Assembly Standing Committee on Economic Development, Growth, and Household Impact

Can you all hear me? Okay. There you go. Good morning. We're going to come to order. I'm Assembly Member Rhodesia Ransom, Chair of the Assembly Emergency Management Committee, and I want to welcome you all to our first meeting which is a joint oversight hearing with the Housing Committee.

I'm pleased to be joined by my colleagues, Assemblymember Matt Haney, Chair of the Assembly Committee on Housing and Community Development, and Assemblymember Jose Solache, Chair of the Committee on Economic Development, Growth and Household Impacts. I appreciate their partnership and all of their help in bringing us together today.

Our hearing today will provide Members with an opportunity to hear from the local and state entities who are leading the immediate and long term recovery efforts on the ground in Los Angeles.

Ideally, in addition to learning more about the progress we are making, witnesses will help us to identify any legislative remedies for any unmet recovery and rebuilding needs. Let me also note that today's hearing is the first in a series of hearings that we will be convening.

Subsequent hearings will focus on wildfire mitigation, pre positioning of mutual aid resources, alerts, warnings and other response activities. Additional hearings may also be convened to examine lessons learned in after action reports, investigations and what those findings may mean regarding the Los Angeles wildfires and California. California's overall preparedness for majors major simultaneous efforts.

But today our focus will be on the actions taken at all levels of government to help individuals, businesses and communities quickly recover and rebuild from the devastating Los Angeles wildfires. With that said, let me turn to my colleagues for their opening remarks. Assemblymember Haney

Thank you so much. Chair Ransom and Chair Solache and your staff and everybody who is going to be joining us in today's hearing. And of course to the staff of the Housing and Community Development Committee, we're very grateful to have the opportunity to have this hearing and to do it in a coordinated fashion.

I think when we look at the devastating impacts of these wildfires, it is something that all of the Members of the Legislature, Legislature have a responsibility to take action on.

Every Committee, every leader in our state, every Department for the State of California is going to have a role in making sure that all of the residents who are impacted, both in the short term and in the long term, have our full and complete support. I know that this is a local, state and federal effort as well. It's also one where there's been tremendous leadership from individuals, from nonprofits, from the faith community.

And so it's important and we're excited to hear both what is happening on the ground and what we can do right now to support those who are impacted to make sure in the short term that they have a place where they can live and recover and also that we can get them back into their homes and rebuilding those homes immediately and address the broader impacts of this devastating crisis.

Of course, in Los Angeles we know that as has been the case across California, we have been in a housing crisis. Even before these devastating fires, the state was already facing a housing deficit, over 2 million homes.

To meet the needs of current and future residents, the State of Housing Department determined that Los Angeles County needed to build 812,000 new homes by the year 2029. With the loss of tens of thousands of existing homes in the Los Angeles region, the situation is now even more dire.

Existing residents were displaced as entire communities were burned down. They then found themselves in an extremely restricted housing market. And some of these displaced families owned their homes for decades and are now entering a vastly different rental market and housing market than what they experienced before.

Housing affordability and stability are core needs of our constituents and it's our responsibility to ensure our policies meet those needs.

We now face the difficult task of figuring out how to press forward with all necessary efforts to speed up housing constructions across the board, especially for those who have been directly impacted and to provide fire survivors with the certainty and support to navigate their own rebuilding as quickly as as possible and to protect these Californians from predatory and discriminatory practices as they navigate this difficult recovery and rebuilding process.

The immediate emergency is now behind us, but for survivors, the road is just beginning. Again, I want to thank my colleagues, the Governor's office, the Federal Government and all of the partners who have stepped up in so many ways.

And I look forward to the conversation today and how we can step up to support you all even more. And thank you again Chair Ransom for bringing us together for this critical and urgent conversation.

Thank you for that, Chair Haney. Assembly Member Solache.

Thank you Chairwoman Ransom for your leadership today and co hosting this today along with our our Chair of Housing and Community Development, Mr. Haney. Pleasure to see you here in the space. We started working together as a young elected officials.

We're no longer as young but happy to be with you in the space and with that I'm just happy to be here and you know we have a long recovery to this issue and you know I look forward to a revolt.

Reverse conversation on Los Angeles recovery and rebuilding after the historic wildfires which have devastated the city, county and the entire state, the personal loss and economic impact of the entire region will be felt for years to come.

The state's responsibility is to continue supporting equitable and fair recovery efforts not only for the individuals but for also the economic backbone where economy small businesses. You know, questions that our Committee will have is, you know, what is the overall household impact of job loss and relative reemployment?

What are the impacts of local economic grocery stores, salons, gas stations? What is the timeline for a full recovery? And you know, with that, obviously my colleagues have initiated this discussion and I just want to say thank you to in advance to the panelists that will join us today in the discussion and to the rest of the Committee Members that are here with us today.

We welcome the dialogue and look forward to a again a robust conversation not only in the next weeks, months, but years and how we're going to recover these unfortunate fires.

Thank you Assembly Member. With that, I would like to introduce my Vice Chair, Heather Hadwick. Heather, would you have any opening remarks?

I just want to thank everybody for coming. I represent District 1 in the north and we are plagued by fires every year. We're not strangers to the recovery process. And I'm just glad that everybody's here. To talk about it and sorry that this happened to LA and hope that we can put our heads together and.

Get things done quicker and a better get these victims back in there, back into homes and get communities healed. So thank you.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Again, for those of you who are just joining us, we are in a Joint Committee hearing with Housing Community Development, Emergency Management and Economic Development Growth and Household Impact. Thank you all for your remarks.

We're going to dive into our first panel which will provide us with an update on recovery option operations from both the state and local perspective. With that, you'll notice that the panelists are not here in the room. We have the first panel of folks that are going to be joining us virtually.

I'd like to introduce Mr. Bob Troy, Assistant Director for Interagency Recovery Coordination with California's Office of Emergency Services. He's here remotely. Mr. Troy, thank you for joining us. You may proceed.

Good morning, Chair Members of the Committee. Normally we would be there with you in Sacramento, but we are meeting with you today from the Joint Field Office here in Pasadena and Los Angeles County. Thank you for the opportunity to provide an update on the critical recovery operations that are currently underway and at the state level.

I'm also grateful for the chance to share the progress we've made, discuss the steps ahead as we continue working toward the recovery and rebuilding of the Los Angeles area. As you know, Cal OES launched an immediate whole of government recovery effort to support the Los Angeles area as soon as these fires began.

On January 8, 2025 the President approved a major disaster declaration. Federal assistance funding available to help state and local governments cover emergency response costs related to the fires. This action formally began the extensive recovery operations that would follow and also allowed for individual assistance and public assistance programs to be initiated.

As I mentioned, we're reporting to here from the Joint Field Office in Pasadena where we are helping to lead recovery efforts that you know, as we know that need to recur occur concurrently with response operations.

To that end, Cal OES and FEMA immediately took the necessary steps to establish the Joint Field Office here in the early days immediately following the disaster. The Joint Field Office, or JFO serves as the coordinating hub for recovery operations for this disaster. Cal OES is working actively on many fronts in partnership with local, state and federal partners led by FEMA and the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management on a massive recovery operation.

I'd like to start by mentioning two important program areas for recovery and although there are a wide range of recovery program areas underway in lines of effort, the two key programs that I want to mention first are the FEMA Individual Assistance Program and then the FEMA and California Public Assistance Program.

The Individual Assistance Program provides individuals and households affected by large scale disasters by providing assistance with shelter and interim housing as well as costs associated with repairing or rebuilding damaged homes and replacing personal property. The Public Assistance Program reimburses state and local jurisdictions for emergency protective measures and debris removal costs.

It may also reimburse repairs and replacement of disaster damage, public facilities and other permanent infrastructure.

Some of the key ongoing lines of effort being coordinated from the JFO include direct aid to survivors, including transitional sheltering assistance and rental assistance support to impacted schools and their students coordinating the restoration of public utilities, debris and hazardous material removal, watershed restoration, restoration and debris flow mitigation, streamlining of state and local permit requirements, assistance for restoration of public infrastructure and additional federal aid programs to support recovery for Los Angeles County and the local communities impacted by these fires.

We've also worked since immediately following the disaster to stand up and support and partnership with our county and local partners to ultimately three disaster recovery centers, two of which are still open. Disaster Recovery Centers or DRCs are a key component of the initial recovery phase and serve as central hub to access immediate services.

Survivors can apply and receive personalized assistance in navigating FEMA's Individual Assistance Program and access other available resources from local, state and nonprofit agencies. These range from disaster assistance programs, document replacement, housing and rental assistance information and other assistance to survivors in a wide variety of needs.

Currently, there are two DRCs open near the impacted areas, one in Altadena and the other at the UCLA Research park west side Pavilion. As of Yesterday, more than 32,000 households, both new and returning, have received assistance across the disaster recovery centers.

As of yesterday, there have been a total of 132,000 valid FEMA registrations for a total of $77.85 million in survivor assistance. In addition to FEMA individual assistance, the Small Business Administration offers low interest disaster loans for businesses and homeowners.

To date, SBA has approved more than 10,000 loans to homeowners and renters for more than $1.03 billion in low and low interest loans and 106.8 million for businesses for both physical and economic injury disaster loans.

I'd like to emphasize that SBA loans are available for both homeowners and renters and their program is critical for helping with the uninsured losses from this disaster. They can provide up to $500,000 in loans for home rebuild and repair costs and up to an additional $100,000 of personal property replacement.

They are low interest, as low as 2.5% with no interest repayments for a year. The average loan amount on this disaster has been more than $355,000 and they are well on their track to this becoming potentially the second largest disaster in their history.

We're also utilizing Task forces joint task forces of local, county and state partners to support the immediate recovery for this disaster in accordance with the California Disaster Recovery Framework and the National Disaster Recovery Framework.

We're utilizing integrated task forces that align with established Recovery Support Functions or RSF and have joint partners with partner the relevant partners from the city, county, state and federal levels.

Among the task forces we have a Housing Task Force and I'm sure my colleague from HCD will speak more to this later on, but the primary objective of the Housing Task Force is to expedite both immediate and long term housing solutions for individuals and families to displaced by the wildfires.

The State Housing Task Force includes federal partners such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development and state and federal agencies that are collectively integrated in the local and Housing Local Housing and Rebuild Task Force to support and bolster locally driven initiatives. The Housing Task Force also continues work on implementing the Governor's Executive Orders.

We also have a School's Task Force which has been established to address the significant challenges faced by the educational community in Los Angeles County. The primary objectives of the school's Task force include assessing damage and coordinating rebuilding efforts, facilitating, facilitating continuity of education and providing immediate support and resources.

We also have an Infrastructure Task Force which serves to spearhead the restoration enhancement of critical infrastructure in Los Angeles County by assessing damage and priority, prioritizing rebuilding efforts, coordinating funding and resources, implementing resilient and sustainable solutions and and engaging community and stakeholders.

We have a Watershed Task Force that aims to mitigate the adverse effects of the wildfire damage on local watersheds, focusing on preventing erosion, impacts from flash floods and contamination of water sources. The Water Task Force collaborates among various agencies to assess, post fire hazards and implement ongoing protective measures.

The Debris Task Force is responsible for the safe and efficient removal of hazardous materials and debris resulting from the wildfires, ensuring public safety and facilitating rebuilding efforts. Top priorities include hazardous tree identification, electric vehicles and For Phase one we are happy to say that as of today we're 100% complete.

Phase two we have more than 9,000 right of entry forms received and are working on validating those and working closely with the county to get those underway for Phase two.

The US Army Corps of Engineers and US EPA have been missioned assigned to lead the debris removal efforts for the Palisades and Eaten fires in Los Angeles County with US EPA the lead on Phase one and Army Corps on Phase two.

We also are joining with the county and the locals on Long Term Recovery and Rebuilding Task Force which serves as a central body to coordinate federal, state and local efforts to ensure efficient recovery initiatives.

It develops a comprehensive long range recovery plan that aligns with the community's vision, focusing on sustainable resilient recovery, minimizing displacement, preserving community character, restoring quality of life and and enhancing overall resiliency and sustainability.

