Since her Altadena rental home burned down in January’s Eaton fire, Tamara Johnson has crisscrossed Southern California looking for a place to live. She started in San Bernardino, where she stayed with a friend, and continued to Oceanside, where an Airbnb voucher let her remain a week.
She’s driven from Long Beach to Azusa searching for apartments, spending her days scanning listings for those that would accept her Federal Emergency Management Agency housing assistance and calling 211 for help. Most nights, she’s slept in her van. The worst came when a truck smashed into the back of her vehicle one morning as she was pulling into a fast food parking lot. Johnson got a rental car and then slept in that.
“I’m going through all this,” said Johnson, 62. “And I just came through a disaster.”
With her struggles, Johnson was surprised to learn that there could have been another path to long-term housing. After major wildfires, floods, hurricanes, earthquakes and other cataclysmic events, FEMA often directly rents apartments for disaster survivors who cannot find somewhere on their own. Yet the agency has not implemented the program in Los Angeles.
Johnson said relying on FEMA for a home would have put her on a path to recovery rather than living in an “emergency mode” where she’s just trying to make it through each day.
“It would stabilize you a lot faster,” she said.
Federal and state emergency officials said that they have not started 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.
“The data does not support a rental shortage,” said Monica Vargas, spokesperson for the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
This stance baffles national and local disaster relief advocates who contend that the public agencies are overlooking precedents across the country and realities on the ground.
Heavenly Hughes, co-founder of Altadena nonprofit My Tribe Rise, 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. Organizations like hers, she said, are straining to keep up with the 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 said. “It’s sad there has to be this much talking when they should know we need it.”
After disasters, FEMA’s primary housing assistance comes through subsidies that survivors can use to find their own apartments. To supplement that, the agency frequently looks to lease properties not typically available for long-term stays, such as corporate and vacation rentals, where it can house people otherwise unable to find housing directly with rent covered for up to 18 months. In Maui, more than 1,100 households moved into apartments and condominiums through the FEMA program after that community’s devastating 2023 wildfires.
Direct Lease provides a necessary backstop for people suddenly in need, said Noah Patton, manager of disaster recovery at D.C.-based nonprofit National Low Income Housing Coalition
“If they can’t find a landlord that’s willing to take the money that FEMA is paying, they’re out of luck,” Patton said. “The idea is to have a list of eligible properties you could give to a disaster survivor and say, ‘Just go here.’”
L.A.’s fires typically would qualify for such relief, Patton said. Between the Palisades and Eaton fires, nearly 13,000 homes were destroyed, an amount equivalent to more than half of L.A. County’s annual housing production.
Before January, Los Angeles had a notoriously punishing rental market. The county’s homeless population stood at 75,000, and nearly 600,000 families paid more than half their income on housing costs. Immediately after the fires, widespread reports of rental price gouging spread across the region with the prices of some listings doubling overnight.
The public agencies’ response “paints a pretty rosy picture of the rental market absorbing a significant amount of fire survivors,” Patton said.
“Based on the things that I know, this doesn’t really make any sense,” he said.
In late January, FEMA formally solicited interest from L.A. landlords to make buildings available for the Direct Lease program. Soon after, the effort stalled.
FEMA spokesperson Brandi Richard Thompson 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,” Richard Thompson said.
FEMA subsidy amounts vary by neighborhood and household size. Under current rules, a family of four could rent a two-bedroom in central Pasadena for up to $3,410 a month.
The agency already has rejected a state proposal to increase these rates, and would be unlikely to approve the Direct Lease program if asked, Richard Thompson said.
She encouraged those facing difficulties to reconnect with FEMA for help.
“We remain committed to helping each survivor find the best path to recovery, even in a very challenging housing environment like Los Angeles County,” Richard Thompson said.
Advocates said the state and federal position minimizes the problems fire survivors, especially those in Altadena, are dealing with. Hughes noted that the agencies’ estimate of available rentals spans the entire county. Altadena residents, she said, shouldn’t be forced to move 50 miles away to the Antelope Valley, for instance, when FEMA could potentially offer closer options.
Hughes said the decision also ignores the local context in Altadena, a longtime haven for Black residents where many elderly homeowners don’t meet private landlords’ income or rental history requirements. That leaves them at further disadvantage in a tough market, she said.
“CalOES and FEMA, they know that price gouging is happening everywhere,” Hughes said.
Johnson, the Altadena renter who has been living in her van, said even with her FEMA subsidy, landlords pressed her to show she earned twice the rent, a standard she couldn’t meet. Some places she looked at were charging upwards of $2,000 a month for a few hundred square feet or a room in a boarding house with shared kitchen and bathroom.
Finally, she found a one-bedroom apartment in Azusa in a building that typically caters to low-income residents. Her FEMA assistance will cover the rent. Johnson moved in on Tuesday.
For survivors still struggling to receive federal help, housing issues can run even deeper.
Before the fires, five generations of Brenda Sharpe’s family lived in multiple homes in Altadena, from Sharpe’s 102-year-old grandmother to her 2-year-old grandson.
Sharpe, 46, and her three younger children were renting a three-bedroom house owned by a friend for $1,200 a month, far below the market rate. The home did not burn down, but suffered ash and smoke damage. FEMA denied her application for rental assistance, a decision she’s appealed. To make matters worse, the fire caused Sharpe to lose nearly all of her housecleaning work in the community.
Over the last three months, Sharpe and her children have bounced between six hotels and Airbnbs. In the Pasadena hotel where they’re now staying, Sharpe has lined up air mattresses between the room’s two double beds so everyone has their own place to sleep.
A nonprofit covered the hotel’s $1,900 cost in April. For May, she has to come up with the money herself. The thought of finding something she can afford on the open market seems impossibly daunting — even harder while having to process the loss her family has experienced. Sharpe’s parents’ house burned down, and her grandmother, whom police officers carried out of her home with flames bearing down, died over the weekend.
“We need somewhere to live,” Sharpe said. “Trying to find affordable housing has been the problem. Pasadena rent is astronomically high.”
U.S. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park), who represents Altadena, said locating long-term housing has been the most consistent concern she’s heard from her constituents. Many have told her that, like Johnson and Sharpe, they’ve had to move multiple times and still are unable to settle.
Chu said she planned to press CalOES and FEMA for more details on why the agencies believed that the Direct Lease program wasn’t needed.
“I’m just stunned at the determination that there’s enough housing at the parameters given costwise,” Chu said.
The decision not to push for the Direct Lease program cuts against the position that Gov. Gavin Newsom has taken in the aftermath of the fires. The governor has asked President Trump and Congress to approve $40 billion in disaster relief, including housing assistance, for the L.A. region and has held repeated press events to highlight the need for federal support.
Brian Ferguson, a Newsom spokesperson, said that in response to The Times’ inquiries the administration is reevaluating its stance on Direct Lease.
“As Los Angeles continues its rapid recovery, providing resources and support to individuals that have been displaced is our top priority,” Ferguson said. “The state remains open to all viable solutions to provide housing and aid to fire survivors.”