Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass went to the California State Capitol last week to ask lawmakers for nearly $2 billion in emergency funding – days after LA’s administrative officer announced that the city faces a billion-dollar shortfall, in part due to the devastating January wildfires. Recovery will take years.
Mayor Bass faces another challenge: Most people in the region are unhappy with her leadership. Forty-four percent of LA County voters in a recent poll say they believe she did a “poor or very poor job” responding to the wildfires. Just 18% approve. Analysts trace the results to the day the fires erupted, when Mayor Bass was out of the country.
“For anyone during a disaster, being there and being on the scene is rule number one,” says Mark DiCamillo, poll director for the nonpartisan Institute of Governmental Studies at University of California, Berkeley, which conducted the survey.
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In crises, people seek strong leadership. Many find LA officials lacking but believe the area can recover from wildfire damage. Emerging community leaders could be seeding that optimism.
A public face of leadership has not emerged in LA as it has during other crises here and around the world. In 1994, LA Mayor Richard Riordan went to City Hall and spearheaded an immediate response after the severe Northridge earthquake. On 9/11, New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani visited ground zero with emergency personnel, and coordinated the response across multiple agencies. And in 2019, after mass shootings at two mosques, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern comforted a stunned nation and implemented gun reforms.
In crises, people expect bold leadership, says Fernando Guerra, founding director of the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University. They “immediately want a person, a voice, to really articulate the ideas and then also the options, the potentials, to respond,” he says.
Institute of Governmental Studies University of California, Berkeley
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Mayor Bass’s 24-hour absence has been unshakable. Other officials also fared poorly in the poll: 18% of voters say the LA City Council is doing a good or excellent job; 19% say the same about LA County Board of Supervisors; and just over one-third rate Gov. Gavin Newsom positively.
At the same time that Angelenos are discontented with their elected leadership, they are turning to each other and taking the initiative to care, innovate, and forge a path forward.
Grassroots leadership often emerges in times of crisis. But this wildfire response is unique, says Dr. Guerra, for a few reasons: It’s driven by the scale of the disaster, combined with declining faith in government, and discussion that federal agencies might not help California. “A lot of people have to take it upon themselves to start thinking about, ‘What if government doesn’t respond? What if government can’t respond?’”
David Crane/The Orange County Register/AP
This is “a powerful moment for Los Angeles,” says Miguel Santana, CEO of the California Community Foundation. People, organizations, and civic leaders acting without waiting to be told shows leadership beyond restoring utilities and securing properties, he says. It’s about “maintaining a sense of community in the impacted places.”
This community also has hope: More than two-thirds of voters have at least some confidence in the region’s ability to recover.
Leadership they hadn’t imagined
Within 10 days of the fires, people from around the world had funneled $30 million into CCF’s Wildfire Recovery Fund, in amounts ranging from single digits to tens of thousands of dollars. Half was distributed right away to organizations on the ground, providing a range of aid to people who lost homes or work because of the fires.
About two months later, donations totaled $80 million.
Some funding went to LA Voice, a multifaith organization made up of congregations throughout LA County. The fires destroyed at least 15 houses of worship.
The close relationships between faith leaders and their congregants make clergy a bridge between elected officials and needs on the ground, says Zachary Hoover, executive director of LA Voice and an ordained minister. It’s “obviously really helpful if people know there’s actually a fabric of relationships and trust and a common story and a common sense of identity and purpose.”
The Rev. Hoover points to Victory Bible Church in Pasadena, where volunteers put together a phone bank in the early days of the Eaton Fire. In the first 48 hours, they knew which of their members had lost homes. Within a week, they had talked to 500 people.
Other houses of worship became distribution centers, managing a constant flow of food, clothing, water, and other essentials. The faith community, with its connections to residents who needed help, was well-positioned to get supplies to survivors.
Mr. Santana says it has been “really impressive to see how different members of the community, everyday Angelenos who lost their homes, are exercising leadership in ways that they probably didn’t imagine” before the fires.
A handful of billionaires are creating new resources for recovery. Rick Caruso, a Los Angeles developer who ran for mayor against Ms. Bass, co-founded Steadfast LA; Los Angeles Times owner and executive chairman Patrick Soon-Shiong created the Leadership Council; Magic Johnson teamed up with Governor Newsom to establish LA Rises; and Snap founder Evan Spiegel launched The Department of Angels with the California Community Foundation.
Critics say some have their own financial and political agendas. But the region will need all the help it can get, and, “If billionaires behaved the way they’re behaving after the fires all the time, civic LA would be a much better place,” says Dr. Guerra.
Thinking ahead
The transition to long-term recovery requires leadership skills to manage the patchwork of entities taking action and a strategy with clear roles and responsibilities, says Corinne Bendersky, an expert in leadership development at the University of California, Los Angeles.
It requires “having someone not just make decisions, but also ensure that all the different interest groups are being heard” and being transparent about how those decisions are made, she says. “It’s definitely a situation where you can’t make everybody happy.”
But in the midst of an emergency, elected officials should mitigate harms in real time, says Katie Clark, whose Altadena apartment was destroyed by the Eaton Fire.
For 15 years, the one-bedroom unit was home for Dr. Clark, her husband, and their dog. In an instant, they were thrust into a limbo shared by thousands of renters.
“If your home is gone, then you’re on your own. And you either find a new place to rent in one of the most hostile and unaffordable housing markets in the country, or you don’t,” she says. “That is a terrible outcome, right?”
Dr. Clark didn’t see the leadership she expected. LA County supervisors passed temporary protections for fire-impacted renters at the end of February.
While she waited for officials to act, the communications consultant, who holds an elected position on the Altadena Library District board of trustees, teamed with other renters to form a tenants union. They met with county officials from the consumer affairs and health departments. They put together a resource guide for tenants and worked closely with members of the Altadena Town Council to establish a renters protection and recovery committee.
“It is an expression of solidarity, and it’s an expression of concern,” she says. “And it’s us turning to one another and saying, ‘OK, well, if we’re all we’ve got, what are we going to do?’”
