WHEN CECILIA ESTOLANO, going through a lengthy divorce, needed to find a place to live with her two children, Altadena embraced her. The house she rented had a grassy yard, views of the San Gabriel Mountains, and welcoming neighbors. She didn’t lock her doors. The owners of her home, a Black couple who had lived in Altadena for three decades, ran a small business out of the garage, and the two families celebrated Thanksgiving together under a gazebo out back. “It was such a safe, diverse, fun, kooky, cool community,” Estolano says. “The people, the physical space, the nature—I landed in this incredible refuge to heal.”
But after her home was heavily damaged by the Eaton fire in January, Estolano fears that she’ll never be able to return. Her landlords, who lost their own home as well, are still in limbo, negotiating with their insurance company to get the funds to rebuild what was supposed to be their nest egg. Unlike some Altadenans who have moved a dozen times or more, Estolano has found a stable living situation—she’s currently staying in Los Feliz. But she’s now one of too many displaced Altadena tenants who have no pathway back to the mixed-income neighborhood, which was celebrated for its racial diversity. “That community did exist, in this beautiful space,” she says. “But if you’re a renter, that is no longer a community you can go back to, ever.”
On Estolano’s block, most of the houses burned to the ground, the lots cleared of debris and scraped into various swatches of tan. One property quickly sold to a corporation that had purchased additional lots nearby. Some homeowners will certainly rebuild, but what about the ones who can’t? And who, Estolano wondered, will carve out space for everything else that was destroyed: the commercial district one street over, the small businesses in garages, the rental units for families?
“We do know how to do this. That’s the frustration,” says Estolano, an urban planner by trade. “We had this incredibly powerful mechanism that could respond to anything from civil unrest to an earthquake.” Traditionally, she says, post-disaster rebuilding was tackled by one of California’s community redevelopment agencies, which at one point numbered four hundred across the state. Until they fell victim to then-Governor Jerry Brown’s budget cuts, the redevelopment agencies provided a centralized authority for envisioning and funding more affordable, equitable communities in the wake of emergencies—and the same type of tool is needed now to help piece together her former neighborhood.
Estolano would know. Before LA’s community redevelopment agency was dissolved in 2012, she was the CEO.
How did you get that hat?
As the Palisades and Eaton fires were still burning in January, a dizzying lineup of mostly male, mostly obscenely rich public figures made sweeping proclamations to rebuild that didn’t deliver. Governor Gavin Newsom stood in a smoldering Altadena and described an “LA 2.0” vision that never materialized. Rick Caruso, the real estate developer who spent $100 million in losing the 2022 mayoral election, grandstanded at his Palisades property—unscathed thanks to private firefighters—and made promises like rebuilding a local park, which would mostly benefit the customers who lived adjacent to his mall.
But one proposal held genuine promise: In February, LA County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath announced the Blue Ribbon Commission on Climate Action and Fire-Safe Recovery, tapping in twenty civic and environmental leaders, including Estolano, to make recommendations for LA policymakers. Unlike the vibes-based, no-follow-through plans of other recovery efforts, all the recommendations of the commission would be dutifully underpinned by the research of UCLA academics. And perhaps most importantly, the commission pledged to deliver its report within six months of the fires because the window to take action was swiftly closing.
IN FACT, THE COMMISSION was ahead of schedule. On a gloomy June morning, as the National Guard patrolled a federal detention center a few blocks away, a press conference was held at Gensler’s downtown LA office to announce the report’s findings. In her opening remarks, Horvath recounted the devastation: eighteen thousand structures destroyed, $250 billion in economic losses, a hundred thousand residents displaced, and thirty lives lost (a number that would be revised to thirty-one in July). Considering the scale of the task, it was clear why, of the fifty-four recommendations put forth by the commission, one key action was deemed most urgent: immediately forming an independent, resilient rebuilding authority, with separate, community-advised divisions for the Palisades and the Eaton fires. The body would be modeled after California’s community redevelopment agencies (which Estolano, being familiar with their frameworks, stepped up to the podium to plug), and like these precursors, it would need to be created at the state level. State Senator Ben Allen, who represents the Palisades, was apparently already at work introducing the legislation to create the authority—by the end of the summer, it was hoped.
