The Brief

L.A.’s homelessness agency revised the locations of over 400 sheltered people in its 2025 homeless count — moving them out of the city of L.A. — in the days before the public release of the findings this week. The moves were made without informing elected officials who had seen the earlier numbers.

On July 7, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told local elected officials and their aides that overall homelessness had declined by 2.5% within the city of L.A. This week, the agency publicly touted a slightly larger 3.4% reduction in the city.

The changes — which revised the city’s count down by 437 people — were not disclosed to elected officials when LAHSA provided the updated numbers Monday morning ahead of their public release that afternoon.

Following questions from LAist, LAHSA said it acknowledged and explained the changes to city elected officials on Tuesday, the day after the count’s public release. Representatives of several L.A. City Council offices told LAist they are asking LAHSA for more information about the revisions.

LAHSA gathered the data used in the estimate in February, as part of a tally mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD.

LAHSA officials said the last-minute revisions were made because the agency discovered that several hundred interim housing units had been incorrectly tagged as being in the city of L.A. by LAHSA’s new housing inventory system, agency spokesperson Ahmad Chapman told LAist. He pointed to HUD’s rules requiring that so-called scattered site beds be tagged as all being in the city where most of the beds in a given project are located.

The issue was fixed after LAHSA briefed council members and staffers on July 7 and before the data was released publicly this week, the agency said. But the homelessness agency did not inform the city’s elected officials until after LAist asked about the revisions.

L.A. Councilmember Monica Rodriguez told LAist that LAHSA should have been more transparent about the changes and that information was withheld by the agency. She said the revisions were made after LAHSA had delayed the briefing for elected officials multiple times.

LAHSA representatives declined to respond to that accusation.

“I don’t think that the outcomes reflect a moment of celebration because it’s unclear to me how real these numbers really are,” Rodriguez added.

"Any changes made to the numbers, the public is entitled to know because these are their taxpayer dollars that are being used for this work.”

A spokesperson for Mayor Karen Bass told LAist the mayor was first provided the updated numbers on Thursday, July 10, a few days after LAHSA's initial briefing to public officials. That’s when the mayor received an updated draft slide deck indicating the updated numbers, the spokesperson said.

The changes made by LAHSA, which happened after when city officials were briefed on the results of a yearly homelessness count, have led elected officials to raise questions about the report's accuracy.

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What changed?

These revisions did not alter the total population estimates across L.A. County, but the overall homeless population estimate for the city of L.A. was revised down to 43,699, from 44,136.

That downward revision consisted of a 475-person reduction to the city’s sheltered count and a 38-person increase in the city’s unsheltered estimate.

While past year’s shelter counts publicly list the service provider names for each shelter site, LAHSA declined LAist’s requests to identify which shelter locations they revised. The agency said the issue was with multi-site or “scattered site” programs with housing units across multiple jurisdictions.

In response to LAist’s question about which shelter spots had their locations revised, LAHSA officials said: “The most important thing is that LAHSA identified the misassignment in the draft data and corrected it before the results were finalized and announced.”

Regarding the revision increasing the city’s unsheltered estimate by 38 people, the presentation to officials and their staffs on July 7 provided a city unsheltered number that was from an earlier set of draft data that was supposed to be updated before the briefing, LAHSA officials told LAist.

LAHSA communication

When LAHSA presented its findings to officials July 7, the agency told them the information was subject to change but that any “possible changes would not be expected to change the overall narrative of the Homeless Count," Chapman said in LAHSA’s written response to LAist’s questions.

After that meeting, LAHSA said it discovered that the way it was tagging cities for multi-site or scattered housing programs did not follow HUD’s geographic coding specifications.

LAHSA said it then adjusted the official addresses accordingly and submitted the information to USC School of Social Work to recalculate the results.

(The agency did not answer how it discovered the issue. HUD’s geographic coding specifications for scattered sites did not change from 2024 to 2025, according to the federal agency’s records.)

USC’s Ben Henwood, an expert on housing and homelessness, told LAist that LAHSA informed him last week that some shelter data had been misclassified and required updating. He said that kind of change is not uncommon.

“The annual count is an intensive process conducted in a compressed period of time, so it is not unusual for us to have to rerun our estimates during this process as we work closely with LAHSA,” Henwood said.

In arriving at the final estimate for the region’s overall homeless population, USC combines estimates of the unsheltered count conducted by volunteers from February and the count of people living inside shelters and other interim housing sites on the same nights. The sheltered portion of the count does not rely on volunteers, but is reported to LAHSA by the shelter providers and is considered an exact count of people.