To support these task forces, Cal OES in partnership with FEMA has activated all six of the national recovery support functions under the National Disaster Recovery Framework. These mission assignments to the Federal partners are crucial for supporting long term recovery efforts here and ensuring coordinated sustainable recovery efforts. The Community Assistance RSF is led by FEMA.

The Economic RSF is being led by the Small Business Administration, Health, Education and human services by U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Housing by Housing and Urban Development, Infrastructure by the Army Corps of Engineers and Natural and Cultural Resources by the Department of the Interior.

The State and Federal RSF partners are the locally led task forces to address short, intermediate and long term recovery needs. These Task forces collaborate with state federal agencies to identify resources, fill gaps, build local capacity and offer ongoing support as requested by the county officials.

We're pleased to have been integrated with the county and local task forces starting in late January and early February. Beyond the immediate recovery efforts, the RSF partners play a pivotal role in sustainable long term recovery and resilience for the affected communities.

In closing, we've seen both progress and challenges with recovery operations following these these devastating Los Angeles wildfires. While significant strides have been made in debris removal and infrastructure rebuilding and community support, continued collaboration and sustained joint efforts will be essential to ensuring a full and resilient long term recovery as we move forward.

We remain committed to working with all stakeholders to restore impacted communities and build a stronger, more resilient Los Angeles. Thank you for your time today.

Thank thank you Mr. Troy. We're going to move to our next panelist. Next we have Mr. Kevin McGowan, Director of Emergency Services for the County of Los Angeles. He's also here. Remote Mr. McGowan, are we able to switch to Mr. McGowan.

Good morning chairpersons and honorable Members of the Committee. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Thank you for joining us. You may proceed.

Thank you for this opportunity. My name's Kevin McGowan. I serve as the Director for Los Angeles County's Office of Emergency Management. Again, appreciate this opportunity to provide you with an update on the most impactful and devastating wildfire in modern history. The 2025 Los Angeles wildfires. In Los Angeles County, recovery started when the disaster started.

This included the Chair of our Board of Supervisors proclaiming a local emergency and through that proclamation requesting state and federal assistance.

As was also noted by my partner Bob Troy, at the direction of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management has been leading the coord of a whole of community and whole of government recovery effort.

This includes engagement with well over 40 of LA County departments, the cities of Los Angeles, Malibu, Pasadena and Sierra Madre, the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, FEMA and numerous other state and federal agencies, along with dozens of community organizations, businesses and nonprofits.

As we collectively navigate this complex and challenging recovery, we know that our shared vision and efforts, accompanied by this great support from the state and Federal Government and our other partners will lead to successful outcomes which will be a historic recovery effort.

To operationalize this recovery and execute a coordinated, effective and efficient recovery, LA County established nine joint task forces which include rebuild and long term Recovery, Debris Removal, Utility Restoration and Recovery, Interim Housing, School, Health and Social Service Recovery, Economic Development, Watershed Recovery and Natural and Cultural Resources recovery.

And again, Bob did a great job explaining all of the different mission, spaces and objectives of which these recovery task forces operate. And of special note is just the sheer partnership between the state and Federal Government along with our cities in an integrated approach to how these task forces operate.

And due to these swift recovery actions taken by the task forces and the teams at all levels of government, we have been making pretty significant progress in our collective initial and intermediate recovery efforts. As was noted prior, Disaster Recovery Centers opened on January 22.

These have been pivotal, pivotal resources to provide that frontline, immediate recovery resources to our survivors. Through that effort, we've served thousands of survivors with all kinds of critical resources from everything from immediate assistance, tying them in with donations with nonprofits, to also assisting with the features that Bob had mentioned.

You know, navigating the FEMA application process, navigating SBA services, along with a myriad of County Department services that provide frontline safety support net features, Debris removal operations are fully operational. As of Today, we have 10 properties that have fully completed all phases of debris removal.

That's both phase one which is the household hazardous waste and phase two which is the fire ash and debris. Over 9,400 rights of entry forms have been submitted. That's over 70% of the eligible parcels. And over 9,000 parcels have cleared phase one of the household hazardous waste.

This morning it was announced that the EPA's portion of Phase 1 has been complete. The remainder of the Phase 1 properties were deferred to the Army Corps of Engineers as per protocol. A streamlined permit acquisition review process to reduce like for like build up on back permitting approvals has been launched.

The establishment of a permitting one stop shop facility. So there's two of them have been established and they're one of them is co-located at the DRC. These allow for people that are going through permitting processes to meet face to face with permitters and really expedite the permitting process.

This also allows for people to get questions directly answered and even some advice on how to navigate the longer term recovery components of rebuilding. We've also had the adoption of on parcel temporary housing permit process. So for example putting trailers and RVs on properties that's been a huge advantage.

And at those one stop shop permitting they can learn about how they can assist in getting the trailers and RVs at their location once they've completed phase one and phase two.

Additionally, our emergency sheltering needs are moving towards a stabilized transitional sheltering and temporary housing phase, which is also a big metric in that transition from response to recovery. The recovery task forces are also resolute in their determination to identify and resolve initial and immediate recovery challenges that exist throughout this enterprise.

For example, debris removal phase one as it concludes and as phase two continues to ramp up, there's still a need to establish effective debris removal solutions for commercial businesses, private schools, public facilities and utilities. This is important because phase two is again a private property debris removal program.

At this stage, restoration of critical infrastructure and the synchronization of a one trench utilization utility effort as infrastructure and utilities continue to recover in their way. Efforts to ensure that this is synchronized to make the process efficient and effective and timely is of the utmost importance.

One of these overarching strategies is typically referred to as the one Dig or one Stretch Pro program. This is the idea that many utilities that are going to be undergrounding if they do it all together, it makes recovery a much more effective process for everyone involved.

Federal and state programs and funding as the disaster assistance program application deadlines approach or incongruencies in program delivered delivery or eligibility being identified. It is critical that all levels of government work together to create creative solutions that ensure program delivery is maximized for our survivors.

This includes rapid approvals for any program extensions as local governments request them, and then another identified area that we're working towards in challenges is rebuilding workforce optimization. As the demand for scarce rebuilding resources increase, there's a need to rapidly scale our supply of these critical resources.

For example, streamlining the ability for builders with highly skilled laborers to be licensed add supply to what will inevitably be a huge demand in the rebuild phase. So with that, on behalf of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the county CEO, and our county leadership team as a whole, thank you very much for this opportunity.

Louisiana County continues to look forward to our partnership with the state and the Federal Government, along with all of our community based partners in the shared effort to have an effective, timely and optimized recovery. And with that, I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. McGowan, we're going to save questions until after the rest of the panel introductions. With that, I'm going to move to our next panelist which is Ms. Jenny Cho, who's a Deputy Director of Federal Financial Assistance with the Department of Housing and Community Development.

And I would just ask that the remaining panelists, if you can, try to keep our opening remarks to five minutes just because there may be a lot of questions moving forward. But with that, we're going to give it over to Ms. Jenny Cho. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning Chair Ransom, Chair Haney, Chair Salachi and Members of the Committee. My name is Jenny Cho and I'm with the California Department of Housing and Community Development where I serve as the Deputy Director over our Federal programs. That includes long term disaster recovery.

Thank you for this opportunity to update the Committee on HCD's role in long Term Disaster Recovery and its response to the devastating fires. In my brief presentation, I'll cover how Federal long term disaster recovery funds are congressionally appropriate to the State of California.

How funds are administered I will provide some examples of past grants and conclude by sharing how HCD has responded in the wake of the fires. So HCD's role is in long term disaster recovery. We administer federal U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development or HUD Community Block Grant disaster recovery or CDBG DR Funds presidential declared major disasters.

CDBG DR Funds are designed as last in for long term recovery after all sources of funding have been exhausted, including FEMA, individual assistance, public assistance, SBA funds, insurance and are designed to benefit the remaining unmet needs. Because These funds are last in they do not Fund the total unmet recovery needs.

Past allocations have reflected approximately 20 to 30% of the total dollar need to demonstrate the timeline of when CPDG funds come available in the context of when a disaster happens.

This diagram shows that it takes approximately one to two years after a disaster has happened for the announcement of funds to the state and once funds are officially announced, it takes another eight months or so to plan and to obtain HUD approval for how the funds will be utilized and after that the state can begin working with jurisdictions and state partners to implement its programs.

On the next slide There is a snapshot of disaster recovery funds that California has received to date approximately 1.7 billion for disasters, major disasters that occurred in 2017-18, 2020-21 and 2023. We are also in the process of obtaining approval for 416 million for disasters that occurred in 23 and 2024.

Upon that approval by HUD, the state would have been receipt will have been in receipt of over 2 billion in CDBG DR Funds. Next slide There is a high level snapshot of the programs and outcomes of the 1.7 million in receipt as administered by the state and local jurisdictions.

HCD works in partnership with its local partners and programs are designed in collaboration with its state partners as well such as CAL FIRE and Cal OES to adopt standards when working in the same geographies to ensure community level resiliency.

As you can see, we administer a wide range of housing recovery programs, infrastructure programs, economic revitalization planning and public services and ensure that homes and communities are safer and resilient in the event of future disasters.

The Next Slide I'll conclude here with a short description of how HCD has responded to the devastating fires in Los Angeles area in January. We have made deliberate and comprehensive attempts to address and efforts to address impacts and work towards rebuilding as quickly as possible.

Specifically, HCD continues to participate in a direct response at the Disaster Recovery Centers and within the Joint Housing Task Force. HCV has adjusted its funding timelines to accommodate disaster impacted communities and has allocated funding to those communities including 6 million to disaster impacted areas through the multifamily Supernova, another 66 million in the home ownership Supernova.

We have been working closely with recipients of HUD rapid unsheltered survivor housing rush funds announced by by HUD in January. Specifically, the State was in receipt of 3 million in direct funding.

The State has awarded that to the Los Angeles County Development Authority and HCD continues to work to implement the Executive orders issued by the Governor related to fire responses that are intended to reduce barriers and expedite rebuilding and recovery. While we await dedicated CDBG DR Funds. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Thank you very much, Ms. Cho. Our next and final witness for this panel is Mr. Randall Winston, Deputy Mayor of Infrastructure for the City of Los Angeles Department of Emergency Management. He is also here. Remote. Mr. Winston, are you here?

Yes, I am here. Can you hear me, Chair Ransom?

Yes sir, we can. Thank you.

Wonderful and good morning to you all. Thank you again. Chairs Ransom, Haney and Solache for the opportunity to speak on this very timely panel. I want to start by just echoing the comments from both Bob and Kevin Cal OES and OEM about the partnership. Partnership in navigating this disaster and recovery process has been, has been incredible.

And I think that it will take that those increased level of partnership to really get folks back in their homes and to quickly rebuild and move forward with all that we need to see in both Palisades and Eaton. I want to talk about a few items.

I know we need to leave time for questions, so I'll first just quickly review the or rather iterate the disaster recovery center and the solutions that have been able to provide to impacted residents. Bringing together over 70 federal, state, local agencies together to provide resources to impacted residents.

The City of Los Angeles and county partners just about two weeks ago opened up a one stop shop to expedite building permits. This is pursuant to an Executive order that Mayor Bass issued shortly after the start of the fires to ensure that folks could cut through red tape and build like for like homes as quickly as possible.

And still looking to achieve measures to again ensure that those permitting processes move as quickly as possible. Just a little over a week ago we also opened with the county four impacted workers centers throughout Los Angeles, in the west, in the Valley, in Boyle Heights and in South LA, providing assistance to those workers who were impacted by the fires due to loss of employment and business.

So ensuring that we can support individuals who are impacted on that front as well. I mentioned one emergency order that the Mayor has signed earlier on in streamlining permitting. I want to refer to three others that also followed. One, on watershed protection.

As you all know, we had some very severe weather events that took place following the firestorm and that necessitated again a great degree of coordination amongst the county and city partners.

And we're fortunate to be able to have the support to ensure that mitigation measures were put in place throughout the region to ensure that to the greatest extent possible, we mitigated erosion and flow of debris to our water supply and our coastal resources.

