IMPACT IN ACTION Featuring Fiscal Sponsorship Partner: The Foothill Catalog Foundation

The Foothill Catalog Foundation

Rebuilding and Restoring Hope After the Los Angeles Fires 

The Los Angeles wildfires represented unprecedented devastation across the entire Southern California region. The Eaton Fire, with a majority of its impact imposed upon the small foothill community of Altadena, destroyed over 9,000 structures alone. Nearly 6,000 of these structures were single-family homes, leaving thousands of households homeless while simultaneously erasing over a hundred years of urban heritage, history, and cultural identity.

Those displaced in Altadena include all ranges of backgrounds and financial means, from those living in historic estates to the multigenerational families all sharing the roof of a single bungalow. Altadena is known for its historic and active BIPOC community, and maintaining that diversity will be a major challenge of this rebuild process. For all those who lost their home, there are inherent inequalities within the population regarding access to resources and financial support to rebuild. The Foothill Catalog wants to ensure that all displaced residents have this ability, especially those struggling with lack of sufficient insurance coverage.

Community Partners is proud to be a Fiscal Sponsor for The Foothill Catalog’s innovative and creative solutions for a community in need, empowering displaced residents with a collection of pre-approved home designs to affordably and expeditiously rebuild.

Founded by an interdisciplinary group of residents and design professionals, united in response to help their community in urgent need of housing, The Foothill Catalog is a nonprofit corporation seeking to retain as many original homeowners as possible while rebuilding the strong character that the Foothill community is known for a diverse and vibrant community.

Many of the displaced residents, from a diverse array of ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, could only afford to live in this area with such high real estate value because their families have owned property for many years, often across multiple generations. These are commonly the least insured and at the greatest risk of not having the means to rebuild a home.

The Catalog’s initiative will connect architects, engineers, builders, and other members of the construction industry, such as manufacturers and suppliers from across the region, to collaborate on the design and construction of model homes at a reduced or pro bono service to support the rebuild effort. Through this collaboration, strategically coordinated at the beginning of the design process with building experts and design architects, the housing structures can be made inherently more efficient, more resilient, and more affordable. This also allows these home designs to be finalized with a group of builders already familiar with the design, prepared to construct the home based on a predictable timeframe with a realistic cost estimate once a design is selected by a displaced property owner.

The Catalog is also working with Los Angeles County to create a faster process for pre-approving home designs for permitting before a specific site or property is selected. This will also allow for much faster construction once a design is published in the Catalog and selected by a resident. The foundation will also provide financial assistance to those who would not otherwise have the means or the insurance options to build a catalog home.

Approximately 6,000 displaced residents are struggling to rebuild not only their homes, but their lives, livelihoods, and communities. The Foothill Catalog Foundation is focused on providing a collection of pre-approved home designs to affordably and expeditiously rebuild, while collectively retaining our community identity and local architectural character.

Learn more about The Foothill Catalog Foundation.