A spokesperson for L.A. Mayor Karen Bass did not respond to questions about the changes.

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On Monday, when the agency publicly announced slightly lower homeless population numbers in the city of L.A. than they had a week prior, LAist asked LAHSA for an explanation of any changes to the main numbers since the briefing of officials.

“There were no significant differences in the data that was shared,” LAHSA’s deputy chief external relations officer Paul Rubenstein responded, as Bass stood nearby.

“The topline numbers were the same.”

Further reporting from LAist found that LAHSA’s top bullet point of numbers had been revised from a 2.5% drop in the city count to a 3.4% drop.

Chapman later told LAist that Rubenstein had been referring to the overall countywide point-in-time results and associated percent decrease, which stayed the same.

On Tuesday, LAHSA first informed public officials of the revisions via email, with the following message:

“You might see slight differences in the Council District, Supervisorial District, and SPA sheltered counts compared to last week’s draft. The data collected did not change, but we corrected some interim housing locations. This happened because our new inventory system initially misassigned some locations for multi/scattered-site programs, which required updates due to HUD’s rules for reporting these types of sites. We identified and accounted for this issue prior to the public release on July 14 by ensuring all programs were accurately assigned, using last year’s address for consistency when appropriate. We’ll refine this mapping for next year’s Housing Inventory Count to comply with HUD’s requirements while also addressing our need for precise local mapping of locations.”

LAHSA says its annual homeless count was conducted in accordance with HUD regulations and the official data released at Monday’s news conference met HUD’s standard.

HUD did not respond to LAist’s request for comment.

Count concerns

Several City Council members and their aides told LAist that slight revisions to the count sometimes happen after their offices are briefed but that LAHSA typically informs them of these changes.

Meanwhile, Councilmember John Lee is raising concerns about the sheltered counts provided in his district. Lee said he’s worked to bring 371 shelter beds online in his San Fernando Valley district and believes they are typically occupied. However, he says data shared with his office last week indicated just 78 of those beds were being used, while the rest sat empty.

“Based on district-specific PIT count data we have received from LAHSA, we have questions regarding the sheltered count: how 'sheltered' is defined and how the data is collected and verified,” said Roger Quintanilla, Lee’s communications director. “Our office continues to seek clarity from LAHSA in order to better understand how they arrived at these figures.”

Asked by LAist about Lee’s concerns, LAHSA officials did not provide an explanation but said they would follow up with Lee.

The agency said it will be releasing more information from the 2025 homeless count this week. That is expected to include breakdowns of the raw homeless count by council district, as well as demographic information about the region’s unhoused population.

Get out your popcorn because there's more drama in the fight over the media powerhouse Warner Brothers Discovery:

Paramount Global has sweetened its offer to acquire Warner by a bunch, offering an all-cash deal valued at $108 billion to take over the parent company of HBO, Warner Bros. Studios and CNN, among other notable properties.

It would appear to significantly outstrip the deal worth $83 billion that Netflix and Warner announced just last Friday, although that agreement is solely for Warner's streaming service and studios. If that deal were to go through, CNN and other cable channels would be spun off.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest people, and his son David, the movie producer and founder of Skydance Media, took over Paramount this summer. It's the parent company of CBS, Paramount Studios, the Paramount+ streaming service and more.

Combining with Warner would let them create a Hollywood behemoth to take on Netflix, already the world's largest streamer. The Ellisons are also mindful of other major movie and TV streamers, particularly Amazon, Apple, and Disney, which bulked up a few years ago by acquiring most of Fox's entertainment assets.

The Ellisons started the ball rolling earlier this year, forcing the hand of Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav by making an unsolicited bid. He ultimately put the company on the chopping block.

In remarks on a conference call Monday with investors and reporters, Paramount executives accused Warner of "never engaging meaningfully" with its six various proposals.

Warner did not respond to a request for comment. Netflix is expected to hold a call with investors Monday afternoon.

Despite Zaslav's reluctance to sell to the Ellisons, they thought they had a dominant hand to play: they were offering a premium for the company's value on the open market and they were bidding for the entire enterprise.

What's more, they had built strong ties to President Trump, whose government regulators ultimately would have to approve any such acquisition by an already established major Hollywood player.

Larry Ellison is a donor, informal adviser and friend of the president. David Ellison has made two key hires at CBS — specifically in its news division — to ensure it will be perceived as less adversarial to Trump. A conservative former think tank chief has become its new ombudsman to review complaints. And Bari Weiss, founder of the right-of-center Free Press, has taken over the news division as editor in chief. Paramount's previous leadership had paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump against CBS News that legal observers described as flimsy.

Presidential preferences are supposed to be held at arm's length from such reviews by antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department. But that's not how Washington operates under Trump.

Even so, Trump's approval is never a sure thing. The Netflix announcement stirred instant opposition from a handful of U.S. senators in both parties. Trump was noncommittal in remarks Sunday.

"Netflix is a great company and they've done a phenomenal job," Trump said. "They have a very big market share, and when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot, so I don't know, that's going to be for some economists to tell and also, I'll be involved in that decision too."

However, Monday morning, Trump lashed out at CBS News for a 60 Minutes interview with Trump ally-turned-critic U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who has announced she is stepping down. Paramount came in for particular scorn.

"My real problem with the show, however, wasn't the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air," Trump wrote Monday morning in a post on Truth Social — after the Ellisons announced their hostile bid for Warner. "THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!"

Editor's note: Warner Bros. Discovery is among NPR's financial supporters.
Copyright 2025 NPR

The Supreme Court hears Monday arguments in a case that could end the independence of independent agencies, overturn a 90-year-old precedent, and reshape the balance of power between Congress and the president.

At issue is whether President Donald Trump can fire Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, whom Trump appointed in 2018, during his first term, to fill a Democratic seat on the Federal Trade Commission. President Biden appointed Slaughter to a second term, which was supposed to end in 2029.

Instead, in March, Slaughter received an email from the White House Office of Presidential Personnel informing her that she was being removed from office, effective immediately. She was told her "continued service on the FTC is inconsistent with [the Trump] Administration's priorities."

Congress created the FTC in 1914 as a bipartisan, independent agency tasked with protecting the American economy from unfair methods of competition. By law, the five-member commission can have no more than three members of the same political party, and commissioners can only be fired for "inefficiency, neglect of duty or malfeasance in office."

Slaughter had been given no such reason for her removal, and so she sued. A lower court declared that Slaughter had been unlawfully removed from the FTC and ordered her back to work. The Trump administration appealed that ruling, and in September, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order removing her from her seat until the merits of her case could be heard. Justices voted 6 to 3 along ideological lines to allow her firing to stand -- for now.

Reconsidering a 90-year-old precedent

President Franklin D. Roosevelt during a radio broadcast circa 1933–40.

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Harris & Ewing

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Proving that history does repeat itself, in 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to fire an FTC commissioner over ideological disagreements. In that case, called Humphrey's Executor, the court unanimously held that while the president has the power to remove purely executive officers for any reason, that unlimited power does not extend to agencies like the FTC, whose duties "are neither political nor executive, but predominantly quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative."

Following that 1935 decision, Congress went on to create many more multimember, independent agencies whose members likewise can only be removed for cause. Since January, Trump has also removed Democratic members from some of those agencies, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Merit Systems Protection Board and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In Slaughter's case and others, the Trump administration argues that the Supreme Court's decision in Humphrey's Executor was flawed, due to a misunderstanding of the FTC's functions at the time. The administration maintains that the FTC did in fact exercise executive power then and says those powers have only grown in the decades since.

During Trump's first term, the Supreme Court chipped away at Humphrey's Executor when it permitted Trump to fire the head of another independent agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In that case, the Supreme Court held that the firing was permissible because the CFPB is run by a single director rather than a multimember board. Chief Justice John Roberts described Humphrey's Executor as applying to multimember agencies "that do not wield substantial executive power."

On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in line with that guidance. In a 2-to-1 decision, the court said Trump's firings of Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris and National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox were lawful, citing those agencies' "significant executive powers."

President Trump attends a press event at the White House on Dec. 2.

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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds

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A clash of views on independent agencies

Slaughter believes that it is vital for the Supreme Court to preserve the independence of bipartisan multimember agencies and allow her to be reinstated.

"Independence allows the decision-making that is done by these boards and commissions to be on the merits, about the facts, and about protecting the interests of the American people," she said. "That is what Americans deserve from their government."

James M. Burnham, an attorney who has served in both Trump administrations, offered an opposing view.

"I don't think there is such a thing as an independent agency because everything has to be in one of the three branches of government," he argued. "I don't think they've ever been independent because I think the removal protections have been unconstitutional from the beginning."

