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As Altadena Homeowners Navigate Life Day to Day, Post Fire, Cash Support Becomes a Lifeline
Homeowners displaced from January's fires continue to rebuild their lives. Many have received financial support for living expenses until insurance payments and other assistance arrives.
Many homeowners in Altadena, like Naomi, pictured here with her son, are working through disruptions caused by January's fires the destroyed many homes in the area. Her family was able to receive furnishings for their rental housing and other support from local organizations including a Sense of Home and Change Reaction. Direct Relief supported Change Reaction with funds to support displaced residents after the fires. (Courtesy photo)
Wildfires are not unusual in California; power outages aren’t either. For Naomi, who asked that her last name not be used for privacy reasons, the power loss to her Altadena home due to high winds from the Eaton fire left her unfazed and prepared. Flashlights, candles, and board games were brought out for her kids as they finished eating dinner and prepared themselves for bed for the night.
However, the Eaton fire quickly spread through Mount Wilson in the San Gabriel Mountains and into the residential area of Altadena. Though she never received an evacuation notice, Naomi, a single mother of three, said her neighbor woke her up at 2 a.m. to alert her of the smoke-filled air. Just to be safe, she gathered her children and drove to her nephew’s house in hopes of returning later that evening.
“My (youngest) son — it still breaks me down to this day — he asked me, ‘Mom, I want to get this toy’,” she said. “And I said ‘no, we’ll be back’.”
Two hours later, the house was gone.
Immediate Support for Residents
Damage from January 2025 fires in Los Angeles has left many in transitional housing as people work through the next steps of the recovery process. (Courtesy photo)
The fires that spread across Los Angeles County in January displaced hundreds of thousands of people. In the months that followed, social service providers have worked to fill gaps in assistance so residents can find housing while awaiting information from insurance companies and the federal government. Change Reaction, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that provides direct cash assistance to Angelenos in need, works with hundreds of case workers to identify residents who may need help. Their goal is to provide cash payments within 48 hours of a request during financial emergencies.
CalFire reported that over 9,400 residential and commercial structures were destroyed and over 1,000 were damaged by the Eaton fire. The Eaton fire, which affected about 100,000 residents from Pasadena to Sierra Madre, burned for 24 days and killed 18 people.
Most of those structures were located within Altadena, an unincorporated community on the northernmost end of Pasadena. The mostly residential community was known for high rates of Black homeownership, as 75% of Black residents owned their homes. Residents say many of these properties, built between 1930 and 1960, were generational homes, passed down from one family member to the next.
Through the local nonprofit’s network, Naomi’s family received a cash grant to support her housing costs and received a furniture package to make the space feel like home.
“It’s really critical to get people back to that space so that they can feel dignified again and feel like there’s hope,” said Wade Trimmer, president of Change Reaction. He began his career as a case worker for homeless youth in the 1990s. His work advocating for people needing access to housing prompted the motivation for his involvement with Change Reaction.
“It wasn’t the clients that stressed me out,” he said of his work with homeless youth. “It was the systems I had to navigate to try to get help for people. And you would always hit these walls of a constant barrage of no, no, no.”
As Change Reaction continues to distribute financial support for Eaton fire survivors, most of the funds are being used for homeless prevention efforts, like auto repair costs so residents can go to work and afford their homes. Trimmer said most need quick access to cash so that they aren’t forced to make decisions while in crisis.
Naomi holds a picture of her family as she stands in her rental housing that was furnished after their family home in Altadena was lost to the fire. (Courtesy photo)
In the weeks that followed the Eaton fire, Naomi and her children moved six times. The high cost of rental units pushed them farther from the Altadena community and into neighborhoods nearly an hour and a half away from her children’s school. For over a month, she stopped working to handle the stress of constant movement and to homeschool her kids so that they wouldn’t fall behind academically. She anticipates returning to work in June.
“The struggle is real,” she said. “I don’t want to just rip them from something that they’re used to.”
Her youngest children have since returned to school, but their home is gone. Just two of the 12 homes on her cul-de-sac street remain. The 42-year-old inherited the house from her parents, Haitian immigrants who raised their four kids in Altadena. When her mom died in 2016, Naomi took over the house. Her siblings and their children live nearby, and the home became a place to gather for dinner, parties, and holidays like Christmas and Thanksgiving.