A third order on tax relief and ensuring that again with our county partners and actually LA City Council, we were able to provide tax relief to local businesses and those impacted by closures due to the fire.

And then finally an order on temporary schools and ensuring that as our schools looked for sites to provide facilities for students without without schools due to the fire that those temporary facilities and daycares could be stood up as quickly as possible.

Lastly, I want to mention what we've been the city has been undertaking over the past couple of weeks since having brought on a major disaster recovery consultant and that is establishing a recovery group at our emergency management Department.

And again, I want to thank our colleagues at Cal OES and certainly at the county for providing input and guidance as we look to mirror the recovery support group structure that we are seeing at multiple levels of government.

And this is all in line with ensuring that there is tight coordination between each of the functions as we look to undertake this long term recovery. Infrastructure, health and social services, housing, economic development, long term recovery. All the functions that you heard earlier from my colleagues here on the panel. As we look to recovery.

I'll just sort of lay out four principles that I know are top of mind for Mayor Bass leading with a Palisades first approach. So this is ensuring that as we undertake our recovery efforts and develop a shared vision for recovery and rebuilding that we do so through a community driven approach.

And that starts on the ground and really weeks ago. We are in it now, keeping people safe as we are removing debris and folks are encountering all the challenges that come with the impacts of the fire, that we're ensuring the highest degree of safety and public health and rebuilding through speed and innovation.

This goes back to what I mentioned earlier about streamlining, permitting and ensuring that we are able to kind of cut through as many barriers as we can both safely and efficiently to ensure that folks can get back in their homes and then finally resilience.

We know we all need to build back better and ensure that we are pardoning both our landscape and what does get built by way of folks rebuilding their homes. So with that, thank you again for your time and look forward forward to questions.

Thank you Mr. Winston. And I want to thank all of our panelists for your opening remarks. So at this time I'm going to bring it back to our Members to see what our follow up questions may be. Mr. Haney.

Oh, thank you. Thank you so much to all of you and your teams for your great work and for providing us with those updates and for being here with us.

I wonder, and I'm not exactly sure who is best to take this question, but if we could have maybe a little more information about what is happening for folks in the short term as it relates to housing. Where are most people who have been displaced living now? What resources are available to them in the short term?

If they don't have the funds to pay their rent, how are they doing that? And what resources are available to them? Are they given up front or are they given after the fact? And then how long are those resources available to people? I know that there were some folks who were in hotels or Airbnbs.

Is that something that we expect to be available for as long as they need it, even if it's years? And what is the level of short term housing support? I'm just going to add one other aspect of that.

Are there plans in the short or medium term around transitional housing that would bring people back to the areas that they've been displaced in any kind of sort of larger way? If that's.

If, you know, I know that there was issues around whether they can have ADUs or modulars and such on their property, but is there kind of larger efforts in a more collective way to bring people back in the short or medium term?

I think that question will be for both the city and county, Mr. Haney.

Yeah. Okay. And if there are federal resources, how they would access those and what those are.

This is. Kevin McGowan, I'm the with Los Angeles County. I'm happy to go. And then hand it off to Randall and Bob for additional thoughts to share. So within our task force structure, we have a housing task force which is focused on addressing these very questions.

And the way I want to kind of convey this is it is. It is a layered approach. We have thousands of survivors that were displaced and not each one of them fits into a specific type of a program. Right. So really to maximize resources for survivors, the first and foremost is to create a layered.

A layered structure of resources that are available. I can go over a couple of broad ones and then I'll hand it over to the, to my teammates. First and foremost, there was the emergency sheltering portion of it, which is heavily supported in coordination with the Red Cross, the city, the county and state partners.

In addition to that, the FEMA TSA program was introduced early on. So we have a variety of survivors that are utilizing the Transitional Sheltering Assistance Program, which is through FEMA. In addition to that, there was reference already made about Airbnb.

I would actually frame it larger that there's a variety of nonprofits and for profit businesses that may have a philanthropic arm that provided resources to a variety of survivors. And then there's a group of survivors that are insured and started initially using resources through their insurance.

And so really the housing task force tries to maximize where all of these different resources can be used for the survivors needs. Currently right now the TSA program is still in effect.

You know, what we see in these types of disasters is that local and state partners continue to grant or request extensions from FEMA as the need still exists. And the last portion of it is the county.

And then in partnership with the cities, the county has an ordinance in place already for the maximization of using trailers and RVs and that like to be placed on residences.

The thing I would, I would reference for this particular hearing is that the most important place for people in, for survivors to access these resources is primarily through the DRC or the virtual DRCs to include our partnership with 211 because again like every survivor and family has different specific needs and those those inputs are really through the 211 virtual centers and the DRC to align these resources. And with that I'll hand it over to Randall and then Bob if they have additional thoughts they want to share.

Thank you and thank you for that, Kevin.

I would echo all of that and I was going to kind of start with the DRC as well where given the very different situations of homeowners and those impacted by the fires, the DRC offers financial assistance, home loans, other housing resources, document recovery if they need to get that information to be able to secure housing.

All of that is there. And you know, we're I think helping to help individuals sort of navigate through whatever housing needs they might need.

I'll also note and kind of uplift one item that Kevin mentioned about ensuring that sites that are as we kind of wrap up or go through debris removal, the debris removal process and folks look to rebuild are we make it as easy as possible to have temporary housing RVs, tiny homes, modular structures and mobile homes and other types of temporary structures for up to three years following this disaster.

We are going to be looking to immediately ways to help facilitate that, whether it be through partnerships with the private sector to be able to offer models for temporary housing on those sites at a potentially reduced cost, other strategies to deploy those structures at scale.

Again, we're still at the early stages, you know, obviously kind of kicking off debris removal as Kevin mentioned. But that is another clear area of focus in the short term.

Thank you. And before our next speaker speaks, I want to clarify the DRC's Disaster Recovery Center. I see folks trying to figure that out. Thank you.

That is correct. Yes.

And thank you for that clarification, Chair. We will do our best to not use acronyms and dispel them out, but both Kevin and Randall were spot on, really kind of the different buckets of populations we're tracking out there and trying to make sure we get assistance to, you know, once folks register for FEMA assistance and we have pretty good visibility on where they are and what their situations are, I earlier on mentioned a total of 127,000 registrations.

But you know, just to kind of pare that down to provide some further visibility, 63,000 of those actually indicated they didn't actually have any damage to their homes or personal property. And so 64,000 were then shifted over to General availability availability for housing assistance.

But within that population, 21,000 are currently ineligible because they haven't either followed up or provided any contact or been able to provide proof of their identity or occupancy or potentially suspected for fraud. And unfortunately we do have a large number of fraud, you know, fraudulent registrations.

I think we have one email address that is, you know, registered 3,000, you know, registrations for survivors. But really part I want to focus in on is those the folks that there's about almost 30,000 people who are pending a decision for further FEMA assistance because they need to provide their insurance settlement or their insurance denial. Right.

And so those folks are everyone's eligible for the serious needs assistance and the displacement assistance. So that's the $770 immediate payment and then the 14 days of displacement assistance for folks that could have their houses inspected or their homes inspected. But really there's 82% of that eligible population has not yet provided their insurance settlement or denial.

And those folks, if they do are potentially eligible for both a Transitional Sheltering Assistance, as Kevin was talking about, if they're currently utilizing their insurance or staying with family Members, but more importantly, they can then request, and under the new rule changes this past March, they must request rental assistance.

And they can receive an initial two months of rental assistance and then after that, if they can demonstrate they have ongoing need, they can receive ongoing additional or continuing rental assistance for up to 18 months from the date of declaration. And those are usually given out in three month tranches.

If they can demonstrate that they utilize the previous rental assistance for a rental unit, show that they have a lease, et cetera. And so those are going to be critical, critical components of supporting interim recovery efforts here until survivors can rebuild and get into the permanent housing solutions here.

So just want to offer that context and we welcome the entire community's assistance and really amplifying some key messaging which is the folks need to register for, for FEMA individual assistance. Even if they think that they're adequately and fully insured, we know from history they are likely not.

So anything we can do to get everyone that's eligible to register is much appreciated. The deadline currently is March 10, registration deadline. And then as I mentioned, once folks are into the program, if they think they have a need, they need to request rental assistance. And they can do that via the phone, via text or in person at the disaster recovery centers.

Really encourage the in person at the disaster recovery centers because they can meet face to face with FEMA applicant specialists who can help guide them through the process of providing sufficient documentation, et cetera, and then providing that insurance settlement or denial.

And then I don't want to miss the opportunity to say also to register for the Small Business Administration as well, because it's really for folks, even if they think they're adequately insured, they don't have to draw down on the approved loan.

They can just have that in their back pocket and use that if and what is necessary during their recovery. So thank you for the time to emphasize those points.

Thank you all. Mr. Solache, you had a question?

Thank you, Madam Chair. You know, I was already excited coming to today's hearing. Just. But now after this first panel, I it's even more real reason why the three committees are having this oversight hearing and just really from the three lenses of housing emergency preparedness and economic development.

You know, before I get to my question, another quick observation. The last speaker, Mr. Winston, made a last comment that he said rebuilding through speed and innovation. You know, this, the Californians, LA, Angelenos, and all of us in Southern California, we're all watching to see how we are going to react collectively.

Not just the Legislature, not just the governor's office, but, but all of us collectively. And really I say this to add that whatever we're doing with these recovery efforts, Californians are going to see how can we use this same model for our crisis in housing, our crisis in responding to recovery efforts and future disasters.

And so I really take this responsibility, today's hearing, very seriously in the sense of how are we going to proceed. Right. So obviously we're all into some of our Members that have been here for more years and maybe eight weeks, like, some of us are new.

But definitely just looking forward to use that lens of how we're going to, you know, use this these models to recover, because we do have a crisis in housing. We have a crisis. And how how are we going to, you know, make these things so fast and possible for other other models that we could implement?

So, that being said, one of the questions that I have, obviously, from the lens of economic development and our businesses, you know, how are they going to recover?

And so I just want to ask, you know, how our business owners how are we going to ensure that their rebuilt spaces meet both safety standards and any new regulations implemented following a disaster, such as those addressing structural integrity, fire prevention and accessibility? Thank you.

Thank you for the question. And I'm sure you know our Members in the next panel have additional information to add on that particular issue, but just want to reiterate a couple forms of assistance.

And so one thing I did mention earlier for our small and self employed populations home based businesses is that under there were a lot of changes in the FEMA individual assistance rule this past March. This is our first major disaster declaration with approved for individual assistance that those took place.

And under those reforms, FEMA can now provide replacement of entrepreneurial work equipment tools, et cetera. So the types of work equipment that someone would have in their home if it was damaged or destroyed following the disaster. And so another example of why people need to register for human individual assistance.

And then the Small Business Administration, in addition to providing Low interest loans for homeowners and renters whose homes are destroyed or damaged, also provides funding for businesses that were damaged or destroyed and also for businesses that suffered economic loss. Right. So economic injury, disaster loans as well, those are also Low interest.

And I encourage them to speak directly to SBA which they can do at the disaster recovery centers. Those loan amounts vary depending on a number of different factors, but particularly when it comes to the individuals and homes and home based businesses, SBA also offers mitigation funding as well. Right.

So if the approved loan amount is, you know, say $300,000, they will add 20% for mitigation on top of that. Right. So that they can go ahead and then build back more resiliently to, you know, to withstand both their individual but also their property, mitigate property losses in the future as well.

And then on a community level, which I knew is above and beyond kind of the immediate question, but I just want to emphasize that under the public assistance program, under what's known as 406 and under the HMGP program, the state will be working very closely with county and the cities to local communities to identify mitigation opportunities protect at the community level.

So there will be significant amounts of funding. Those amounts are still to be determined. But as I think both Kevin and Randall noted, this is going to be far and away the costliest wildfire in U.S. history. And with that will come an historic amount of mitigation funding as well.