The court will continue its deliberation on Humphrey's Executor on Jan. 21 when it considers another case involving Trump's attempted firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Copyright 2025 NPR

Marlon Wayans and Skye P. Marshall presented the nominees for the 83rd Golden Globes this morning. You can watch the announcement above and read the full list below. The Golden Globes awards ceremony will be held on Jan. 11, hosted by Nikki Glaser.

Best motion picture – drama

Frankenstein (Netflix)
Hamnet (Focus Features)
It Was Just an Accident (Neon)
The Secret Agent (Neon)
Sentimental Value (Neon)
Sinners (Warner Bros. Pictures)
 

Best motion picture – musical or comedy

Blue Moon (Sony Pictures Classics)
Bugonia (Focus Features)
Marty Supreme (A24)
No Other Choice (Neon)
Nouvelle Vague (Netflix)
One Battle After Another (Warner Bros. Pictures)
 

Best motion picture – animated

Arco (Neon)
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle (Aniplex, Crunchyroll, Sony Pictures Entertainment)
Elio (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix)
Little Amélie or the Character of Rain (GKIDS)
Zootopia 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
 

Cinematic and box office achievement

Avatar: Fire and Ash (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
F1 (Apple Original Films)
KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix)
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning (Paramount Pictures)
Sinners (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Weapons (Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema)
Wicked: For Good (Universal Pictures)
Zootopia 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)
 

Best motion picture – non-English language

It Was Just an Accident (Neon) - France
No Other Choice (Neon) - South Korea
The Secret Agent (Neon) - Brazil
Sentimental Value (Neon) - Norway
Sirāt (Neon) - Spain
The Voice of Hind Rajab (Willa) - Tunisia
 

Best performance by a female actor in a motion picture – drama 

Jessie Buckley (Hamnet)
Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love)
Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value)
Julia Roberts (After the Hunt)
Tessa Thompson (Hedda)
Eva Victor (Sorry, Baby)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a motion picture – drama

Joel Edgerton (Train Dreams)
Oscar Isaac (Frankenstein)
Dwayne Johnson (The Smashing Machine)
Michael B. Jordan (Sinners)
Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent)
Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a motion picture – musical or comedy 

Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I'd Kick You)
Cynthia Erivo (Wicked: For Good)
Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue)
Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another)
Amanda Seyfried (The Testament of Ann Lee)
Emma Stone (Bugonia)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a motion picture – musical or comedy 

Timothée Chalamet (Marty Supreme)
George Clooney (Jay Kelly)
Leonardo DiCaprio (One Battle After Another)
Ethan Hawke (Blue Moon)
Lee Byung-hun (No Other Choice)
Jesse Plemons (Bugonia)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a supporting role in any motion picture

Emily Blunt (The Smashing Machine)
Elle Fanning (Sentimental Value)
Ariana Grande (Wicked: For Good)
Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas (Sentimental Value)
Amy Madigan (Weapons)
Teyana Taylor (One Battle After Another)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a supporting role in any motion picture 

Benicio del Toro (One Battle After Another)
Jacob Elordi (Frankenstein)
Paul Mescal (Hamnet)
Sean Penn (One Battle After Another)
Adam Sandler (Jay Kelly)
Stellan Skarsgård (Sentimental Value)
 

Best director – motion picture

Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Guillermo del Toro (Frankenstein)
Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident)
Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
Chloé Zhao (Hamnet)
 

Best screenplay – motion picture

Paul Thomas Anderson (One Battle After Another)
Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie (Marty Supreme)
Ryan Coogler (Sinners)
Jafar Panahi (It Was Just an Accident)
Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier (Sentimental Value)
Chloé Zhao, Maggie O'Farrell (Hamnet)
 

Best original score – motion picture 

Alexandre Desplat (Frankenstein)
Ludwig Göransson (Sinners)
Jonny Greenwood (One Battle After Another)
Kangding Ray (Sirāt)
Max Richter (Hamnet)
Hans Zimmer (F1)
 

Best original song – motion picture

"Dream as One" – Avatar: Fire and Ash
"Golden" – KPop Demon Hunters
"I Lied to You" – Sinners
"No Place Like Home" – Wicked: For Good
"The Girl in the Bubble" – Wicked: For Good
"Train Dreams" – Train Dreams
 

Best television series – drama 

The Diplomat (Netflix)
The Pitt (HBO Max)
Pluribus (Apple TV)
Severance (Apple TV)
Slow Horses (Apple TV)
The White Lotus (HBO Max)
 

Best television series – musical or comedy

Abbott Elementary (ABC)
The Bear (FX on Hulu)
Hacks (HBO Max)
Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
The Studio (Apple TV)
 