“My mom planned this, for it to go down from generation to generation,” she said. “It’s definitely a multi-generational family home; we utilize it for a lot of our activities.”
Like many of her neighbors, Naomi hasn’t and isn’t expected to receive insurance payments to rebuild her home. Some didn’t have insurance; homeowners whose properties were paid in full are not required to obtain insurance. Some homeowners were underinsured and don’t have the cash to rebuild. Many older adults and retirees in Altadena had the appropriate insurance, but through reverse mortgage agreements, the insurance money to rebuild has gone to mortgage lenders, not residents. For displaced homeowners with mortgage payments, monthly living costs have become untenable.
According to Census data, the median monthly homeowner costs for residents with a mortgage in Altadena is $3,442, compared to $844 for homeowners without a mortgage. The median rent is over $2,200.
Recovering, Day by Day
Tina Johnson’s 1940s home is damaged, but it’s still standing. Six of her relatives’ homes have burned to the ground; including her father-in-law’s home, which was paid in full.
“He now has to try to qualify for a $700,000 mortgage at the age of 83 in order to rebuild a house that he had no mortgage on,” she said.
Johnson and her husband stayed in their 1,300-square-foot home throughout the Eaton fire. Johnson said her husband tried to save family heirlooms, like letters from their son, who was murdered years ago. She said that he ran back and forth from the front to the back of the house, spraying water with the hose, water bottles, and eventually Gatorade to save himself and their property.
Her husband experienced temporary blindness from the fire, and his doctor has since found nodules in his lungs from inhaling smoke. In tragicomic style, she said his new nickname is “Fire Marshall Bill, from Living Color.”
The retired couple, now in their 60s, have lived in a cul-de-sac street in Altadena for decades. The neighborhood has watched each other’s children grow up, and they’ve built community and common understanding among each other. When her daughter had an at-home, outdoor wedding during the pandemic, the neighbors watched and celebrated.
“On any given day, I could stand in my kitchen and wash dishes and look at the hillside and watch the deer eat the leaves off the trees,” Johnson said.
Johnson and her husband received cash assistance from Change Reaction to cover living expenses and a new truck so that they can earn money through a transportation and dumping service. They also received a large storage container for household items while their home is being remediated.
Like Naomi, Johnson said that news of a nearby wildfire and power outages were normal. But as the smoke thickened, she had an “eerie feeling.”
When the fire reached Altadena, Johnson said the neighbors contacted one another about potential evacuations. She said they never received an evacuation notice from authorities. According to Johnson, a 73-year-old neighbor stayed in his house until they knocked on his door to wake him up on Wednesday morning when the neighborhood water was no longer available.
“On his 73rd birthday, that man sat in my driveway and watched his home burn (to) the ground.”
Johnson said she worried for older neighbors and people with disabilities to get out in time. She encouraged her stepmother, who wears a hearing aid and never would have heard a phone alert, to leave the house before falling asleep that night.
“I can see how these people perished in the fire,” said Johnson. “I don’t know if there was not enough done or if it just happened so quickly.”
Now, Johnson worries how Altadena will move forward. She suspects many former residents will opt to sell their land and buy property elsewhere, creating a space for gentrification to grow in the area. The community was one of the few areas in Los Angeles free of redlining and allowed space for Black families to purchase property. The generational homes are now gone, and for many older adults who are retired, no longer qualify for loans and can’t afford to rebuild. She suspects that most will have to sell their land to survive.
“I don’t know that we’ll be a community again, that’s the concern for me,” she said.
Compensation and repairs to their home are expected to last two to three years. Johnson said they are still making mortgage payments and are “navigating life” day by day.
While she’s dismayed about the condition of the Altadena community moving forward, Johnson said that Change Reaction’s help and support for her family and others has renewed her faith in humanity.
“The biggest thing that I’ve learned is that because of organizations like Change Reaction, there is a tomorrow,” she said. “…I’m reassured because of that organization.”
In response to the L.A. wildfires, Direct Relief has provided $500,000 in financial assistance to Change Reaction to provide rental assistance to families at risk of homelessness, ensuring they can remain housed during their recovery.
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