Mutual Aid Networks That Emerged in Housing Crisis Are Mobilizing Amid LA Fires

I’ve always said that Los Angeles is a mirror: Whatever you’re seeking, you’ll find it reflected back to you. Sure, the city has its ugly parts — celebrity worship and diet fads and smog that blots out the sky — but Los Angeles’ true core is multitudinous. Home to about 13 million people, the sprawling metropolis brims with countless communities and enclaves, neighborhoods and histories. If the ugly is all you see, then you’re not looking hard enough.

Since the Palisades and Eaton fires roared to life last week, Los Angeles residents have shown how much strength and solidarity lies in their communities. In the midst of mass devastation and government neglect, Angelenos have rapidly mobilized to help each other. Dozens of mutual aid networks, already in place before the wildfires, sprung into action; organizations were flooded with supplies, money and volunteers. Now, for many relief centers, the next big hurdle is figuring out what to do with all the donations — how to sort them, store them and continue the work long after the immediate emergency has passed.

Mutual aid organizing of this depth isn’t new in Los Angeles; many groups came together in the years following another mass catastrophe, the COVID-19 pandemic, or were formed to help Los Angeles’ unhoused population amid the city’s housing crisis. I spoke with organizers from five different mutual aid groups about the work they were doing before the fires, what the picture currently looks like on the ground and advice for how people everywhere can get involved in their own communities.

“L.A. isn’t just celebrities. There are millions of working-class people here, and as a part of that working class, we’ve had to build these mutual aid networks to meet the needs of our unhoused neighbors and our housed neighbors,” Andreina Kniss, an organizer with Ktown for All, told Truthout. “One of the most beautiful things to come out of COVID and the housing crisis is folks deciding, well, if the government isn’t going to meet the needs of the people, we will.”

Ktown for All formed about six years ago when the founders met at a counterprotest in Koreatown. Homeowners had organized a rally against the construction of a homeless shelter in the neighborhood; Kniss told me Ktown for All’s founders were the only pro-shelter demonstrators in attendance. They joined forces and began distributing whatever food or supplies they could find in their own cabinets. Now the volunteer-run group consists of over 300 volunteers who bring tents, sleeping bags, and other aid to about 400 unhoused people across Koreatown.

In the face of the latest emergency, Ktown for All organizers have been even more active, sharing wildfire resources to their large social media following and increasing their number of supplies drops during the week, thanks to a huge rush of donations. In addition to Koreatown’s usual unhoused residents, many people from Altadena and Pasadena evacuated to the neighborhood during the Eaton Fire, Kniss said, so Ktown for All is strategizing on how to support those folks in the long run.

Personal check-ins are key to doing this work; when Ktown for All volunteers bring aid to encampments, they ask unhoused people about their pressing needs. Some people with asthma, for instance, have been unable to leave their tents due to wildfire smoke — even outside of evacuation zones, the city’s air quality has been exceptionally poor — and so they’ve requested drop-offs of food and water.

“Always check in with folks — they’re the best people to tell you what they need and want,” said Sofia Guadron, an organizer with Water Drop LA, a grassroots group that has been distributing bottled water to unhoused communities in Skid Row every week for the last 235 weeks. Guadron said that connecting with other mutual aid groups since the wildfires has enabled organizers to pool their surplus donations, and as a result, Water Drop has been able to pass out even more resources on Skid Row, including diapers, masks and dog food.

“In the midst of everything being horrible and feeling like life itself is falling apart, it’s been inspiring to also see people come together and try to look out for each other,” said Guadron. “I’m hoping that people will start to engage more critically and meaningfully with what it means to be a good neighbor, with what it means to be there for each other, and hopefully that’s one positive outcome of this horrible situation.”

In fact, Kniss noted that a Signal group for mutual aid formed the same day the fires started. It now has 1,000 members — the most a Signal group chat can hold — and is bustling with requests for aid and offers to help.

“There’s been a really healthy growth of mutual aid orgs all over the city in the last two to three years, because there’s no denying there’s a crisis,” said Kniss. “There’s been a lot of criminalization and demonization, but there’s also been a lot of blossoming of people who care. Because of that, when these emergencies occur, we already know each other. We’re already friends.”

Founded in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mutual Aid LA Network (MALAN) is an information hub and connector for some of these efforts. MALAN already had a mutual aid directory, but within hours of the wildfires starting, the group posted an Instagram graphic asking for community input on fire resources. They received hundreds of responses and began collecting them into a spreadsheet the next morning. It received 100,000 hits that same day.

