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today at noom.com. at noom.com. What's

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good? I'm Jean Denby and you

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are listening to Code Switch, the

0:20

show about race and identity, from

0:22

NPR. And today on the

0:25

show, we want to take

0:27

you to Altadena, California. Altadena,

0:29

as you might remember from

0:32

the recent news, is the

0:34

site of one of the

0:37

two major wildfires that ravaged

0:39

Los Angeles County. So much

0:41

of Altadena was decimated by

0:44

the Eaton fire. More than

0:46

9,000 homes and businesses and

0:49

schools in houses of worship,

0:51

they were just all leveled by

0:53

the flames and the winds. everywhere

0:56

they hit, they would just start

0:58

up because of the wind. It

1:00

was treated turned on. Every street

1:02

and fire. And it was a pre-fellowed

1:05

on. Yeah. And we want to zoom

1:07

in on Altadena because it occupies

1:09

this really code-switchy place in

1:12

Los Angeles and in California

1:14

more broadly. Altadena is a

1:16

mostly brown place with a

1:19

large, long-tenured black population. Backed

1:21

on the civil rights era. It was

1:23

one of the few places in LA

1:25

County where black folks could buy homes.

1:27

So if you were a black person

1:29

in California and you wanted to get a

1:31

piece of the American dream, this is

1:33

a place you could do it. Jackie Robinson

1:36

has roots in Altadena. Rodney King

1:38

grew up there. Octavia Butler is

1:40

buried there. And so a lot of the

1:42

history of black Los Angeles is threaded

1:45

through this place. And for many of

1:47

the families who settled there, that

1:49

loss of community. is the hardest

1:51

thing to come to grips with

1:54

right now. But the elders

1:56

that worked hard to leave

1:58

some for the next... racing

2:00

in the years to come.

2:03

It ain't fair to them

2:05

at all. What's devastating now

2:07

about the fires is that

2:09

there's always going to be

2:12

a gap. Even if you

2:14

replace what you had, the

2:16

equitable growth in your property

2:18

will not be like it

2:21

was before. I've cried so

2:23

much that I can't cry

2:25

anymore. That chapter in my

2:28

life was gone, but I

2:30

plan to build a new

2:32

chapter, a new home. With

2:34

so much of this community

2:37

destroyed by the eaten fire,

2:39

and so many of the

2:41

residents having to start over,

2:43

and I guess trying to

2:46

figure out whether they even

2:48

can, one thing is clear.

2:50

Whatever comes next for Altadena

2:53

is likely to be very

2:55

different from what was there.

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Visit schwab.com to learn more. Jire

4:31

Dang is a reporter who lives

4:33

close to Altadena and they've been

4:35

covering the eaten fire since the

4:37

fire came through on January 7th.

4:39

Jirer, what's good? And welcome to

4:41

Code Switch. Hey Jean, thanks for

4:43

having me. So Jire, what have

4:45

you been saying? What have you

4:47

been saying to you? I've spent

4:50

a lot of time with residents

4:52

in the past few weeks and...

4:54

When I first went past the

4:56

police line, the week the fire

4:58

started, it was really, really creepy.

5:00

Some houses were spared on blocks

5:02

that were completely flattened, and it's

5:04

because the fire wasn't spreading from

5:06

house to house. The wind was

5:08

actually pushing it miles from block

5:10

to block. And we know that

5:12

wildfires and the winds don't discriminate

5:14

when they destroy people's homes, but

5:17

the losses after the eaten fire

5:19

hit the black community in Altadena

5:21

particularly hard. Okay, so why were

5:23

the black residents of Altadena hit

5:25

so hard by the fires? Right.

5:27

There's this road called Lake Avenue

5:29

that divides Altadena into two. And

5:31

residents west of Lake Avenue where

5:33

there are more black and working

5:35

class residents received an evacuation emergency

5:37

notice a full six hours later

5:39

than their neighbors, literally a block

5:42

east of them. Wow. Okay, so

5:44

when you say emergency notification, you

5:46

mean like one of those really

5:48

loud buzzes like on your phone?

5:50

that you get saying like something

5:52

is happening? Yes, yes. Okay. And

5:54

the west side of Altadena is

5:56

the area that we're seeing way

5:58

more casualties. It's also where long

6:00

stand communities of black families built

6:02

homes in the 1960s. And now with

6:05

the amount of time and money that

6:07

it's going to take to rebuild,

6:09

it's really uncertain whether a lot

6:11

of them are going to be

6:13

able to pass their homes down

6:15

to their children. So it seems

6:17

like although Altadena broadly

6:20

was one of the few places

6:22

in California that black folks could

6:24

buy homes back in the day.

