In March 2025, two months after the Eaton Fire swept through Pasadena, Gil Barel's landlord sent cleaners to the duplex where she'd raised her two kids for eight years. When Barel went over afterward to look, she found things sitting untouched under furniture and behind shelves. The surfaces looked the way they had before anyone came.
The duplex survived the fire. It sits nearly a mile from the nearest burn scar. Barel hasn't lived there since January 2025, and as of this month, twenty-one months later, she still hasn't moved back.
In April 2025 she told the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that she and her son were sharing a bed in a small back-house studio in Los Angeles, paying $500 a month more than they had for the two-bedroom duplex. Her renters insurance had paid out $6,000 in temporary-housing benefits early on. That money was already gone.
By last summer, FEMA was covering the Lincoln Heights unit. Barel had scraped together enough to hire an industrial hygienist, a professional who tests indoor spaces for contamination, to assess the duplex on her own. The results showed elevated levels of heavy metals, including lithium and chromium. The hygienist recommended more testing and a deeper cleaning.
Her landlord said testing had been done after the March cleaning and reported "good results." The landlord wouldn't say how the testing was done, which contractor did it, or what the numbers actually were, and refused to test the soil.
When Barel talks about all of this, she keeps coming back to one thing:
"The issue is that I have no control."
The wall between a renter and her own home
If the contamination in Barel's duplex is as bad as her testing suggests, it's in the building itself, in the walls, the insulation, the ductwork. Her renters policy covers her belongings and a limited stretch of temporary housing. It doesn't cover the structure. The building is insured under her landlord's policy, and only the landlord can file that claim, negotiate with the building's insurer, hire remediation contractors, and decide when the work is done.
Barel could hire her own tester, and she did. She could file complaints with the city, and she did that too, bringing in Pasadena officials to push her landlord toward more work. What she can't do is direct what happens to a building she doesn't own. So she pays rent on a place she can't safely live in and waits on decisions made by someone who doesn't live there.
California law does give tenants some tools. A disaster-habitability statute that took effect in January 2026 requires landlords to remove disaster debris and deal with hazards like smoke residue, ash, and asbestos within a reasonable time, using licensed contractors. If a local health official hasn't found that the disaster debris at a unit is nontoxic, the law presumes the place is unfit to live in. Once the work is done, the landlord has to share any environmental testing results.
The catch is that the law requires landlords to disclose testing that exists. On its own, it doesn't force testing in every case. And a tenant who withholds rent or breaks a lease over suspected contamination may still have to prove the habitability problem in court if the landlord pushes back.
After tenant litigation forced the issue, Pasadena set up a fast-track inspection program for fire-affected rentals. An eligible complaint requires the owner to hire an environmental consultant and complete whatever remediation the city orders. That program gave Barel a way to bring municipal pressure. But nothing in the public record shows whether her landlord's additional testing has been completed, what it found, or whether the city has cleared the unit.
She's not the only one waiting
Across the fire zone, other renters describe versions of what Barel is living through. At a 403 Figueroa Drive apartment complex, tenants reported lingering smoke and ash, missing utilities, and a management company that handed one tenant a can of paint for a wall that looked contaminated. In Altadena, LAist reported on tenants disputing smoke remediation, facing rent increases, and waiting for plans to clear potentially toxic ash from properties where some units survived.
The California Department of Insurance estimates that more than 13,000 insurance claims from the January 2025 fires involved standing homes with smoke damage. That's a count of claims, not of homes proven contaminated or unlivable. Still, it gives a sense of how many people are dealing with something most of us outside the fire zone haven't had to think about: a house that looks fine from the street and may not be safe to breathe in.
The law that's coming, and what it won't fix for her
California's Smoke Damage Recovery Act, signed September 15, changes how insurers handle smoke-damage claims. It presumes that contamination in a surviving home within the fire zone came from the wildfire, so the insurer has to prove otherwise instead of the homeowner having to prove the fire caused it. It requires insurers to pay for the testing needed to restore a property and clear it for occupancy, subject to the policy's terms. And it bars insurers from cutting off temporary housing payments until the home has been restored and cleared, though that obligation stops at the policy's coverage limit.
Those provisions take effect January 1, 2027. As of this week, they haven't changed anyone's legal rights.
Even when they kick in, the law doesn't touch Barel's particular problem. It governs the relationship between an insurer and a policyholder, meaning the person who holds the building insurance. A tenant can file a smoke-damage claim under her own renters policy for her belongings and temporary housing. But nothing in the law lets a tenant demand testing under the landlord's building policy, make the landlord file a claim, or deal with the building insurer directly.
So Barel's path still runs through her landlord, through Pasadena's enforcement program, through the habitability statute. The new law might move her landlord's insurer faster, if the landlord files the claim and if the law applies to a loss from January 2025. Legal-aid attorneys are still working through that second question.
After October 9
FEMA extended housing assistance for eligible renters displaced by the fires through October 9, 2026, the Friday before the Columbus Day weekend. Eligible homeowners got an extension through July 2027, nine months longer.
FEMA housing assistance for displaced renters ended October 9, 2026. Homeowners received an extension through July 2027 — nine months longer.
A week past that deadline, no public record says whether Barel is still in the Lincoln Heights studio, whether she found some other help, or whether she went back to the duplex. What we do know is that she paid for her own testing on a building she doesn't own and found contamination her landlord hasn't dealt with to her satisfaction. Her renters insurance benefits ran out months ago. She's waiting on a city enforcement process and on a landlord she can pressure but can't compel. When the new state law arrives in January, it will tighten the rules between her landlord and her landlord's insurer, and she still won't be a party to it.
The duplex is still standing, and she is still paying rent on it.
