Dear all,

 

Yesterday, millions of Californians woke up to see, in black and white, the insurance crisis that we survivors have been suffering under for nearly a year.

 

California’s insurance market isn’t collapsing only because climate risk is rising. It’s collapsing because the person we elected to protect us has spent years partying with — and bending rules to benefit — the companies he is supposed to hold accountable.

 

Two huge L.A. Times investigations dropped yesterday, both by Paige St. John, a Pulitzer Prize–winning insurance reporter who first contacted me back in April. In a year of newsroom layoffs, the Times poured massive resources into this package. That tells you the gravity.

 

This is Pulitzer-level reporting. They will certainly submit it. They may well win.

 

✈️ Luxury travel, missing receipts, and a regulator who went off course
 

The first article opens with a line that sets the tone:

 

“Ricardo Lara’s transition from influence brokering state legislator to autonomous insurance regulator was rocky.”

 

Then the gut punch:

 

“Almost immediately upon assuming office in 2019, the California insurance commissioner was discovered soliciting money from those he regulated, even allowing his campaign fundraiser to set his office calendar.”

 

The Times found that Ricardo Lara:

 

• took 32 international trips to 23 countries, spending 163 days abroad on state time

• repeatedly failed to disclose who paid for his first-class flights and luxury hotels

• left two-thirds of travel records missing or incomplete

• is now under two state investigations

 

Then came the lines that stunned even longtime watchdogs:

 

“In late November, the department released 452 pages of airline bookings for Lara made by the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners, the powerful, industry-funded trade organization that creates model regulations for states to enact.”

 

This piece is a masterclass in investigative journalism: receipts, records, internal emails. All damning, and now, all public.

 

The second investigation opens with this extraordinary sentence:

 

“California’s property insurance market was unraveling fast in mid-2023 when the state’s insurance commissioner, Ricardo Lara, landed in Bermuda for four days of elbow rubbing with industry figures.”

 

And then Paige reveals the deeper truth.

 

While Lara was in Bermuda telling Californians he was stabilizing the market, he advanced a regulatory overhaul that accelerated the collapse.

 

What happened next:

The Times published the chart that explains what we are experiencing:

 

In 2019, the FAIR Plan covered 123,657 homes.
By September 2025, it covered 645,987.

 

This is not a hiccup. It is a systemic collapse.

 

Lara told the public that insurers who received rate increases would be required to write policies in high fire zones. But six of nine insurers who got those hikes wrote zero new policies in high risk areas.

 

They took the concessions. We took the consequences.
 

As a result,

This collapse was not inevitable. It was engineered and overseen by the regulator charged with preventing it.

 

 

Right in the heart of the second investigation, the Times included this photo of us, shoulder to shoulder, demanding accountability for every California family:

 

This image captures what Paige’s reporting makes unmistakably clear.

 

While our regulator was in Bermuda, Paris, Cape Town and Singapore with industry executives, we were here trying to survive the hardest year of our lives.

 

We never asked for any of this.
We never asked to become experts in insurance misconduct.
We learned the language of delays, denials, exclusions and appeals because no one else stepped in.

Our homes were gone and all we wanted was to bring our families back home.

 

So we did the work our regulator refused to do.

 

We organized.
We demanded investigations.
We held one another up when the system that was supposed to protect us simply didn’t.
We showed up to press conferences exhausted, grieving, sometimes barely able to speak, and still told the truth.

 

Families like ours kept every promise. We paid our premiums, taxes and deductibles. We did everything right.

 

Now we are simply asking the industry, and the officials who oversee it, to keep their promises to us.

 

 

Travel and ethics investigation is here.

 

Insurance market collapse and L.A. fires investigation is here.

These two pieces are subscriber-only. If you’re not yet a subscriber, please consider the $1 for 4 months trial. The L.A. Times is doing the deepest reporting on our recovery, and quality journalism takes real resources. Their work is changing the landscape for survivors.

 

 

California can’t afford another year of this insurance system collapse.
And neither can our recovery.

 

Governor Newsom now has a real choice: keep this failed oversight in place, or bring in new leadership so survivors can finally move forward, and every Californian can have an insurance system that works.

