For Altadena, the Crisis Comes After the Fire
How Alternative Approaches to Speculative Real Estate Can Help Preserve Altadena
One of the first burned out lots in Altadena sold for $100,000 over asking price only a month after the Eaton Fire ravaged the town. For many Altadenans, this sale signaled a warning of what’s to come for our small town on the edge of a big city.
News coverage detailing the sale of this lot noted that the seller was using the home as an investment property, renting it out to tenants. According to CBS News, “The woman who owned the property said she didn't want to wait years to rebuild because she was renting the property out as an investment.” But what about her renters? With no control over the fate of the land on which they once lived, they will not be able to return to Altadena unless they can secure another rental in the future or can afford to buy something after the community has been rebuilt. And while I don’t know the circumstances of these particular renters, plenty of renters I’ve spoken to in the community face this exact predicament, while also being barred from accessing much of the funding homeowners are eligible to apply for.
In the Los Angeles county rental market, where rent is on the rise, the likelihood of renters being able to afford to return to Altadena post-fire looks slim. As a real estate expert noted in 2024, average rent in LA in 2024 is a whopping $2,638 a month, which reflects an average increase of nearly 5% per year since 2000. And as we are seeing with the illegal rent gouging post-fire, we are in for a devastating rental market for tenants, while landlords and investors stand to profit immensely from this fire.
In response to not only the displacement of renters, but to predatory attempts to swoop up land, members of the Altadena community have begun an Altadena Not 4 Sale movement. A few different groups organically began sharing this message online in the days and weeks after the fire, and a quick Google search for “Altadena Not for Sale” results in plenty of news coverage, as well as Reddit threads of residents concerned for the future of their neighborhood.
The Eaton Fire ignited several hours after the Palisades fire, but there is much less talk of the Palisades falling victim to predatory development. Despite the fact that both of these communities burned on the same day in the same county, the difference in their residents’ racial and socioeconomic backgrounds reveals the root of what will be their different outcomes when it comes to rebuilding. In the Palisades, the median home price is somewhere between $3.2 and $5.2 million, whereas the median home price in Altadena is around $1.1 million. Many more homes in the Palisades were second homes or investment properties compared to Altadena. Meanwhile, Altadena is an historic Black neighborhood where Black residents were able to build wealth through homeownership at an exponentially higher rate than in other parts of the U.S. because of differences in restrictive covenants that shaped Black homeownership elsewhere in the county. These Black homeowners are now at risk of displacement, as their families’ wealth rested almost entirely in their homes, which are now gone.
So what is Altadena supposed to do? How are we supposed to remain a community when burned-to-the-ground rental properties are selling for tens of thousands over asking price, renters are being abandoned, and challenges around insurance and potentially higher property taxes are only some of the issues facing anyone who lost their home and hopes to rebuild? According to Matthew Vu from Beverly Vermont Community Land Trust, "As many as 25% of impacted homeowners are facing a 40-70% gap post insurance settlement (median payout is ~$350k) and will be unable to rebuild."
When interviewed, the real estate agent who sold the aforementioned burned lot in Altadena explained, "Everyone here has three options: they can start trying to rebuild their house, they can wait and do nothing, or they can sell the lot and get on with their lives," Harris said. But there is another way.
Over the last two months, I’ve been talking to and working with residents and community organizers to understand the landscape of support that is emerging to help Altadena residents, particularly for renters and low-income Black families and other families of color to remain in the neighborhood post-fire. While all of us are facing many challenges in this moment—trying to find a reliable builder, fending off predatory contractors, fighting with insurance, filing extensive FEMA paperwork, navigating a sea of information about resources and regulations that change every day—there are a few organizations in particular tackling some of the more foundational questions of home that will hopefully allow residents to return to Altadena.
After her apartment building burned down in January, Katie Clark, a renter and member of the Altadena Library District Board of Trustees, formed the Altadena Tenants Union (ATU). When I spoke to her on the phone in February, we talked about renters having a feeling of total invisibility in this moment. “I think what people don’t realize is how many folks are renters in Altadena… There is no visibility for or attention to people who don’t own their own housing. These are people who are an integral part of the community.” When I asked her if she had any success talking to the county about the plight of renters, she told me that not only did the county seem to have no plans for renters, but that, at that point, they hadn’t even been accepting questions from tenants or saying words like “renter,” “tenant,” or “landlord” at Monday briefings. She started ATU to help support renters in fighting for their rights in this moment, whether they are facing a total loss of their rental unit or navigating remediation from toxic smoke that damaged their rental unit during the fire.
I’ve talked to renters across Altadena whose rentals are still standing, many of whom cannot get their landlords to do anything with regards to remediating their unsafe living conditions. “I think what is going to happen is that most of these landlords are going to decide they can wait out tenants until the tenants give up and leave themselves,” Katie told me.
