The first time Dan Grebow returned to Altadena, Calif., to pick through the rubble of his family’s home, he felt a strong pull to rebuild.
After all, it had been his home for 15 years. Mr. Grebow and his wife, Carmina, fixed it up together. And it was where their three young children had started their lives.
But when Mr. Grebow began navigating the labyrinth of insurance, mortgage payments and temporary housing, the variables overwhelmed him: How long would it take to rebuild? How much would it cost? Would the house be insurable in the future? Would it be safe for him and his family?
Across Altadena, where thousands of homes were destroyed in January by the Eaton fire, residents are grappling with the difficult question of whether to stay and rebuild — or leave for good.
Their decisions will determine the future of a neighborhood that generations of families have cherished as an emblem of middle-class prosperity in the bucolic foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains.
As of this week, more than 60 burned properties in Altadena have been listed for sale since the fires, according to data collected by Jim Tripodes, a local real estate agent. Nine have sold and 17 others are in escrow, the data show. Sale prices have ranged from $520,000 to $790,000.
Many homeowners are finding that insurance will not cover the full cost of rebuilding the structures they had, especially in an inflated market where materials and builders are in high demand. Already exhausted by a frantic evacuation and weeks of living in temporary housing, some believe it would be easier to sell their land and buy a home elsewhere than to wait for construction to finish in Altadena.
“The list of things that we were concerned about with rebuilding just seemed to grow,” Mr. Grebow said. “I think there’s a lot more uncertainty in the numbers for rebuilding.”
The prospect of longtime residents leaving Altadena for good has alarmed some community members, who fear that an exodus would open the door for developers to buy land and reshape the local character.
It was a place where middle-class Black families established strong neighborhood bonds decades ago, where Angelenos could find beautiful, affordable single-family homes and where Latino immigrants found community. It was known for its eclectic mix of Craftsman and Midcentury Modern homes and its small-town feel. Now, all of that is in question.
At the same time that residents were struggling to make the rebuilding math work, text messages began arriving on residents’ phones offering all-cash payments for their land. And real estate agents have been flooded with inquiries about cheap property.
In response, a movement called Altadena Not For Sale has crystallized in the weeks since the fire, and members have planted “Altadena Not For Sale!” yard signs in front of their decimated homes. On a Saturday morning in February, a handful of people, some of whom had lost their houses, stood on a corner with signs that encouraged residents to keep their property. Passers-by honked in support.
Besides demonstrating, the group has been educating uninsured and underinsured residents on their rights and encouraging them not to sell their land under pressure, said Melissa Michelson, an activist who has helped organize Altadena Not For Sale.
“It represents the idea that we’re not moving, we’re not selling, that we’re strong as a community,” she said.
After demonstrating, Altadena Not For Sale members drove in a caravan through the neighborhood, flagging down residents as they sifted through the rubble of their destroyed lots.
Salvador Placencia and his two young daughters were combing through the charred remains of his father-in-law’s property when the caravan pulled up. Mr. Placencia bought two signs for the yard and T-shirts for his daughters to wear.
His father-in-law, a gardener, had expanded a two-bedroom starter home into a four-bedroom structure over about 20 years.
“He fought,” Mr. Placencia said, “and that’s why he’s not selling.”
The sentiment was shared elsewhere in the neighborhood.
“We worked hard for that land,” said Rebbie Sylvester, a behavioral therapist who said her home had been in her family for decades until it was destroyed by the Eaton fire. “That’s our 40 acres and a mule.”
In communities that have been destroyed by wildfire, it has been common for victims to fear that their neighborhoods will lose their character after the rebuilding process. Across town from Altadena, homeowners who lost their homes in the Palisades fire, which destroyed more than 6,800 structures, have worried that affluent buyers will purchase prime real estate and turn Pacific Palisades into a land available only to the uber rich. There’s a nascent “not for sale” movement in the Palisades as well, Together Palisades.
In Hawaii, residents in Lahaina worried that their town would be sold to developers and lose its connection to its Native Hawaiian roots after the devastating 2023 fire.
And in Santa Rosa, Calif., there were similar questions over whether to rebuild after more than 3,000 homes were destroyed in a 2017 wind-swept blaze.
“I think that the biggest concern up front is the concern of the unknown,” said Gabe Osburn, the director of planning and economic development in Santa Rosa. “You just don’t know how it’s going to come back.”
Ultimately, Mr. Osburn said, zoning regulations prevented developers from building denser housing, and those who chose to rebuild helped form an even tighter community.
In many cases, insurance coverage — or lack thereof — could force the hands of homeowners.
Auriel Branson, whose grandfather bought her Altadena home in 1971 for $23,500, discovered after the Eaton fire that she was underinsured.
Ms. Branson inherited the home when her grandfather died in 2023. With it came all kinds of family treasures: her grandmother’s watercolors and her grandfather’s jazz instruments. Photos of her family members with Maya Angelou and Coretta Scott King. She realized how deep her roots were every time she met a stranger who knew stories about her from her grandparents.
She expects to receive a $380,000 payout from insurance, well shy of what it would take to reconstruct the 1,300 square foot, two-bedroom home and pay off her grandfather’s mortgage.
Ms. Branson, 28, loves Altadena and wants to continue her family’s legacy. But rebuilding feels impossible financially, she said, and she worries the neighborhood’s water and air are unsafe. She has been contemplating selling the property and returning to live in the South, where her mother’s family is.
“I will probably have to sell,” she said. “It breaks my heart.”
Some homeowners are doing their own calculations and finding that rebuilding just doesn’t make sense. Brock Harris, a real estate agent who said he has a total of five lots sold, in escrow or on the market in Altadena, said that a growing number of Altadena residents have been calling him in recent weeks with questions about selling their properties.
“I think a lot of them are coming to the conclusion that spending the next three to five years of their life building a house is just not in the cards,” Mr. Harris said.
Ms. Michelson, the activist, said one of her goals was to help those homeowners take time to deliberate and look at all their options to keep their homes. “Everybody’s in a different position,” she said. “There’s no way we could just glibly say, ‘Don’t sell, stay here.’”
Deciding whether to rebuild has been an emotional decision for Mr. Grebow, who moved to Altadena after graduate school to begin working as an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. There, he found a home that he could afford as a young adult, with the added perk of living within walking distance to work.
Initially, there was little question that he and his wife wanted to rebuild.
“But then after a couple of weeks that wears off,” Mr. Grebow said. “The more rational side kicks in.”
After wrestling with the decision, Mr. Grebow and his wife chose to list their home in mid-February. They wept together when the listing went live.
In just a few days, the Grebows’ home attracted three offers. The lot, which they had listed at $549,000, was set to sell for about $30,000 above asking price.
The Grebows felt relieved. They had moved quickly enough. Perhaps they could begin to restart their lives. With money from insurance and a sale combined, they hoped they could recover their home’s pre-fire value and buy a new home nearby, so their eldest child would not have to change schools, helping preserve a sense of normalcy for their family.
But while the house was in escrow, Mr. Grebow got a call from his real estate agent telling him that the buyer had pulled out.
The Grebows again found themselves pondering their next steps. They have gotten new offers in recent days for about $100,000 less than what the home had been set to sell for. The couple was not sure what to do.
“We saw this window that maybe we could get as close to being back to where we were as possible,” Mr. Grebow said. “Now, I feel like that window has closed.”