“For the past week, we’ve had a dedicated crew of hardworking volunteers updating the spreadsheet around the clock, with tips coming in from our friends and family on the ground, our community contacts, social media, and a giant Discord server of other mutual aid-minded folks,” MALAN organizers told Truthout. “The spreadsheet outlines who needs what, where. It’s an up-to-the-minute picture of the rapidly expanding network of distribution hubs, volunteer centers, shelters and folks in need, and coordinates on-the-ground needs with those who have something to give.”

Trans Defense Fund LA, a group formed in 2020 to offer free self-defense classes and safety kits to trans women of color, has also become a source of mutual aid information since the fires.

“I am amplifying fundraisers and encouraging people to give their donation money directly to real people and real mutual aid community organizers,” Nikki Nguyen, Trans Defense Fund LA’s founder, told Truthout. “A lot of displaced people first and foremost need housing resources, since they literally do not have a place to live anymore.… This is why I think it’s super important to listen to their direct needs as well as organizers’ needs. There is a lot of overconsumption happening and a huge influx of supplies at every drop-off site. All of these items should also be going to the unhoused community, who have needed resources long before the fires started.”

Most of the organizers I heard from drew a connection between the current fires and the ongoing housing crisis in Los Angeles. “I think people often view being unhoused as a determinant of how well or unwell people are, or as some form of morality,” said Guadron of Water Drop LA. “One thing I wish people had more sympathy for is that anybody can become unhoused, and it can happen overnight.”

Kniss of KTown for All said that mutual aid groups are working together with the LA Tenants Union to demand a rent freeze as landlords attempt to capitalize off the catastrophe by illegally gouging prices.

“We’re asking for a moratorium on evictions to stop the bleeding from folks who are going to be displaced. Policy-wise, we’re putting pressure on our elected officials to act in response to this emergency to prevent more displacement,” said Kniss. “We’re already seeing folks living in their cars in Koreatown in record numbers, and that number is only going to go up if landlords are allowed to increase the rent or price gouge with no enforcement from our electeds.”

Organizers with Mask Bloc LA, a mutual aid group that formed two years ago to distribute free masks in Los Angeles, also uplifted the call for a rent freeze and eviction moratorium, and they noted how their work has often had to fill in gaps where the government has failed. Faced with toxic wildfire smoke and the ongoing threat of COVID-19 and other infectious diseases, Mask Bloc has stepped up their efforts distributing KN95 and N95 masks to those who need them.

“We were lulled into a false sense of security by officials who were supposed to care for us,” said organizer Abby Mahler. “Being so abandoned right now in such a visible way, not only the smoke but the burn scar that is going to touch our city for decades, I do think this is a chance to reframe the last years we just lived through.”

Organizer Navneet Kaur noted that there are mask blocs all over the country and new ones popping up all the time. “In the face of so much state abandonment and neglect, it really is everyday people who are taking care of each other,” Kaur said.

While getting involved in mutual aid work can be intimidating, organizers from every group emphasized that anybody and everybody has the ability to get involved in helping their communities. “If you can make a sandwich, you can start a mutual aid network,” said Kniss, who added that most people involved with Ktown for All are not professional social workers. “Anything you can do for folks that you weren’t doing before is a win.”

Nguyen of Trans Defense Fund LA echoed this sentiment. “I’m a regular degular woman with a full-time job and many side hustles and no formal background in community work,” she said. “The idea of giving back is really abstract to a lot of people — I blame capitalism — but it really shouldn’t be. If you have a skill or an idea, just do it and apply that in the context of helping your community.”

Mask Bloc’s Kaur also said we should lean in to the expertise, knowledge and skills that we all already have. “We know that there’s so many crises on the horizon, so it really is just about creating this infrastructure, these relationships and little nodes of connection before a crisis actually happens, and then sustaining it long term,” Kaur said.

That long-term sustainability will be crucial in an era of economic precarity and mounting climate and public health crises. As MALAN put it, “Mutual aid isn’t just for emergencies.”

“You’re probably already doing mutual aid in some capacity. Getting a sick friend groceries, handing water out on hot days or stocking masks at your local bus stop are all mutual aid in action,” MALAN organizers wrote. “Every day, you can fill in the gaps left by the failure of our institutions to meet our needs, and that community care will come back to you when you need it most.”