When Rachel Jonas and Robert Fagnani planned their younger son’s first birthday party for Jan. 11, 2025, they expected to gather in the backyard of their Pacific Palisades home.
Four days before the celebration, the Palisades fire destroyed the house. The couple packed what they could, put their children in the car and left California for Tennessee, where they moved in with family because they had nowhere else to go.
Their home was gone. So was their older son’s preschool, along with the library, restaurants and everyday places that had anchored their family’s life. What remained was a mortgage on a property that no longer existed — and a rebuilding process they say experts have told them could take at least two to four years.
Jonas and Fagnani, who later co-founded Disaster Mortgage Relief, are now among the California fire survivors urging lawmakers to extend mortgage protections for homeowners whose properties were destroyed in major wildfires.
The couple’s advocacy centers on Assembly Bill 1847, a proposal that would expand and strengthen protections created under last year’s emergency fire mortgage relief law, AB 238. That earlier law gave homeowners whose properties burned up to 12 months of mortgage forbearance.
Jonas and Fagnani argue that one year is not enough for families trying to rebuild in areas such as Pacific Palisades and Altadena, where fire recovery has been slowed by debris removal, utility restoration, insurance disputes, permit approvals, contractor shortages and rising construction costs.
Through Disaster Mortgage Relief, the couple says they have heard from hundreds of families trying to understand what mortgage servicers are required to do, how forbearance affects credit and what happens when the relief period ends.
As those forbearance periods begin expiring, they say some homeowners who were current on their loans before the January 2025 fire are seeing steep drops in their credit scores. Others are facing the possibility of foreclosure or large balloon payments, in some cases exceeding $100,000, while they are still trying to finance construction.
The California Bankers Association has raised concerns that AB 1847 could restrict access to credit. Jonas and Fagnani say they understand lenders need stability and clear rules, but argue that the larger risk is a wave of borrower defaults, damaged credit and stalled rebuilding in fire-damaged neighborhoods.
Supporters of the measure say the bill would not erase mortgage debt or eliminate lender rights. Instead, it would allow payments to be deferred during the rebuilding period and moved to the end of the loan.
Jonas and Fagnani point to the federal CARES Act during the COVID-19 pandemic, which provided up to 360 days of relief for borrowers with federally backed mortgages, as an example of a large-scale forbearance system that was workable.
For families who lost homes, they say, the ability to redirect two or three years of principal and interest payments toward construction could determine whether they rebuild or leave their communities permanently.
The couple remains in Tennessee and says they are trying to save enough money to rebuild the home they lost.
Their message to lawmakers is that California’s mortgage and disaster recovery systems must reflect the reality of modern wildfires: entire neighborhoods can be destroyed at once, and families can be displaced for years before they are able to return.
Original source: CalMatters
