A Year After the L.A. Fires, A Community Grapples with Who Gets to Rebuild

Altadena was shaped by, and celebrated for, its history of Black home ownership. After the Eaton Fire, residents wonder how much will change.

By Maya Cook

“Maya, you better call your family. Altadena is burning.”

In the early hours of January 8th, 2025, my boyfriend shook me awake with a plea I never expected to hear.

The Eaton Fire raged across fourteen thousand acres of land in my hometown of Altadena, California, taking nineteen lives and almost ten thousand structures with it. I watched this devastation unfold for hours, overwhelmed with anxiety as I waited to hear from my evacuated family.

I flew to L.A. as soon as I could. Miraculously, our house was still standing. Inside, ash coating our floors and windowsills was the only reminder of the fire. But outside those walls, entire blocks were razed. My elementary school burned to the ground. Mellanie, my family friend, lost her home of nearly 30 years. “Nothing prepares you for leaving your house one night and never coming back,” she told me.

We Altadenians liked to boast about our charming, unincorporated pocket of Los Angeles, tucked away in the foothills of the mountains. Some Angelenos had still never heard of it when it went up in flames.

Empty lots and exposed mountains in Altadena, December 2025

“Black people always knew about it,” Mellanie said. Once home to influential figures like Sidney Poitier and Octavia Butler, western Altadena houses one of the first middle-class communities in L.A. to include Black homeowners. Mellanie herself is a lifetime resident of the area. When she was looking to buy a home in 1997, Altadena was the obvious choice. “It was my stomping ground as a child, and I wanted to raise my two interracial children in a place that was a little more integrated.”

In the 1930s, western Altadena was designated as a “declining” zone by the U.S. Home Owners’ Loan Corporation. This designation led to lower housing prices that persisted after redlining practices were outlawed, allowing many Black families to purchase homes in the area despite systemic barriers. By the 1970s, the homeownership rate for Black families in Altadena was at 70%, nearly double the rate for Los Angeles County overall.

Since the fire, Altadena has been hailed in the media as a haven for middle-class people of color. But behind the new publicity is a history of inequality that has been reproduced, by bad luck and systemic factors alike, in the unequal devastation and aftermath of the Eaton Fire.

Echoing the historic redlining, there is a distinct line in the sand (down central Lake Avenue) that persists to this day, east of which Altadena becomes notably whiter and wealthier. Though the fire started in the east, wind patterns caused the fire to tear through western Altadena unabated. Yet residents of the area were not issued evacuation orders until 3am, nearly ten hours after orders were given for the east. And because of the fire raging in the Palisades, firefighting resources across Altadena were limited. In the end, 18 of the 19 individuals who perished in the Eaton Fire were from western Altadena. 48% of Black households were destroyed compared to 37% for non-Black households. The impact was disproportionate.

Credit: UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

As we begin to rebuild, we celebrate it as an act of optimism and hope. But we also know it is an act of choice. Choice about what is preserved, what is replaced, and who is included.

It is now one year later, and a few houses are starting to go up. When I walk through the streets, I no longer see the gruesome remnants of homes and belongings. What I see now is mostly empty lots and possibility. When Mellanie began to rebuild her own home, she said to me, “I feel extremely blessed, but I’m also so scared.”

There is a lot of fear about who will be forced out of the new Altadena. Black homeownership was declining even before the fires due to rising home prices. This effect will only be intensified as developers buy up land and families lose the ability to pass on generational wealth via home assets. Some families who have been here for generations lost multiple homes across their family unit; Mellanie’s sister’s house burned down as well. Some Black families, who paid off their home loans generations ago, were uninsured when the fires hit. While most well-insured Altadenians have plans to rebuild, it is the underinsured who will likely be unable to return. This will inevitably include many of the people who made Altadena what it was.

History has shown us that when natural disasters hit, Black and brown people endure the worst of it. Altadena is no exception.

Despite the grief, the hope is palpable. On January 4^th, 2026, Altadena came together in remembrance for the inaugural “Altadena Forever” run. Even in the pouring rain, thousands showed up to run through the burn zone in a much-needed reminder that Altadena is more than the sum of its structures. The community is still here even when the physical place is not.

We have all suffered the same loss. Our collective memory of what it once was will hold together the community as it is. And if for nothing else, for that we will be stronger. It is now incumbent upon those of us who remain to rebuild Altadena in a way that honors the ones who can’t come back—all those people who have made it worth saving.

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Maya Cook is a Legal Program Associate at Democracy Defenders. She is a native Californian and earned her BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley.