The Federal Safety Net for Disaster Survivors Is Increasingly Uncertain
Arguments against sending disaster aid to Los Angeles reveal the politics of the process

A donation center in Arcadia, California, on January 15. | Photo by Richard Vogel/AP
For nearly two weeks, survivors of two of the most destructive wildfires in California history have gathered for help at the Westwood Recreation Center in Los Angeles. The community center has been transformed into an everything-you-might-need shelter for those who fled the wildfires that have burned across the city since January 7. Outside, when the air quality allows, kids run around on the green turf field or climb the jungle gym, and adults share their stories of how they got there and what they’ve lost.
One man told me he had moved into a rental in Pacific Palisades less than a year ago, which housed the recording equipment and musical instruments he needs to do his job. He wasn’t sure if any of it had survived. A woman told me she had been living out of her car in the impacted area and had no idea where she would go next—safe parking where she wouldn’t be harassed is hard to come by, she said. And there was the mother who told me her family had lost their home, but they had relatives to stay with; her daughter realized during our conversation that she’d left sneakers in her locker when her school evacuated. She wondered when she’d be able to get them.
The stories are endless, and they are only in their first chapters. Together, the Palisades and Eaton Fires torched nearly 40,000 acres of land and destroyed at least 12,000 structures as of January 17, everything from multimillion-dollar homes and historic buildings to schools and beloved businesses, as well as generational homes, rent-controlled apartments, and mobile homes.
The spectrum of needs is both vast and crowded—and elected officials from local, state, and federal entities have acknowledged that a massive response will be needed to move forward with recovery. But as a new Congress settles in and a new presidential administration makes its entrance, conversations in Washington, DC, cast shadows of doubt onto what that support might look like. It's unclear what the next steps are for the people I met at that shelter and hundreds of thousands more.

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In the days following the fire, officials held daily press conferences to update the public on the progress of both fires and share news of available aid. The lineup behind the podium has been a rotating mix of uniforms and acronymed titles, with representatives from the various cities impacted, from Los Angeles County, from the State of California, and from the federal government. The scene speaks to the multipronged government response that kicks into effect in the United States when a disaster occurs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) refers to the structure for handling such events as “locally executed, state managed, federally supported recovery.”
In other words, a disaster is handled with local government responders until the needs escalate beyond their capacity, and then the state steps in. When the state’s resources run thin, it then appeals to the federal government for additional support, as has been the case in California. The response of federal agencies is directly authorized by the president, while their ability to operate largely relies on Congress keeping the relevant agencies sufficiently funded.
It’s a setup we see go into effect often these days. As LA entered its third day of burning, with thousands displaced across the city, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its tally of billion-dollar disasters for the previous year. In 2024, 27 “weather and climate disasters” cost at least $1 billion in damages each, trailing only the previous year’s count of 28. That included events such as Hurricane Helene, which is very much still an active disaster for FEMA and for the more than 375,000 households that were displaced, many of whom are still in the thick of filing paperwork for both FEMA and their insurance providers, if they had proper coverage.
When lawmakers gathered at the end of 2024 to hammer out a budget deal, disaster aid was a sticking point. A few weeks before the dealmaking, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell had been called before three congressional committees for a total of around nine hours to explain why the agency was asking for an additional $40 billion just weeks into the new fiscal year. She answered questions about FEMA’s response to Hurricane Helene—including reports of an agency employee politically discriminating against storm survivors displaying pro-Trump paraphernalia—and about the program to shelter migrants that Congress itself directed FEMA to run. In one hearing, other agency heads from the Small Business Administration and the Department of Transportation, among others, made their own cases for needing more dollars to put toward disasters—they, too, had been largely depleted by the mounting costs of more frequent and devastating disasters.
Ultimately, Congress passed a continuing resolution that included over $100 billion in disaster aid, allowing federal agencies to support communities such as Los Angeles as they navigated an unfolding disaster and areas impacted by Hurricane Helene that are facing individual-level and public recovery costs. But officials are set to once again debate disaster aid in the case of California, and leaders of the new session of Congress have been vocal that they believe strings should be attached to any funds sent West, unlike the response to Hurricane Helene and countless other disaster-struck states.
"There should probably be conditions on that aid. That's my personal view. We'll see what the consensus is," Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said, as reported by Reuters.
“They don’t deserve anything, to be honest with you,” Senator Tommy Tuberville said in a blunt television interview with Newsmax.
The incoming Trump administration has also floated limiting aid to California due to political policy differences, which Democrats warn would set a “terrible precedent,” according to the Washington Post.
There’s a common refrain in Congress that disasters should not be political, but disaster experts often disagree with that characterization. The very setup of allocating aid through Congress opens the door to politics, and it’s the same at those state and local levels, which decide how to fund more local emergency management agencies. Politics are also in play even before disasters strike, with decisions elected officials make about urban planning, land management, and other infrastructure setting the stage for how communities are able to weather disasters. Research shows that disasters and the corresponding response in the United States often exacerbate inequality in the impacted area, with the impacts of disasters hitting lower-income and more vulnerable people disproportionately. The politics are inescapable, at least as the current disaster response system is designed.
As FEMA has struggled to keep its coffers full under the weight of mounting disasters in recent years, the agency has repeatedly put projects deemed nonessential or lifesaving on pause while it awaited fresh funding from Congress. FEMA aid is not just for individuals. It is also necessary for supporting the recovery of public spaces, and these were the types of efforts that were hit hardest by lapses in funding. In Vermont, for example, repairs from last summer’s devastating floods were halted, and in Santa Cruz, California, the county had to take on almost $100 million in debt to move forward with flood and fire repairs it expected FEMA to have already covered.
For those impacted by the LA fires, much of what happens next remains unclear. With large swaths of the city still cordoned off by National Guard troops, many have yet to see the full scope of damage to their homes and are waiting to hear back about next steps. Some of that guidance will come from local and state officials, some will come from federal agencies, and some will come from insurance providers, which face their own significant challenges to cover these massive costs. There is currently no public timeline for how long shelters like the one I visited will be open, providing not only services but a place to stay.
In the series of November FEMA hearings, there was one more common refrain: The way we deal with disasters is not working. Members of Congress couldn’t agree on the specifics of that—the causes for the dysfunction or the solutions—but on this one point, the politicians, experts, and disaster survivors all seem to agree.