6:26

there's still residential segregation within the town

6:28

itself, which is why you have folks

6:30

on one side of Lake Avenue being more harshly

6:33

affected by the fire than other people. Just to

6:35

back up a little bit, why did Altadena

6:37

even become the kind of place where

6:39

black folks in California decided they wanted

6:41

to settle down in the first place?

6:43

So black people have been coming

6:46

to Altadena since the 1800s. Okay.

6:48

Robert Owens was born into slavery

6:50

and he bought his family's freedom

6:53

in the 1850s. He lived up

6:55

what's called the medals on the

6:57

El Puyeto Trail and the indigenous

7:00

people. He lived there with them.

7:02

That's Veronica Jones, the first black

7:04

president of the Altadena Historical Society.

7:07

He became really rich by cutting

7:09

the trees in the forest, bringing

7:11

them down to LA to the

7:13

military. and he became one of

7:16

the wealthiest African-Americans in L.A.

7:18

County. Owens helped set the stage

7:20

for Altadena to become a

7:22

space for black wealth, as

7:24

well as working-class folks who

7:27

eventually settled there. Fast forward

7:29

almost a century later, and

7:31

the great migration actually led

7:33

many black families to settle

7:35

in Altadena and Pasadena to

7:37

build one of the first

7:39

middle-class black communities in California

7:41

in the post-civil rights era.

7:44

But of course, we know that

7:46

the neighborhood wasn't necessarily a

7:48

black utopia. Of course, of course,

7:50

there's no way it was that simple.

7:53

Yeah, prior to World War

7:55

II, the area was predominantly

7:57

white, and even though housing

7:59

policy changed, and redlining left their

8:01

mark. In 1960, black people only

8:03

made up 4% of residents in

8:05

Altadena, but that number grew to

8:08

44% in the 1980s. Julie Bussie

8:10

Threatz remembers when her family first

8:12

moved to Altadena in the 60s.

8:14

I was 10 in 1967. That's

8:16

when they bought the house. It

8:18

was a struggle for my parents,

8:21

I think, initially, because there weren't

8:23

a lot of African Americans living

8:25

up there. And when my parents

8:27

went to go view the house

8:29

on an open house, they didn't

8:32

want to let them in. which

8:34

made my dad even more determined

8:36

to buy the house. So he

8:38

wrote the broker's name down and

8:40

went and found the broker and

8:43

told him, I want to see

8:45

that house and I want to

8:47

buy that house today. And that's

8:49

how we got there. I spoke

8:51

to Barbara Richardson King, who became

8:53

a realtor in the 80s. She

8:56

remembers when realtors practiced something called

8:58

steering to keep black people out

9:00

of certain areas. You know, if

9:02

you said you wanted to live

9:04

on... on Main Lane, which is

9:07

east of Lake, they would steer

9:09

you over to a neighborhood. They

9:11

had these unspoken rules, you know,

9:13

that realtors were following and didn't

9:15

want to be the first one

9:17

to what they say kind of

9:20

breaking the neighborhood, you know, and

9:22

cause white flight. Yeah, there's so

9:24

many things that lead to housing

9:26

segregation in communities, right? You got

9:28

red lining, you got things like

9:31

this, like steering, people ramming. highways

9:33

and expressways through residential neighborhoods and

9:35

breaking them up. Exactly. And that's

9:37

actually what let Julie's family to

9:39

move to Altadena in the first

9:41

place. We were displaced by the

9:44

210 freeway. When the 2-10 freeway

9:46

came through, ours was the last

9:48

house on the block that they

9:50

took. Thousands of black families lost

9:52

their homes in the 50s and

9:55

60s when was taken by eminent

9:57

domain when they were planning to

9:59

connect the 210 and 710 freeways.

10:01

eminent domain is when the government

10:03

says we need this private property

10:06

and we want to take it

10:08

from you so we can build

10:10

some you know public works project

10:12

because for the good of everybody.

10:14

In cities of the country we've

10:16

seen this used for things like

10:19

you know the Dan Ryan expressway

10:21

in Chicago or you know the

10:23

cross-rockers expressway in New York and

10:25

those infrastructure projects those highways just

10:27

helped shape the racial geography of

10:30

those big cities. It just like

10:32

I seem like happened in Altadena.

10:34

Right. This is nothing new for

10:36

the black community in Altadena that's

10:38

had to rebuild time and time

10:40

again. All of this hurt in

10:43

regards to the eaten fire comes

10:45

from a real place of hurt

10:47

that black residents have had their

10:49

homes taken away from them intentionally

10:51

before. I am saddened. I'm frustrated.

10:54

There's no one to blame, no

10:56

finger to point. This is a

10:58

natural disaster. The freeway was not.

11:00

That was Marcus Williams, an elder

11:02

at Friendship Church in Pasadena. The

11:04

church used to be the heart

11:07

of a thriving black community in

11:09

Old Town, Pasadena, until the expansion

11:11

of two local freeways in the

11:13

1950s and 60s. As usual, you

11:15

know, the black community takes the

11:18

brunt of, as it did here,

11:20

you choose the black community, because

11:22

we don't have the numbers of

11:24

the... economic influence to stop it,

11:26

like South Pasadena stopped 17th freeway

11:29

from going through. So Marcus is

11:31

actually referring to South Pasadena, where

11:33

a lot of white and affluent

11:35

residents were able to stop the

11:37

freeway from coming through their neighborhood.

11:39

And so that's the irony, is

11:42

that the freeway was never fully

11:44

completed. But many of those black

11:46

families lost their homes in Pasadena

11:48

as a result of those freeways.

11:50

And then... They moved to Altadena

11:53

as part of that wave of

11:55

building a middle class. black neighborhood

11:57

on the west side in the

11:59

70s and 80s, but their distrust

12:01

still permeates and colors how they

12:03

see the eaten fire crisis. There

12:06

is racial inequity that permeates Southern

12:08

California like everywhere else, but this

12:10

hurts because this was truly an

12:12

act of nature. Or an act

12:14

of God's call it what you

12:17

like, and we will see how

12:19

the community recovers. The word community

12:21

is really key here because Pasadena

12:23

and Altadena are really closely interwoven.

12:25

A lot of residents here just

12:27

refer to both places as Dina

12:30

and one of the biggest concerns

12:32

about recovering after this disaster is

12:34

whether the community will get to

12:36

stay intact. I talked to one

12:38

resident. Brandon Garner, who saved his

12:41

grandparents' home in Altadena with just

12:43

a garden hose. He feels like

12:45

the fires have made Altadena more

12:47

susceptible to development. So I get

12:49

the newsletters, you know, I know

12:52

what they, you know, what the

12:54

vision is and so forth, so.

12:56

So Javer, what's really interesting listening

12:58

to this is, in one hand,

13:00

like Altadena's enclave of black folks

13:02

who, you know, found this sort

13:05

of like, you know, low density,

13:07

you know, suburban style, place to

13:09

live in California. And it was

13:11

affordable when they moved in. But

13:13

like when you talk to people

13:16

about the sort of housing crisis

13:18

throughout California, in LA County in

13:20

particular, they talk about the fact

13:22

that the kind of housing, like

13:24

the kind of housing that dots

13:26

Los Angeles, which is like single

13:29

family low density housing. means that

13:31

there just isn't enough housing for

13:33

everybody, which means there's like a

13:35

lot of crunch on people who

13:37

either want to rent or buy

13:40

homes because there's just never enough

13:42

housing stock. I'm just thinking about

13:44

the sort of like attention here,

13:46

which is that like Altadena is

13:48

this enclave that is rare in

13:51

so many ways. And

13:53

also, places like

13:55

Altadena in terms

13:57

of their layout

13:59

are like part

14:01

of what so

14:04

many people see

14:06

as the problem

14:08

of affordability in

14:10

California. So what

14:12

does Brandon mean by the

14:14

vision? I mean, isn't it

14:16

a net good if, you

14:18

know, people want to come

14:20

in and build more housing

14:22

in Altadena and Pasadena because

14:24

LA County famously has a

14:26

severe housing shortage? What Brandon

14:28

is talking about is also

14:30

the issue of gentrification in

14:32

Los Angeles County. So even

14:34

though there have been efforts

14:36

to build more dense housing

14:38

in these suburbs where they're

14:40

zoned off for single -family

14:42

homes, a lot of the

14:44

times when these developers come

14:46

in, they're not building affordable

14:49

apartments, they're building luxury development.

14:51

And in a lot of

14:53

instances, it further accelerates the

14:55

gentrification that pushes out people

14:57

of color from their own

14:59

neighborhoods. So, and this was

15:01

happening before the fire? Right.

15:03

New state -of -the -art buildings, things

15:05

of that nature, stuff, you

15:07

know, industrial type, you know,

15:09

settings, you know, it's

15:12

just, you know, they, it's all

15:14

about a look. But it wasn't,

15:16

it's not necessarily about a look.

15:18

It's about getting the value for

15:20

the land. It's not, you

15:24

know, I've seen people's

15:26

houses being bought and then

15:28

stores put on, you

15:30

know, things of that nature,

15:32

like, what happened to

15:34

the residency? Like, why

15:37

you take three houses and

15:39

turn it into a grocery store?

15:41

Our three houses and turning

15:44

it into a building that ain't

15:46

nobody using. Coming

15:56

up, the scale

15:58

of this destruction in

16:01

Altadena. combined with this housing crisis

16:03

has a lot of people asking

16:05

who will get to rebuild

16:08

and return to the town.

16:10

Nobody's coming to save us.

16:12

We have to embrace each

16:14

other. We have to be

16:17

community focused. We have to

16:19

rebuild together. Stay with

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for details. Gene?

17:52

Jira? Code switch. So Jira,

17:54

we've been talking about the

17:56

eaten fire in Altadena, California

17:59

and how... because of the racial

18:01

and social economic makeup of altadena.

18:03

You got black, you have brown

18:06

working class families who have been

18:08

disproportionately feeling the brunt of the

18:11

damage from the wildfires. Obviously, LA

18:13

is notoriously one of the most

18:15

difficult housing market in the country.

18:18

Everything is mad expensive, and there's

18:20

more demand than there is supply.

18:22

So how does the destruction of

18:25

places like altadena and even the

18:27

Pacific Palisades in the West where

18:29

there are also fires? complicate this

18:32

dynamic around housing? Well, it just

18:34

means that there's now even a

18:37

greater demand for housing than there

18:39

was before. Nothing is really affordable

18:41

anymore, so it's a crisis, it's

18:44

a national crisis. The average person

18:46

can't compete. That's Herman Allison. He

18:48

and his wife Aldra recently lost

18:51

their home in Altadena. They both

18:53

actually happened to also be housing

18:55

experts. Aldra actually came out of

18:58

retirement at 68 to work with

19:00

the city of Pasadena to help

19:03

seniors find affordable housing. And the

19:05

irony is that she and her

19:07

husband are now in the same

19:10

boat. There's no doubt that

19:12

I will one day rebuild

19:14

my house. Okay, that's my

19:16

goal. Even though I'm older,

19:18

retire, basically some may retire.

19:21

I plan to rebuild my

19:23

home. If you're going to

19:25

have generational wealth in your

19:27

family, your families have to

19:29

come together and help you

19:31

rebuild. I've already heard from

19:34

residents that there's been rental

19:36

price gouging and developers already

19:38

trying to go in and

19:40

purchase property from retired seniors

19:42

whose homes burn down. There's

19:44

so many developers out there

19:47

sending letters, misinformation to people.

19:49

There's a danger, a serious

19:51

danger in Altadena now that

19:53

we have all these vacant

19:55

lots of outside developers coming

19:57

in not to replace single-family

20:00

houses, but to increase the...

20:02

so-called neat for more housing.

20:04

Aldra is really worried that

20:06

the fires could accelerate gentrification

20:08

if developers outside of the

20:10

community start building luxury apartments

20:13

in Altadena like she's been

20:15

seeing in Pasadena. And Aldra's

20:17

concerns aren't unfounded. The first

20:19

burnt-down home already sold in

20:21

Altadena for over half a

20:23

million dollars in all cash.

20:26

So it's already starting. Okay,

20:28

so is anyone trying to

20:30

protect Altadena from being brought

20:32

up by developers? Yes, I

20:34

spoke to local representative Judy

20:37

Chu. This is a disaster

20:39

that has left people shell-shocked,

20:41

numb, not knowing where to

20:43

go, and they need help

20:45

from the federal government to

20:47

ensure that they can... live

20:50

the life that they had

20:52

always hoped to have. Chew's

20:54

office has also demanded an

20:56

independent investigation into why the

20:58

west side of Altadena received

21:00

delayed evacuation notices. Then there's

21:03

Catherine Barker, the county supervisor

21:05

for Altadena. She's kind of

21:07

like the mayor for this

21:09

unincorporated town. For me, Altadena's

21:11

not for sale. If you

21:13

look at the history of

21:16

Altina, even when it comes

21:18

to the red lining, that

21:20

really is... a place that

21:22

for the African-American community represents

21:24

so much. And I want

21:26

to make sure that we

21:29

don't let that history go

21:31

away and that we provide

21:33

the opportunity for the next

21:35

generation because while we're not

21:37

redlining now, in a way

21:39

we are, because the cost

21:42

of housing is so expensive

21:44

that it is pricing many

21:46

young African-American families out of

21:48

the market and they're having

21:50

to move away. This

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customers with a minimum financial

34:43

commitment can cut their current

34:45

cloud bill in half. slash

34:51

NPR.