 

If you like, add your voice to the growing coalition asking him to act:
lararesign.org
 

 

If you’re a State Farm policyholder from Eaton or Palisades, this is for you.

 

We spent ten months asking Ricardo Lara to enforce the laws against illegal delays and denials. Now we know why he didn’t act.

 

So we took our evidence to L.A. County.

 

Once the county launched its investigation on November 13, everything shifted:

These stories matter, but we need the full picture.

 

To protect our community, we need to know:

That’s why we created a brief survey.

 

 

You’ll receive the compiled, anonymous results so you can use the information in your own negotiations.

 

If you’re not with State Farm, good news: the Department of Angels has already surveyed survivors across insurers. Their data is coming soon. We’ll use it to push for accountability across the board in 2026.

 

 

Friday, December 5 | 12–6 PM
2231 Lincoln Ave, Altadena
Burritos arrive 3:30 PM
Short program at 4 PM

 

If you’re rebuilding or just exploring options, come walk full-scale prefab homes, meet independent experts, connect with fellow survivors, and yes — eat some of the best burritos in California.

 

Parking at Community Bible Church, 2124 Lincoln Avenue, Altadena.

 

 

 

 

A warm, supportive evening for every Eaton and Palisades survivor to enter the holidays with calm.

 

You’ll choose the space you need most, with breakout rooms including:

We’re honored to be joined by world-renowned trauma expert Elaine Miller-Karas.

 

 

 

Many of us are now reaching the end of our 1 year mortgage forbearance, and the squeeze is real.

Amazingly, the CalAssist Mortgage Fund still has grant money available — up to $20,000 per household — and they’ve raised their income limits so thousands more fire-impacted homeowners can now qualify.

 

The program covers up to 3 months of mortgage payments, capped at $20,000, paid directly to your servicer, and it never has to be repaid.

 

The new income limit is generous: household income can be up to $211,050 in L.A. County.

 

Applying is simple, free, and online.

Learn more at the CalAssist Mortgage Fund website here.

 

 

Tomorrow, Sat @ 6 PM – Christmas Tree Lane Lighting

I’ve lived in Altadena for 15 years, and this night has always been one of my favorite traditions. It’s the moment our town feels like a village — neighbors shoulder to shoulder, kids with hot chocolate, everyone waiting for the countdown. Then the switch flips, and nearly a mile of deodar trees lights up.

 

Before the fire, Christmas Tree Lane is what made Altadena a little famous!
(OK — that and the $2 billion lottery ticket!)

I’ll be there tomorrow, and I hope I get to see you in the glow!
 

Annual Lighting Ceremony
December 6, 2025, 6:00 PM
Santa Rosa Ave & Mariposa St
Free and open to the public.

 

Zone 0 has stirred up a lot of debate in our Discord — for good reason. These rules shape how we rebuild and what’s required within the first 5 feet of our homes. This webinar is a rare chance to hear directly from experts about what the science actually says, what remains uncertain, and how policymakers are writing the rules we’ll be living with.

 

“Policymaking Under Uncertainty: Zone 0 and Vegetation Clearance”
📅 Friday, December 12 at 12 PM
🔗 Register here
 

Enter your email at efsurvivors.net/newsletter and it will take you straight there.
Give yourself 5 minutes to download the app on your phone and computer.

Thousands of survivors are already inside comparing notes, sharing resources, and helping each other recover in real time.

 

After the webinar, join us for discussion in the Discord #advocacy channel

For more community events, visit the Discord #events channel

 

 

If your first reaction to the Times package was, “So I wasn’t crazy. The system really was rigged against us,” you were right.

 

You were never asking for too much. You were simply asking for the protection you paid for in full from your insurers and from your government.

 

Please remember:

 

Your anger is justified.
Your exhaustion is understandable.
Your hope is strategic.

 

Every check that arrives, every policymaker who listens, every reporter who digs for months, all of it is happening because together, we kept going.

 

Thank you for completing the State Farm survey.
Thank you for showing up when you are tired.
Thank you for fighting even when institutions failed you.

 

We cannot control what one commissioner chooses to do in a luxury hotel on the other side of the world.

 

We can shape, together, what happens next.

 

With love,
Joy
 

 

Every new survivor and ally helps strengthen our community.