UCLA: Most Altadena Rental Housing Shows No Rebuilding Activity a Year After Eaton Fire

More than a year after the Eaton Fire swept through this unincorporated community, three-quarters of Altadena’s fire-damaged rental units remain on properties with no rebuilding permits, property sales, or active listings, according to a new policy brief from UCLA’s Latino Policy and Politics Institute published Wednesday.

The research, the second in a series examining post-fire housing recovery in Altadena, found that the January 2025 fire disproportionately damaged rent-stabilized and naturally affordable rental units — and that displaced tenants, who had substantially lower incomes and higher poverty rates than homeowners before the disaster, face limited pathways to return. Without targeted intervention, the researchers warn, many may be permanently pushed out of the community.

About 74% of identified rental units within the fire perimeter were on properties with no public record of recovery activity one year later, according to the brief. Only 18% of rental units were on properties where owners had filed rebuilding permits, compared with 23% of severely damaged single-family homeowner properties seven months after the fire, the researchers found.

The scale of loss to Altadena’s rental stock was extensive. Seven in 10 rental units — more than 1,500 — were located within the Eaton Fire perimeter, the brief states. Of those, 927 units were on properties where buildings sustained severe structural damage, defined as 50% or more of the building destroyed.

Before the fire, tenant households in Altadena had a median income less than half that of homeowner households and were more than four times as likely to live below the federal poverty line, according to the policy brief. More than half of Altadena’s tenants were cost-burdened in 2023, and tenant heads of household were more likely to be people of color than homeowner heads of household, the researchers found.

The fire also struck at the heart of Altadena’s affordable rental supply. Altadena had at least 792 recorded rent-stabilized units before the fire, representing more than one-third of its rental market, according to the brief. Two-thirds of those units were within the fire perimeter, and 39% were on properties with severe structural damage.

The affordability gap was significant. Rent-stabilized two-bedroom units had rented for about $600 less per month than comparable market-rate units, and rent-stabilized three-bedroom units rented for roughly $700 less, the researchers found. Even non-rent-stabilized units destroyed by the fire had rents that were, on average, 17% lower than comparable units that were not destroyed.

“Rent stabilization in Altadena had strong affordability benefits, particularly for family-size units,” said Gabriella Carmona, senior research analyst at UCLA LPPI and one of the brief’s authors, in a statement accompanying the release. “The fire appears to have removed many of these naturally affordable units from the market and without targeted intervention, displaced tenants face an uphill battle to return.”

The brief was authored by Carmona, Vinit Mukhija, Sofia Barajas, Mariah Bonilla, Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, Xalma Palomino, and Ana Lua Martel. It draws on Census data, rental listings, fire damage assessments, construction permits, and property sales records.

The policy brief emphasizes that disaster recovery systems in the United States are largely structured around property ownership, according to the researchers, leaving tenants with fewer tools and less control over rebuilding decisions.

Katie Clark, co-founder of the Altadena Tenants Union and a member of LPPI’s Altadena Research Advisory Board, said displaced renters have been left behind in the recovery.

“Since the fire, many of our Altadena neighbors have been scattered across the Los Angeles region: folks are living in their cars, piecing together temporary housing, moving dozens of times, or doubling up with family,” Clark said in a statement. “Without properties to rebuild or control over landlord decisions, we tenants have largely remained invisible in this recovery.”

The researchers called for several policy actions, including funding for master leasing programs to stabilize displaced tenants, improving access to land and capital for public and nonprofit entities to acquire fire-damaged properties, streamlining approvals for small-scale multifamily housing such as duplexes and bungalow courts, and building countywide infrastructure to track rental housing and enforce tenant protections.

The Eaton Fire began on January 7, 2025, in Eaton Canyon and burned more than 14,000 acres, destroying 9,418 structures and damaging 1,073 more, according to Cal Fire. The fire killed at least 19 people.

The full policy brief is available at latino.ucla.edu.

“The policy recommendations in this report — from access to capital to preserving Altadena’s affordable housing — are critical steps towards ensuring that our neighbors aren’t permanently displaced from the community we’ve called home,” Clark said.