A year ago last week, more than 400 volunteers spent two days in a Pasadena park building walls for houses that did not yet exist. One of those houses now stands on East Pine Street in Altadena, and Kenneth and Carol Wood are living in it.
The two-day event, called Walls of Hope: Altadena Strong, was San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity’s public start on rebuilding homes lost in the January 2025 Eaton Fire. Now twelve months later, the nonprofit has finished one of those homes and begun nine others — a measurable start against a loss its chief executive has put at more than 4,400 single-family residences in Altadena alone.
For the Woods, the East Pine Street house is not new ground. Kenneth Wood, 85, and Carol Wood, 84, raised their children in Altadena and lived in the community for more than 40 years before the fire. The lot where their rebuilt home stands first belonged to Carol Wood’s parents, according to ABC7 — part of a cluster of family houses that, Habitat chief executive Bryan Wong has said, made the Woods one of several three-generation families displaced by the fire.
Construction on the Wood home and an accompanying accessory dwelling unit began in mid-October 2025, and the house was completed on March 27, 2026. The roughly five months of work drew 1,626 volunteers, according to figures United Way of Greater Los Angeles provided to Pasadena Now. It is a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house built from the “Lewis” plan, one of the pre-approved designs the nonprofit has used to speed rebuilding.
That speed was not incidental. In June 2025, the Altadena Builds Back Foundation — a supporting organization of the Pasadena Community Foundation — awarded SGV Habitat a $4.55 million grant to rebuild 22 homes for uninsured, underinsured and low-income homeowners in West Altadena over three years. The foundation, in announcing the grant, described it as the largest ever distributed from one of its funds. The average applicant is 72 years old, and many have owned their homes for more than 30 years, the Pasadena Community Foundation said.
SGV Habitat paired the money with pre-approved house plans developed by the Foothill Catalog Foundation under a streamlined Los Angeles County permitting process. The organization says it was the first to receive a rebuilding permit in Altadena after the fire.
Faith Mellinger, the organization’s senior director of communications and operations, said the pre-approved plans have saved families “anywhere from several months to as much as six to twelve months” compared with a custom design and permitting process. “In disaster recovery, time is one of the most precious resources families have,” she said in written responses to Pasadena Now.
At the June 26-27, 2025, build in Pasadena’s Brookside Park, volunteers assembled 160 wall panels, 32 cabinets and six table bases and painted 18 pieces of furniture, according to SGV Habitat. The components were stored until on-site reconstruction could begin in Altadena. More than 400 people took part, ABC7 reported, among them the actor Dorian Harewood, whose daughter lost an Altadena home in the fire. “Whatever we can do we’ve been trying to do,” Harewood said in a testimonial posted by SGV Habitat.
As of late May 2026, SGV Habitat said it had completed or begun construction on 10 homes in the burn area, with nine still underway beyond the Woods’ house and roughly 30 more in permitting stages, according to Mellinger. The Monrovia-based affiliate, founded in 1990, has committed to at least 25 Altadena rebuilds and says it hopes to reach 100. More than 800 families have contacted the organization about rebuilding.
“When we began looking at what we could do to help the community we had a goal of 25 families, then 100,” Mellinger said. “Thanks to many volunteers, funders and community support we are now looking to be able to help everyone who wants and qualifies for our program.”
Mellinger said the less visible side of recovery does not appear on a construction schedule. “People often see groundbreaking ceremonies, construction progress, and completed homes,” she said. “What they don’t see are the months of difficult decisions that happen before a single shovel goes into the ground” — insurance claims, financing gaps, temporary housing and, she said, grief.
The nonprofit’s recovery work has drawn outside support. The Wells Fargo Foundation awarded SGV Habitat $1 million for Altadena accessory dwelling unit construction in January 2026, and the organization has named Bank of America, the builder C.W. Driver and the disaster-response group GER³ among its partners. It also operates a ReStore on North Sierra Madre Boulevard in Pasadena that has offered discounts to fire survivors. In May 2026, Assemblymember John Harabedian, D-Pasadena, named SGV Habitat the 2026 Nonprofit of the Year for the 41st Assembly District. “At a time when families were facing unimaginable loss and uncertainty, Habitat showed up with compassion, urgency, and action,” Harabedian said in a statement.
The Eaton Fire ignited on January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon and was contained 24 days later, on January 31. Cal Fire records show it destroyed more than 9,000 structures; the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner has confirmed 19 deaths.
The walls the Woods now live inside were among those raised in Brookside Park a year ago this week. Standing in the finished house in March, Carol Wood reached for a way to describe it. “Not knowing the answers, and now we’ve come to see this beautiful home,” she said. “It’s really beyond words.”
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