Helping Navigate the Legal Challenges of Losing Your Home in a Wildfire: Legal Aid of Sonoma County
The most substantive feature on Kendall's work published to date. The Community Foundation Sonoma County profiled Kendall extensively — including leadership appointments that establish her as a statewide figure in disaster law — alongside deep quotes on insurance dynamics, underinsurance vulnerability, renter displacement, and the policy work required to effect lasting change. The article also documents the program's expansion beyond North Bay to consult with communities across California and other states.
"The thing that we know for sure is that so many people are underinsured, if they're insured at all. We look at it more holistically while prioritizing the vulnerable. People were severely underinsured. I think that that creates an extreme vulnerability, which is not an issue that the private bar takes on, generally speaking."
— Kendall Jarvis, Esq."Consistently, adjusters that are generally, keep in mind, not from this area, they're from another state, they'd say 'Okay. This is the house you have, you could rebuild for 200 grand or 250 grand.' You can't even really buy a manufactured home for that value."
— Kendall Jarvis, Esq., on insurance adjuster undervaluation"We have helped other communities understand how to respond to this kind of need. We've traveled to the Dixie Fire. We traveled to the Butte Fires. I talked to people in Oregon all the time, New Mexico, Colorado, Los Angeles, Southern California in general. There are so many people out there where I was on day one. There's such an importance to institutionalizing that knowledge, sharing that knowledge, and saying: we're going to bring this together on a united front."
— Kendall Jarvis, Esq., on national knowledge-sharingKey Themes & Details
- Eligibility based on expendable income — not a hard income cutoff — making program accessible to middle-income survivors too
- Insurance companies typically don't release 100% of benefits at once; Kendall's team did extensive administrative law work to access full coverage
- Three-generation uninsured families on rural parcels with unclear title — required creative solutions and Community Foundation gap financing
- Policy emphasis: renters rehoused at 2–3x previous rent are not "permanently rehoused" — Kendall advocated this distinction with other service providers
- Program shifted to policy-oriented focus due to funding changes — Kendall noted the work is "far from over"
- At time of article: nearly half of the 450 individual clients came from the Tubbs Fire alone