The Brief

State Farm is facing another investigation into its handling of Eaton and Palisades fire insurance claims, Los Angeles County’s top attorney announced Thursday.

The civil investigation is focusing on “potential violations” of the state’s unfair competition law, which prohibits unlawful or unfair business practices, the Office of County Counsel said.

“We are committed to thoroughly investigating State Farm’s actions and making sure they are treating claimants fairly and resolving their claims quickly and in full compliance with the law,” County Counsel Dawyn Harrison said in a statement.

How we got here

The move comes as the insurance giant already is dealing with a state probe into the same issue. Some residents have raised concerns that State Farm isn’t moving fast enough.

“In the absence of state leadership, today's county investigation is a major step forward,” the Eaton Fire Survivors Network said in a statement. “It matters not only for Los Angeles fire survivors but for every Californian who pays premiums and expects the protection they paid for when disaster strikes.”

Customers have reported much higher rates of denials, lowball claim estimates, poor communication and challenges with multiple adjusters, according to a third-party survey of fire survivors.

State Farm won the first emergency rate hike in the state earlier this year. The company told officials it was in financial distress and expected to pay more than $7 billion in January fire claims.

Signs of that came back in July, when a nearly $900,000 check for an Altadena resident was put on hold because of insufficient funds.

About the investigation

In response to the investigation, State Farm said it has been "cooperating fully" with the California Department of Insurance.

"The goals of this investigation by L.A. County are unclear, but what is clear is that it will be another distraction from our ongoing work in California to help our customers recover from this tragedy," the company said in an update, alongside a list of actions it's taken.

The county counsel has sent State Farm a letter with demands for claim information. It says the investigation is looking at a number of alleged problems, including:

• Timely communications
• Switching adjusters, resulting in delays
• Misrepresenting policy language
• Failing to reimburse survivors’ living expenses
• Failing to disclose estimate documents upon request
• Not reasonably investigating smoke damage or paying for testing and remediation

County officials have given State Farm until Nov. 20 to respond. As California’s largest private insurance provider, State Farm manages more than 2.8 million residential and commercial policies statewide.

Housing officials in the city of Los Angeles say a pandemic-era voucher program is set to run out of money later this year, putting thousands of renters at risk of homelessness.

The federal Emergency Housing Voucher program was launched in 2021 as a way to get vulnerable people off the streets and into housing during the COVID-19 crisis. The city of L.A. received more than 3,300 of the vouchers.

With federal funding now running out, the city is preparing to wind down the program. On Monday the city’s housing authority said it had told 2,760 tenant households and 1,700 landlords that unless new funding is found, vouchers will expire by November or December of this year.

“We are providing this notice nearly a year in advance because our families deserve the respect of time to prepare, but this is not a notice of resignation,” said L.A. Housing Authority President Lourdes Castro Ramírez said in a news release. “We are exhausting every avenue — at the local, state and federal levels — to bridge this funding gap.”

The Housing Authority said each household using a voucher had an average of 1.58 members. That puts more than 4,000 Angelenos at risk of losing their housing later this year.

Homelessness progress could be reversed

Congress originally intended the program to continue through 2030, but last year, the Trump administration announced funding would end sooner. The program’s demise risks reversing L.A.’s reported progress at stemming the rise of homelessness.

After years of steady increases, the city has registered slight reductions in the number of people experiencing homelessness for the past two years. In 2023, the region’s homeless services authority reported 46,260 people experiencing homelessness in the city of L.A. By 2025, that number had fallen to 43,695.

The accuracy of those official counts has been questioned by local researchers, but elected officials have cheered the numbers as a sign that the tide is turning in addressing one of L.A.’s most vexing problems.

With thousands of renters now at risk of losing a key resource helping them afford the city’s high rents, sharp increases in homelessness could be on the horizon, said Mike Feuer, a senior policy advisor with the Inner City Law Center.

“They're going to fall into homelessness, and they're going to increase L.A.'s homeless population by almost 10%,” Feuer said. “Those are the implications of what the Trump administration is doing.”

Voucher holders have low incomes; many have kids

According to L.A.’s Housing Authority, about 1-in-4 voucher holders has children and 1-in-5 is elderly. And about 40% are disabled. These households have an average income of less than $14,000 per year, and they receive an average of $1,789 per month in rental subsidy while paying about $350 out of their own pockets.

The loss of federal funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers is distinct from the issues facing renters using Housing Choice Vouchers, another federally funded program often referred to as Section 8. Existing vouchers in the Section 8 program have continued to be funded, but federal funding reductions have caused city officials to cut the amount of rent new vouchers in that program can cover by 10%.