For Michael, a renter in west Altadena, his landlord hadn’t even reached out to check on the rental property he lived in during the fires. He has tried communicating with her many times about getting his home cleared of the toxic chemicals that entered the home as a result of old, single-pane windows that didn’t hold up to the massive amounts of smoke and wind blowing ash into every open crack in the house. His story, like the story of many others, is about a landlord sending a simple janitorial crew to wipe surfaces of visible ash without taking any precautions to actually remediate harmful substances created by the many burned homes in the area—lead, asbestos, arsenic, and more.
As for legacy Black homeowners and other homeowners of color in Altadena who are facing displacement due to systemic barriers to resources that would help them recover, organizations like My Tribe Rise and Greenline Housing Foundation, are working with those residents in the short, medium, and long term to secure their futures in the neighborhood.
My Tribe Rise has been holding weekly lunches for the community at a local church where residents can access support in the form of donated goods and gift cards as well as connect with government and other organizational representatives. My Tribe Rise has been helping to house people in the short term in hotels and is fighting to get residents into more stable long term housing while they manage what comes next in their lives. Their organization began by doing gang intervention, and they have recognized that unchecked predatory development in post-fire Altadena is a form of violence that threatens to tear that community apart, so they are working around the clock to support residents in remaining in Altadena.
For concerns related to the immediate future, Greenline Housing Foundation is providing “technical support for navigating the claims process with insurance companies, managing mortgage deferment with lenders, and connecting residents with community partners that can assist with immediate needs such as short-term housing, food and basic necessities, transportation, or mental health and wellness services” and is “providing small grants to help with insurance deductibles.” They’re also trying to help families stay in the Altadena/Pasadena area during the rebuilding era, since remaining close to your community is imperative in times of struggle.
Most significantly, they are hoping to “offer $250,000 per family in construction costs support over what insurance and FEMA offer for rebuilding.” Finally, Greenline is effectively going to serve as a land bank, meaning they can hold onto property they purchase while the community determines plans for how that land will be used in the future. They closed on their first acquisition the week of March 17th, and in their press release they write: “This effort is putting ‘Altadena is NOT for Sale’ into action, offering an option to mitigate speculative development and also to ensure that fair prices are paid for the lots purchased.”
Some local Altadenans are working to build out a mechanism that would connect renters who lost their homes and apartment buildings with sellers who are interested in selling to people who are already members of the Altadena community. In this model, renters who are close to being able to buy their own home can potentially connect with an organization like Greenline, which has a list of available lots or with sellers who want to sell conscientiously, to arrange a possible future purchase that would allow renters to return to Altadena as homeowners. This approach is still very much in the works, but there are indeed efforts to consider approaches to buying and selling that are outside of the standard scope of how the real estate market works, and spreading the word about these approaches will help more neighbors to envision a future beyond speculative real estate. The more we understand homes as dwellings of living, as shelter, and as the spaces where people enact the important rituals of their lives, the more I hope we can move away from solely prioritizing profit in the housing market.
While all of these organizations work to connect residents to vital resources that will allow them to remain in community, the Altadena Not For Sale movement is providing yard signs and shirts that serve as a strong visual message to everyone inside and outside the community that Altadena belongs to Altadena. Yes, some people are going to need or want to sell their homes or their burned lots, either because they are rightfully uneasy about returning to a site of so much trauma and tragedy or because of other personal factors that will pull them away from the neighborhood. But just because there are people who need to sell does not mean they have to sell to any random buyer. While I do believe no one should be shamed for their decision to sell their land or their home, I also hope that sellers can understand that they once lived in a vibrant, eclectic, historically complex and significant community. That home is not just a physical structure you pay a landlord or a bank to occupy, but that it is a place connected by geography and history to so many other people who also have needs and hopes, and who deserve the dignity of being able to come back to their neighborhood without the fear of mini-mansions or condo developments or the kinds of businesses that alienate an original population of people while pandering to a new demographic market that is wealthier and likely whiter than the Altadena we knew before the fire.
Being open to alternative options for selling and rebuilding means being open to supporting the neighbors that sellers are leaving behind as they work to recover a version of their life that made them love Altadena to begin with. Whether it’s renters or long-time homeowners without the resources to rebuild alone, we need neighbors and organizers and organizations that will help us imagine new futures for Altadena that don’t center profit or resource extraction or market viability, but instead strive for a shared horizon that honors what was while reaching for something even stronger. Organizers and organizations will continue to keep the community apprised of community-oriented options for sellers, and in the meantime, sellers or neighbors of people trying to sell can refer to this document for support.
