It has been one year – it was the evening of Jan. 7, 2025, when the Eaton Fire in Altadena was ignited, quickly growing in size and becoming one of the deadliest wildfires in California’s history. It burned simultaneously with the Pacific Palisades Fires, and the two raging infernos burned thousands of acres for more than three weeks.
By the time it was finally extinguished 24 days later, the Altadena fire alone would take the lives of 19 people, destroy over 9,000 buildings and burn more than 14,000 acres.
Even though some rebuilding efforts are currently underway a year later, progress for many homeowners and small business owners is painfully slow and uneven, as pointed out by community leaders in a recent webinar.
Hosted on Tuesday, Jan. 6, by the University of California, Los Angeles Latino Policy and Politics Institute, the webinar – called “The Altadena Recovery: Who Gets to Come Back?” – featured panelists who discussed the barriers many residents have faced when it comes to rebuilding and what more could be done.
The panelists were Lori Gay, president and CEO of Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS) of LA County; Katie Clark, co-founder of the Altadena Tenants Union; Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network; and Diana Gonzalez, the owner of a small business called Cactus Foods.
When asked what recovery means to them and the community, the consensus was that people need stabilization, both in terms of housing and economic circumstances, before they can even begin to think about rebuilding. And a big part of having stability goes hand-in-hand with having money.
Gonzalez launched her business in 2023, selling gluten-free cactus chips. However, she didn’t have her own brick-and-mortar store. Rather, she sold her products at organic and vegan stores or online, keeping all of her stock and business items at home. So when her house went up in flames, so did her business.
Although she suffered a great financial blow, Gonzalez had to prioritize her family’s living situation, especially for her two daughters. She was fortunate to have other family members to fall back on and was able to restart her business with a $10,000 grant from The LA Wildfire Relief Program. However, she’s finding that support is drying up.
“There were a lot of grants [that are] no longer available,” Gonzalez said. “We were competing in a housing market, trying to find where to live, and so many people couldn’t take advantage of free opportunities, like free mattresses, when they didn’t have a place to live. Where were they going to put it?
“My conversations with a lot of my neighbors and fellow fire victims were like, we couldn’t accept the help that was available when it was available,” she continued, “and now that we’re coming up for air, there’s not a lot out there.”
Chen said that there are mainly two groups of people who are able to rebuild: those who had wealth before the fire and people who were fortunate enough to have their insurance company pay out fully and timely. She belongs to the latter category and is already back in her home, but recognizes that this isn’t the reality for so many others.
“We’re seeing in many cases that trauma is compounding everything right now,” Chen said. “We’re finding that seven out of 10 Eaton and [Pacific] Palisades fire survivors are still displaced, and most who have insurance are running out of insurance housing coverage in the coming months.”
The question of recovery is even more challenging for tenants. Clark estimates that at least 25% of people who lived in Altadena a year ago were renters, many of whom have lived in the area for decades. However, she said that tenants have largely been overlooked in terms of relief.
“The only advances we have seen in including tenants in the recovery have come as the result of sustained advocacy and basically yelling at LA County and other government and public agencies to say, ‘Hey, we are here too,’” Clark said. “We, the Altadena Tenants Union, had to sue Los Angeles County for basic habitability enforcement at every single stage of this process. It has been a huge fight.”
Gay put it plainly, saying that the federal government failed Angelenos in both Altadena and the Pacific Palisades. Whether it’s the Federal Emergency Management Bureau (FEMA) or the Small Business Administration (SBA), or even the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), when they aren’t doing their job at 100%, people don’t get the help they need.
She asserted that the majority of survivors, herself included, are not receiving the full benefits owed to them. This only creates more problems, as other programs and sources of funding now feel the pressure to pick up the slack, like the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.
The NHS of LA County has served as the region’s largest affordable homeownership provider for more than 30 years, Gay said, meaning that they know the work that it takes to build a house – something that the vast majority of people don’t.
The nonprofit has been hosting rebuilding workshops with technicians for several months, so people can sit down with experts, get free guidance and understand the work that goes into constructing a house. Even so, Gay knows that they have a long road ahead.
“This week, as we commemorate [and] celebrate recovery, … we need to bring the world’s attention right back here, to the LA region,” Gay said. “Not everyone is destitute, and even if they were, we should be our brother’s keeper right now.”