Altadena, My City.

There are a lot of "ideas" but still no "plans." How we got here and what we are going to do.

I decided it was time to stop waiting for someone to write the story of Altadena after our fires, its rebuild, and how we get there, and start writing the narrative myself.

Of course, this task will be more work than I probably want to do, but it is time to get the message out. It is too important to let an opportunity like this pass. We are doing history in real time, and those who want to study our fire in the future as well as those wanting to learn about politics in real time may enjoy the record.

As many know, Altadena was devastated by wild fires about three months ago. A lot has been written in the local and national media about the effects. When the fires hit, there were a lot of responses from a lot of people. The good and bad of humanity was out there for all to see. The dichotomy of the outpouring of charity and support from everywhere, and yet roaming looters out there, trying to take advantage of what was an absolute travesty was there for us to see every day.

For me, being the policy wonk that I am, the question was how to best help when I realized my house survived miraculously? How could I help my community?

My experiences with “big” and “complex” issues lead me to see the first layer of the problem- what to do with all those people who lost their houses and were not going to rebuild? How could we get them the funds they needed to get their lives in order and not wade into the broader policy questions of how to rebuild, which would ultimately slow down what people needed the most- a sense of relief.

Altadena is also a complex community, with diverse socio-economic experiences. There were those affected who did not know how to get their interests best advocated for. In my mind, what I saw was a need to “release the pressure,” getting people a “chance to breathe.” The conversations were translated into a bill introduced by our Assemblyman, now numbered as AB 797, which will be a theme of a later post.

After we got the bill introduced (and it is languishing in the Assembly), the question really became what happens next? We needed the bill to get traction but the media did not want to hear that the “underpricing of property” was solved, they wanted to publish stories about the continued exploitation of property holders instead of showing there was an answer to the problem they wrote about.

I felt we needed to keep pushing the discussion. We were hearing about a “plan.” Nobody would put one out. Everyone had ideas. Everyone was trying to get a “piece of the action,” while not actually hearing what people wanted. It was time for something different. It was time to put something out there that people could resonate around. It was time to break down the problem on a high level for someone to do something.

In February, we published our initial plan through a nonprofit I work for. That plan is a three stage model- stabilize, rebuild residential, and bring back businesses. Not that they had to be sequential, but the idea was build on successes so each stage became easier. The goal was to put something out there for people to “attack,” at at least move the conversation “off center.”

We started to get people discussing the plan. People came to us because there was finally an idea for people to resonate around. We started to unite parts of our community in an ad hoc form. Community building started at its most basic level. There were “official” responses- those of the leaders, but there was something else happening, something more magical. People came out of the woodwork to start to have input, bring new ideas, build on the skeleton we published. It was very encouraging.

One thing led to another and Altadena started to create its own narrative in the shadow of the much more prominent Pacific Palisades. Politicos came to “visit” our community and have the photo op, but the “plan” stayed elusive.

It is here we started to reach out to the local media, trying to find the narrative beyond what was published, and get attention to the bill solution we had and start to move the rebuilding conversation forward.

The narrative is, there is a “plan” coming together (and will be constantly evolving from the base having been published). We are understanding the “lefts and rights” as they say in politics. We are “running the traps,” while nevertheless moving the narrative forward. We are learning what the different components are, federally, state and county. We were creating policy in real time, in a high wire act.

And so, with the above in mind, I wanted to create this Substack to record the “how” for what we are doing. History is being written in real time. Policy is being made right here. There are challenges for sure, but there is hope. There is a path forward. We will create something great. Recording it in real time is something not done before. There are serious questions to be resolved and not resolved in a single Substack. It will take time.

And with that, stay tuned. There is a list of questions we need to answer and will try to as we evolve. Some posts will be short. Others will be an essay. Complex issues are hard to simplify in real time. Some days we will get tremendous movement. Others will be slow slogs as the wheels of government move. I have been here before and now you will too. The hope however is to show a history for all to see, and see how we can begin to attend to issues similar to ours in the future.

Thanks for reading.