WATCH: Panel OKs making rebuilding easier in Altadena

By Madeline Shannon
The Center Square

Homeowners in Altadena would have more time to rebuild their wildfire-damaged properties and homes under a new bill that passed unanimously at a California legislative committee hearing Wednesday morning.

Senate Bill 1090 exempts the unincorporated Southern California community from housing zoning laws passed in recent years. Those recent laws allow multi-unit housing developments to go up on formerly single-family lots where single-family homes in Altadena recently stood. Many of those homes – as many as 6,000, according to state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez, D-Pasadena – were lost in the January 2025 Eaton Fire.

“This is important community-driven legislation,” Pérez, author of the bill, said at a press conference on Wednesday morning in Sacramento. “It will protect Eaton Fire survivors and allow them the time they need to rebuild their community without the overpowering influence of predatory developers looking to take advantage of the devastation and suffering caused by the Eaton fire.”

Since that fire, speculators have bought land from families in distress who lost their homes in that fire, offering extremely low prices to buy the property from families who don’t have the cash on hand or insurance payouts to rebuild their homes, Pérez said.

Those developers then proceeded to build multi-unit buildings on those properties, consistent with state law that was meant to increase housing supply in communities that aren’t impacted by catastrophic wildfires, she added.

“These survivors are asking for time to rebuild our community,” Pérez said. “I want to be crystal clear. These laws were not intended to rebuild a community that has been devastated by fire or a natural disaster.”

According to previous reporting by The Center Square, the Eaton Fire burned 14,921 acres and burned down 9,418 structures in the Altadena and Pasadena area. The fire was one of the worst in the history of Los Angeles County.

Coastal Los Angeles area communities impacted by the January 2025 Palisades Fire received exemptions similar to what Pérez’s bill proposes because they were designated “high fire severity zones,” which Altadena was not.

“People like me came to Altadena to put down roots,” Darlene Greene, a member of the Altadena Town Council, said at the press conference. “I know people like me and older people are getting calls for them to sell their homes to developers coming in and not being honest with them. That has to stop.”

Opponents of the bill said during the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee hearing on Wednesday that many families in that area are trying to still pay their mortgage on a burned-up lot while paying rent in temporary housing. Opponents say another barrier is that the families are still figuring out how to rebuild homes with a minimal payout from the California FAIR Plan, which acts as the state’s insurer of last resort.

“This legislation, unfortunately, does not address those barriers,” Azeen Khanmalek, executive director of Abundant Housing LA, testified in opposition to SB 1090. “On the contrary, tools that allow homeowners to build a unit or two or split their lot can be a financial lifeline for folks that require additional equity to pay for the cost of rebuilding.”

The bill would close off access to tools that allow homeowners to take advantage of those ways of rebuilding, Khanmalek told the committee at the Capitol.

“If we seek to help disaster-impacted communities remain intact and flourish, we must help residents rebuild their homes and return,” Khanmalek testified. “That requires monetary resources and financial assistance, not bans on a modest amount of new housing.”

The bill ultimately passed 10-0 in the Assembly Housing and Community Development Committee on Wednesday and now heads to another hearing by the Assembly Committee on Local Government.