We'll be working closely with you all to identify those local community priorities and how we can help at a granular level as well. And then I'm sure our partners in housing also have their own mitigation funds that come with some of that Funding as well.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Mr. Troy. Assemblymember Patel, you had a question?

Yes, thank you. Coming from the San Diego area, we're obviously watching very closely how things are being done here as a model of what we could do going forward. We know we're in a very fire prone area.

My question to you is, as the evacuation orders come to their end, mandatory evacuation orders come to their end, and people start reoccupying their homes or, you know, in an ADU or a temporary housing unit, what is being done to monitor air quality as debris removal and the cleanup process continues to go on?

And is the county health Department able to check in or provide assistance on air quality or, you know, that, that kind of thing for the residents that are returning back to those communities?

Hi, this is Kevin McGowan. I'm with the county's Office of Emergency Management. I can take the first part of that. So the air monitoring question is again, a layered approach. As debris removal operations are occurring, the Army Corps of Engineers has a practice in place.

This is the same practice they've used in other debris removal programs that is called the wet method, but they wet the fire ash and debris for removal. And, and with that they also do monitoring.

And so in addition to what is being done by the contractors under the oversight of the Corps of Engineers, there's also a monitoring plan that is done through our county public health Department in partnership with South Coast Air Quality Management District. So again, there are kind of multiple layers of operational resources that oversee this effort.

But the first line of defense in our air monitoring is with our South Coast Air Quality Management District that is working in partnership with all of the different entities to ensure that survivors returning back to areas are returning back to you, a safe and healthy environment.

And a follow up question to that. As we wet the debris, what are we doing? I was with Assemblymember Herabedian near the Altadena site and we were speaking with EPA scientists there and they were talking about how when the sites are wetted, there's going to be a process that the Army Corps of Engineers will go through to make sure that, that there isn't anything going into the ground when we do redevelopment or reconstruction.

Is that an accurate understanding of what they were explaining to me just for groundwater quality?

Well, the, I mean, the group that should be answering this very technical question is the Army Corps. And Bob, I don't know if you have additional thoughts, but at a very high level, the Army Corps is using their process that they've used in multiple, multiple previous fires. It includes removing topsoil.

And the idea is to remove the household hazardous waste through the EPA phase one and then phase two, the ash and debris in a way to take, you know, this material out of an uncontrolled environment and put it into a controlled environment. And part of that includes removing the topsoil.

Thank you for that.

Thank you, Assemblymember Patel, Assemblymember Caloza.

Thank you, Chair Ransom, and thank you to all three Chairs Solache Haney, for convening this really important Joint Committee hearing. I represent Northeast la, East LA and South Glendale, which is part of the impacted area, literally a block away from the fires.

We had some residents who were evacuated but thankfully did not have any structures burned in the district or any direct impact. But our impact is in a different way. Impacts of people who have been displaced looking to move into specifically Northeast La, South Glendale, loss of jobs.

And got to a chance to meet and get to know some of the panelists as well during some of the press conferences. And so I think for me one of the questions that I had that haven't been asked already have to do with some of maybe the after actions lessons learned and really what the city, the county is doing for us to have better coordination and alignment.

I know that was one of the things that was a little bit tough, especially for being a new Legislator and wanting to jump in and help is how are our local partners coordinating with state entities like the Emergency Management Committee, like our Committee on Economic Development Growth and Household Impact and as well as our Housing and Community Development.

You know, really we're here to help support your efforts and so would love to hear any after action items that you have discussed about how we can better work with all of you at the state level.

Because we know that of course the biggest ask that you all have is really around funds and money and outside of that there's so much more that we need to coordinate on.

Okay, so who would like to start with the response for that?

I think we probably all have items to say. This is Randall Winston, deputy Mayor of Infrastructure for the city and I'll maybe kick it off, but certainly we'll turn it to my colleagues here, Kevin and Bob. Really timely question. Obviously similar Cal OES and thank you for that after action reports. There are multiple underway at the moment.

The Council of the City Council of Los Angeles has called for one. Obviously the Mayor has as well. So I think you can anticipate seeing, I think a host of recommendations outlined as that report gets underway more immediately at the city level.

I think we've sort of come face to face with what is a clear need for bolstering our capacity at the Emergency Management Department and particularly our recovery group recovery apparatus. We are standing that up at this scale really for the first time, or at least for the first time in quite some time really since the Northridge earthquake back in 94.

And so we're starting to kind of exercise muscles at the city level that we, that we really haven't had beforehand and learning a tremendous amount, as was mentioned earlier, from our partners at the county and state level, I think, you know, with your partnership, assemblymember and your colleagues to help strengthen those ties both in terms of regulations and additional direction to come and guiding what that sort of more permanent structure can be moving forward.

As you know, we have major events coming up on the horizon in the next three years.

So we are very much focused on ensuring that from a disaster preparedness standpoint we, you know, we have all the tools and kind of the organizational structure in place to be able to respond at a multi government level as quickly as possible to whatever may come and be able to adapt and prepare accordingly. But I'll turn it to my colleagues I know have additional thoughts.

Thanks, Randall. Again, this is Kevin McGowan with the Office of Emergency Management with LA County. We are also engaging in after actions. We have a evacuation and emergency notification after action process already underway. And then we also are working towards our comprehensive after action which also is in partnership with the state and all of the coordinating entities. And with that I'll hand it over to Bob and the Cal OES team.

Thanks Kevin. Thanks, Randall. Spot on. And just to build upon that, yes, we are dedicated to Cal OES and the recovery Director, but also across oes, a continuous improvement. Right. So both, you know, what we do before, during and after a disaster.

And so some examples are before the disaster we go ahead and we've captured publicly available data on all the counties in California and all the community demographics. So we have that ready in at our fingertips. And then as the disaster happens.

So for these years, as the damage inspection reports came in, we could apply at the census tract level. We could get what the impacted populations were likely to look, you know, to look like and the challenges that we're likely to face.

You know, what are the sayings we have in disaster recovery is that disasters exacerbate pre existing community conditions. And so we do that in real time so we can figure out what the needs are likely to be. And then of course post disaster we're dedicated to, you know, learning from that as soon as possible.

And to that end, we established, you know, as I said, recovery starting up as soon as response did and opening the jointfield office down here.

But we also brought in our planning preparedness partners at Cal OES who are ultimately responsible on the OAS side for conducting those after action reports, but also with our FEMA partners and federal partners, the continuous improvement program brought in their staff from D.C. I think two weeks into the event.

So they could be here living this with us in real time to identify certainly the strengths but also the things we need to improve. We've had some pretty robust conversations with them already.

Thank you for. Oops, sorry, Chair, thank you for your responses. I would just request that you loop in our appropriate Chairs here and their teams on the specifics of what those after actions are because I think that's really, you know, what I didn't hear and I understand that you're undergoing the review right now and what some of those lessons learned are.

The last thing I'll just point out is really just around the notifications. I know that you've heard this feedback before and really just want to ensure that the notifications that were sent when we're notifying residents to evacuate, that we specifically have a better communication channel and protocol and process for that.

Many of the notifications, I think all of them are only in English and that's something that's really tough. I represent a district where I think half of my residents speak another language other than English, specifically Spanish. And so just want to ensure timely notification under emergency circumstances.

And so I know that that's, you know, been said already prior, but just wanted to state that for the record for this hearing. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Assemblymember. For those of you who may be unaware, an after after action report looks at the incident, what happened, lessons learned and what the response was for, you know, the purpose of making sure that we do better in the future and that we also are accountable for what happened in the past.

Also want to remind folks that we we do plan to have a meeting that does focus on the after action reports. We know the agencies are continuing to work on those things. With that, I'm going to move to the next question that we have for our panel as we go towards wrapping this panel up.

And it's in regards to building permits. I want to say I heard it from Mr. Winston and I believe we also may have heard something similar from Mr. Troy regarding expediting building permits. And what I'd like to know is while we are expediting and doing like for like as example to be able to move things forward.

And as we have relaxed permitting in some cases, what are we doing to ensure that those things are rebuilding, being rebuilt in ways that are more protective, more hardened based on some of the information science in things that we know right now that could prevent future wildfires, just protect those homeowners in the future.

I can maybe go ahead.

Bob Randall, you go first and I'll be happy to add on.

All right, thank you for that, Bob and thank you for the question. Chair. I'll kind of maybe lead off on what I mentioned about the Executive order number one that the mayor signed about streamlining building permitting.

There are a number of efforts now underway led by various groups including I know Supervisor Horvath's Blue Ribbon Commission, other self organizing groups here throughout the county, looking at just that very question, how can we build back more resiliently and ensure that those measures are incorporated into permitting processes moving forward?

So I think you'll see additional action at least I'll speak for the City of Los Angeles kind of coming forth on that front in the subsequent weeks ahead.

We want to make sure that we're working closely with our stakeholder groups and recommendations that have come, for instance from we know that the governors recent Executive order on the zero zone and expediting or accelerating the regulatory process about that sort of five foot zone between the building footprint and the landscape and harboring that area as well as building materials, ensuring more fire resistant construction materials and then potentially creating a pathway that is equally as barrier free for those restructures that are homes and homeowners do choose to build more resiliently.

So all of those I think issues around more resilient building are being considered right now, I know by our task forces associated with infrastructure rebuild and we will look to incorporate that into our expedited, larger expedited permitting process here in the coming weeks. Bob, let me turn it to you.

Thank you.

Thanks Randall. That was spot on. Unfortunately, California is becoming a leader in wildfire resilience and home hardening efforts. In particular, we have the state's Wildfire Mitigation program, the state Advisory Committee working with some of the national leaders in this space as well to really come up with the most cost effective ways to harden communities.

And so the Governor is, you know, since this event began and a host of Executive orders that have helped to kind of, you know, all intended to streamline and speed the pace of recovery as much as possible.

We're also at the same time working very diligently to examine which, you know, code enforcement or other requirements we need to keep in place to maximize federal dollars and funding. Right. So we, we far and away get more mitigation dollars than any other state in the country from the Federal Government.

And that is in part to California's, you know, forward leaning requirements for resilient rebuilds as we find that balance. So that we're going to be able to provide as much funding to local communities to help harden these communities both at an individual and a community level. And so it's part of an ongoing dialogue and conversation. It'll continue to happen. So thank you for that opportunity.

Awesome. Thank you. And thank you for those responses. With my emergency management hat on, I want to ask a question about the clearing of debris that includes the electric vehicles.

We're seeing that this is one of the first times that we've had to deal with this magnitude of a disaster regarding result including I should say electric vehicles and the toxicity of the lithium batteries and just really the, you know, concerns about what we're going to do.

Can we speak to how we are mitigating that and are we prepared, you know, long term, short term and long term how we are mitigating the concerns regarding disposal of vehicles that can no longer be used but still have the toxic lithium batteries whose brace.

Yeah, this is Kevin with LA County. I can take the first, first round at that. So part of the benefit of having the US EPA running phase one of the household hazardous waste is their expertise in handling lithium ion batteries.

So they've been both providing technical expertise in the safe removal like the safe mitigation and removal of lithium ion batteries. That includes both in electric vehicles but then in the non electrical vehicle states. So if you think about backup batteries for solar, that is also one of the areas in which they're finding batteries on properties.

So they're, they're, they are using their protocol with their technical special specialty and then they're primarily sending them to authorized locations for recycling and, and disposal of those resources in a, in a controlled fashion. So that's the short term component of it.

I can hand it to one of my partners for a long term, but that's, that's the information I have to share as far as the short term.

Thanks, Kevin. I can definitely chime in. And so this isn't the first time that California has dealt with the issue. It's just the first time on the scale. We really first started seeing this as an issue back in the 2020 and 21 fires and so even back then we worked similarly under mission assignments to bring in the state technical experts as well as the federal rights of dtsc Cali Penn. Working with US EPA and the Army Corps on that.

The federal, our federal partners gained significant additional experience when the Lahaina fires in Maui as well and brought back some valuable lessons learned on both the immediate removal and staging and then the permanent and safe removal of those as well.

So ongoing conversation, but it's an evolution and unfortunately California has really kind of led the way on that. We've already had the number of other states inquiring lessons learned during this event as well.