Altadena ruin. Min Heo
The recommendations landed at the perfect moment. The rebuilding process had proved agonizingly slow, even though city and county departments streamlined approvals for like-for-like plans. But the scale of the disaster also called for thinking beyond like-for-like. What the commission was promising was an approach that was both more efficient and more thoughtful: a road map to guide the recovery of these devastated communities cooperatively. Where tenants would be offered first right-of-return at rebuilt properties. Where single-family-home owners might reimagine their own fire safety beyond an individualistic, lot-by-lot pursuit and as part of a collective social good. Where the ravages of disaster capitalism could be held at bay through democratic governance. But none of it was going to happen without instituting a single designated authority to oversee—and, more importantly, finance—the rebuilding process.
One of the researchers pressed with making an evidence-based case for the Resilient Rebuilding Authority was Julia Stein, deputy director for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at UCLA’s School of Law. Stein refers to the rebuilding authority as a “one-stop shop to centralize recovery efforts,” but just as importantly, it would also centralize accountability. Altadena, for example, is an unincorporated community in LA County (a county more populous than forty states) represented by LA County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who declared herself the “de facto mayor” of forty thousand Altadenans even though she simultaneously represents two million constituents. The fragmentation of the region led to chaos during the fires—social media commenters often accused LA Mayor Karen Bass of not taking action in Altadena even though her jurisdiction ends five miles away—and understandably fomented distrust. The authority would help to show that the different districts are united, says Stein. “On a broader scale, what we need is an example of local government working for people.”
Of the fifty-four recommendations put forth by the commission, one key action was deemedmost urgent: immediately forming an independent, resilient rebuilding authority, with separate, community-advised divisions for the Palisades and the Eaton fires.
One important thing a Resilient Rebuilding Authority could do is allow the state to buy out the properties of people who either can’t rebuild or don’t want to do it themselves. This could allow for a form of managed retreat, turning high-risk properties into parks or greenbelts, creating the benefits of firebreaks while reducing the strain on the state’s public insurance plan. The state could also acquire properties and give them back to the community. “This is the real appeal of the authority model,” says Stein, “a voluntary transfer of properties to one entity, like a contractor, who can then offer the property back with right-of-return to the folks who were there before.” Tariffs and ICE raids have made construction costs unpredictably high; the authority could alleviate those concerns somewhat by leveraging purchasing power at scale, buying building materials directly from manufacturers, and streamlining the hiring of workers. And with the intervention of an authority, an entire block could be raised to the specifications of the most current fire codes, presenting a unified front against the next disaster. This is the approach Santa Rosa took after the Tubbs fire decimated over three thousand homes in a similar ember-driven conflagration in 2017. In one neighborhood, Coffey Park, 80 percent of the homes were rebuilt within three years. That’s an astonishing figure when compared with the aftermath of LA’s Woolsey fire, which destroyed sixteen hundred structures in 2018. Over six years later, fewer than half of those homes have been rebuilt.
As of late July, only eight hundred building permits had been approved across both the Palisades and Eaton burn zones—and Stein says that rate won’t significantly change without a Resilient Rebuilding Authority in place. This would also be the only real chance for Altadena’s mixed-income community to reemerge from the ashes. Otherwise, she says, rebuilding will be limited to one very exclusive group: “The people who can afford to move forward.”
The issue is especially urgent because even before the fires, Altadena was primed for speculative development. Starting in the 1950s and increasing in the 1960s, the area became home to Angelenos who were redlined out of other locales in the county, particularly the city of Pasadena, to the south. By 1980, Altadena’s population was over 40 percent Black, with the neighborhoods west of Lake Avenue constituting one of the largest communities of Black homeowners in the entire county. Over the past ten years, those trends were already heading in the opposite direction: From 2015 to 2023, the Black and Latino populations in western Altadena declined by 20 percent. Postfire redevelopment could help long-term residents regain their footing—or hasten their exit.