Best television limited series, anthology series or motion picture made for television

Adolescence (Netflix)
All Her Fault (Peacock)
The Beast in Me (Netflix)
Black Mirror (Netflix)
Dying for Sex (FX on Hulu)
The Girlfriend (Prime Video)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a television series – drama 

Kathy Bates (Matlock)
Britt Lower (Severance)
Helen Mirren (Mobland)
Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us)
Keri Russell (The Diplomat)
Rhea Seehorn (Pluribus)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a television series – drama 

Sterling K. Brown (Paradise)
Diego Luna (Andor)
Gary Oldman (Slow Horses)
Mark Ruffalo (Task)
Adam Scott (Severance)
Noah Wyle (The Pitt)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a television series – musical or comedy 

Kristen Bell (Nobody Wants This)
Ayo Edebiri (The Bear)
Selena Gomez (Only Murders in the Building)
Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face)
Jenna Ortega (Wednesday)
Jean Smart (Hacks)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a television series – musical or comedy 

Adam Brody (Nobody Wants This)
Steve Martin (Only Murders in the Building)
Glen Powell (Chad Powers)
Seth Rogen (The Studio)
Martin Short (Only Murders in the Building)
Jeremy Allen White (The Bear)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a limited series, anthology series, or a motion picture made for television 

Claire Danes (The Beast in Me)
Rashida Jones (Black Mirror)
Amanda Seyfried (Long Bright River)
Sarah Snook (All Her Fault)
Michelle Williams (Dying for Sex)
Robin Wright (The Girlfriend)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a limited series, anthology series, or a motion picture made for television 

Jacob Elordi (The Narrow Road to the Deep North)
Paul Giamatti (Black Mirror)
Stephen Graham (Adolescence)
Charlie Hunnam (Monster: The Ed Gein Story)
Jude Law (Black Rabbit)
Matthew Rhys (The Beast in Me)
 

Best performance by a female actor in a supporting role on television 

Carrie Coon (The White Lotus)
Erin Doherty (Adolescence)
Hannah Einbinder (Hacks)
Catherine O'Hara (The Studio)
Parker Posey (The White Lotus)
Aimee Lou Wood (The White Lotus)
 

Best performance by a male actor in a supporting role on television 

Owen Cooper (Adolescence)
Billy Crudup (The Morning Show)
Walton Goggins (The White Lotus)
Jason Isaacs (The White Lotus)
Tramell Tillman (Severance)
Ashley Walters (Adolescence)

Best performance in stand-up comedy on television

Bill Maher (Bill Maher: Is Anyone Else Seeing This?)
Brett Goldstein (Brett Goldstein: The Second Best Night of Your Life)
Kevin Hart (Kevin Hart: Acting My Age)
Kumail Nanjiani (Kumail Nanjiani: Night Thoughts)
Ricky Gervais (Ricky Gervais: Mortality)
Sarah Silverman (Sarah Silverman: Postmortem)
 

Best Podcast

Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard (Wondery)
Call Her Daddy (SiriusXM)
Good Hang with Amy Poehler (Spotify)
The Mel Robbins Podcast (SiriusXM)
Smartless (SiriusXM)
Up First (NPR)
Copyright 2025 NPR

Fire survivors are calling for longer timelines on mortgage forbearance and better policy to stop credit hits as the expiration of mortgage protections looms nearly a year after the most destructive fires in L.A. County history.

After the Eaton and Palisades fires, hundreds of mortgage companies promised to let borrowers delay their monthly payments for 90 days. In September those protections were extended and enhanced when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 238 into law. That allowed survivors to request forbearance for up to 12 months, without requiring full repayment at the end of the forbearance period.

Ever since, fire survivors have said some mortgage lenders are not adhering to those rules.

“We have heard feedback that there is widespread activity that goes to show that a lot of banks and a lot of mortgage services are not actually complying with 238,” said Assemblymember John Harabedian, who wrote the law.

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation told LAist it has received more than 200 complaints from L.A. fire survivors “related to issues such as credit reporting, forbearance terms and insurance payouts.”

Harabedian said his office has been receiving calls as well.

“ A lot of people who rightfully deserve forbearance are not being given it, or to the extent that they're being offered forbearance, they're being tasked with things that are illegal under the law, like negative credit reporting, lump sum payments, et cetera,” Harabedian said.

He said holding companies accountable remains a challenge, since that requires survivors to report the issues they’re experiencing.

