Food, Lawyers & Money: Charity Chiefs Talk Supporting Victims On Deadline’s ‘L.A. Fires Aftermath: The Path Forward’ Podcast
As the wildfires continue to burn in Los Angeles, the extent of the damage to property and minds is front and center.
Deadline is releasing the second episode of our two-part podcast series, L.A. Fires Aftermath: The Path Forward, to try and give people an idea of what else they can do to help.
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Expanding on Episode 1 earlier this week, today’s conversation is with Richard Ayoub, CEO of Project Angel Food; Kathryn Eidmann, president and CEO of Public Counsel; Angie Kim, president and CEO of Center for Cultural Innovation; and Keith McNutt, Western Region Director for the Entertainment Community Fund.
Listen to the podcast above.
Project Angel Food is a nonprofit that delivers 1.5 million meals each year to the vulnerable across L.A.m and Ayoub was among those making deliveries as the fires burned.
“Because our clients are the most vulnerable — they’re living with HIV, heart disease, lung disease, kidney failure, all forms of cancer — we really needed to step up in a very big way to make sure that the meals came to them uninterrupted, especially in the Altadena and Pasadena area,” he says. “Within 36 to 48 hours, we got them their meals because they still need to eat. As we’ve evolved through this crisis, through the days and the hours and the weeks, we’re discovering that more people need us right now, so we have loosened up our criteria and we’re allowing elderly people with respiratory problems in that area to be fast-tracked and get meals ASAP.”
Ayoub has talked about the overwhelming support his charity has received from the likes of Paris Hilton, who lost her own house, bringing it to the attention of her 27 million Instagram followers, as well as help from the likes of Annie Lennox, Lori Loughlin and Chuck Lorre, the latter of whom donated $250,000 to Project Angel Food’s Fire Relief Fund. “When we said we needed help with volunteers, 8,000 people emailed or phoned us,” Ayoub says. “We usually, in the year, get 4,000. It’s incredible.”
Public Counsel is a nonprofit public interest law firm and has been helping people with free legal support as they deal with the fallout of the fires.
“We provide free legal services to people who can’t afford lawyers,” Eidmann says. “It’s been really beautiful the way that the legal community and the public interest community has come together to really step up and meet the needs of people impacted by the fires.”
She adds that her attorneys are staffing FEMA disaster clinics as well as the Pasadena City College Disaster Recovery Center providing guidance and advocacy to tenants who are impacted.
She highlighted price gouging from unscrupulous landlords. “We already had conditions where longtime tenants with rent protections are being pushed out of their homes to make ways for developers or to significantly increase rents,’ she says. “We are really calling for a freeze in rents right now, for an eviction moratorium because we know that the vulnerable tenants across the city are very much at risk as some landlords may intuit that they might be able if they can remove their current tenants might be able to bring in new tenants for much, much higher rates.”
As such, Public Counsel is calling for policy protections across the city and the county.
Center for Cultural Innovation is in charge of a $12M relief fund – The Los Angeles Arts Community Fire Relief Fund – backed by a group of more than 40 arts institutions and donors including the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. “Our mission has always been to support the people in the arts,” says Kim.
McNutt, who was also on the first episode, reiterated that support will be needed for some time to come. “The three needs that people are coming to us saying is they need emergency money now, they need help navigating systems and they need some support with the mental health repercussions of all of this,” he adds. “Every voice that can add to that message and amplify it is crucial.”
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