AS THE FLAMES BORE DOWN the canyon toward her own home in Pasadena, Rémy De La Peza began to fear precisely this. A community lawyer, De La Peza had founded Morena Strategies in 2018 to combat the displacement she was witnessing in her neighborhood. As the lead author on Confronting Disaster: Curbing Corporate Speculation in Post-Fire Altadena, De La Peza pored over the community’s sales transactions from the months after the fires. She and her coauthors found that of the ninety-four lots that were sold from February 11 to April 30, forty-five were purchased by corporate landlords, most of which were buying multiple lots in the burn zone at a time. (The previous year, during the same time frame, there were ninety-five sales—and only four went to corporations.)
“We knew, based on what we do professionally and from our research, that there was an extremely high risk, given the demographics and all of the displacement risk factors in Altadena, that we were likely going to see this bleeding out of land,” De La Peza says. “But then to start doing the data analysis a few months after the fire and review concrete land transactions, it became pretty frightening. It’s a real visceral reaction when it’s your backyard—it’s no longer just theoretical. It was then that I really knew that this community is truly going to change.”
To stop the bleeding, Confronting Disaster recommends an idea that also appears in the Blue Ribbon Commission report—a community acquisition program for people who want to sell. (The document states that “with adequate funding, mission-driven public or nonprofit entities could acquire and temporarily hold Altadena properties until they can be transferred to new responsible, trusted owners to redevelop the sites according to community goals.”) The same aspiration has been advanced by the Greenline Housing Foundation, which was founded in 2020 to offer down payment grants and financing solutions, with the intention of preserving Altadena’s high rate of Black homeownership; pre-fire, eight out of ten Black Altadena residents were homeowners, double the national average. But when the Eaton fire burned a circle around her own house, Greenline president Jasmin Shupper realized that the organization didn’t just need a land bank—it needed to become the land bank. “We have a responsibility to steward this rebuilding process,” says Shupper. So far, she’s been able to acquire two lots, with one more in escrow, but as many as twenty more homeowners want to sell to Greenline. Other residents have come to her with creative solutions to buy, sell, or lease property to keep it in community hands, she says. “That just speaks to the power of place and what’s so special about Altadena.” Shupper, who moved back into her own damaged home this summer, is now securing smoke-remediation loans and insurance-gap grants in the hopes they will help more homeowners stay.
Even before the fires, Altadena was primed for speculative development.
Shupper and De La Peza are looking for funding. They have their eyes on a land bank program piloted by LA County that was started before the fires with an intention to spur affordable housing development. But what they’re talking about needs to be deployed at scale. And it needs to anticipate the next catastrophe. “We need all of this on the front end in place, ready to be triggered by any natural disaster or state of emergency,” says De La Peza, who provided feedback on the Blue Ribbon Commission’s initial recommendations as a community stakeholder. “Because it’s going to happen again.”
FOR ALTADENANS WHO WANT TO rebuild fast, the design choices are especially appealing: county-approved blueprints for catalogue homes in traditional Craftsman styles, cute modernist modular homes, and a slew of prefab ADUs. But most homeowners aren’t there yet, says Alejandra Guerrero, executive director of Office of: Office, an architecture and urban policy nonprofit that launched a program in January to offer pro bono services to vulnerable families trying to navigate their options. Guerrero’s team is currently helping forty-two households, but few have made it to the rebuilding phase. “We have a very ‘reality check’ first meeting where we go through everyone’s financials and building parameters,” she says. “People are waiting for some money bag to see if they can rebuild before thinking about alternatives.” Although one new amenity seems to be universally embraced as its own type of insurance as it can used as temporary dwelling if the permanent structure never materializes: “Almost everyone wants an ADU,” she says, “and is willing to go into debt for it.”
With the intervention of an authority, an entire block could be raised to the specifications of the most current fire codes, presenting a unified front against the next disaster.
“Our house was vaporized,” says Rasheed Ali, one of Office of: Office’s Altadena clients, who was celebrating his forty-third wedding anniversary in the Bahamas with wife Gayle Nicholls when they saw their fire-engulfed neighborhood on the news. The couple had lived in Altadena for thirty-two years, fifteen in their current home, which they owned, and all the residences they had ever lived in the community had burned to the ground. “You feel like an orphan,” says Ali. “You’re a refugee in your own town.” Being connected with Office of: Office for the rebuilding process meant becoming immersed in the bigger structural reforms, says Nicholls. “You can’t do this without recognizing that policy changes need to be busted, interrupted, or destroyed so we can build back in Altadena. Because it’s not going to work otherwise.”
