State-led County of Los Angeles disaster housing task force.

Assembly Members Harabedian and Irwin advance a measure to create a state-led disaster housing task force for Los Angeles County, the proposal would coordinate and streamline housing-recovery work across the Department of Housing and Community Development, FEMA, the Office of Emergency Services, and local governments in communities affected by wildfires that began on January 7, 2025. The act takes immediate effect as an urgency statute and would terminate on June 30, 2028, requiring a formal status update to the Legislature on April 1, 2026, and annually thereafter.

The core mechanism establishes a task force convened by the Department of Housing and Community Development, with membership including the department itself, FEMA, OES, the City of Los Angeles, and the County of Los Angeles. It also requires the task force to appoint a state disaster housing coordinator—housed within HCD—to accelerate the delivery of resources, including funding and technical assistance, to wildfire-impacted communities. The defined wildfire scope covers the fires that began in Los Angeles County on January 7, 2025. The tasked status reports are to be prepared under a government-wide reporting framework and delivered on a specified schedule beginning in 2026.

Governance and implementation focus on interagency coordination rather than new regulatory standards. The bill creates a coordination framework among state, federal, and local actors and does not specify new appropriations or explicit powers to direct building codes or permitting. The absence of explicit funding means the program’s operational capacity would rely on existing agency resources, unless future budget actions extend or renew the sunset provision. The structure suggests an emphasis on aligning funding streams, technical assistance, and information sharing to support housing recovery efforts within the Los Angeles County wildfire-impacted area.

Contextual considerations include a finding that a special statute is necessary for Los Angeles and Ventura Counties, though the operative provisions target Los Angeles County. This potential scope ambiguity, along with the sunset and the lack of new funding, informs expectations about the measure’s sustainability beyond 2028. The reporting requirement offers a mechanism for legislative oversight, while the interagency composition—HCD, FEMA, OES, and local government partners—indicates a formal channel for coordinating resource delivery and recovery planning to affected communities and housing providers.