LA County Assessor Takes Fire Survivors’ Tax Questions in Free Webinar Tonight

Sixteen months after the Eaton Fire leveled their neighborhoods, thousands of Altadena property owners are still paying taxes on homes that no longer exist — and tonight, the county official who sets those assessed values will explain how to stop.

Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang will take survivors’ questions directly in a free, one-hour Zoom webinar hosted by the Every Fire Survivor’s Network, the 10,000-member advocacy organization that grew out of an Altadena pickleball WhatsApp group in the days after the January 2025 fire.

The session, scheduled from 7 to 8 p.m. Thursday, will cover how to file Misfortune and Calamity claims, what a recently secured four-year property tax deferral means for individual homeowners, and what happens to a survivor’s tax base when they move, rebuild larger or have already made payments.

The webinar arrives at a critical moment for fire-affected property owners. The April 30 deadline for property tax payments passed two weeks ago, and beginning May 1, homeowners who could not pay on time due to wildfire damage became eligible to file Penalty Cancellation Requests through the Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector. Many survivors have also begun receiving Notices of Assessed Value Change as the Assessor’s Office enrolls value reductions for fire-damaged properties, as of spring 2026 a process the office has described as complex and potentially requiring multiple notices per parcel.

The Every Fire Survivor’s Network — a nonprofit formerly known as the Eaton Fire Survivors Network — characterized tonight’s session as a follow-up to what it called a recent victory: a four-year property tax deferral for Eaton and Palisades fire survivors covering qualifying tax bills through June 30, 2030, according to the organization’s events page.

Joy Chen, the network’s executive director and a former deputy mayor of Los Angeles, credited the deferral to collaboration between survivors and elected officials including Assessor Prang, state Sens. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena) and Ben Allen (D-Pacific Palisades), Assemblymembers John Harabedian and Jacqui Irwin, and county Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

“There are so many hard things in this recovery,” Chen said in a statement on May 4. “But working together with our civic leaders to improve the system and unlock the funds our families need to get home is exactly the kind of catalytic direct relief that EFSN is here for.”

Prang’s office helped develop Senate Bill 663, authored by Sen. Allen and co-authored by Sens. Jerry McNerney and Sasha Renée Pérez. The bill, signed into law by Gov. Gavin Newsom on October 10, 2025, extended the deadline to file a Misfortune and Calamity claim from 12 months to 24 months and expanded the window for rebuilding while preserving a property’s pre-fire tax base from five years to eight. The legislation also preserved property tax exemptions for religious, charitable and hospital facilities, and for low-income disabled veterans whose properties were damaged.

Pérez also authored Senate Bill 293, signed in the same October 2025 package, which extended the deadline for fire survivors to resolve ownership documentation issues from six months to three years after receiving a reassessment notice from the Assessor.

“This law will help residents engaged in the long, difficult process of rebuilding their lives by extending deadlines to apply for disaster relief, preserving their pre-fire tax base, and providing additional protections for disabled veterans and nonprofit property owners impacted by the fires,” Prang said at the signing of SB 663 in October 2025.

To qualify for a Misfortune and Calamity reassessment, a property must have sustained at least $10,000 in damage to its current market value, according to the Assessor’s Office. Property owners file Form ADS-820, which can now be completed online through the Assessor’s website at assessor.lacounty.gov/tax-relief/disaster-relief. The form serves a dual purpose: it requests the Assessor to reduce the property’s assessed value and requests the Treasurer and Tax Collector to defer the current year’s property tax bill without penalty. Under SB 663, survivors now have 24 months from the date of damage rather than 12 to file.

The fires that began January 7, 2025, destroyed more than 16,000 structures across Los Angeles County and killed 31 people, according to county officials as of early 2026. The Eaton Fire caused the majority of casualties and devastated Altadena.

The webinar  is free and open to all fire survivors including Eaton, Palisades and Malibu not only EFSN members. Registration is available at efsurvivors.net/events. Attendees may submit questions during a live Q&A. The Assessor’s disaster relief office can be reached at relief@assessor.lacounty.gov or (213) 974-8658. Past EFSN webinars are available on demand at efsurvivors.net/expert-resources.

Register for the webinar at:
https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_xb6JPylUSLeDzJpiBRFYBg#/registration