The Brief

The wildfires that ravaged L.A. County have damaged or destroyed thousands of properties, leaving many homeowners with hard questions about what’s next.

LAist has put together this resource to help homeowners navigate questions about mortgages and, if they choose to sell, what rights they have.

My house is destroyed. Do I have to pay the mortgage?

Contact your mortgage servicer (the company listed on your mortgage statement) because you might be eligible for some relief per Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae guidelines.

Jenise Hight, Fannie Mae’s vice president of Single-Family Credit Risk Policy, said mortgage servicers are required  to proactively identify properties that may be impacted by disaster and offer homeowners 90 days of initial forbearance without even speaking to the borrower.

If your loan is held by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, you might be eligible for suspended mortgage relief of up to 12 months, during which you will not incur late fees, foreclosures or other legal consequences. Fannie Mae also offers a temporary reduction of mortgage payments.

You can find more information on the Fannie Mae website or visiting the Freddie Mac website. Those whose loan is held by Fannie Mae can call 855 437-3243 for free assistance by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development-approved housing counselors.

Hight also said homeowners can work with their mortgage servicers to file insurance claims to rebuild the property.

 ”If it's determined that the property cannot be rebuilt, then the servicer would apply those insurance loss proceeds to reduce the amount of the outstanding mortgage loan balance,” she said. “Then the borrower would also be able to use the proceeds from the sale of the land in order to satisfy the rest of the mortgage debt. But that's a worst case scenario.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom also announced some relief for property owners whose mortgage is through Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo. Borrowers from these institutions will be eligible for the postponement of their mortgage for 90 days without having to submit any forms. During that period, they also won’t incur late fees, and late payments won’t affect their credit score.

For 60 days, these banks also won't evict or foreclose on homeowners unable to make their mortgage payments.

For more details, homeowners in these ZIP codes should contact their lenders: 90019, 90041, 90049, 90066, 90265, 90272, 90290, 90402, 91001, 91104, 91106, 91107, or 93536.

Do I still have to pay taxes on my home? 

My colleague Cato Hernández addressed those questions in their informative story. If your home was destroyed in the wildfires, you could be eligible for property tax relief through L.A. County’s disaster relief ordinance. You have 12 months from when the disaster occurred to file an application with the county assessor’s office to get the reduction.

My house is destroyed. I received a call from a real estate agent asking if I am selling my property. Should I?

Newsom also announced an executive order banning unsolicited cash offers for homes in the affected areas for three months.

Chika Sunquist, commissioner for the California Department of Real Estate, said the order  is meant “to protect the Los Angeles area fire victims from predatory buyers who are wanting to exploit them, the trauma and to exploit the disaster.”

“ It's intended to prevent those people from making lowball offers and trying to buy out those properties from people who don't have the time to make the decision or feel like they need to make a quick decision,” she said.

If you do receive one of these calls, you can report the caller to the California Attorney General’s Office.

Sunquist said people who do want to sell their homes should take time to make an informed decision, thinking about what they would have done before the fires.

She recommends thinking through and researching:

• What is the process for selling a home?
• How much do you want to sell the property at? What is a price you are willing to accept for the property?
•  Find the right people to help you through that sale, such as a real estate agent, an attorney to help you read through contracts and agreements, a licensed contractor to fix up the property before the sale and a financial advisory team, which could be family and friends.

And yes, homeowners have to disclose to potential buyers if a property has been damaged in a fire.

“ Rebuilding can be an option. You have your insurance carrier that you can contact to find out how much you might be able to get to rebuild,” she said. “There are licensed contractors you can talk to about maybe building a home that you really wanted, as opposed to the one that you had at the time, that's been passed down or that you previously wanted to restore.”

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation is also warning homeowners to be wary of scams and fraudulent behavior. Verify claims with government sources versus relying on information via social media and secondhand sources. Scammers often come across as urgent, so take your time when reviewing offers and claims.

The Walt Disney Company has invested $1 billion in OpenAI’s Sora video-generation tool, making it the first major media company to license its intellectual property to an AI system.

Household names like Mickey Mouse, Darth Vader, Iron Man and Cinderella are just some of the several hundred characters that are included as part of this three-year licensing deal that allows fans to generate and share videos with these characters, using Sora.

