Millions of dollars earmarked in CalAssist Mortgage Fund goes unused

By Judy Abel · Sat Aug 22 2026

Why Malibu fire survivors can’t get assistance; Income and loan limits are shutting some Palisades Fire victims out of a state program 

A potential lifeline for homeowners trying to rebuild after the Palisades Fire is causing frustration for those who are currently unable to qualify for the CalAssist Mortgage Fund.

The state mortgage-assistance program provides financial relief to some fire survivors. But the program’s eligibility requirements leave many Malibu homeowners unable to access the assistance.

The CalAssist Mortgage Fund administered by the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA) was established with $105 million from the National Mortgage Settlement Fund to help homeowners whose primary residences were destroyed or rendered uninhabitable by qualifying disasters. There are millions of dollars still undistributed.

The program initially provided up to $20,000, covering three months of mortgage payments. The state later expanded the program to provide up to $100,000 per household, covering as many as 12 months of payments. The assistance is paid directly to the mortgage servicer.

There are several gatekeeping requirements to qualify including a household (not individual) income ceiling of $285,000 per year. This limit was increased in October 2025 from $211,050.

Income is not the only limiting factor. The homeowner’s original unpaid principal balance on the first mortgage also cannot exceed the 2025 conforming loan limit for Los Angeles County which is $1,209,750. This is particularly significant in the Palisades Fire burn area because so many mortgages here are larger than $1.2 million. And the details are important: Even if a homeowner originally borrowed $1.3 million but has paid down the balance to below $1.2 million, the homeowner would still fail the mortgage-size requirement.

Jo Drummond, who serves on Malibu’s Rebuild Task Force (MRTF), just missed qualifying due to the loan size, saying the program “discriminates against people who live in a high-value area.” Wade Major, also on the MRTF, concurs: “CalAssist is one of those areas where there has been consistent frustration on the part of everyone. We had a kind of informal poll and something like 80[%] or 85% of the people, most of them in Big Rock, had applied and were turned down.”

Major also criticized the program, saying it’s too onerous. “They've constructed a gauntlet of requirements that is so restrictive and so drawn out that it makes it almost impossible to qualify, including people who need it the most, just so that the people who are possibly a little too wealthy to receive it, can be caught in a dragnet," he said. "And the result is they're catching everybody in the dragnet …They want to know every dollar that comes in and where it goes and where you might be hiding it, and eventually they wind up just getting exhausted and satisfied that you have exposed every financial reality of your life. It is more difficult to qualify for CalAssist mortgage assistance than it is to actually get a mortgage.” 

Another limitation is that the mortgage assistance is only eligible on a primary residence. Major said he’s heard from other applicants whose Malibu homes were incorrectly categorized as non-primary by CalAssist due to issues with deeds or family trusts or inaccurate ownership records. “They will come back and claim that you own more than one property, even if you don’t,” Major claimed. “They will deny your appeal and say you have no further recourse. There's no one to talk to. You can never actually get information on why your appeal was turned down and there's no recourse to appeal, even if you know that you are fully within legal rights to do so. That is a failure of process.”

Major questioned why the State of California uses federal conforming loan limits (which by law limit the maximum for Los Angeles County to 150% of the national average) when the real estate spread is vastly larger than that. 

“The area we live in is has its own economic challenges," he said. "So it makes no sense to take a federal limitation that is supposed to apply to the entire country in times of non-disaster and apply it to a high-income, high cost area like ours after the worst disaster in state history. It's a completely unfair and arbitrary limitation.”

Importantly, without assistance, some families could be forced to abandon rebuilding and leave Malibu entirely. “We have people here, who are not wealthy, but they are carrying very large mortgages,” said Major. “They're working extremely hard to pay those mortgages and to pay for their rebuild and the rent of wherever they are currently displaced. These are people who have children who benefit our school system. So when you start punishing our people and making it too costly for them to rebuild, too costly for them to stay in the area, too costly to rejoin the community, now you're not only taking away our community, you're taking away our kids and you're taking away from our schools. We need people to stay here.

“The whole point of this is to enable people to stay in the community. And their (CalFHA) fear that a dollar might fall into the pockets of somebody who's too wealthy to receive it is having a residual impact that's going to damage Malibu.”