The Lot
Robert Lara moved into a trailer on his lot in Altadena to watch over the rebuilding of his home. A year after the Eaton Fire, he had plans drawn and approved but hadn't broken ground. "I wish I could stay in a nice place, and I didn't have to go through this," he told CNN. "You see yourself in a vacant lot, just a pile of dirt… I do understand why people would give up."
He hasn't given up. That's the wager. The wager is that the ground you're standing on is worth more than the sum of what it costs to stand there.
The costs are specific and they are brutal. Most rebuilds in Altadena will take 10 to 24 months from site cleanup through construction. Permit applications spend an average of 118 days in review. New tariffs on lumber are raising material costs. Immigration enforcement is thinning the construction labor pool in a state where 41% of construction workers are immigrants. As of early 2026, out of nearly 6,000 burned parcels, 28 buildings have reached completion. Twenty-eight. Fewer than a fifth of burned homes have even been issued permits.
An LA Times investigation of fires between 2017 and 2020 that destroyed 22,500 homes found only 38% were ever rebuilt. More than six out of ten, gone for good.
And still, people are coming back.
Zaire Calvin lost five houses in the fire. He lost his sister Evelyn McClendon, one of nineteen people killed. He's rebuilding anyway. Calvin is a football coach and founder of Xtreme Athletics, which trains underserved youth in Altadena. Calvin's wager is on the people who lived around those buildings and what they meant to each other. That's the part fire can't reach.
On East Pine Street, Carol Wood stood in front of a house that first belonged to her parents. An intergenerational home, the kind Altadena was built on. It burned. San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity rebuilt it. At the ribbon-cutting she said:
"Not knowing the answers, and now we've come to see this beautiful home. It's really beyond words."
That pause between "not knowing the answers" and the key in her hand lasted fifteen months. Nine more Habitat projects are under construction. Architects launched the Foothill Catalog of pre-approved plans to shave months and 10% off costs. The Altadena Builds Back Foundation funded rebuilds for 22 underinsured homes in West Altadena. The Rodriguez family moved into a donated modular home on their old lot.
Real, every one of them. And against the scale of the loss, a rounding error. Twenty-eight completions out of 6,000 burned parcels.
The money alone would break most people, and money is the part you can count. You're paying rent somewhere else while holding a mortgage on a lot with nothing on it, carrying two housing costs on a timeline nobody will guarantee. Then there's the rest of it. 73% of Black homeowners with severely damaged homes had taken no observable recovery action as of August 2025. Corporate buyers now hold 59% of post-fire purchases, concentrated in western Altadena, where the fire hit hardest and where Black families settled after the 1960s. The community that was already contracting before the fire may not reassemble on the other side of it. The neighbor you're waiting for may not be coming back.
Staying demands bridging an insurance gap averaging hundreds of thousands of dollars with savings, loans, crowdfunding, or the help of organizations that are themselves scrambling for resources. It demands navigating a permit process that moves at 118 days if you're lucky, in a construction market where costs are climbing and workers are disappearing. It demands waking up every morning and believing the timeline will resolve, the neighbors will return, the place will still be the place.
Robert Lara, on his lot in his trailer, knows all of this. He said he understands why people would give up. He also hasn't left. I have spent a fair amount of my life around people who stay in situations that any sensible accountant would tell them to walk away from. Sailors who re-up on ships they know are badly maintained. Workers who stick with a job site after the contractor's already stiffed them once. People whose attachment to a place or a crew or a way of life doesn't fit on a balance sheet and can't be argued with.
There's a word for what keeps a person on a pile of dirt waiting for something that might take two years or might not come at all. I don't know if the word is faith or stubbornness or love. I suspect the people standing on those lots don't know either. They just know what leaving would cost, and it's the one number nobody can put a figure on.