In the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires that destroyed thousands of homes and properties, many fire victims moved far away from Altadena and Pacific Palisades in a sudden diaspora that upended the two tight-knit communities in ways beyond the initial loss of property.
Residents now living in rentals, with expenses that have ballooned, expressed frustration with school transfers, longer commutes to work and the overnight disappearance of yearslong relationships with their neighbors.
Of those who had to move, more than half ended up in neighborhoods at least a half-hour’s drive away, according to more than 3,500 change of address records analyzed by The New York Times. A quarter left the Los Angeles metro area entirely, and most ended up living somewhere with higher population density than their original neighborhood. While the data doesn’t include every displaced person, the results provide a clearer picture of where the victims settled after several fires erupted amid high Santa Ana winds across Los Angeles in early January.
“I feel like I was forced to take a very dramatic lane change,” said Ben James, 45, whose family is now living 28 miles away from their home that burned down in Altadena. “Where the hell am I and where am I going? Whose house is this? Whose stuff is this?”
The Palisades fire ignited close to a trailhead along a ridge, near the site of an earlier New Year’s Eve blaze. That same evening, another fire — the Eaton Fire — began in Eaton Canyon in the San Gabriel Mountains, possibly sparked by strained Southern California Edison electrical equipment. By the time the blazes had been contained, the devastation was staggering. The two fires had engulfed 37,400 acres, wiping out 16,200 structures — homes, schools, libraries and businesses — and killing 30 people.
In a city known for its sprawl, Altadena and Pacific Palisades share a common draw: They are both nestled in mountain foothills, with horse stables, hiking trails, and walkable downtowns with locally-owned shops. They drew people looking for space, quiet and a small-town vibe. Those who left Pacific Palisades, one of the wealthiest enclaves in Los Angeles with a population that is 78 percent white, tended to move further from their homes than those who left Altadena, which is 42 percent white, 18 percent Black and 27 percent Latino, according to the census. Both communities were heavily owner-occupied, and in many cases, extended families and lifelong friends lived near each other — kinship and relationships now shattered.
The experience of displacement is a pattern repeated in climate disasters around the country, with rents in nearby areas typically rising in the short-term, and displaced residents trying to stay close to home, but often settling far from the disaster zone.
As these communities rebuild, past disasters like Hurricane Katrina tell a story of permanent displacement for some. Rebuilding can accelerate gentrification since wealthier homeowners are far more likely to ultimately return than poorer ones, and investors are more likely to buy the less expensive properties.
However, the land beneath the Los Angeles homes that burned is incredibly valuable. For many families, generational wealth, particularly in Altadena, was tied up in those properties, and so there may be incentive to hold out and rebuild. “There’s reason to think that people might really fight to hold on to those properties however possible,” said Sara McTarnaghan, a principal research associate in the housing and communities division at the Urban Institute.
Many homeowners’ choices were dictated by their insurance policy’s coverage; and many renters without insurance found themselves starting over with only the few items they grabbed as they fled their homes.
Ben and JJ James, who rented a home in Altadena for five years before it burned, had insurance. However, their policy’s limit was only enough to replace 40 percent of their possessions.
The Jameses looked at 33 rentals across the San Gabriel Valley, while staying in three Airbnbs and an R.V. — in El Segundo, San Dimas, Whittier and Alhambra — before they found a three-bedroom house in Van Nuys in March. Their insurance paid for their temporary housing, but it did not cover rent for permanent housing, which at $4,200 a month, is 24 percent more than their previous rent.
Mr. James, a graduate student in social work at California State University, Los Angeles, now drives over an hour to get to school. Ms. James, who works in marketing in Culver City, has to contend with heavy I-405 traffic, and their children are in a new elementary school. Ms. James’s mother temporarily relocated from Kansas to help with child care and has been living with them since late January.
Mr. James used to sit on his back porch listening to the wild parrots and peacocks. “It was a magical place,” he said of Altadena. Van Nuys has twice as many people per square mile as Altadena, and Mr. James has traded bird calls for airplane traffic overhead.
Some residents left the state altogether, with about 17 percent of people from Altadena registering out-of-state addresses and 20 percent of people from Pacific Palisades. The top out-of-state destination for people from both places was Texas, followed by Florida.
The Times obtained the change of address counts by Census block from Melissa, a market research firm based in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., that studies the movement of people, using postal records and other sources. Most movers listed a residential address, while less than ten percent listed post office boxes. Distances were calculated between origin and end points using commercial mapping software.
While many displaced families had to move far away, there were also clusters of relocations to neighboring areas. Residents from Altadena were more likely to move to neighboring Pasadena than any other destination, with 23 percent of movers registering a new address in that community, the Times analysis found. The top local community for Pacific Palisades movers was nearby Santa Monica, which accounted for 14 percent of their change of address registrations.
More Money, More Miles Away
Geography made it more difficult for people living in Pacific Palisades to find new homes within a short distance of their old neighborhood. With Pacific Palisades flanked by the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica mountains, close options were somewhat limited. Only one in 10 people displaced from Pacific Palisades ended up in locations less than a 15-minute drive from their home, compared to one in four households from Altadena, according to the Times analysis.