“It should not be incumbent on the borrower to have to educate a financial institution that's licensed and operating in the state of California that this is the law,” Harabedian said.

Loopholes

Aimee Williams, a housing rights attorney for the legal aid nonprofit Bet Tzedek that is working with fire survivors, said she has seen many clients benefit from the passage of AB 238. But big loopholes remain. She said the law doesn’t mandate the protections and there is still little transparency from many mortgage lenders about how their mortgages work and what people’s rights are.

“It's a step in the right direction, but outside of an overhaul of the law and providing something standard that all mortgage services need to follow, it's going to continue to be a bit of a mystery for people,” Williams said. “And unfortunately, we're going to continue to see people being surprised by demands for payment or threats of foreclosure.”

That’s what happened to Tamara Carroll, whose Altadena home survived the Eaton Fire. With smoke and other damage, though, it took more than eight months for her to safely return.

Tamara Carroll assesses damage to her patio from the Eaton Fire earlier this year.

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She entered forbearance for the first three months after the fire while she lived in a Burbank hotel and took some time off work to cope with the stress. She said she extended that forbearance another three months when she was still displaced and sorting out her finances. Then she got a call — she was in active foreclosure.

“I literally screamed,” Carroll said.

The state policy urging lenders to extend those protections up to a year had not yet gone into effect, but Carroll said she got no warning or explanation that she could go into foreclosure if she continued with her forbearance, which is required by state and federal law.

A spokesperson for Carroll's lender, the Rocket Mortgage-affiliated Mr. Cooper,  said they didn't have any record of her asking for an extension. She says she did request one over the phone. The spokesperson said the company has fully complied with AB 283.

Without the extension, Carroll was told she’d have to pay about $18,000 — to make up for the last six months of forbearance plus additional fees — to get back in good standing, she said. Carroll used insurance money that she was going to use to replace her roof, which was damaged in the fire, to pay off the bank.

“I just feel like they took advantage of me,” Carroll said. “I was so emotionally battered from the fires … so I just didn’t have the energy to fight an institution that really didn’t care.”

A call for better policy 

As temporary housing insurance dries up, the challenges are only mounting for fire survivors. Many are paying rent on top of mortgages for homes that no longer exist or are still uninhabitable.

One Palisades couple is leading the charge for stronger mortgage protections — Rachel Jonas and Rob Fagnani lost their home in the Marquez Knolls neighborhood, where they had planned to raise their two young children. Now they’ve relocated to Fagnani’s parents’ house in Tennessee as they work to rebuild, which they expect to take at least another year.

“We want to be back in L.A., and we want to be in L.A. for the future,” Fagnani said.

Rob Fagnani, left, and Rachel Jonas, in front of where their Palisades home stood, are calling for policy changes.

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While they don’t have to pay rent, they still have a substantial mortgage and are underinsured, so they decided to enter forbearance as they figure out how to finance their rebuild. Fagnani’s finance background gave him the tools to dig deeply into mortgage and insurance policy.

After talking with dozens of colleagues and friends in the mortgage and finance world, he and Jonas decided to organize their neighbors around mortgage policy reform for disaster survivors.

“Most people are underinsured. Everyone's trying to free up cash. Most people already have too much debt anyway, and they don't want to add on additional debt,” Fagnani said.

So they built a website and a platform to help neighbors easily send letters to their representatives to call for more comprehensive federal mortgage protections for disaster survivors across the country.

Their asks include:

• Extending the forbearance period for two to three years.
• Add deferred payments to the end of the loan term at current interest rates, with protections to avoid damage to credit scores and foreclosure pressure. 

“Many people are maybe a couple hundred thousand dollars short, and those couple hundred thousand dollars are the difference between them being able to square the economics,” Fagnani said. “So this is a way to do that without forcing families to take on more debt.”

Their efforts are gaining traction — Los Angeles City Councilmember Traci Park highlighted their advocacy in her newsletter last month. Mayor Karen Bass recently called on banks to voluntarily extend their forbearance relief for an additional three years. And some lenders are voluntarily doing the same — Bank of America announced it will offer up to three years of forbearance to fire survivors, though most people will have to modify their loans, which can hurt their credit.

Williams, the lawyer, said a standard at a federal level is “a great idea,” though she doubts the current Congress will be open to it. Mortgage-relief legislation proposed by Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) earlier this year did not pass.

“Forbearance is not supposed to be … you'll be able to pay everything in full after the period ends,” Williams said. “It really gives you breathing room to figure out what to do next to make your long-term financial plans while trying to stay on top of your short-term financial security.”