California Got Millions to Train Workers in Disaster Relief, but It’s Leaving Money on Table

In January 2023, and continuing throughout the spring, rain swelled many of California’s reservoirs and creeks, engulfing homes and businesses and killing 21 people. One federal estimate says it cost the state nearly $5 billion.

Now, nearly two years later, it’s Alexis Ramirez’s job to help pick up the pieces, clearing debris from a damaged park. For him, and hundreds of others across the state, the disaster isn’t just about loss — it’s also an opportunity for temporary work. But these cleanup jobs are precarious and difficult, often requiring physical, back-breaking labor in remote areas under extreme conditions. Some government agencies struggle to manage these workers because of administrative hurdles, shifts in the weather that complicate disaster relief, and delays in the grant awards that make this cleanup possible, according to a CalMatters analysis of eight federal grants and interviews with agencies across the state.

Ramirez is part of one federal program, known as the National Dislocated Worker Grants, that has pumped over $210 million into California since 2015 to provide temporary, disaster-relief jobs to lower-income and unemployed workers. The money came from 12 grants, each one in response to drought, floods, wildfires, or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of these disaster-relief grants, the state failed to use about 20% of the money that was available, according to a CalMatters analysis of public records. That’s in part because of “bureaucratic hoops,” such as delays in receiving grant money, said Michael Cross, executive director of the Northern Rural Training and Employment Consortium. He said his 11-county program in Northern California has sometimes had to delay or “stop work” on relief projects related to the wildfires and floods because the money was slow to arrive.

Around the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramirez said he got sick and was unable to find steady work that could  support himself and his 4-year-old daughter. “I was really in need of a job.” Now, he said he’s making about $21 an hour, almost twice what he made picking blueberries and grapes before the pandemic. But his current job, which began in September, ends in the next few weeks, and he said he has yet to find other work.

Temporary work provides a new start 

California’s Central Valley saw some of the worst flooding during the 2023 winter storms, and small agricultural towns were hard hit. In Tulare County, a local river overflowed its banks in March 2023, washing over homes, roads, and parks near the town of Porterville, population 62,000.

Two months later the county received money to hire temporary relief workers, but it was too early, said Priscilla Gonzales-Gray, a career services coordinator with the Tulare County Workforce Investment Board. The initial proposal was to clear debris from Porterville’s waterways, but by the time the money had arrived, winter snowmelt had filled the sloughs with fast-running, deep water. “It was not a safe working environment for employees,” said Gonzales-Gray.

The county decided to send workers to a Porterville park instead, which had flooded around the same time as the waterway, leaving a playground completely submerged.

It was September 2023 before the waters had receded enough to allow workers to begin clearing out the park. Since work began, Gonzales-Gray said the county has hired 23 people, including Ramirez, all for temporary jobs.

Ramirez said he arrives at the park at 6 a.m. and works until 2:30 p.m., four days a week, using hand-tools like shovels and rakes to gather broken branches, tree trunks, and rocks. “It’s not a ton of hours,” he said in Spanish, “but it’s helping me start over.”

The program’s insurance doesn’t allow workers like Ramirez to use power tools, said Gonzales-Gray, so the county puts workers on a team with the parks department, which is authorized to to use wood-chippers and chainsaws. “That does make the work go a little slower,” she said. “However, it does provide longer opportunities for these temporary employments.”

The park is scheduled to open in January, and the county is preparing to hire a new round of temporary workers to repair another park. By the time both parks are complete and open to the public, Gonzales-Gray said the county will have hired about 60 workers from a roughly $1.5 million grant.

Why Merced left money on the table

Like Porterville, the town of Planada in Merced County revolves around agriculture and most residents are Latino. Many are undocumented.

In January 2023, floods tore through the town, and Anastacio Rosales, who has lived in Planada for 60 years, was one of many residents whose homes were destroyed. “I have lost all of my most valuable possessions, including family photos and precious keepsakes from my parents,” he wrote in an Op-Ed to CalMatters a few months after the storm. “Sadly, the same can be said for many of my neighbors.”

One study by the University of California, Merced found that more than 80% of Planada’s roughly 4,000 residents suffered financial losses as a result of the storms, such as missed work or property damage.

Erick Serrato, Merced County’s director of workforce investment, said the county won’t claim most of the federal money available for temporary disaster-relief jobs. Initially, the county workforce agency planned to hire workers to assist in the town’s reconstruction, such as repairing its community center. But once money arrived in Merced County in May 2023 — five months after the initial flooding — waters had receded and others had already repaired the parks that temporary workers were supposed to fix, Serrato said. “When you have to wait five months to receive the support you need right in the aftermath, it makes it difficult to put those resources to work.”

The grant money also comes with restrictions, Serrato said. Temporary workers can’t repair private property, such as homes or businesses; they can only work on public lands, such as parks or waterways. The repairs can only return public lands to their prior conditions — workers can’t make any improvements that weren’t there before the flood.

Instead of repairing parks or waterways, which Serrato said were in good condition by May, the workforce board repurposed some of the federal grant money to hire workers to perform other services, such as helping homeowners navigate the state’s reimbursement process. This spring, for instance, the state gave the town of Planada $20 million to support recovery, including reimbursements for homeowners and businesses. That money remains largely unspent due to the county’s planning process and state rules requiring residents to verify their damages.

Rosales acknowledged that the community center is functional again but in a recent interview, he said that other public lands still need repairs. “Around the creeks and canals, they haven’t cleaned them up like they’re supposed to.”

He said debris is gathering in the storm drains and waterways once again, and if another storm comes, they could flood.

Moving money around

Following floods in 2017 and dangerous, deadly wildfires in 2018, California’s workforce agencies spent over $80 million in federal funds to hire temporary workers to clean debris. In both cases, the state used more than 90% of the money it was allocated. But after wildfires in 2020 and 2021, the state left around $20 million — about 55% — in federal funds unclaimed.

If California doesn’t use all of the money, then the federal government reallocates it to other places that need it, said Monica Vereen, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Labor, which provides these disaster relief grants to states. She said it’s common for states not to claim all of the money, but that every dollar ultimately gets used.

Greg Lawson, a spokesperson for California’s Employment Development Department, said there are various reasons why federal money goes unclaimed. “The cleanup may not take as much time as initially estimated, the impact on jobs in the area may not end up as big, or people may be able to return to their jobs more quickly,” he said.

“These funds weren’t as critical to us as maybe other parts of the state,” Serrato said about the workforce money that Merced County never claimed.

Of the federal workforce grant, the county ultimately spent $165,000 — about 16%. Because the state awards the dollars in installments, Merced never had to return any money; it just never asked for the remaining cash.

CalMatters reporter Levi Sumagaysay contributed to this story. Financial support for this story was provided by the Smidt Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation.