Bus Tour Tracks Slow, Steady Path Home for Altadena Fire Survivors

A coalition of housing advocates, architects, and community leaders rolled through the scorched and slowly rebuilding streets of Altadena on Monday, stopping at properties where families are piecing together the money, permits, and labor needed to come home after the Eaton Fire.

The Rebuilding & Recovery Tour was organized by Neighborhood Housing Services of Los Angeles County, the Southern California chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects, and the Restore the Legacy LA Coalition. Lori Gay, president and CEO of NHS, led the bus past lots that ranged from freshly graded dirt to homes already framed and rising.

NHS is a certified Community Development Financial Institution offering housing counseling, construction project management, and low-cost loans and grants to fire survivors.

Gay said the coalition has counseled more than 4,000 families since the fires and provided nearly 500 households with estate plans. “We’ve all teamed up together to try to make sure that we help at least a thousand families come home,” she said, adding that federal disaster aid has been slow to reach homeowners and that most families on the tour were underinsured before the fire ever started.

The stops told individual stories. Ellen Williams stood on the graded lot that once held her family’s gathering house, the site of every holiday for two decades. “Unfortunately, we lost four homes as a family,” she said, noting she also lost three businesses that operated from the property. “There’s no other place that we want to be. Altadena’s home.”

Errol Adams, married to his wife Nina for 57 years, watched a contractor prepare their lot for a groundbreaking the next day. “We were kids when we bought this house,” he said. “We are Altadena strong.”

Architect Charles Bryant, who lost his own home in the fire, designed the Adams house using a floor plan adapted from a decades-old book of homes by renowned Pasadena architect Paul Williams, loaned to him by a community member.

“It’s going to be a beautiful home,” Bryant said.

Dr. Eshelle Williams described how NHS purchased her family’s rental property sight unseen after her landlord put it on the market, clearing a path for her and her 12-year-old son to become homeowners in the house where he was born. “Now we have a reason to come back to Altadena,” she said, “because we were going to live in the home that we’ve always lived in.”

Aldra Allison, a former NHS employee, recalled sifting through the ashes of her home with an NHS staff member. “I was lost but not defeated,” she said.

Howard Rose, who has lived on his property since 1980, said he and his wife Vickie fled the fire with police warning them they had only minutes to leave. “We took the choice to leave,” he said. “I’m so glad we did.”