🏡💚 Corporate landlords are buying Altadena

Written By Zach Lou

At this point, we’re all pretty familiar with the disaster capitalism blueprint: disaster strikes, and profiteers move in to take advantage of the situation. And yet even if we know it’s coming, it’s still so hard to stop.

In the immediate aftermath of the LA wildfires, there was widespread concern of property speculation and price gouging. State and local officials took initial steps early on, hoping that would mitigate the most predatory behavior. Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency, which was supposed to ban price gouging on rent and many other basic supplies. As documented by activist volunteers on a public spreadsheet, price gouging was rampant nonetheless.

Newsom also issued an executive order that was intended to limit property speculation of impacted homes. In an interesting personal comment in the EO, Newsom says, “WHEREAS I have personally heard first-hand from homeowners, faith leaders, and business property owners who, while these fires still burn, received unsolicited offers to purchase their property, which in many instances represent their life savings and family legacies, for amounts far less than fair market value prior to this emergency.” The initial executive order was set for 3 months, and was later extended to July 1st.

As documented by a recent report from Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE), these efforts have not been enough. The report, Compounding Disaster: A Spatial Analysis of Housing Risk and Speculation in Post-Fire Altadena, goes into great depth examining the demographic shifts and gentrification pressures in Altadena before and after the fire. As they make clear throughout the report, displacement was happening in Altadena before this year’s fires . But the fires are accelerating that change, first through the devastating damage and destruction, and then through the aftermath of speculative real estate investment.

Altadena has played a historic role as a center of Black homeownership in Los Angeles. During the time of redlining and legalized exclusion, Altadena became one of the few places where Black families could buy homes and build generational wealth. By 1980, Black residents made up 43% of the population, and as of 2023, approximately 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes—nearly double the national average for Black households.

Before the fires, this was already rapidly changing. From 2015 to 2023, some neighborhoods in western Altadena had an over 20% decline in people of color, and an overall decline in average tenure (length of time residents stay in their home). Together, these are hallmarks of a gentrifying area: new white residents move in, and long-term Black and POC residents move out.

With the Eaton Fire, this trend of displacement that was playing out over years is now happening right before our eyes. One of the biggest findings in the report is that 48% of post-fire home sales in Altadena have gone to corporate landlords. Of the 94 post-fire sales from February 11 to April 30, 2025, 45 were to corporate entities, compared to just 5 of 95 home sales over the same period in 2024. This indicates that the fire is triggering opportunistic investment behavior.

While displacement pressures already existed in Altadena, this kind of change is more than just market shifts. As stated in the report, the corporate acquisition patterns “reflect the financialization of land and housing with capital flowing to areas already undergoing demographic change and market pressures. The data suggests that Altadena is being drawn into a vulnerable position, where significant amounts of land are accumulated for the sole purpose of generating a securitized return on investment, placing tenants, homeowners, and the community’s legacy of Black homeownership at risk.”

But the community isn’t just rolling over and letting this happen; there’s another side of the story of what’s going on in Altadena. Just as we often see some of the worst predatory behavior after disasters, we also see some of the most beautiful ways that people can come together. After the fires, neighbors quickly mobilized to provide mutual aid, and set up systems to keep each other safe. Under the name Altagether, they created Neighborhood Captains to provide points of contact at the neighborhood-level — not just sharing information, but also discouraging sales to investors and connecting residents to alternatives.

They’re not just recovery volunteers; they’re organizers. And now, with other community groups and partners, they are fighting for the resources and policies they need in order to preserve Altadena. A few weeks ago, more than 1,000 Altadena residents and supporters sent a letter to state officials calling for $200 million from the state budget to support community stabilization (you can still sign on to that letter here).

There are other attempts underway to try to step in to preserve land for the community. Greenline Housing Foundation, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit, is working to buy burned properties and move them into a community land bank — removing them from the market and holding the properties until eventually transferring them back for community use.

State officials have also put forward legislation to try to protect the community from investors. That includes SB 782 and SB 658 from Senator Sasha PĂ©rez: SB 782 would create a special financing district to accelerate community recovery by providing funding through a community-based approach; SB 658 was initially meant to give priority to public agencies and nonprofits (like CLTs) to purchase homes and commercial properties in the impacted zones, but was been watered down to only require a registry of public agencies and nonprofits interested in buying impacted properties, and homeowners interested in selling. Last week, even in its diminished form, that bill was held in Appropriations Committee.

As shown by the fate of SB 658, one of the major challenges of state legislation is that the state legislative cycle and process are not the most conducive to rapid response. One other bill, AB 797, does have an urgency clause and so would take effect immediately when passed — that bill, the Community Stabilization Act, would create a program to help stabilize property values in disaster-affected areas by supporting qualifying entities (e.g. nonprofits, CLTs, etc) to purchase homes at fair market value.

These legislative efforts show promise, and they are worthy of support. But they are not the only tool. Local government can intervene much more strongly than it has; philanthropy can step in to support right away; and social movement groups can organize in support of resident demands.

Two weeks ago, leaders from Altadena gathered to make their demands heard, and make sure that people know what’s going on. One spokesperson, Zaire Calvin, said it all: “As a fourth-generation African-American Altadenan, I’ve seen Black families and working folks fight to build a life here when others shut us out. Now, predatory developers are threatening that legacy — putting profit over people. This isn’t just a land fight; it’s a fight for the soul of Altadena.”

Zaire Calvin speaks at an event on May 15th, with Senator Sasha PĂ©rez to his left. Source: LA Public Press

WHAT WE’RE READING

Feel free to reply any time! I always enjoy hearing from people and getting any feedback/questions/additional thoughts.

We send these out on a somewhat weekly basis. If you don’t want to get these newsletters, feel free to unsubscribe below. If you know someone that would be interested, send me their email, or you can forward this along to them and they can use this link to subscribe.

Zach Lou
Previous

🏡💚 One step closer toward utility justice
Next

🏡💚 Where do they go?