Thank you for that. I'm going to pass it to Assemblymember Solache.

Thank you, Madam Chair. As we continue the recovery, one of the areas that I'm concerned is the folks that have lost their jobs.

And I don't mean just folks that were working at maybe local restaurants, local businesses, but folks that were working from other communities that are, that were coming to the communities of Palisades, to Artadena, you know, folks at did housework, that construction work, our gardeners, our nannies. And so I did. I was very intrigued by Mr.

Winston's comment of the one job stop that LA is doing. So I was just curious if we could know a little more about that process and how that's going.

Assuming that I understood correctly that that's a place where the City of LA is hosting, you know, a one job stop to folks for job folks that have lost their jobs. So if I understood that correctly, if I could please have more information, that'd be great. Thank you.

Absolutely similar. And thank you for the, for the question. I'll make a little point of clarification. So there's the One Stop Shop which opened a couple of weeks ago that's focused actually on permitting.

And it's a one stop shop where we have all of the City of Los Angeles and other government partners in one room to facilitate a speedy permitting for rebuild. I think what I was mentioning beforehand and what you're referring to, Assemblymember, are our Impacted Worker and Family Recovery Centers.

There are four of those centers, centers located throughout the region. One in West La, one in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, one in West Adams and Leimert park, that's south la, and then one Boyle Heights.

Those services include job placement and training, access to temporary employment opportunities, and we are offering actually $2,000 in relief funds to those workers who have been impacted.

Also offer a host of small business services, including grants that are available, assistance with business permits financial advice for recovery and those looking to restart or re establish business as well as business management and growth workshops. We also offer kind of in tandem with those sort of job placement, job recovery and business services, family services.

And this includes assisted with screening and applying for income support programs, emergency to or access to emergency shelter and rental assistance. And some of these services are also available at the disaster recovery centers. So there's some overlap here.

And then assistance with filing taxes, including business taxes and claiming tax credits, as well as to referrals to immigration services as the need arises. So those are the again the impact impacted work and family recovery centers and certainly welcome any other input or advice that you would want to offer Assemblymember and happy to provide more information as need be in the future.

And I do appreciate the the clarification. Thank you for that. I just intrigued me just because I have had folks from my district that have asked the question, you know, going back to work and, and things that they were impacted of the loss of jobs.

And so even though we were not impacted by the fire directly in our district, obviously the folks that I worked in these communities do come from my district.

So I was just intrigued by your, by your your question and thank you for, for your comments and thank you for that information and good job on the, on the job you're doing there in the City of LA. Thank you.

Thank you Senator Member.

Okay. Thank you for that. Our final question for this panel is for Ms. Cho. It's in and, and I believe that Ms. Cho is the appropriate person to answer this question, but it's in regards to people who have lost, have total losses of their homes and are going through the recovery process and the ability for them to receive forbearances from their mortgage companies.

We are hearing that there are folks who are being asked to continue paying their mortgages while the homes are still going through the FEMA and insurance process. Is there something being done with our federal partners to receive a full forbearance for people while we figure out how long it will take to rebuild their homes? Do we have an answer to that question?

Thanks for that question. I don't, I don't have an immediate answer. I'm not able to speak to the forbearance efforts underway. That's not under HCD purview, but we'll. Look into that and get back to.

You on okay, I definitely appreciate that. I want to thank all of our first panelists for your testimony and for your work and your commitment to helping our communities to recover. We're going to go ahead and move forward to the next panel.

I'm going to turn it over to my fellow chairs to moderate the questions as soon as I'm done introducing the panel. The second panel is going to provide us with updates on what we need to help individuals, small businesses and others rebuild their homes following the disaster.

And so we have a couple of people who are here in person and some folks who are here remote I'm going to first introduce our remote panelists, starting with Ms. Kelly Lo Bianco, Director of Economic Opportunity for Los Angeles County. Welcome Kelly.

Thank you everyone. Thank you Assembly Members. Good morning. My name is Kelly LoBianco, Director of the LA County Department of Economic Opportunity. We are the County's Economic Development Agency and serve with a vision for a more equitable economy with thriving local communities, inclusive and sustainable growth and opportunity and mobility for all.

We oversee the LA County Workforce Development Board as well as 18 America's Job Centers of California, our LA County Small Business Commission and Office of Small Business and hundreds of programs and services, capital and placemaking projects and community partners who implement this vision with us.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to discuss known impact economic impacts of the January windstorms and wildfires, our immediate response and relief efforts and learnings to date, and share goals and efforts underway for long term restoration and recovery of our impacted workers, businesses and communities.

While we are still in the process of surveying damage and assessing direct and indirect costs of the windstorms and wildfires, early available data and analysis support statements that this is one of the most devastating natural disasters in recent years.

Our partners at UCLA estimate between 95 and 164 billion in total property and capital losses, with insured losses estimated at 75 billion and a total wage loss of 297 million for local businesses and employees.

Leveraging some of our public sector data sets, we are seeing more than 2300 small businesses under 100 employees in the fire perimeter with potential impacts to more than 9000 employees and 51 million in monthly wages. More than 1500 businesses have been destroyed with over 50% damage, including 280 commercial spaces alone.

When you look at the fire perimeter and the broader emergency zones, the indirect impact reaches nearly 39,000 businesses with a potential impact to more than 230,000 workers and 1.4 billion in monthly wages.

While not every business, commercial, home based or otherwise, face complete structural loss, we know partial damage and revenue loss will have a multiplier effect on the total economic impact.

In fact, the UCLA Anderson School is estimating close to a 0.5% county level GDP decline for 2025 amounting to approximately 4.6 billion. Known workforce losses are concentrated by number of businesses and wages, health care and social assistance, professional services, arts and entertainment, transportation and warehousing and construction.

We will need to support these displaced workers as well as ensure a robust workforce ready for the scale of the rebuild. It's important to note that these early numbers do not account for shared commercial spaces among businesses or the informal entrepreneurs and workforce.

With income loss supporting the fire impacted business and residential community, we are implementing strategies to further refine our understanding of these impacts.

EO is working alongside UCLA as I mentioned Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation and our fellow local, state and federal agencies to produce and share with stakeholders and community additional analysis in the coming weeks and months to further understand economic loss to guide our recovery strategy and needs.

In the early days of the response, our Department and our county knew how critical it was to ensure workers, small businesses and our community Members had real time centralized information to stay safe.

We knew that this would take an immense coordination between federal, state, county, city, economic and workforce development leadership and quickly set up weekly calls with many of our colleagues on this very panel to ensure that we had common common understandings, triage issues and coordinated our responses.

We have kept up this cadence as we now support a relief and recovery strategy. In those first 30 days we push folks to readiness Resources we just saw my colleague Kevin McGowan at LAcounty.gov/ready and emergency resources at LACounty.gov/emergency all managed by our Department, our Office of Emergency Management.

We also stood up our own Emergency resource page at opportunity.lacounty.gov with information on the disaster recovery centers that you just heard about, as well as the Small Business Administration and FEMA Business Recovery Centers. Daily events and webinars Resources by topic Whether it was grants and loans, debris removal or layoff aversion, a direct connection to technical assistance providers.

This includes our own Job Centers and Business centers as well as those offered through the City of LA and fellow jurisdictions as well as our SBA Small Business Development Centers run by our partner Pat Nye, who's here with us today.

Our Department has seen more than 2,500 impacted individuals at the Disaster Recovery Centers since January 14th and provided one on one counseling to more than 300 small businesses in follow up.

We have also hosted bi weekly webinars with the Together for LA Coalition, a cross sector group that was instigated in COVID 19 for regional coordination and 20 + webinars and events that target those directly impacted as well as train the network of technical assistance providers on the latest information and resources for their clients and communities through these centers, webinars, events and surveys by DEO, the Center for Nonprofit Management and our fellow cities.

We know businesses and workers are facing compounding loss of home and work, particularly in leased spaces are still seeking FEMA disaster relief are managing COVID 19 SBA loans as they take on new ones have various needs with access to capital front of mind now for many as they assess what recovery looks like and that for many this is the first time they are accessing disaster related services and engaging with government in this way.

We know that building a bridge now with relief support will be critical to our engagement on long term recovery that allows workers and businesses to return and restore in a more fire resistant and economically resilient community.

As we move into the relief and recovery phases, our Department is now leading the Economic Development Task Force with the County's Office of Emergency Management, including leadership from the impacted cities and unincorporated areas like LA City, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, Malibu, and with local, state and federal partners.

Right now we are ensuring our communities understand the upcoming March 10 due dates for employment development, the Employment Development Department's Disaster Unemployment Insurance, the SBA disaster loans and FEMA disaster assistance.

While there has been sorry While there has been a significant update with 6,300 Unemployment Insurance and 2,200 disaster unemployment assistance eligible signups, 303,500 SBA loans approved for more than 945 million in capital and more than 78 million in individual assistance and 15 million in housing assistance through FEMA.

We know that there are folks who could benefit from additional dollars, time and support in getting signed up for UI and DUA as they get their bearings after the disastrous first six weeks.

We are also listening to our constituents and seeing where we can stand up relief focused on programming now where we can stand up relief focused programming now.

Businesses and workers who face dual personal and professional impacts need immediate housing accommodations first and foremost and we're grateful to our emergency partners like FEMA, Red Cross and private sector partners Airbnb and Hilton.

But they also need space and capital for economic security while they plan for their next steps for their business from permanent loss or temporary closure. Our Department launched the business to Business spaceshare. It's a free online platform that allows individuals to donate space whether it's commercial, kitchen or a warehouse.

By sharing functional details and availability dates and allowing impacted businesses and nonprofits to view listings and support matchmaking. To date we have over 291 active users and 38 spaces listed.

Folks can take a look at b2b spaceshare.lacounty.gov we also launched the LA Region Small Business and Worker Funds with the county and City of Los Angeles, Southern California Grant Makers and Aid Kit, our third party Administrator to both raise public and private funds and disperse cash grants to impacted communities.

Our hardest hit small businesses and nonprofits may be eligible up to $25,000 in one time cash assistance and our hardest hit workers may be eligible for $2,000 as well.

You heard the City of LA mention that we are prioritizing those who faced permanent loss from the fires and windstorms and will have the hardest time recovering, including factors such as dual home loss and under or lack of insurance or benefits. The grants are currently open through March 2, with grants planned for disbursement by direct deposit or cash card in March.

We've recorded webinars in English and Spanish application guides in 14 threshold languages and have technical assistance at all city and county job centers and business centers, including the City's new Impacted Worker and Family Recovery Centers that you just heard about.

In addition to the Webinars, we've hosted 13 community events and 15 train the trainer sessions for partners to amplify outreach and Ta for the funds. To date for our Small Business Fund we have had more than 3,400 applications submitted and 3,900 applications in progress.

For our Worker Fund we have more than 3600 applications submitted and nearly 1600 applications in progress. Folks can learn more about the funds at laregion.lacounty.gov both for donation and for application.

And today is also the launch of the County's new Household Relief Fund and that and folks can learn more about that at lacounty.gov/relief while this cash assistance will be a salad for those who who are applying, for those who apply and for where funds are available, we also know that workers and business owners will need access to income to get back on their feet now as they think through longer term pathways.

We worked with Secretary Knox and the Employment Development Department to swiftly unlock 20 million in national dislocated Worker Grants and additional assisting grants for dislocated workers with temporary subsidized employment training and re employment assistance and led weekly workforce Meetings with the Region 7 Workforce Development Boards to coordinate assistance for impacted workers throughout LA County.

10 million of these dollars will be managed through the Department. These programs will support 300 plus dislocated workers through the county. To start in this phase, we also know that small businesses and nonprofits need to engage in Phase 1 and 2 debris cleanup efforts.

We are providing clarity to commercial businesses on how to activate Phase 2 cleanup through their insurance as they are not included in the Army Corps scope even though many are located amidst the residential communities. Further, we are supporting service aligned small businesses and registering with the Federal Government and signing up for subcontracting opportunities with eec.

