‘It was just pure, pure giving’: How The Change Reaction Helps Fire Survivors with Direct Cash Payments
Just days after wildfires rocked Los Angeles County, Greg and Jodi Perlman committed $10 million to give direct cash assistance to fire survivors. By the end of the week, their nonprofit The Change Reaction had assembled a team and was busy handing out $2,500 checks to residents who lost everything.
How was the organization able to move so quickly? Before the fires hit, they were already experts in providing cash assistance, Change Reaction president Wade Trimmer said. Since 2019, they have given direct aid to nearly 40,000 struggling Angelenos – including hospital patients and their families, foster care youth, domestic violence survivors, veterans and seniors.
“We realized we were built for this,” Trimmer said. “We took a quick assessment and said ‘Hey, we know how to get money to people directly. We just need to build a team out who can triage this.’”
The organization stepped in where the government’s slow response to the Eaton and Palisades fires left a gap, he said. While aid from public agencies, insurers, or unemployment is sluggish, giving instant financial assistance to fire survivors can be lifechanging.
The Sherman Oaks-based nonprofit has given out more than $13.3 million in direct cash aid and helped more than 7,000 families impacted by the January fires. The California Community Foundation supported the organization with a grant from its Wildfire Recovery Fund earlier this year. More than a dozen other CCF wildfire fund grantees have also provided direct relief to fire survivors.
“We’ve heard from recipients who are saying: ‘You gave us a lifeline. You gave us hope. You restored our faith in God. You restored our faith in humanity. We feel seen. We feel loved.’ I mean, that’s really what we’re after,” Trimmer said.
When Elizabeth Jackson’s Pilates studio in the Pacific Palisades was destroyed, she lost her livelihood and all of her exercise equipment. But it was more than that – she lost a “personal, sacred space.”
“Everybody said when you walked in there it was a very special energy. It was very calming and soothing,” said Jackson, the owner of White Lotus studio that opened in 2021.
One of Jackson’s clients is an advisor for The Change Reaction and he told her about an event at the Santa Monica YMCA. She invited some of her studio staff who were also out of work. In mid-January, they sat with hundreds of fire survivors in the gymnasium as Greg Perlman spoke about the relief effort.
She and her staff members each left with $1,000 in cash assistance that day. She used it for food and toiletries.
“Knowing that people like (Greg Perlman) exist was amazing. It was something I couldn’t give my staff but somebody else could. It was just beyond touching. I was able to give to my staff because of him. It made me feel proud when I couldn’t do anything,” said Jackson, 52.
Her condo in the Edgewater Towers in the Palisades sustained smoke damage and she has been displaced since the wildfire as gas line issues have prevented residents from returning.
Jackson found a place to rent in Santa Monica in February, but she had no way to earn a living and serve her clients. That’s when The Change Reaction stepped in again.
In April, she received $10,000 in cash assistance for her business, which allowed her to purchase two key pieces of exercise equipment so she could provide private sessions in her apartment.
“It was just pure, pure giving,” Jackson said. “When you have such little energy, you’re in a state of such confusion and trauma. So, just knowing that there’s people and organizations that have that attitude is extremely empowering and uplifting.”
The Change Reaction was founded in 2019 by the Perlmans after the Encino couple decided to create a fund at UCLA Health to provide financial support to the families of hospitalized patients. Greg Perlman is the founder and CEO of GHC Housing Partners, one of the largest owners of affordable housing in the United States.
The nonprofit’s Wildfire Direct Giving Fund launched in January with the $10 million gift from the Perlmans. Fire survivors who received cash benefits are vetted and identified through a network of more than 2,000 trusted social workers, teachers and religious leaders, Trimmer said.
That’s how Katherine Anderson, 80, found out about The Change Reaction. She had been living with her daughter in their west Altadena home that was destroyed in the Eaton Fire.
Anderson’s church, Lifeline Fellowship Christian, was also destroyed. In early February, her pastor told her to come to a Change Reaction event in the gymnasium of Pasadena City College where she might receive financial relief.
No application was required, and she was handed an envelope with a check on the same day. She had no idea how much it was worth. As she walked outside, she opened the envelope. She was floored when she saw a check for $2,500.
“I was just thinking: ‘thank God, thank God. We now have some money to help us to stay afloat until we can just get things organized.’ This was just overwhelming,” Anderson said.
She and her daughter stayed at a slew of hotels in the region for a few months before finding a two-bedroom ADU to rent in the city of San Gabriel. But it came unfurnished. Anderson used the money from Change Reaction to buy new furniture, pots, pans and linens.
“We had to buy a whole house full of things. The money helped so much. We are living comfortably now,” she said.
Anderson has strong roots in west Altadena. In 1972, she purchased a home there for $17,000. In those early years, she saw the neighborhood change dramatically as Black homeowners moved in while white families left the area. She raised her two children in a house where she lived for more than 30 years.
“We had a chance to come in and buy a home and that’s what we did. And all of that area burned,” said Anderson, who is retired from the U.S. Postal Service.
She left the neighborhood for a decade and then moved back to the area to live with her daughter in 2015. They now are waiting on soil testing results before they can submit plans to the county to rebuild their home, she said.
The Change Reaction gave away nearly $5 million during the first phase of its direct assistance plan, supporting social workers, hospital workers, teachers and also residents like Anderson who lost their homes or were displaced.
In the second phase, they distributed $8.6 million focused on stabilizing about 1,000 families with cash assistance for rent payments, groceries, bills, storage containers and other essential needs. They also gave a $1 million donation to A Sense of Home to provide full home furnishing kits for fire survivors. The nonprofit team replaced work trucks, equipment and tools lost in fires so survivors could get back to work. And they provided business recovery loans to 22 Malibu businesses.
Like Jackson and Anderson, fire survivors have expressed deep gratitude for what The Change Reaction has done for them. The monetary help shows survivors that they are being seen and cared for, Trimmer said.
“Money is an instrument, a vehicle to send people those messages,” he said. “We see you, we care about you, we love you, and that’s why we act so urgently, because we know people are literally praying for a miracle. We’re often an answer to that prayer and we take that seriously. The work is sacred. It’s a beautiful thing to take wealth and redistribute it in this way.”
The nonprofit continues to stay hyper-focused on all working class residents in L.A. County, Trimmer said.
“On a daily basis, there are hundreds of thousands of people in the city who have their own personal fires that they’re trying to fight,” he said. “A car breaks down, or I can’t pay my rent this month because my child was sick and I didn’t have enough sick time. All of these little things become really big things when you don’t have the financial resources to cover them.”
— Ben Poston
