FEMA won’t enact a major housing program that would help California wildfire survivors. Homelessness after the fires is both “predictable and preventable,” housing advocates told ThinkProgress. An excerpt from the article:

FEMA told ThinkProgress in an email that as of Tuesday morning, only 49 families (120 individual people) have checked into hotels through FEMA’s Transitional Sheltering Assistance (TSA) program. The TSA program pays for hotel sheltering for people displaced in emergencies.

But there are other programs available to FEMA. The agency has thus far refused to enact a Department of Housing and Urban Development-administered program that would provide essential housing relief to those people in desperate need of stable housing. The Disaster Housing Assistance Program (DHAP), created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, provides housing subsidies to survivors and evacuees, and covers the cost of rent, security deposit, and utilities.