The Army Corps prime contractor DEO has an APEX accelerator at the Disaster Recovery Centers for this purpose. Businesses are also starting to take advantage of the city and county's new permitting one stops. We're building. Related agencies like Regional Planning, Public Works and Fire are expediting permitting options while DEO offers wraparound small business services.

During this time we are also reminding folks to take advantage of technical assistance by the city and county for relief and early rebuild while being mindful of scam scams and price gouging.

We're seeing over a thousand complaints to date and encouraging reporting with our Business and Consumer Affairs Department at DCBA at dcba.lacounty.gov as we push relief today and set our sights on long term recovery.

We know we are going to need to maintain our regional leadership and coordination among partners and stay physically present in the impacted areas with additional and dedicated county as well as job and business center staff even after the disaster recovery center sunset.

We also need to Fund and create responsive programs and services, resources and technical assistance that assistance that expedites access to economic opportunity for impacted workers and businesses and restoration and rebuilding for legacy businesses and communities.

This includes community advisory boards and needs assessments, rapid re employment and skills training and apprenticeships for impacted workers, small business and permitting concierges, incubators and accelerators for businesses and co ops, new grants and capital products, tax and debt relief, no cost legal aid support and long term business planning and development, commercial revitalization and return home campaigns and economics, economic resiliency plans and programs.

We also need to activate and accelerate pipelines of equitable and sustainable rehabilitation and reconstruction projects for commercial and residential properties and our public infrastructure and ensure that we have a pipeline of talent and partnerships to make that happen.

Finally, we need to continue to assess the economic impact the reports that leverage the latest quantitative and qualitative data and invest in our recovery commensurate to the economic losses faced in our research. Other jurisdictions have funded economic recovery activities at 3% or more of damages.

We look forward to working with you all and the state to meet the moment and communicate our progress with communities as local community age as the local community agency overseeing not only LA County, but our unincorporated areas devastated like Altadena.

We know that if we do not show up with proper care and resources now, we will not have their trust for the rebuild. So thank you for the opportunity to share on behalf of LA County and thank you to the state for being our partner in this.

And as I close, I will just quickly share a screen with. zero, you already shared it, so thank you so much, Doug. I do have to exit at 11am for a meeting here in Alawa, Governor and so I will be here to answer questions before I can.

But I did want to acknowledge that I very appreciate, much appreciate the opportunity to be here and also connect with all of your offices as we support the recovery here in LA County.

Thank you. Thank you, Ms. LoBianco. I'm going to turn it over to Assemblymember Solache to introduce the rest of our panelists and we'll go from there.

Okay, thank you. Chairwoman. I know that we have one more person on Zoom. Correct. And then we'll go to the in person. Okay. Okay. First, next. I believe Tennis Wick is actually physically here, Correct? Is that correct? So I have Tennis Wick from AICP Director of Permit and Sonoma. Please join us. Thank you.

Where would you like the chair?

It's right here.

Wherever you want. All right. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Chair. People and Members of the Committee appreciate the opportunity to speak here this morning. Thanks to Ms. Engel for support in preparing for the testimony today. And to Lauren divalencia with the California Chapter of the American Planning Association.

Again, my name is Tennis Wick and I'm the Director of Permit Sonoma, which is the land use authority for Sonoma County. And if. I'm not sure if you have the PowerPoint presentation notes or are they coming out?

I think they're putting up. They're going to put it right now. Good.

Okay. Did you want Lauren to join you? I apologize. Is. Lauren is also in the room. Did you want. You can join at the table while we get the presentation ready. And then, Mr. Chair Solache, we'll introduce you later. Is Abby Browning also here? And is Abby Browning in the room as well? Okay.

You might as well do. Why don't you join us at the table and then Mr. Slash Assembly Member Solache will introduce you all. It was awkward. Sorry.

Got it. Thank you. We were confused of who was on Zoom and who was here physically. So now we know who you are. So thank you. Okay, we do have the presentation and then we'll introduce the rest of the Members. Go ahead, Mr. Wick.

Okay, so while we wait for the PowerPoint, I'll just continue.

I think it's on. Is that it?

Not yours?

Nope. No.

Yeah, yeah.

You can go ahead and start. We have it in our packets and then they'll put it up eventually. Yes.

So the next slide that Committee Members can see, with just a brief summary of what Sonoma County's gone through since the mega fires in 2017. We've gone through four of them in addition to floods in that time. So tragically, we've had too much experience with disaster response and recovery.

The good news is, after having 10% of our county burn and losing about 3% of our housing stock within 72 hours, we have seen almost 90% rebuild in that period.

We've learned a lot from our stumble in 2017 in response to successive fires, and then also provided substantial amount of mutual aid to other counties in California and Lahaina in Hawaii. The pace and competence of the response and recovery in LA County is just extraordinary. We've been providing assistance remotely.

Some of us in person from county Sonoma staff have been at community meetings in Altadena where the design and development community and local officials were already working towards rebuild during the initial parts of the firefight. The community meeting in Altadena. I think was attended by 155 fire survivors while they were searching for places to live.

And just to get to one of the points that I think one of you asked about, how do fire survivors respond to all this information that's coming at them? Something to keep in mind is so far, since 2017, the average fire survivor lives in five different places before they finally settle in their rebuilt home. Five separate.

So imagine going, you've lost everything and you're trying to rebuild your life, your credentials, your home, and you're moving to five different places and trying to keep your children in school, keep your job, keep your business afloat. So that's just something to keep in mind as we're thinking about the needs of these individuals.

So to some of the measures that I have outlined in the, in the PowerPoint that you have to think about it at a state level. Ah, there we go. First one, extending the emergency management mutual aid process. So think of us as second responders that come in and help with recovery as the rebuild begins.

That really only applies to response. It doesn't apply to the recovery services. So many of us that do mutual aid to help our sister counties in California and other states, we do it either on our own dime or we do it through nonprofits like after the Fire.

So one measure I would ask the Legislature to think about is actually extending EMA to include support for the recovery process, not just the response.

And then, as you've mentioned here today, the very, very important premise that we started with, and that's keeping survivors in the community by rapidly offering emergency housing measures to get people back on their properties or to at least get them to elsewhere in the immediate community. Otherwise, you have the loss of.

The loss of community, the loss of culture, the loss of economy that just accelerates and compounds unless you get people into housing rapidly. And for us, that was a really uncomfortable process at first.

So we generated a series of emergency housing measures that allowed people, whether you were a fire survivor or not, because we were already in a housing crisis, but whether you were a fire survivor or not, to live either in the burn zone, obviously, after the first two phases of debris removal and environmental clearance have occurred, or in trailers in people's driveways.

And because we have a substantial rural community, not just urban services, that may mean services like honey pots serving trailers in driveways. So there was a lot of social disruption as those were established. But we still have those measures in place to this day. We'll have them in place until the last survivor is served.

And it's been remarkably successful. We've had maybe a half a dozen complaints since 2017 and starting that program, one of which was valid. So we always hear and when we establish these new measures about the problems. But there have been a number of successes.

So one of the things I would also ask is that when we come with these emergency housing measures, this has started as an open source project and it's shared Director to Director, county to county.

I would ask the state to support bringing this whole emergency housing measure to an appropriate state agency and start best practices so that you don't have to be relying on a personal relationship with somebody in another government. We can do better. And I think that's one area that wouldn't cost much money and would be extremely effective.

And brought to date some of the relief that I know some of my, my colleagues like Amy Bodak with LA County would really love to see would be more flexibility from Housing and Community Development. When it comes to her regional housing needs allocation is over 90,000 units.

So some of those infill development sites are within the burn zone. So she needs some flexibility. She's willing to obviously commit. She takes that as a minimum number, not a maximum.

But she needs flexibility in where those other sites are going to be because she knows that she's not going to be able to get to some of those within the year recovery period. And then finally to some of the characterizations that have made about building like for like. We actually took a very different approach.

We ask people to build back better, not just under the building code because it is extraordinarily more safe than most of the housing stock that we lost in Sonoma county or that's been lost in the Eaton fire. It's a, it's a much more robust code now that allows for safer and more energy conserving construction methods.

But we encourage people to build ADUs as part of their rebuild. They would be entitled by right as they would be under current law. So we asked people to go beyond what they had before. We co called apartment developers and said would you think about building back more units?

So we really took this as an effort to maximize the amount of housing we could do as part of the accelerated rebuilding process. So I can conclude my remarks there and look forward to answering any questions from the Committee.

Thank you, Mr. Wick. We're going to hear from all the panelists and we're going to go circle back with all the panelists and ask questions. Next we have Lauren Greenwood, she's the Deputy Director of Legislative and External Affairs, California's Office of Business and Economic Development. Ms. Greenwood, great.

Good morning Chairs and Committee Members. My name is Lauren Greenwood, Deputy Director of Legislative and External affairs for the Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, known as Go Biz.

Just to provide a high level for Go Biz for those who might you might not be as familiar, we serve as the state's leader for job growth, economic development and business assistance efforts. We offer a wide range of services to business owners to help them start, grow and invest in California.

This includes site selection, permit streamlining, navigating regulatory hurdles, identifying incentives, and much more importantly and relevant for this conversation, we also have two teams within Go BIZ that work directly with state, federal and local partners to plan and mobilize during these times of natural disasters.

Our California Office of the Small Business Advocate, Cal osba, has been leveraging its network of small Business Support Centers that receive annual state support of $23 million to mobilize approximately 200 business advisors to the Disaster Recovery Centers in Los Angeles, of which thousands of people have visited. Your next panelists will share more specifics about this work.

Additionally, a few of CALOSPAS contracted providers, including the Los Angeles Small Business Development Network, specialize in helping small businesses obtain government contracts, including state contracts for disaster response.

Even before the wildfires, the LA Small Business Development Network has been working to educate small business owners about procurement opportunities and anticipation of the upcoming needs for planned infrastructure to support LA International sporting events.

Cal OSBA has also been engaging with local partners to share lessons learned from its experience operating various programs such as its nearly 4 billion COVID 19 small business relief Grant Program in times of disaster, and our Regional Economic Development Initiative team has been providing critical coordination support between local, state and federal recovery efforts and identifying best practices from other jurisdictions in California with similar large scale disasters.

Zooming out Go BIZ provides a key coordinating role within California's Disaster Recovery Framework for the Economic Recovery Support function in partnership with Cal OES Slides 3 and 4 on your handout.

As you've heard in the previous panel, there's a number of efforts ongoing to support relief and the Economic RSF is one of the six state pillars designed to support the recovery and enhancement of businesses and other economic assets in in communities impacted by a disaster in the various stages of early, intermediate and long term recovery.

The Economic RSF structure has led to smaller working groups and task forces that have enabled timely, helpful information and best practices sharing among state, local and federal partners.

The fires were contained less than a month ago and state, local and federal partners are leveraging these frameworks to put forward a recovery needs assessment slide slide 5 to serve as a scoping mechanism for the Federal interagency recovery coordination, this assessment will assess incident impacts, set joint recovery objectives, identify and validate needs for potential federal support, and evaluate potential gaps and unmet needs and recovery capabilities.

The deadline for completing this assessment is March 8th and allows for a structured recovery effort that has been utilized in other major disasters to allow for the careful balance between maintaining emergency services and beginning the shift toward permanent solutions Solutions we are still in the early stages of recovery and GOVIZ will continue its role facilitating communication across relevant stakeholder groups across all recovery phases to ensure community understanding and buy in for recovery decisions.

We are grateful to have such dedicated partners at the state, local and federal and private sector level. Success in implementing this recovery strategy requires strong leadership, sustained community engagement, and careful attention to the unique characteristics of each community.

By adapting proven federal and state recovery practices to address these local conditions while maintaining a focus on long term resilience, we know Altadena and Pacific Palisades can emerge from recovery as more resilient communities better prepared for future challenges. Thank you.

Thank you. We'll go to the next panelist, Pat Nye. He's a Regional Director of the Los Angeles Small Business Development Network.

Welcome.

Thank you. Chairs and Committee My name is Pat Nye. I'm the leader of the Los Angeles Regional Small Business Development center network, the SBDCs as we're known. We serve the entire state and collectively we are California's leading provider of small business technical assistance.