L.A. Housing Authority officials said they have dedicated staff reaching out to tenants to explore other housing resources that might keep them housed after the vouchers expire.

Manuel Villagomez, an attorney with the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles specializing in subsidized housing, said with city and state budgets strapped, tenant advocates are not counting on California to find alternative funding sources to continue the program.

“It seems like it's a tragedy in the making,” Villagomez said. “We're preparing for the worst.”

As the Palisades Fire roared to life a year ago, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass was nowhere to be found in the city.

She was on a diplomatic trip to Ghana, the guest of the Biden Administration, when the wind-whipped flames swept into the Pacific Palisades on Jan. 7, 2025. After her return to Los Angeles the next day, she stared stone faced and silent when a reporter from the British outlet Sky News quizzed her at LAX about why she had left the city amid warnings of historic winds and fire danger.

Later, she said the fire chief, whom she terminated six weeks after the fire, did not properly warn her of the impending extreme and dangerous conditions. Bass later called it a “mistake” to have left the city.

From day one of the Palisades Fire, which burned nearly 7,000 homes and killed 12 people, Bass has been under intense scrutiny for her response to the disaster.

And it will likely be a big issue in her reelection campaign this year.

The mayor is politically vulnerable when it comes to fire response, said Fernando Guerra, who directs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

“The fires are the major issue in this election,” Guerra said.

Among the criticisms: The mayor introduced a plan to waive new building permit fees for Palisades residents, an effort to help fast-track rebuilding, but it is languishing in the City Council. Some residents say the rebuilding process has gone to slow and blame the mayor.

Additionally, The Los Angeles Times reported last month that an after-action report by the L.A. Fire Department, which the mayor oversees, was toned down to avoid being too critical of the agency’s response. The Times reviewed multiple drafts of the report and learned that the revisions amounted to “an effort to downplay the failures of city and LAFD leadership.”

The fumbles have left many in the Palisades frustrated. Some in the Palisades have called on her to resign.

Larry Vein of Pali Strong, a fire survivors group, acknowledges the anger some in the Palisades have expressed toward Bass, but he is careful about criticizing the mayor.

“I have a saying which is I don’t do politics, I do Palisades,” he said. “ But “certainly mistakes were made.”

“As of today, there is a lot of anger and there is a lot of upset at the mayor, thinking that she should have done more,” he continued. “She has been making strides with trying to get the rebuild done, but there have been the standard hurdles that happen in any bureaucracy.”

The mayor has defended her administration’s response to the fire, saying debris cleanup and the issuing of permits to rebuild have happened at “lightning speed” and that thousands of people have used the city’s one-stop centers that provide relief. She has urged banks to extend forbearance of mortgage payments to residents who lost their homes, and banned projects that split lots zoned for single-family homes — an effort to retain community character in the Palisades.

In an interview with LAist, Bass acknowledged the criticism.

“You certainly have Palisadians who say that it's going too slow. But it's going too slow for a variety of reasons,” she said. “It might be financial, it might be insurance. If it's the city process — and it might be — and we find out about it, we jump on it and move whatever obstacle that’s in the way out of the way.

“We have a long ways to go, but I am hoping that progress will even speed up more, and more homes will be under construction,” Bass said.

Fire Department report criticized

Much the criticism has focused on the fire department, which Bass oversees.

The Times has reported the department downplayed some of the problems in the response, including the agency’s failure to fully extinguish the Lachman Fire a week before the Palisades Fire. It is believed that high winds reignited the Lachman Fire and caused the Palisades Fire.

“There was an effort to minimize errors in judgment that were made,” City Councilmember Monica Rodriguez told LAist.

Maryam Zar, founder of the Palisades Recovery Coalition, echoed the sentiment.

“The lack of accountability, the lack of ability to say, ‘Hey Pacific Palisades we really got this wrong’...that leads to this community’s inability to let go,” Zar added.

Bass wouldn’t say if there was a cover-up by the fire department. She said another report ordered by Gov. Gavin Newsom is due out later this month.

“That is an independent report,” she said. “ It had nothing to do with the Fire Department. And you can judge at that point.”

According to the Mayor’s Office, more than 1,400 construction permits have been issued for more than 680 addresses in the Palisades as of this week. At least 417 projects are confirmed to have started construction

The office says Palisades rebuilding plans are being approved in half the time compared to single-family home projects citywide before the wildfires.

In April, Bass introduced a proposal to waive construction permit fees for people who wanted to rebuild in the Palisades. But the proposal needs approval from the City Council, which has delayed any action citing concerns about the effect it would have on the cash-strapped city.

The cost will run into the tens of millions of dollars. The council approved a $13 billion budget in June that included little wiggle room for additional spending.

