Generational Black Homes in LA Reduced to Ash Amid Growing Wildfires

Sixty-two years burned to ashes for the Daniels family. Their Altadena home, a Craftsman-style beauty, was a living archive of their family’s migration story from Louisiana, adorned with sepia-toned photos of their early days in California and framed certificates marking achievements from children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

For the Washingtons, 50 years of love and labor met a similar fate. It was where Sunday dinners stretched into the evening, where nieces and nephews learned to ride bikes, and extended family could come to connect with nature. 

Fifteen years may seem fleeting compared to the lifetimes etched into the Daniels’ and Washingtons’ histories, but for the Abraham-Traylor family, it was long enough to craft a world they called their own. Yet, when the flames came roaring down from Eaton Canyon, they devoured everything — the cherished art projects brought home from school, the photos of milestones celebrated in their cozy living room, and the sense of belonging they’d worked so hard to cultivate.

Less than a week after two major fires tore through the mountains and into neighborhoods, the death toll stands at 24. Two-thirds of the lives lost were in Altadena, where thousands of structures were destroyed. Economic losses across Los Angeles County are estimated at over $200 billion. But the wildfires are more than a test of California’s economy, firefighting capabilities, or policies. They’re a devastating reminder of how climate change and political inaction compound vulnerability in Black communities. As “weather whiplash” worsens, the insurance market collapses, and the housing crisis deepens, the state — and nation — is failing to meet the demands of a changing planet.

For Fred Daniels, the destruction of his home and neighborhood has brought a profound sense of loss that feels all too familiar. His grandmother, a New Orleans native, was displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, then Hurricane Harvey in 2017, and now this.

“I hope that we’re able to rebuild,” the U.S. Navy veteran told Capital B. “Although everybody has the sense of it like, ‘Hey, let’s stay put, let’s rebuild.’ There’s not going to be a cookie-cutter approach to this.”

Since 2020, major insurers have abandoned Altadena, leaving hundreds of Black families like the Daniels without coverage. And like many other Black families in the area, they’re still expected to pay their mortgages while covering rent elsewhere. Three days after the fire, a real estate broker contacted Daniels’ mother with a “deal”: $7,000 rent for a 3-bedroom apartment in neighboring Monrovia. Double the average rent in the area. 

So it’s clear, half a dozen residents told Capital B, that those who lost homes and jobs in the fires now face recovery with a fractured safety net. And the mental toll — watching their community burn, enduring displacement, and living with the constant fear of more disaster — has only magnified the instability. 

Grassroots groups are stepping in where institutions fall short, but it raises a crucial question: Can California confront the intersecting crises of climate change and housing in a way that protects its most vulnerable? Or will the cost of inaction continue to fall hardest on those least equipped to bear it?

The inaction is already generation-altering. 

“I’ve prayed my whole life to be able to afford settling in my own town,” explained Cienna Benn, a graduate student at the University of California, Irvine, whose working class family was displaced by the fires. 

Studies after disasters have found that wealthier people often buy up property in areas damaged by disasters, forcing out lower-income residents. This process is called disaster gentrification, and it’s already underway.

“I always tried to keep this place a secret because I didn’t want it taken from me,” she said. “It’s really difficult to feel like that is spinning out of control now. Developers are already contacting people. I don’t mind sharing it — but I don’t want it gone.”

Rooted in Soil, Uprooted by Fire

For Black families fleeing Jim Crow’s grip in the mid-20th century, Altadena’s foothills presented a sanctuary. The Los Angeles suburb offered something rare: a chance at homeownership, safety, and access to well-resourced neighborhoods. 

The area, dotted with trails and open green spaces, made families feel closer to the former Southern homes. And with that comfort, the working-class community climbed the social and economic ladder over generations. Their success was written into the streets — historic homes, thriving institutions, and a shared sense of place that endured even as gentrification crept closer. Since the 1990s, property values have soared, with the suburb’s median home price landing in the top 4% nationally and many homes appreciating to over $1 million.