My specific SBDC covers the region of Los Angeles, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties and in LA we have a team of close to 200 support and small business experts and annually we typically coach around 11,000 small businesses one on one and then we offer workshops and we typically see about 21,000 attendees.

We are publicly funded through the US Small Business Administration, California's Office of the Small Business Advocate, and then locally for projects LA County and cities around our region. Disaster response has become a large part of what we do.

It's one of the key elements elements of our work and we were a primary small business resource for the pandemic and then previous wildfires, including the Thomas Fire, Woolsey Creek fires and mountain fires. So we unfortunately have a lot of experience assisting businesses through these critical times.

I really do like to think of our programs like the SBDC as California's critical second responders. We jump in and assist those small businesses just as soon as our first responders make sure everybody's out of harm's way. It's also important to note that we are a permanent resource.

The LASBDC has been around since 2007 and we will be there supporting Los Angeles businesses well beyond the emergency recovery operations that are happening now. So to our current response, we were there day one. In fact, some of the federal disaster resource centers basically adopted our centers. So they came and used our spots.

So we were already there and we were already reaching out to our clients and everybody, you know, sort of on our internal lists and everything two days after the fires happened. So we were very proactive on that.

You know, that that's one of the nice things about having a permanent resource there and part of the state's resources that you know, were already there embedded in these communities. As of Yesterday, we've had one on one business advising sessions with 406 impacted businesses.

So those are folks that have come in and worked one on one with us. And that's roughly 130% increase over what we typically see in those two fire impacted regions each year. We host live webinars multiple times a week, including live Q and A sessions and things like that.

So we really are that source to help people navigate all these different resources. We respond quickly. We are that live person on the phone. We have emails that are staffed. We want to be that sort of warm handoff.

And the things that we primarily cover are we're helping people navigate their insurance claims, the sba, disaster loans, maybe more importantly the disaster reconsiderations. You know, it's very common for somebody to get declined in the federal process.

We're there to help them figure out what was wrong with the paperwork and get it resubmitted for a successful deployment of those resources. We can help people with their employee needs through EDD and other workforce kind of resources.

And then of course all of the other grants and things, whether that's small foundations offering some relief or our combined effort with LA County and City of LA where they're helping people navigate being able to get those grant resources.

I would say some of the challenges we've been facing, even with this spike in activity, just personally the numbers feel a bit Low. I know we've seen way more businesses impacted by this and it's far more than just those that were physically damaged through the fires.

But it's really the whole region has suffered economic impact, whether that's being in evacuation zone, loss of power, or just a huge downturn in people going out and utilizing business services.

So I think part of the reason behind that is that even though it feels like we're already a couple months in really, DRCs only showed up at the end of January. And a lot of these resources are fairly new. It's very confusing for clients. They don't know where to start.

I'll say even the emergence of these one stop shops and things like that, it's been amazing to see a concentration of resources. But at least in the early days when you went there, you would have no idea what table was number 1 and 2 and on down the line.

So I believe there's a role for technical assistance providers to sort of help be that concierge through these services. I also think that we still have a lot of people that are not back in the region. They're not able to return.

We know hearing from our partners up in Ventura that their hotels are still all full in the outer reaches of the county. And even my colleagues in Orange County and San Diego, they're still serving a lot of people from Los Angeles County who have not come back.

I also think that a lot of people don't know about these resources. So I think there's an outreach problem to be solved. And then I also think it's challenging. You're being asked to take advantage primarily of loans. You know, that's sort of our number one resource is a federal loan.

Well, if you've just lost everything, do you really want to contemplate taking on more debt? And what are you going to base that on? What are your projections for the next two or three years during a rebuilding process? You know, it's very much flying blind.

And so again, I think that's really where technical assistance is of most importance to help people be able to figure those things out. And so, you know, I do think that small business is always the last to recover from these kind of events.

And for example, in the Maui fires, you know, back in 2023, there are brick and mortar businesses that have still yet to begin their recovery. They're still stuck in, you know, commercial property being, you know, debated going through remediation. Rebuilding will take several years.

And you know, even though we seem to be moving pretty quickly, I think for a lot of small businesses this is more of a marathon, you know, kind of Proposition. So I do have some, some things that I would offer as potential solutions.

So I do think that, you know, there are a couple of funding measures that I think will support this effort. So I know Chairman Solache, he's proposing an increase to technical assistance funds for programs like sbdc, Women's Business centers, ethnic chambers. We currently receive funding from the state under the technical assistance program, the TAP program under CalOSPA.

In normal times that's about 23 million. There's a proposal to see that increase And I think 23 million is just sort of normal course of business and we don't want to step away from that either. That's been an important driver of our state's small business economy.

So I think that looking at, you know, expanding that and being able to grow it is very important. I also know that Assemblymember Coloza has a Bill to create a permanent disaster Fund that would provide direct funding to small businesses with a 10% carve for technical assistance. And I think that's. We obviously support that.

That's Assembly Bill 265. I think that's very important in terms of marrying those two things. I think that people should look at technical assistance partners as that sort of risk mitigation insurance policy to go along with any disbursements from public funds.

We can make sure that those funds are used effectively and that there's sort of long term planning strategy and overs hand holding with that business. So it isn't just a one off, throw some money at it and hope it worked. We can stay with that business for the life of that business.

I also think that there's an opportunity here to look at more sort of Main street approach to recovery.

And by that I mean specifically during the Thomas fire, we helped the City of Ojai as an entire city, so not just little independent businesses within that city, but we took a holistic approach and helped them develop strategies for the entire city.

Well, I think we could do that same thing with all the technical assistance partners and agencies looking at sort of business districts or streets or things like that in each of these cities that have been impacted and build that into the recovery. So it's not just one offs and there's a more holistic approach here.

I also think that, you know, small business owners are going to need access to affordable capital. Our state has a couple of loan programs that could easily be adapted and sort of turned into a more robust disaster resource. And I think that's very easy. You know, these programs already exist. We already have them.

It can be very easy to adapt them and be able to offer, you know, a Head Start for some of these businesses to recover. So with that, we're the LASBDC and we look forward to working with all of your offices and our partners in this recovery.

Great, thank you so much. We have one last person panelists that's on Zoom and that's Abby Browning and she's a Chief Chief of Private Sector Nonprofit Governmental Organization Coordinated California Office of Emergency Services Good morning.

Thank you. Chairs and Members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak today about the Cal OES recovery efforts for the devastating 2025 wildfires.

The purpose of the Cal OES Office of Private Sector NGO Coordination is to design, coordinate and implement statewide outreach to foster relationships with businesses, associations, companies and universities as well as nonprofit, non governmental and philanthropic organizations.

This office works within Cal OES to maximize the inclusion and effective use of private sector philanthropic and NGO staff and resources in all phases of emergency management.

With these partnerships, they can help with filling or supplementing a variety of resource needs such as logistics systems, facility space, established communication networks, availability of supplies such as food, water, construction materials, other critical goods, equipment such as transportation, vehicles, telecommunication and other technology and personnel such as those with technical or specialized skills.

This office also disseminates critical information to California's business community regarding disaster preparedness, response and recovery as well as gathering vital information from the business community to help Cal OES leaders prioritize response and recovery efforts. During the January Firestorm response and recovery, this office has remained actively engaged to coordinate offers and donations from the private sector and NGOs.

The office has efficiently connected donations with the appropriate organizations to best serve wildfire survivors. Here are a few examples of the donations and partnerships that have been facilitated thus far from the private sector. You heard about Airbnb? Airbnb provided evacuation housing credits to more than 25,000 people during the wildfires, including school employees, government employees.

This totaled to over $26 million in credits working through 211 LA. They are currently assessing the situations for some of the families still in the homes to have longer stay credits. Uber and Lyft offered free rides, meals and freight services to support wildfire response and arc, the Red Cross sheltering operations.

Maersk donated three forklifts to a local nonprofit to use in the donations warehouse, Mission Blue diamond and Chobani donated snacks and drinks to be distributed at the disaster Recovery Centers and SAS Safety donated 3,000 P100 masks. Those are specialized for working in ash and fire debris with the nonprofit organizations.

Baby 2 Baby donated several truckloads of diapers and hygiene supplies as well as air purifiers to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank for distribution. Direct Relief provided respirators, additional PPE and medical supplies to local clinics through coordination with the Emergency Network of Los Angeles and the California VOAD which is the voluntary organizations active in disaster.

A Wildfire resource hub ran for six days in Pasadena, was located in a donated space by Kaiser Permanente. 48 different nonprofit organizations serve the public. This included over 1,250 volunteers. $8,000,459 in financial aid was distributed immediately. That was in cash, gift cards and bank deposits. And then over 2000 $2,000,900 in goods were distributed immediately.

That's with foods, air purifier clothing and child supplies. For those six days. They serve 12,725 families. A total value of all of the services, including the volunteer services added together was over $12 million. That was purely by our nonprofit community. Additional resource hubs like this are being planned to support the communities impacted by the Palisades fire.

And they'll be running next week for philanthropy. Coordinating with Philanthropy California. We have a list of 20 vetted funds that are actively collecting and distributing monies to survivors of the fires. And it represents approximately $254 million.

Note that this number does not reflect other sources like GoFundMe or the Department of Angels or the Annenberg foundation, which was the LA Fire Aid Concert or the LA Rises Initiative.

We're continuing working with larger nonprofits such as the American Red Cross and the United Way of California to support additional local nonprofits serving survivors with direct resources in those situations. The larger nonprofits have collected donations and then are turning around and granting them to smaller nonprofits on the ground for operating expenses.

And then several major corporate partners also donated millions of dollars direct with to these foundations, including companies like Amazon, Walmart, Disney, Meta and Netflix. We're continuing to work through our recovery task forces that you've heard mentioned by several of my colleagues on the panels today. A couple of examples.

Through the school's task force, we coordinated donations of over 5,000 Chromebooks, PCs and additional computer equipment to the Los Angeles Board of Education for the schools that were destroyed in the fires.

We've also finalized an additional donation of 1000 chromebooks and chargers that went to the YMCAs of Greater Los Angeles to be passed out to those families that were also impacted but their schools might not have been impacted. The Debris Task Force where they include leaders.

As you heard from local, state and federal agencies, we're doing important coordination to integrate nonprofit partners into that activities so we can help cover things that are not included with the U.S. army Corps of Engineers.

Some examples of this is sifting to retrieve personal property before the larger debris operation happens or specialized cleaning of homes that were not directly destroyed by the fire, but may have gotten ash or smoke involved in there. And then finally, the retrieval of cremated remains that were inside of the homes.

And so we have specialized nonprofits that can go in and assist the survivors in finding those cremated remains before the larger debris operation takes place. So, as you can see, our community partners are involved in every aspect of the response and recovery in Los Angeles. Of course, this list is not exhaustive and certainly not final.

We capture the information as best we can and encourage our donors to connect directly with the community that's impacted. Many of these relationships happen organically and go unnoticed by the larger public, but are essential to survivors. Thank you for your time.

Thank you to all the panelists today for the information. I'll entertain any questions from Committee Members.

I have a very quick specific question, Mr. Wick. When you spoke with those apartment community owners about redevelopment and increasing the number of units, that sounds, you know, trying to tackle the problems, existing problems we have with this new situation. Are you encouraging them to put in family sized units as well as multi bedroom units? I would hate to see families getting displaced and then only small units get rebuilt.

Yes, we placed an emphasis on building three bedroom, two bath to accommodate families. So not just two bedroom, two bath which is the development norm in the state.

Yeah, we also encouraged ADU as I, as I mentioned, ADU development and we now have in the prior burn zone over a thousand ADUs built that were not part of the landscape before.

Having been a former community planning board Member, getting those family units that allow for multi generational living or just roommates, those kinds of situations actually help with people getting into housing, stable housing.

Point well taken. And that is something that we really focused on in our community meeting in Altadena. Like many communities in California, we were all living in multi generational housing before these disasters. It was just called the main residence.