“This is very much a situation of if you can't beat them, join them,” said Erik Barmack, AI columnist for The Ankler. He added that the media conglomerate’s characters were being generated in videos by Sora users already, and the company wants to engage those users while also having its own guardrails in place.

Currently, vague limitations have been outlined by Disney CEO Robert Iger in the deal, including a ban on the use of character voices and on how long a video’s duration can be. Barmack said there will be blocking that Disney will likely define what is or isn’t appropriate for a Disney character.

“They are not going to put Lilo and Stitch into adult situations. But those guardrails have not been published as part of this deal yet," he said.

Disney also will become a “major customer” of OpenAI and use its technology to build new products, tools and services. It also will roll out ChatGPT for employee use. Both companies said they are committed to responsible use of AI that protects the safety of users and the rights of creators. As part of the deal, some user-generated Sora videos will be made available on the Disney+ streaming service.

Learn more

Listen to our interview with Erik Barmack, AI columnist for The Ankler on AirTalk with Larry Mantle.

Irvine city leaders approved a land swap with property developer FivePoint in a 4-3 vote Tuesday, greenlighting the development of 1,300 market-rate units that won’t have to comply with affordable housing requirements.

As part of the deal, the city will give FivePoint 26.4 acres of land within Great Park in exchange for 35 acres bordering the Irvine Spectrum, dubbed the Crescent site.

 The development of 1,300 market-rate housing units, said Stephanie Frady, director of community development at the city, will generate more than $200 million in special taxes Great Park residents pay to fund school expansions and public infrastructure development.

The Crescent site “ creates an exciting opportunity for transit-oriented development and an important linkage between the Great Park and the greater Spectrum area,” said Pete Carmichael, assistant city manager.

The Irvine Spectrum attracts 17 million visitors each year, while Great Park sees around six million, with many more expected as the park builds out.

Because of the unequal acreage in the land swap, city officials also voted to waive state affordable housing requirements for the developer. The staff report for Tuesday’s meeting did not include a financial analysis of the land swap or the effects of waiving affordable housing requirements for FivePoint. LAist has requested those documents. But during the meeting, Carmichael said the 8.6 incremental acres are valued at around $66 million and that the deal benefits the city  by about $37 million.

Elizabeth Hansburg, co-founder of People for Housing OC, called the land swap an opportunity for the city to have greater say in the kind of development bordering a transit center.

 ”When the city becomes the owner of the land adjacent to the transit center, then the city will be held to a higher percentage of affordable [housing] than a private entity would be,” she said.

Housing close to a transit center, Hansburg said, opens up “the region of where you can go for jobs.”

“For households that are low income and maybe aren't a two-car family, or maybe there isn't a car for every driver, having proximity to transit does increase your mobility in terms of areas where you're able to go to work,” she said.

$15 million toward a public library

In the land swap, FivePoint also will give the city $15 million. During Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Larry Agran pushed for the city to consider using that money toward a final resting place for veterans.

But residents spoke out overwhelmingly against the idea during the public comment portion of the meeting, calling for the money instead to go toward a library.

In the end, Councilmember Melinda Liu introduced a motion to approve the land swap and to  prohibit expenditure of any portion of the $15 million on the design or development of a columbarium for cremated remains. That motion passed 4-3.

Federal health officials on Wednesday expanded an outbreak of infant botulism tied to recalled ByHeart baby formula to include all illnesses reported since the company began production in March 2022.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said investigators "cannot rule out the possibility that contamination might have affected all ByHeart formula products" ever made.

The outbreak now includes at least 51 infants in 19 states. The new case definition includes "any infant with botulism who was exposed to ByHeart formula at any time since the product's release," according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The most recent illness was reported on Dec. 1.

No deaths have been reported in the outbreak, which was announced Nov. 8.

Previously, health officials had said the outbreak included 39 suspected or confirmed cases of infant botulism reported in 18 states since August. That's when officials at California's Infant Botulism Treatment and Prevention Program reported a rise in treatment of infants who had consumed ByHeart formula. Another 12 cases were identified with the expanded definition, including two that occurred in the original timeline and 10 that occurred from December 2023 through July 2025.

