After the devastating wildfires at the start of 2025, the city and county of Los Angeles have made historic strides toward wildfire recovery, completing the fastest hazardous materials cleanup in the Environmental Protection Agency’s history, and removing debris at a historic pace in Pacific Palisades. Yet even in well-resourced areas, residents of multifamily and nontraditional housing are often overlooked. 

For example, the burned-down Tahitian Terrace mobile home park was not included in the federally funded debris removal program until five months after the fire. In less-resourced areas like Altadena, the pace of cleanup and rebuilding has been even slower. 

Six months after the fires, many residents still lack the necessary resources to rebuild and face a difficult path of returning to their communities.  The long road to recovery demonstrates how our disaster recovery systems are not prepared to support people who are the least able to prepare for and recover from disasters.

Recovery, in Altadena or anywhere else, is not just about raising enough money for communities. It is also about how that money is invested, for whose benefit, and to what lasting effect. 

Robin hughes, president and CEO, the Housing Partnership Network

Natural disasters stem from the stark reality of our changing climate and will continue to drive displacement if government fails to invest in more inclusive preparedness and recovery systems, especially for people who are most vulnerable. Even before the L.A. wildfires, natural disasters forced an estimated 11 million people in the United States to relocate in 2024.

We urge state and local leaders to move forward with effective policymaking and ongoing community engagement, necessary to reduce inequities in both post-disaster recovery and future disaster planning.

Recovery, Rebuilding, and Reimagining for the Future 

Following the L.A. wildfires, local and state leaders introduced and implemented several proposals to expedite debris removal, streamline rebuilding, and provide direct assistance to residents and businesses in fire-impacted areas. However, to ensure an equitable recovery, policymakers must prioritize community resiliency and redesign disaster recovery systems to better withstand future events.

As disasters worsen in both frequency and impact, a community resiliency framework must guide future policymaking to prioritize:

• State and local investments in wildfire mitigation and resilience to reduce risk to life and property. This includes expanding programs like CalHome to help low- and moderate-income homeowners make critical repairs, incorporating fire-resistant upgrades into weatherization assistance programs such as the Low-Income Weatherization Program, and funding proactive mitigation strategies such as defensible space maintenance, home hardening, prescribed burns and fire-smart landscaping. Policymakers should also support the development of higher-density affordable housing in infill areas that are less vulnerable to wildfire risk.  
• Insurance strategies that protect all sectors, addressing existing market failures such as prohibitive cost of coverage, lack of coverage for multifamily properties, and lack of access to disaster insurance
• Distribution of resources for homeowners who wish to rebuild in their communities, with local protections to ensure survivors can return home without being priced out or displaced
• Streamlined development with a focus on increasing affordability and climate resiliency in the redevelopment of communities
• Community-centered disaster planning and preparedness to ensure that jurisdictions, community members, businesses, and affordable housing providers have the knowledge and resources to keep their communities safe from the effects of climate change

Community Stabilization in Altadena

In Altadena, where the fires affected more than 10,000 commercial properties and residential homes and displaced thousands of families, community members, local leaders, and nonprofit organizations are coming together to combat the speculative market and prevent further displacement. Backed by State Sen. Sasha-Renee Perez, a coalition of partners led by the California Community Land Trust Network, Los Angeles Community Land Trust Network, and Inclusive Action for the City, is pursuing a state allocation of $200 million to acquire fire-damaged properties. The homes will be redeveloped as affordable housing and/or maintained under community ownership models. Enterprise is proud to join partners in support of these efforts, which are critical for preventing permanent displacement of wildfire victims and ensuring that community ownership can be preserved. 

Driving through fire-ravaged neighborhoods reveals the true extent of the devastation: debris-covered lots, burned vehicles, and remains of former homes going back generations. Recovery in these neighborhoods is far from complete, and current systems in place are failing to reach people most in need. 

Robin Hughes, president and CEO of the Housing Partnership Network, lost her own Altadena home alongside thousands destroyed in January's Eaton Fire.  Before leading the national collaborative of nonprofit housing organizations, Hughes spent 26 years at Abode Communities, guiding the creation of thousands of units of sustainable affordable housing in California. "Recovery, in Altadena or anywhere else, is not just about raising enough money for communities," Hughes said. "It is also about how that money is invested, for whose benefit, and to what lasting effect."

Reimagining Systems for Long-term Recovery

Disaster recovery can take years — sometimes decades. Rebuilding L.A. will continue to demand coordination and planning across jurisdictional boundaries. And preparing communities for future disasters will require reimagining systems at all levels of government to integrate resiliency into our environment, infrastructure, and communities — including housing.  

We believe that recovery efforts should be inclusive of all sectors of our housing system, and that community needs must be met with sustained investments for long-term recovery and resiliency. Enterprise will continue to leverage its role as an intermediary to engage community partners, policymakers, government agencies, and public and private partners to ensure that recovery planning and policy is forward-facing. 

Read part one and two in the Building Back in LA series: Prioritizing Wildfire Resilience for Affordable Housing and A Climate Crisis We Can No Longer Ignore