Mayor Karen Bass urged FEMA on Wednesday, Sept. 2, to release funding for six wildfire recovery projects stalled in federal review for more than four months.
None of the $745 million in potential Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) funding for Los Angeles had been obligated as of July, according to a letter from Reps. Maxine Waters and Brad Sherman citing FEMA's public database. The money is meant to strengthen the city's infrastructure against future wildfires, earthquakes and floods after the January 2025 Palisades and Eaton fires, which killed 31 people and destroyed over 16,000 homes and businesses.
None has been spent.
Bass said the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) completed its review and submitted all six projects to FEMA months ago. Two have already cleared FEMA's technical and eligibility review and are waiting only on a final sign-off from FEMA headquarters, according to the mayor's office.
Cal OES told the city it has no visibility into FEMA headquarters' review process and no timeline for a decision.
"Los Angeles cannot afford for critical mitigation projects to sit indefinitely in a federal review queue," Bass wrote in the letter to FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton. She called the lack of transparency "unacceptable" for projects that have already advanced through the state review process.
The six stalled projects span multiple city departments:
- LAFD fire code environmental compliance update
- A post-wildfire disaster code enforcement project and one-stop recovery center run by the Department of Building and Safety
- LA Housing Department home hardening residential retrofit project
- Seismic retrofits at nine LADWP electrical substations
- Drainage improvements at four high-risk flooding locations by the Bureau of Sanitation
- Wooden cable trench cover retrofit at 21 LADWP substations
Waters and Sherman sent their own letter to Hamilton on Monday, Aug. 31, two days before Bass's. The lawmakers gave FEMA a deadline of Friday, Sept. 4, to provide a full status update on the six projects.
Data cited by the Congressional Research Service found that no new hazard mitigation funding had been approved under FEMA's major programs since March 2025, aside from certain congressional earmarks. Statewide, roughly 49 HMGP projects representing about $89 million in federal funding remain in the same review queue, according to Bass's letter.
The HMGP grants are separate from California's $9.9 billion request to the Department of Housing and Urban Development for long-term fire recovery, the Westside Current reported. As of May, nearly 29,500 households were still navigating insurance claims, and about 1,000 remained on federal temporary housing assistance. FEMA has extended housing aid for eligible homeowners through July 2027.
Spectrum News reported that FEMA officials did not respond to a request for comment on Sept. 2. The Sept. 4 deadline set by Waters and Sherman is the next public milestone for a FEMA response.
