Every year at the Oscars, attendees leave with gift bags so elaborate they have to be reported as income to the IRS. Luxury skincare, personal training sessions, designer apples that never brown, and extravagant trips are standard issue. But in 2025, Academy Award guests also received a grimmer gift: a yearlong subscription to a white-glove disaster recovery service called Bright Harbor, which has grown popular in the wake of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles last January.
If your house is destroyed in a fire or flood, the basic logistics of righting your upturned life understandably consume your full attention, even if you’re a movie star. Under this level of stress, navigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s byzantine requirements for recovery assistance quickly becomes “a full-time job,” according to Bright Harbor’s chief growth officer, Emily Bush. “We help you understand what your options are and what’s the cost associated with each option that you take.”
Do you stay and rebuild? Does it make more sense to just move? Bright Harbor helps clients freeze their mortgage payments, [apply for FEMA aid](https://grist.org/extreme-weather/how-disaster-relief-and-response-work/), navigate seemingly endless paperwork, and secure low-interest small business loans. Bush acknowledged that the company’s luxury services, which can significantly ease the financial burden of disasters, do not come at a cost that all victims can afford to front. (Services started at $300 per month for individuals when the company launched in 2024, but Bright Harbor now sells directly to companies — who purchase coverage for their employees.)
“To be clear,” she said, “I think the government should pay for this.”
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Every year at the Oscars, attendees leave with gift bags so elaborate they have to be reported as income to the IRS. Luxury skincare, personal training sessions, designer apples that never brown, and extravagant trips are standard issue. But in 2025, Academy Award guests also received a grimmer gift: a yearlong subscription to a white-glove disaster recovery service called Bright Harbor, which has grown popular in the wake of the wildfires that devastated Los Angeles last January.
If your house is destroyed in a fire or flood, the basic logistics of righting your upturned life understandably consume your full attention, even if you’re a movie star. Under this level of stress, navigating the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s byzantine requirements for recovery assistance quickly becomes “a full-time job,” according to Bright Harbor’s chief growth officer, Emily Bush. “We help you understand what your options are and what’s the cost associated with each option that you take.”
Do you stay and rebuild? Does it make more sense to just move? Bright Harbor helps clients freeze their mortgage payments, [apply for FEMA aid](https://grist.org/extreme-weather/how-disaster-relief-and-response-work/), navigate seemingly endless paperwork, and secure low-interest small business loans. Bush acknowledged that the company’s luxury services, which can significantly ease the financial burden of disasters, do not come at a cost that all victims can afford to front. (Services started at $300 per month for individuals when the company launched in 2024, but Bright Harbor now sells directly to companies — who purchase coverage for their employees.)
“To be clear,” she said, “I think the government should pay for this.”
It technically does. FEMA money is funneled to disaster relief nonprofits that then hire case managers to guide victims through the recovery process. But even before President Donald Trump took office with an eye toward diminishing the agency, recovery funds couldn’t keep up with victims’ needs. Now, as the administration [slashes](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/climate/fema-disaster-recovery-trump.html) FEMA funding, withholds aid, and puts more of the onus of recovery onto individual states, victim-assistance organizations feel that they’ve been left totally unprepared, with [too few case managers to go around](https://wvmetronews.com/2025/09/09/disaster-relief-organizations-express-concern-about-femas-future-shrinking-number-of-case-managers/). All of these issues are likely to grow more severe in the coming year, as a review board appointed to reform the agency [prepares to make its recommendations](https://grist.org/politics/trump-fema-david-richardson-karen-evans/).
[https://www.vox.com/climate/473543/fema-disaster-recovery-capitialism-wealthy-bright-harbor](https://www.vox.com/climate/473543/fema-disaster-recovery-capitialism-wealthy-bright-harbor)