ByHeart, a New York-based manufacturer of organic infant formula founded in 2016, recalled all its products sold in the U.S. on Nov. 11. The company, which accounts for about 1% of the U.S. infant formula market, had been selling about 200,000 cans of the product each month.

News that ByHeart products could have been contaminated for years was distressing to Andi Galindo, whose 5-week-old daughter, Rowan, was hospitalized in December 2023 with infant botulism after drinking the formula. Galindo, 36, of Redondo Beach, California, said she insisted on using ByHeart formula to supplement a low supply of breast milk because it was recommended by a lactation consultant as "very natural, very gentle, very good for the babies."

"That's a hard one," Galindo said. "If there is proof that there were issues with their manufacturing and their plant all the way back from the beginning, that is a problem and they really need to be held accountable."

Amy Mazziotti, 43, of Burbank, California, said her then-5-month-old son, Hank, fell ill and was treated for botulism in March, weeks after he began drinking ByHeart. Being included in the investigation of the outbreak "feels like a win for all of us," she said Wednesday.

"I've known in my gut from the beginning that ByHeart was the reason Hank got sick, and to see that these cases are now part of the investigation brings me to tears — a mix of relief, gratitude and hope that the truth is finally being recognized," she said.

In a statement late Wednesday, ByHeart officials said the company is cooperating with federal officials "to understand the full scope of related cases."

"The new cases reported by CDC and FDA will help inform ByHeart's investigation as we continue to seek the root cause of the contamination," the statement said.

Lab tests detected contamination

The FDA sent inspectors last month to ByHeart plants in Allerton, Iowa, and Portland, Oregon, where the formula is produced and packaged. The agency has released no results from those inspections.

The company previously reported that tests by an independent laboratory showed that 36 samples from three different lots contained the type of bacteria that can cause infant botulism.

"We cannot rule out the risk that all ByHeart formula across all product lots may have been contaminated," the company wrote on its website last month.

Those results and discussions with the FDA led CDC officials to expand the outbreak, according to Dr. Jennifer Cope, a CDC scientist leading the investigation.

"It looks like the contamination appeared to persist across all production runs, different lots, different raw material lots," Cope said. "They couldn't isolate it to specific lots from a certain time period."

Inspection documents showed that ByHeart had a history of problems with contamination.

In 2022, the year ByHeart started making formula, the company recalled five batches of infant formula after a sample at a packaging plant tested positive for a different germ, cronobacter sakazakii. In 2023, the FDA sent a warning letter to the company detailing "areas that still require corrective actions."

A ByHeart plant in Reading, Pennsylvania, was shut down in 2023 just before FDA inspectors found problems with mold, water leaks and insects, documents show.

Infant botulism is rare

Infant botulism is a rare disease that affects fewer than 200 babies in the U.S. each year. It's caused when infants ingest botulism bacteria that produce spores that germinate in the intestines, creating a toxin that affects the nervous system. Babies are vulnerable until about age 1 because their gut microbiomes are not mature enough to fight the toxin.

Baby formula has previously been linked to sporadic cases of illness, but no known outbreaks of infant botulism tied to powdered formula have previously been confirmed, according to research studies.

Symptoms can take up to 30 days to develop and can include constipation, poor feeding, loss of head control, drooping eyelids and a flat facial expression. Babies may feel "floppy" and can have problems swallowing or breathing.

The sole treatment for infant botulism is known as BabyBIG, an IV medication made from the pooled blood plasma of adults immunized against botulism. California's infant botulism program developed the product and is the sole source worldwide.

The antibodies provided by BabyBIG are likely most effective for about a month, although they may continue circulating in the child's system for several months, said Dr. Sharon Nachman, an expert in pediatric infectious disease at Stony Brook Children's Hospital.

"The risk to the infant is ongoing and the family should not be using this formula after it was recalled," Nachman said in an email.

Families of several babies treated for botulism after drinking ByHeart formula have sued the company. Lawsuits filed in federal courts allege that the formula they fed their children was defective and ByHeart was negligent in selling it. They seek financial payment for medical bills, emotional distress and other harm.
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