California Wildfire Funds Were Redirected To Low-Income Housing

We’re all out of shocked faces. When it comes to wasteful spending and California, no one should expect efficiency or competence.

Gavin Newsom has been governor of the state for almost two full terms, since the beginning of 2019. He was lieutenant governor of the state for two terms before that. He’s been at the center of state politics for nearly 16 years at this point. The state has not gained a reputation for wise fiscal spending, or for looking out for the well-being and safety of the residents of California. And now, a new report from the California Post (the West Coast branch of the New York Post) has the details of how federal wildfire relief funding over the last several years got divided up by the state, with a majority being marked for low-income housing instead of for victims’ relief.

California funneled nearly $369 million in federal aid intended for victims of its deadliest wildfire year to low-income housing developers — without requiring them to house a single wildfire survivor, a California Post investigation found.

The staggering sum was awarded to developers while thousands of Californians struggled to rebuild their lives after the devastating 2018 fires, which killed 103 people and damaged or destroyed more than 24,000 structures.

The fires being referenced here were the Woolsey and Camp Fires. Jerry Brown was still governor at the time, with Newsom as his lieutenant governor. Eventually, over a billion dollars was given to California from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.