Eaton Fire Renters Stuck in FEMA Review Face Friday Deadline Without Answers

Kate Adams has not received a FEMA rental assistance payment since May. With the agency’s rental aid for fire-displaced renters period ending Friday, Oct. 9, the former Altadena renter says she still has not been told why.

Adams is one of an unknown number of renters whose FEMA files sit in review as the deadline arrives. Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County says renters in that position are getting no information from the agency, and its lawyers are urging them to file every claim, appeal and requested document before Friday. Displaced homeowners will keep receiving FEMA housing help until July 9, 2027.

“I’ve been told that my file is in a review because they can’t verify some information, but they won’t tell me what that information is,” said Adams, who rented on North Lake Avenue in Altadena for 10 years before the Eaton Fire.

Since the fire, Adams and her two teenage daughters have stayed at the DoubleTree in Monrovia, in short-term rentals in Monrovia and Newport Beach, back at the DoubleTree, and since mid-April 2025 in an apartment in Duarte. Her former Altadena rental is still standing but was severely contaminated after a roof vent blew off in the windstorm, she said.

Adams said she received FEMA rental assistance for more than a year, and the early process went quickly. Nothing in her file has changed since then, she said. FEMA has not assigned her a caseworker, she said, and her landlord had called the agency on her own to verify information when Adams’ assistance came up for renewal.

“Tell me what is under review and I’ll help you verify it,” Adams said she has told FEMA.

Adams, a single mother and a realtor who is paid only when a sale closes, said she has closed one escrow since the fire. Her Duarte landlord plans to raise her rent to $4,440 a month unless she signs a one-year lease this month, she said, and breaking that lease early would cost two months’ rent. She wants to move back to Pasadena, where she was born and raised and where her parents live.

“It’s a full-time job trying to maneuver the system or the systems,” she said.

Virginia Goggin, interim development director of Neighborhood Legal Services of Los Angeles County, said Adams’ situation is not unusual among the group’s clients.

“Many renters are in a very difficult position because FEMA has frozen their accounts and is not making a decision on their claims and/or appeals with no explanation,” Goggin wrote in responses to questions. One client, a very low-income single parent, has had a case frozen since last year, she said. The legal aid group found out what information FEMA needed and supplied it, and the case remains frozen.

Goggin said FEMA has stated it will still process appeals filed on time after the Oct. 9 deadline, but renters will not be able to submit new claims. FEMA’s published guidance for the disaster says applicants must appeal within 60 days of any decision, and those who receive a decision fewer than 60 days before the program’s end date still have 60 days to appeal.

Goggin said renters should send FEMA all claims, appeals and requested documents by Oct. 9. A denial issued after that date can still be appealed within 60 days, she said, unless it is a final decision on an appeal.

The deadline covers more than rent. FEMA’s guidance says the extension applies to all types of Individuals and Households Program assistance and that, for renters, all financial assistance ends Oct. 9. Goggin said FEMA staff have told renters the extension covered only rental assistance, which she said is incorrect under the agency’s own guidance. It also applies to help replacing destroyed or damaged personal property, medical equipment and storage costs, she said. The legal aid group advises renters to attach FEMA’s guidance to their appeals.

Goggin said she expects more evictions, both from landlords who had been waiting on FEMA to approve applications for Continued Temporary Housing Assistance and of tenants who cannot pay rent without it. Some tenants will move out to avoid eviction, and some will return to unsafe units for financial reasons, she said. Tenants’ rights under state law are not affected by the end of FEMA aid, she said.

The group is already seeing more eviction notices for nonpayment of rent and more rent increases, Goggin said. Many of its clients are older adults on fixed incomes.

“Historically, low-income communities take longer to recover from the devastation of a disaster, and that is exactly what’s happening to the communities of Altadena and Pasadena,” Goggin wrote.

Adams said she does not know whether FEMA will pay the months she has gone without, or whether her file will be resolved at all before the cutoff.

“It re-traumatizes these families, mine included, every time we’re denied for services or we’re told that our renter’s assistance is only going to be extended for three months, whereas homeowners get 12 months and we lost everything too,” she said.

Neighborhood Legal Services offers free legal help on FEMA, landlord and eviction issues at 1-800-433-6251. FEMA’s helpline is 800-621-3362.