department of Angels, a fire recovery nonprofit launched after much of Altadena and Pacific Palisades were destroyed in the Eaton and Palisades fires, marks the organization’s fifth quarterly survey of about 2,100 fire survivors.
It noted some marginal progress in the overall recovery but also found “large and widening gaps between the recovery paths of different survivors,” particularly when accounting for respondents’ income levels and race and ethnicity.
The highest percentage yet of fire survivors — almost 40% — reported that they had either run out of temporary housing insurance payments or expected to soon, signaling “an impending end of coverage for many more survivors before they are able to return home,” the report found.
About 40% of respondents said they would be able to afford temporary housing only for a few months, if that, without those insurance payments.
And the findings were even more urgent for lower-income households: Among those earning $50,000 or less, almost 80% said they didn’t think they could afford housing for three months once coverage ended.
“Long-term finances are the most urgent issue for survivors, even as they face a diverse array of other pressing challenges,” the report found. About 2 in 3 fire survivors are still displaced.
On top of temporary housing costs and concerns, 1 in 5 reported significant financial hardships as a result of the fires, while 1 in 10 said they’d been forced to cut back on food or were falling behind on rent, mortgage or utility payments.
Nearly half of all survivors have depleted a significant portion of their savings, and about 4 in 10 said they’d taken on debt, the report said.
“Some of the most dire financial impacts are disproportionately being experienced by people of color: 22% of Latinos and 18% of African Americans have cut back on food, compared to 7% of white survivors,” the report found. “Latinos and African Americans are also more likely to have fallen behind on rent/or mortgage, fallen behind on utility bills, missed work or school, relied on food assistance, and experienced homelessness.”
Beyond families’ immediate needs, insurance shortfalls are also bringing concerns for residents hoping to rebuild.
“Homeowners estimate that in order to rebuild their homes, they would need more than $600,000 on average above what insurance is expected to provide,” the report found. Total-loss homeowners in Altadena estimate they will be short about $550,000 even after insurance payments, while in Pacific Palisades and Malibu, residents estimate the gap will be around $1.19 million and $1.73 million, respectively.
Fewer than half of homeowners with major damage said they would rebuild no matter what. About a quarter said that they would like to rebuild but that it hinged on “financing or a pathway to make it affordable.”
“I don’t think anyone has enough” insurance money, said Isabella Mendoza, an Altadena fire survivor who has volunteered with several fire recovery groups. Most recently, she’s worked with the Altadena Land Initiatives, a nonprofit that works to provide interest-free loans to fire survivors. She said that the group had been inundated with requests for help, but that as the true cost of rebuilding becomes clear, the group realizes it can help only so many people.
“It’s difficult to decide you want to come home and do the finances of it all, then realizing it’s not financially feasible,” Mendoza said. She said the exhaustion she sees on people’s faces has become normalized.
“Sometimes you need a break, but you don’t get a break from recovery.”
And there’s a similar gap for renters too: On average, these residents estimated they would need about $250,000 in addition to insurance payouts to pay for lost belongings and temporary housing.
Still, the report found that a majority of fire survivors remained hopeful or confident they would recover, though that confidence is strongly correlated with income. Higher-income groups were more likely to feel confident about recovery, while lower-income fire victims expressed the most uncertainty.
And though the majority of fire survivors remain displaced in temporary housing, the report did find that there’s been some improvement for survivors with standing, but damaged, homes. Only about 40% of those residents remained displaced as of April, down from about 55% in December.
Survivors also saw progress in soil testing, with almost half of total-loss homes reporting they had completed soil tests, up from about a third in December. (Though, it’s worth noting, many of the new tests came back positive for dangerous contaminants.)
Despite the ongoing and complicated challenges, leaders with the Department of Angels said they hoped the report’s findings “may serve as a practical tool for aligning efforts, directing resources, and ensuring that recovery remains within reach for every family.”
This is “a fragile moment for survivors,” Department of Angels co-founders Evan Spiegel and Miguel Santana wrote in the report. “As gaps in family budgets widen, confidence is wavering, raising important questions about who will recover and under what conditions. … The decisions made in this moment will shape the pace and the outcomes of recovery.”
The post Nearly 40% of L.A. fire survivors face crisis as temporary housing funds dry up, survey finds appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
