Human-Centered Aid
Rebuilding an Aid System That Reflects Reality
"Doing the paperwork was worse than the fire. Every single application made me relive the worst day of my life again and again, and I still didn't get anything."
After the fires, many business owners said the same thing in different ways: The fire was devastating. The recovery process was worse.
Not because help didn't exist — but because accessing it required people to relive the most traumatic moments of their lives again and again, often without results. One entrepreneur described it plainly:
Across Altadena, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and Northeast Los Angeles, the wildfire assessment surfaced a consistent truth: existing aid systems were not built for the realities people were living through.
They were not built for displacement. Not built for lost documents. Not built for elders navigating digital portals. Not built for caregivers juggling trauma and responsibility. Not built for home-based or informal businesses whose losses were real but difficult to "prove."
Instead of relief, many encountered administrative trauma — a recovery process that compounded harm rather than alleviating it.
The data confirms what business owners already knew. Nearly 90 percent found FEMA and SBA processes inaccessible. Seventy-five percent were denied aid or self-excluded because the burden of applying was too high. Not a single interviewed entrepreneur received meaningful business interruption insurance. Approximately seventy percent of elders faced digital barriers they could not overcome."Everything is so technology-driven. People past 60 don't know how to work on computers. Imagine the people who don't have a son or daughter to help them. They're not getting anything." — Infirmary ClothingAid systems are designed around assumptions: that people have time, documentation, internet access, administrative capacity, and emotional bandwidth. For micro-entrepreneurs — especially Black and Brown women-owned, home-based, and informal businesses — those assumptions collapse in crisis.
"They asked me to prove I lived there and show receipts for things that no longer exist. All of my paperwork burned. [In contrast,] community didn't ask me a lot of questions. They just came to act." — Octavia's BookshelfNational research from the Marshall Fire, the Paradise Fire, and Hurricane Harvey shows the same pattern repeating across regions: renters, elders, informal entrepreneurs, and caregivers are systematically excluded from disaster recovery systems built around property ownership, formal payroll, and digital fluency.
The result is an aid ecosystem that deepens inequity by design.
So the question to answer is this: What happens when recovery systems fail to meet people where they are — and what does it look like to rebuild aid infrastructure that is human-centered, trauma-informed, and grounded in lived reality rather than administrative convenience?
Octavia's Bookshelf: A space for dialogue, healing, and community support.
What Works Elsewhere
Across the country, regions that faced similar crises learned a difficult lesson: aid systems that prioritize speed, documentation, and administrative efficiency over human reality consistently fail the people most impacted.
But some places chose a different approach and the results were measurable.
After Hurricane Harvey, Houston embedded recovery navigators within trusted, community-rooted organizations. Rather than expecting displaced residents to navigate complex systems alone, navigators met people where they were: in homes, churches, pop-ups, shelters, and small businesses. This approach dramatically increased aid access for renters, elders, undocumented workers, and home-based entrepreneurs who had previously been excluded from FEMA and SBA pipelines.
In Detroit and Baltimore, funders and public agencies required CDFIs to subcontract with community-based organizations embedded in Black and Brown neighborhoods. These intermediaries translated requirements into plain language, rebuilt lost documentation, and delivered trust-centered outreach. The result was not just higher uptake, but faster deployment of capital to micro-entrepreneurs traditionally considered "too risky" or "too informal" to serve.
Following the Napa and Sonoma wildfires, agencies piloted phone-based and verbal applications to reduce documentation barriers. Survivors were allowed to explain losses verbally or via video, supported by community verification rather than formal receipts. These shifts reduced retraumatization, shortened processing timelines, and expanded eligibility for elders, caregivers, and displaced families navigating loss without paperwork.
The Marshall Fire in Colorado and the Paradise Fire in Butte County reinforced the same conclusion. When aid systems rely exclusively on property ownership, formal payroll, and digital fluency, renters, informal entrepreneurs, and microbusinesses are systematically excluded. Where local intermediaries were empowered to deliver assistance, recovery outcomes improved — not because people suddenly became "more prepared," but because systems adapted to reality rather than forcing people to adapt to bureaucracy.
Across these regions, the pattern is consistent:
Aid works when it is relational.
Aid works when it is simplified.
Aid works when trust is treated as infrastructure.
These models demonstrate that equitable recovery is not achieved by creating more programs, but by redesigning how support is delivered — shifting from compliance-first systems to human-centered ones.
The question for LA County is not whether these approaches are viable. The evidence already exists. The question is whether the region is willing to build an aid infrastructure that reflects how people actually live, recover, and rebuild.
Recommendations for LA County and Regional Partners
1. Establish a Multi-Year Recovery Navigator Corps
Fund a sustained navigator corps rooted in trusted community-based intermediaries to support renters, displaced families, home-based and informal businesses, elders, caregivers, and undocumented or mixed-status households. Navigators should provide individualized application support, document reconstruction, aid triage, capital navigation, and ongoing follow-up beyond one-time assistance.
2. Require CDFIs to Subcontract With Community-Based Organizations
Aid uptake improves when CDFIs partner with culturally rooted intermediaries embedded in affected corridors. LA County should require subcontracting to community-based organizations to deliver capital navigation, loan-readiness support, financial coaching, and trauma-informed outreach.
3. Simplify Access Through Phone-First and Video-First Applications
Adopt verbal and video-based applications, community verification of loss, flexible identification requirements, and reduced paperwork. These approaches are critical for seniors, displaced families, home-based businesses, caregivers, and entrepreneurs without robust administrative capacity.
4. Provide Individualized PRI and Capital Readiness Support
Pair recovery capital with one-on-one technical assistance focused on cashflow planning, document reconstruction, repayment scenario modeling, and trauma-informed underwriting. This ensures PRIs and loans support stabilization without deepening debt or financial harm.
5. Co-Design Capital Tools With Affected Entrepreneurs
Before deploying PRIs at scale, convene focus groups with Black and Brown micro-entrepreneurs, home-based operators, elders, caregivers, and informal business owners. Co-design ensures capital tools are accessible, culturally aligned, and responsive to post-disaster realities.
Toward a Human-Centered Aid System
In the wake of the wildfires, recovery did not unfold through a single agency or program. It emerged unevenly across a fragmented aid landscape—shaped by community-based organizations, small business intermediaries, local funds, and informal support networks that stepped in where formal systems stalled. These actors helped people navigate loss, reconstruct documentation, translate requirements, and persist through processes that were often confusing, retraumatizing, or inaccessible.
What the assessment makes clear is that failure was not the absence of aid, but the design of its delivery. Systems optimized for documentation, speed, and administrative efficiency consistently excluded those most impacted—renters, elders, caregivers, undocumented households, and micro-entrepreneurs operating outside formal structures. Where recovery efforts succeeded, it was because systems adapted to human reality rather than forcing people to adapt to bureaucracy.
Rebuilding an equitable recovery architecture requires treating trust, proximity, and relational support as essential infrastructure. Navigators, community-based intermediaries, simplified access pathways, and co-designed capital tools are not supplemental services; they are the mechanisms through which aid becomes reachable, humane, and effective.
The question for LA County is no longer whether these approaches work. The evidence is well established. The challenge ahead is whether recovery systems will continue to prioritize administrative convenience—or be redesigned to reflect how people actually live, lose, and rebuild.