Much of Office of: Office’s work requires sifting through the permitting processes, funding mechanisms, and property tax rules of various jurisdictions to find out answers about what can be rebuilt. For example, Guerrero says, if a client chooses the Craftsman kit house, they might not be grandfathered into their current property tax rates. What would really help, she says, is one unified and concerted rebuilding effort, not necessarily aspirational renderings. “We have heard a lot of wishful thinking from our peers and not a lot of working on something substantial for what is needed,” says Guerrero. “I’m also wary of putting all of our hopes for a better city on people that are going through this and their good intentions in lieu of actual policy that allows it. There’s a leadership vacuum, and it’s noticeable.”
In the meantime, Altadena homeowners are still getting calls to sell their lots. The emergency ban on unsolicited offers in disaster areas expired on July 1. But nine months after the fires, a new problem is emerging: Even if Altadena homeowners decide they want to sell, the value of their properties, which was stable for many months right after the fires, is now plummeting due to a surplus of inventory of now-vacant lots and uncertainty about the feasibility of rebuilding.
As the Palisades and Eaton fires were still burning in January, a dizzying lineup of mostly male, mostly obscenely rich public figures made sweeping proclamations to rebuild that didn’t deliver.
The problem with a leadership vacuum is that you never know who’s going to fill it. It was erstwhile The Hills cast member Spencer Pratt who rose to the occasion. In a series of TikToks posted on July 15, Pratt, a Palisades resident who lost the house he shared with wife and fellow Hills costar Heidi Montag, called on Horvath to kill the Resilient Rebuilding Authority, which he described as a “group project of academics seeking to use the Palisades as an experiment.” Pratt had ChatGPT “analyze” the rebuilding authority language and concluded that Gavin Newsom was going to seize the land on which his house formerly stood. (“[P]lease pre order my book in bio so they can’t buy my lot for cheap!” reads one of his posts.) Soon Instagram influencers began posting reels about a “land grab,” and thirsty realtors cranked out content about a sinister scheme to “purchase fire-damaged lots and build affordable housing.” There are now “Spencer for Governor” T-shirts for sale with the tagline “Won’t let your town burn down!”
But the bigger problem was that many of the politicians who should have supported the rebuilding authority damned it with faint praise. Ben Allen, the state senator for the Palisades, tacked the authority language onto an existing bill, SB 549, that was about building infill housing. LA City Councilmember Traci Park then directed her Palisades constituents to voice their opposition to the bill, claiming it would cede local control of the rebuilding process. Bass also refused to support the bill, saying it needed more community input. Even Horvath, who had championed the recommendation via the Blue Ribbon Commission, did not personally speak at the committee hearing when the bill was being debated to advance to the state assembly floor.
Until they fell victim to then-Governor Jerry Brown’s budget cuts, the redevelopment agencies provided a centralized authority for envisioning and funding more affordable, equitable communities in the wake of emergencies—and the same type of tool is needed now to help piece together Estolano’s former neighborhood.
SB 549 didn’t get killed, but it was shelved until the next legislative session. Meaning the conversation about a Resilient Rebuilding Authority for either Pacific Palisades or Altadena—an emergency action deemed critical to recovery—won’t be taken up again until January, one year after the fires.
Estolano says her Altadena neighbors remain tenacious and connected, but there’s a general feeling among them that the rest of LA has moved on. “Most of these people are holding down regular jobs, fighting with insurance, and trying to get their kids back to school,” she says. “Now they’re getting less and less attention because folks are focused on unpredictable terror-inducing actions of the federal government.” She’s still holding out hope for an Altadena where that mixed-income community can return, but that commitment has to come from the top. Business as usual isn’t going to work here, she says. “Can we please get to a new structure that will enable us to work more collectively? Because that’s what government can do.”