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California officials used federal funding meant to help wildfire victims rebuild, and spent it on low-income housing instead.
That’s the bombshell revelation in a new report by The California Post. And it confirms the worst suspicions of fire-ravaged communities that have wondered whether state officials ever intended to help them, or simply saw their suffering as an opportunity to exploit.
Beginning with the devastating Camp Fire and Woolsey Fire in 2018, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) allocated almost a billion dollars to California.
The money was meant to help rebuild homes, provide affordable rental housing, and repair infrastructure.
But the state allocated $368.7 million to developers to build dense, low-income housing projects, without any guarantee fire victims would benefit.
To this day, there are families who have not returned home. Some lived in trailers on their lots until local officials ordered them removed, and others don’t have the money to rebuild.
The push for low-income housing accomplishes three ideological goals. One, it redistributes property from those who had it to those who do not.
Two, it satisfies a “green” agenda that sees single-family homes as a sign of wasteful sprawl.
And three, it allows politicians to claim they are doing something about the state’s housing crisis.
But none of that is the purpose of the funding, which taxpayers provided to help rebuild communities that had been destroyed through no fault of their own.
It is no longer a conspiracy theory to say that some policymakers would rather see residents of destroyed communities replaced by dense developments than to see them safely restored to their homes.
We hear a lot from California Governor Gavin Newsom about how he is not to blame for the fact that President Donald Trump and the Republican Congress have yet to provide additional funding for rebuilding after the devastating LA wildfires in 2025.
But perhaps Washington has been reluctant for good reason: Americans cannot trust that California will spend the money properly.
We have noted before that politics should never get in the way of emergency relief. This it about getting politics out of fire aid. California politicians are the ones who have misallocated fire relief funds.
The saddest part of this story is that the need is still urgent. Thousands of fire victims still need help. And the federal government should provide it. But strict oversight should come along with it.