While Pacific Palisades residents had the means to move — the average household income is $375,000, and a typical home is worth $3.7 million — the closest options are among the most expensive in the area, including Santa Monica, Topanga and Malibu. The average monthly rent is $3,150 in Santa Monica and $20,000 in Malibu, according to Zillow. Pasadena, just south of Altadena, has an average monthly rent of $2,300.
‘I Left My Heart in Altadena’
Altadena, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, is an area that once drew Black residents shut out from other parts of the city by redlining, and over the years became a destination for artists. The median household income in Altadena is $130,000.
Janina Daniels’s grandparents bought the family’s six-bedroom house in Altadena in 1985. Though the home was not destroyed, it was severely damaged by smoke, wind and ash, rendering it uninhabitable.
In April, Ms. Daniels, 33, moved with her grandparents, her mother and her 11-year old son into a two-bedroom apartment in Glendale, ending three months of displacement. Their living quarters are cramped — Ms. Daniels shares a bedroom with her mother, her grandparents share the second one and her son sleeps on an air mattress in the living room. “We’re making due,” said Ms. Daniels, an associate marriage and family therapist. (It could take 18 months to restore the house, she said of an estimate from her insurance company.)
Residents of Altadena described a community that felt like a small town, and many spoke of now feeling unmoored. For Mackenzie Schneider, 43, a single mother whose Altadena home was damaged by ash and smoke, the loss of community plays out on the freeways she now traverses every day. Before the fire, her commute was “a matter of blocks and stop signs,” as she ferried her 8-year-old daughter to elementary school and her father’s home, also in Altadena.
Now, Ms. Schneider, who works remotely in graphic design, drives 25 minutes from her sublet in Silver Lake, 15 miles south of Altadena, crossing freeways to get her daughter to school or to her dad’s new rental in Mount Washington. At $4,400 a month, the sublet has no in-unit laundry or parking. “We all were forced to make decisions that we probably would not have made in other situations,” said Ms. Schneider, whose sister also lost her home in Altadena.
Desperately longing for a connection back to a community that vanished in a night, Ms. Schneider and another friend, Linda Hsiao, who was also displaced by the Eaton fire recently decided to make car magnets and stickers that read “I left my heart in Altadena,” a sort of calling card to connect a community dispersed across highways and mountain ranges.
No Ownership, No Stake
The fire immediately severed many renters’ relationships with their community in a way that was not true for homeowners. With no ownership stake in the community, there was simply nothing to come back to. As soon as the Eaton fire displaced Veena Parekh and her family from the home they had rented for five years, she knew her time in Los Angeles was over — the city was too expensive for them. Her brother’s Altadena home burned, and he also left the city, severing another tie for Ms. Parekh. “We immediately recognized that the community is not here anymore,” said Ms. Parekh, 48, who works remotely for a software company. “They’re literally all gone.”
By the end of January, she, her husband, Chad Jones, 55, a composer and sound designer, and their 9-year-old son packed the few belongings they still had into a rental van and their car and drove to Phoenix, where a close college friend who lives there had found them a house to rent.
The new neighborhood, Willo, in midtown, reminds Ms. Parekh of Altadena, with historic homes and century-old palms, along with mesquite and palo verde trees. Ms. Parekh has no idea how long they will stay in Phoenix, where they arrived knowing only one friend. “I don’t feel like I have a community. I don’t know who to call to have coffee with,” she said.
After the home they’d rented for 25 years in Pacific Palisades burned, Gerry and Linda Daley drove 1,200 miles to Port Townsend, Wash., to stay with family. “We got out with almost nothing but the clothes on our backs and our two dogs,” said Mr. Daley, 66, a union organizer.
Of all the things Mr. Daley misses about Pacific Palisades, it is his landlord, Patric M. Verrone, also his close friend and Harvard University roommate. Mr. Verrone lived in the house behind Mr. Daley’s. The two men often chatted over the back fence and had a standing Friday night sushi double date at Sasabune in the Palisades village, the location now closed because of the extensive fire damage in the village. “We miss them terribly,” Mr. Daley said.
The Verrones’ house was also destroyed. A third college roommate, who lived in Pacific Palisades, lost his home as well.
In April, Mr. and Ms. Daley returned to Los Angeles, landing in a more expensive two-bedroom apartment in Santa Monica. Without insurance, the couple, in their 60s, is now rebuilding from scratch. “We’re setting up a starter apartment again,” Mr. Daley said.
Mr. Verrone, a television writer, is also now a renter of a fully-furnished, five-bedroom house in Beverly Hills, about 13 miles from his home, a ride that can take anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour, depending on traffic. His homeowners insurance is covering the rent.
“We’re all scattered to the four winds,” he said.
Ronda Kaysen, a real estate reporter for The Times, writes about the intersection of housing and society.
Robert Gebeloff is a data journalist for The Times, using data analysis to augment traditional reporting.
Leanne Abraham is a graphics editor at The Times with a focus on cartography and data visualization. She holds a master’s degree in cartography and geographic information systems from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
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