The council is scheduled to take up the issue again this month.

Some blame Bass for not pushing the council hard enough.

“We think she’s lost that sense of urgency — that this is an important part of L.A. city that has burned down and been completely devastated,” said Zar, from the Palisades Recovery Coalition.

Vein, from the fire survivors group, said knowing whether the city will waive potentially tens of thousands of dollars in permit fees per home is important because many residents are still on the fence about whether to rebuild.

And the delays have been frustrating to many.

“A year later, we’re still waiting on permit fee waivers,” said Jessica Rogers, vice chair of the Palisades Long Term Recovery Group.

Back to square one

The city also still has no overall plan to rebuild city infrastructure. The mayor hired one firm to develop a plan then switched to another, AECOM, which is conducting listening sessions with residents, according to Zar.

“We think there’s been enough of a listening tour and too little output,” said Zar. “Over and over again we feel like we’re back to square one.”

Rodriguez said it's important to move things faster for the residents of the Palisades.

“With every false start, you’re delaying a plan for the families that were affected to be able to recover,” the council member said.

At the same time, Zar said she thinks some of the criticism of the mayor has been overblown. Zar said she isn’t convinced it’s such a big deal that Bass was out of town the day the fire started.

“The mayor being in town would not have meant that she would have shown up with a hose in her hand,” she said.

Some in the Palisades say any mayor would have struggled to respond to such a large-scale wildfire.

“For a disaster of our size, it would be hard for anybody to do a very good job at assisting with recovery,” Rogers said.

Bass faces reelection bid

Bass announced her reelection bid Dec.13, touting on her website that L.A.’s fire cleanup was the fastest in U.S. history.

Former Los Angeles Unified School District superintendent and investment banker Austin Beutner is among those challenging her. He’s also a Palisades resident whose home was badly damaged by smoke.

“She keeps announcing recovery strategies only for them to get bogged down in details or abandoned altogether,” Beutner said.

Guerra, from Loyola Marymount, said many voters perceived that Bass had “underperformed” during and after the fires.

“I think we’re picking that up not only in the public narrative but also in public opinion polls,” he said.

According to a UCLA/Luskin School Quality of Life Index survey conducted in February and March of last year, her total unfavorable rating was 49% compared to 23% during her first year in office.

Still, she commands a strong coalition that includes labor unions and business groups like the Valley Industry Commerce Association, said Guerra. He predicted Bass would “probably win in the June primary.”

Guerra said Bass will be tough to topple, despite her missteps on fire recovery.

One of the outstanding questions is whether billionaire businessman Rick Caruso will enter the race. Caruso, who ran against Bass in 2022, has been a sharp critic of the mayor’s recovery response.

He spent more than $100 million trying to defeat Bass the first time.

Caruso won’t say whether he plans to mount a challenge to Bass.

The filing deadline is Feb. 7.

The U.S. took the unprecedented step Monday of dropping the number of vaccines it recommends for every child — cutting protection against a half-dozen diseases in a move slammed by the nation’s pediatricians.

The overhaul is effective immediately, meaning that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend vaccines against 11 diseases. What’s no longer broadly recommended is protection against flu, rotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protections against those diseases are only recommended for certain groups deemed high-risk, or if their doctors recommend them in what’s called “shared decision-making.”

Trump administration officials said the overhaul, a move long sought by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., won’t result in families who want the vaccines losing access to them, and said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the move increases confusion for parents and could increase preventable diseases.

The change came after President Donald Trump in December asked the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising its guidance to align with theirs.

HHS said its comparison to 20 peer nations found that the U.S. was an “outlier” in both the number of vaccinations and the number of doses it recommended to all children. Officials with the agency framed the change as a way to increase public trust by recommending only the most important vaccinations for children to receive.

Among those left on the recommended-for-everyone list are measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chickenpox and HPV.

“This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday.

Medical experts disagreed, saying the change without public discussion or a transparent review of the data would put children at risk.

Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said countries carefully consider vaccine recommendations based on levels of disease in their populations and their health systems.

“You can’t just copy and paste public health and that’s what they seem to be doing here,” said O’Leary. “Literally children’s health and children’s lives are at stake.”

The new guidance also reduces the number of recommended vaccine doses against human papillomavirus from two or three shots to one for most children, depending on age.

The decision was made without input from an advisory committee that typically consults on the vaccine schedule, said senior officials at HHS. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the changes publicly.

“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis and rotavirus, and changing the recommendation for HPV without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits, will lead to more hospitalizations and preventable deaths among American children,” said Michael Osterholm of the Vaccine Integrity Project, based at the University of Minnesota.