But, in a matter of hours on Jan. 8, it all vanished. The homes, the history, the strongest chance at generational wealth — obliterated in the most destructive wildfires ever to strike Los Angeles.

Every morning growing up, Benn and her mother, Alicia, practiced the same tradition. “She’d tell me to put my feet in the dirt for 10 minutes every day,” Benn shared, a practice that became symbolic for her. “It was my way of letting the land know my name and acknowledging that I come from people that have worked the land and have known it, and have chosen to build their family on this land.” 

She explained that these fires have destroyed natural spaces integral to Altadena’s identity, and much of the grief is tied to this environmental loss. Solastalgia is a term that captures the deep emotional distress caused by environmental degradation, where people feel the loss of their home and sense of place caused by displacement or disasters. 

Benn’s family’s migration, she explained, carried with it a dual sorrow—the estrangement from fertile Southern soil that sustained their roots. Altadena offered a reprieve, but now that’s gone, too.

“The land, physically, just means so much to me, my family, and anyone that grew up here,” she said. “We spend so much time in parks, nature, and the hills around us because I think that’s where we’ve felt like home.” 

Climate change is speeding up the breakdown of these natural landscapes all across America, creating the perfect storm for disasters like the LA wildfires. Unpredictable weather patterns are making the land less resilient, and we’re seeing the effects firsthand through the phenomenon known as “weather whiplash.” 

After Los Angeles experienced one of its wettest seasons on record, eight months of drought left the region bone dry, turning once-lush vegetation into kindling. That’s exactly what set the stage for the Palisades and Eaton fires.

In fact, weather whiplash has surged by about 66% over the past few decades. Places are now getting wetter and drier at the same time, leading to more disasters and even the spread of diseases.

Think of it like a sponge — global warming allows the atmosphere to soak up more water, but it also releases it more intensely. At the same time, it works to dry out and wither landscapes like a sponge left on your counter overnight. So when it rains, like Los Angeles saw last spring, it floods. When it’s dry, like the region saw this month, it explodes. 

These extremes hit Black neighborhoods the hardest. Statistically, our communities are the most likely to face major flooding events and have a 50% higher vulnerability to wildfires compared to others. While we traditionally think of wildfires as a rural and white issue, hundreds of thousands of Black people face heightened wildfire vulnerability due to historical housing inequities placing them in high-risk areas, compounded by barriers like limited resources for evacuation and recovery, and systemic underinvestment in disaster preparedness.

And the threats aren’t slowing down. If this February brings as much rain as last year, the risks could escalate even further. Fire-scorched hillsides can’t absorb water the way healthy soil does, so heavy rains destabilize them, causing devastating mudslides and debris flows. These avalanches of mud and rocks destroy homes, wipe out what’s left of the landscape, and leave entire neighborhoods unrecognizable.

The climate and environmental fears spreading across the once leafy green city have added “insult to injury,” said Chris Schell, an environmental professor at the University of California, Berkeley and Altadena native, a part of the Washington family whose grandparents, mother, brother, uncle, and aunt all lost their homes to the flames. 
As climate change ramps up and fire seasons get longer, wildfire smoke is undoing years of progress in cutting pollution from cars and factories. Health experts are raising the alarm, warning that the effects could be devastating. Since 2016, wildfire smoke has wiped out 25% of the nation’s air quality gains, and if nothing changes, deaths linked to smoke could climb by 50%.

In Los Angeles, Black residents are already feeling the impact. Air quality in parts of LA has hit dangerous levels, with experts estimating that daily mortality could rise by 5% to 15% due to the toxic air. The air pollution isn’t just making it harder to breathe — it’s also worsening skin conditions that disproportionately affect Black people. 

And the health effects don’t stop there. Wildfire smoke makes respiratory and heart conditions worse, harms pregnancy outcomes, and even damages organs like the liver and brain. Maybe you miss a day of work because you can’t breathe as well, explained Joseph Wilkins, an assistant professor of atmospheric science at Howard University. It can be “just as simple as a cough or lack of being able to breathe fully — all the way up to dying,” he said. 

What makes the situation even more concerning is the type of pollution being released. When homes burn — especially older ones built with now-banned toxic materials like asbestos — the smoke becomes much more dangerous than burning trees. These legacy toxins are spreading across neighborhoods, compounding the health risks.

“These Black strongholds are now facing not only the loss of their homes, but the now the exposure to environmental pollutants and contaminants that could kill them slowly on the other end,” Schell said. 

To stay safe, experts recommend staying indoors, using air purifiers, and wearing N95 masks. But in South LA, where much of the smoke is drifting, many Black residents are living paycheck to paycheck, making it tough to afford these protections. The result is a community left to weather the worsening air quality with limited resources.

Wildfires turn housing crisis into disaster

Fifteen years ago, Lydia Abraham-Traylor moved from south LA to Altadena to start her family in a rented house on the city’s westside, where she quickly found a community tied closely through schools, day care, and neighborhood friendships. 

Last Tuesday started as an ordinary day, winds howling as they often did. Trees leaned precariously, trash cans toppled, and shingles loosened from rooftops. The power flickered, but she reassured her 8-year-old daughter, making it a fun evening with pizza and flashlights. By dusk, the fire reports from Eaton Canyon had grown concerning. Calls from family urged caution, but she resisted evacuation — reluctant to disrupt their lives midweek.

California’s wildfire crisis has been compounded by insurance challenges and housing policies that put communities at greater risk. These fires came just weeks after California introduced sweeping reforms to stabilize its insurance system. After many residents lost their private coverage, they turned to California’s basic state-run insurance plan, which has its own funding challenges.

The new rules require insurers to expand coverage in fire-prone areas while allowing them to charge premiums based on future fire risks and rising reinsurance costs. However, these changes have a double-edged effect: They encourage insurers to return to high-risk areas but also lead to skyrocketing premiums, with some homeowners seeing rates triple.

Read More: Black Communities Left to Sink as Insurance Companies Abandon the South

At the same time, California’s push to expand housing in wildfire-prone areas has turned high-risk zones into tinderboxes. Fires are increasingly threatening towns and cities at the Wildland-Urban Interface, where wild spaces meet dense communities. In these areas, a fire doesn’t just burn out — it spreads from home to home, with tightly packed neighborhoods turning into deadly ignition points.

Despite years of warnings from environmentalists and urban planners, powerful real estate interests have blocked efforts to limit development in these high-risk areas. In 2021, a bill aimed at restricting building in “very high risk” wildfire zones was defeated after heavy lobbying by the California Building Industry Association. Critics argue that these interests prioritize profits over public safety, leaving communities to shoulder the escalating costs of housing policies that fuel the wildfire crisis.

“There’s nothing left in Altadena for me at this point,” Abraham-Traylor said. “I’m a single mom as a teacher, and we’re renters, so, you know, price gouging will start to happen.”

As damages from these fires climb into the tens of billions, the question looms: Will the nation’s housing and utilities systems begin to adapt to a world where the unimaginable has become routine? While cities, real estate developers, and utilities swoon over profits and convenience, the devastating consequences of inaction are becoming impossible to ignore.

The fires may have caught local and state agencies off guard, but grassroots organizations and small businesses have quickly stepped up to fill the gaps. In Black neighborhoods, bookstores have become makeshift hubs with emergency essentials like food, blankets, and toiletries. Community groups are running around-the-clock hotlines and offering evacuation rides to anyone in need. Meanwhile, Black-owned restaurants, like South LA Cafe, are stepping in, too — handing out groceries to ensure no one goes without.

This isn’t just a crisis for the wealthy neighborhoods often portrayed in media coverage, Schell said.

“The majority of the folks that were displaced were not wealthy millionaires or billionaires, celebrities or actors or actresses,” Schell said. “They were people just like the people in Appalachia whose homes were floating down rivers, or the folks who have experienced fires along the Northeast coast of the United States. We are all in the heat of the climate crisis right now.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Alicia Benn.

This story has been updated.