And so again to think differently about like, for like a lot of people want to build back a main residence, an adu, maybe only an ADU first because that's all they can afford and, and a junior accessory dwelling unit.

So another thing to think about at a state level that is minimal investment that several of us are doing in the state and have been doing. San Diego, San Mateo County, Napa and Sonoma together was creating permit ready designs now that are available for people.

Imagine that's another easy thing to elevate to a statewide level maybe through the. What's the new name for opr? The Land Use and Climate Innovation Office. Just a great place.

So a lot of these designs are already there and then we can modify them to meet new building codes every three years as they come about or new innovations come about in design, new construction materials come about. So this is a great opportunity. Thank you. To really do something better.

Thank you. Any other questions, Mr. Gallagher?

Yeah, well thank you guys for being here and maybe more just of a comment, but definitely want to get some of your feedback as well.

One I think, you know, from my own experience and rebuilding after the campfire and paradise, you know, HCD was, you know, you guys have been a really good partner and we worked through some different things, you know, trying to, you know, navigate a lot of the different programs and funding and you know, and as things come came up you know, I think, I think we learned some things as well.

And, and so that, that was really good. One thing I'd like to say is that I think it is important to first of all let the property owners and the community decide what they want to do, you know, and how they want to move forward.

And that was definitely the case with paradise is, you know, there was a lot of conversations in the community about okay, how do we want to rebuild, what do we want that to look like?

And sort of out of that did come, you know, one of the things that came out of that was, is having a sewer system, because I actually did not have a sewer system previously. And that would enable some more higher density development along the main corridor in Paradise. And that's something they're still working on.

And you know, the sewer system is something we're still trying to work through different agencies to get that kind of online. But, but CDBG DR Funds were very vital in terms of bringing on affordable housing units and rebuilding affordable housing in paradise and in the region.

One thing that's frustrating is sometimes like it takes a disaster cause so many times before we try to get some of those different, like tax credits and other ways to build affordable housing. And you know, it was only really through the, the Doctor Funds that we ultimately were able to build some of that housing.

Obviously rebuilding lost affordable housing stock that we lost in the fire. But I think even like, you know, building more affordable housing in the region, which I think is really important.

And I think Paradise did a particularly good job of making use of those. So. Kudos.

Yeah, no, I mean, and, and you know, working, working with you guys. So that was, you know, I think that was a positive. But I, I kind of begin with like, you know, really looking at, let those communities kind of determine what they want their rebuild to look like.

Not really trying to force any particular view on them. And then secondarily, I've been working on some legislation and there's some legislation that I reintroduced this year. You know, working with the emergency management Committee last year about really especially for disadvantaged communities, how do we kind of really help rebuild that infrastructure?

Because that's, you know, on these fires one of the biggest things is, hey, a lot of infrastructure is damaged that helps rebuild this kind of fundamental backbone to the rebuild of that community.

And so having some kind of focused policy effort on that I think could be really helpful in the rebuild of the communities affected by these recent fires. And certainly something I want to continue to work on. But if you, anything you wanted to respond to in that, please.

No, Points well taken. And, and that is definitely. So this list of items that, that are in my notes, those really come from county directors throughout the state that have been through this.

And that is one of the first things that they mention is check with us first before you impose any kind of mandates or bring a, in good faith bring a new program forward. Because everybody comes and comes at it with a different circumstance. They have different resources and absolutely Los Angeles deserves all the support they can get.

Someone like LA County is better resource than Butte County or Sonoma County. So the needs shift depending on that and also the devastation of whatever disaster is hitting. So point well taken. Talk of this first.

Anything else? Gallagher? Okay.

Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate this panel for the information on, you know, how we rebuild and the economic development and impact. Mr. Wicks, you seem to be fielding all the questions, but you mentioned that you had an open source opportunity that you were willing to share.

I guess an open source project that kind of deals with how we can help as these potential disasters come up in other places. Has that, how do you, how do folks access that? Can you share that with our Committee where we can take a look at some, how we share that out to the state.

So not knowing the exact backgrounds of the Committee Members here, but I assume some of you, I know at least one of you are from local governments. So. Several. Yeah, several. So imagine you're. So we were in the emergency operations center.

So my team, so I also serve as the plan section chief for emergency operations in the county. And our, our team from Permit Sonoma staffs that section. We were writing resolutions and ordinances and that 00 hour to morning time and getting ready for recovery. So resolutions, ordinance staff reports, we pass those on to Butte County and Paradise.

They got passed on to Lahaina, Lahaina passed them on to LA County and so on. So they get it, they get improved new ideas, they get tailored to that local community's need. But it's something as simple as that that can help kickstart a local government's effort at getting started in rebuilding.

Yes. So you said it was open source. How do we access it?

Amy Bodak has the most recent version. So I will get that to you before close of business.

Okay, thank you. I'll put you in touch with the Committee staff that can take that. Thank you so much for that.

You bet. Thank you.

Great. And I'll take one last question myself for the sbdc. Just wanted to know, you know, as what can we as government do More to help expand support for small and home based businesses over the long haul of the recovery.

So I appreciate that question. I think that a key thing, one of our key challenges, and I think this is true of all technical assistance providers, is really having funding available for outreach.

I think this is of a scale that our typical funding doesn't really allow us to do things like go out and have street teams or have office hours in places where we can just sit and wait for people to show up. So I'd say that is one solution.

I think another big solution is really around providing long term access to capital specifically to be able to Fund operations and businesses being able to weather things like a rebuilding schedule and all that. And like I mentioned at the beginning, the state has a couple of great loan programs, the CalCap and Ihub.

Perhaps we could look at raising the guarantee level. The state already has a pretty strong guarantee, but maybe for disaster impacted businesses you could raise that even higher. Maybe you could even put a requirement.

If you do get that, then you need to work with the technical assistance partners so we can act as a little bit of your insurance there to make sure that they have a plan for how to utilize those funds. I think even in things like disaster preparedness, maybe you can help to incentivize businesses.

Maybe they get a better rate on their insurance or something if they can prove they have a disaster preparedness plan in place, things like that. So I think there are a lot of different levers that legislators have at your disposal to be able to support business.

Great. Thank you for answering that. And I want to thank all the panelists for being here today and those who are on zoom. This concludes this part of the agenda and the panel on this. With that, I'm going to turn it over back to our Chairwoman.

Thank you. I want to thank Chair Haney from Housing Community Development for joining us. Chair Solache and at this point we're going to go ahead and move to a public comment section due to time constraints. As we see folks are are moving now, we're going to be limiting public comment to one minute per person.

And before we get to public comments, I want to acknowledge that we've been receiving comments from many Campfire Wild, Campfire Wildfire victims that have contacted our Committee in the last few days regarding the Wildfire Catastrophic Fund that was established in 2019.

The purpose of that Fund is to provide a source of money to reimburse eligible claims arising from covered wildfires caused by utility companies. After the Fund was created, the legislation that was signed into law by the Governor did not allow the Fund to pay for prior wildfires caused by utility companies such as what happened in the campfire.

Although this issue is beyond the scope of today's meeting, we definitely want to thank people for bringing it forward to us as we continue to look for solutions. And we look forward to working together as colleagues to ensure that there is definitely an equitable response to the disasters in California.

So we just wanted to acknowledge the folks because some of them can't be here, but they did take the time to reach out to us about those concerns. So we want to make sure that you understand that we are taking your concerns seriously and we'll definitely be going over those.

So with that being said, we're going to open it up to public comment. We will. Each person will have one minute to make a comment. Please state your name and where you're from. And then if you get to time, I will. I'll try really hard not to interrupt you, but I will let you know. Thank you so much. Go ahead.

Thank you, madam and Mr. Chair and Assemblymember. Sara Flocks. I'm with the California Federation of Labor Unions. We do have a letter on worker protections in post fire recovery that we'll submit to the committees. So I will keep my comments very brief. We just want to make sure that worker protections are front and center in any recovery.

One example would be as homeowners are hiring contractors to rebuild and do debris removal outside of the EPA and the federal that it would be good to have education on what contractors should be providing in terms of ppe, in terms of workers rights, breaks, overtime, all of that information so homeowners are informed as well as workers.

The other thing is, is that a lot of workers have lost their workplaces and a lot of them were not just businesses but homes that burned down. And so just making sure that they do not fall off the radar. Thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Hi, Good morning. Janice O'Malley with the American Federation of State County Municipal Employees. Thank you for this hearing today. I just want to highlight that it was our AFSCME Members that were also part of the recovery and rebuilding process. We have the City of Pasadena. They were staffing the convention centers while the community was trying to recover.

We have fire mechanics as well in LA County that are servicing all of the rigs and many other public employees who had to drive into the face of danger within reach of fires to be able to staff facilities.

And so just want to echo what my counterpart, Sarah Flocks, had Just mentioned about making sure that we fully protect the workforce. They have to have access to adequate PPE and cleanup equipment and they're properly trained on the hazards of exposure.

Also want to highlight as well that there may be lingering illnesses that impact their health for years to come, especially with our fire mechanics. Also want to flag that there should be some portion of federal funds to go to hazard pay for our workers who worked overtime during the fires to protect our communities. So thank you.

Thank you for your comment.

Thanks very much Committee Members, for the insightful hearing and the great questions. My name is Will Abrams. I'm a wildfire survivor from the 2017 Tubbs fire.

Very much concerned about these issues and I did want to reiterate that one of the things that we should absolutely be focused on for all wildfire survivors is to focus on the 30% shortfall where victims are not getting paid from the 2015-2018 fires. Solving this is important for all fire victims.

They rely upon the California Wildfire Fund to receive funds. I was here in 2019 with the passage of AB 1054 and was absolutely the commitment then that this was legislation to make all wildfire survivors whole. And I'm asking you to focus on that now.

The second issue that I think is really important for LA wildfire survivors to understand is is that while there's a lot of good attorneys working on behalf of victims and the public, there are lots of predatory attorneys who are descending on the LA area that we need to be aware of.

They may Prop up nonprofits that are not nonprofits. They may be receiving funds as they did here from PG&E investors to move things in this Committee and elsewhere for their ends, not necessarily for their clients ends who they're also getting 30% from. We need to shine a light on these things.

We need to make sure that folks are held to account. And I have encourage all of the Committee Members to look at the letters sent from victims and to really communicate directly with victims of these fires and learn from those mistakes. Thank you.

Thank you sir for your comments.

Thank you Honorable Chair Ransom, Haney and Solache and esteemed Members of the Committee. My name is Amy Hines-Shaikh. I'm representing Unite Here, Local 11 and the California Community Land Trust Network here to facilitate a just and equitable disaster recovery. We must contemplate four things.

First of all, deeply appreciate Assemblymember Patel your point about linguistically accessible emergency notifications for language justice. Secondly, have an orderly and fair return to work for hospitality workers who have lost their jobs due to no fault of their own. Workers who have been laid off due to natural disasters deserve the right to return to their jobs.

Number three, an orderly system in place so that three large speculative investor corporations don't end up owning all of the wildfire ravaged areas. And number four, finally urgently extending the governor's Executive order prohibiting unsolicited offers and enforcing that prohibition. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments.

Thank you. Chair and Members. I'm Kim Lewis representing Children Now and I just want to shine a particular light on our children and youth in foster care and their families, especially during the impact of a wildfire and how challenging it can be for them to be able to connect with their social workers or social services agencies who have been supporting them because they may be dealing with their own issues and particularly for our older non minor dependent foster youth is they may not have savings available to them to be able to help them recover and get back on their feet quickly.

And so we just wanted to elevate their very unique needs and that really, we encourage you guys as Legislature to be thinking about potentially creating a special disaster recovery Fund for our children and child welfare system and to really ensure that our Department of Social Services is working with those local disaster recovery centers to be providing the supports needed to support our system involved youth.

Because not everyone's very familiar with the nuances of our child welfare system and whether families can relocate at all and whether that disrupts their connections to their visits or any of their timely services. So thank you for that consideration.

Thank you. Again, I want to thank those, the Members of the public for joining and for sharing your concerns with our committees. We do take this very seriously and again want to thank our colleagues for joining as well. This meeting is now adjourned.