Topline:
Two members of the Black Eyed Peas, Taboo and will.i.am, release a song condemning ICE and celebrating the community that raised them.
Why it matters: The track is a love letter to East L.A. and to the immigrant communities that shape the area. It’s also a response to what will.i.am and Taboo call "cruel and indiscriminate ICE raids terrorizing Los Angeles."
Keep reading... to hear what we learned when we sat down with Taboo to get the track’s origin story.
Two members of the Grammy-winning, chart-topping hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas, released a new track, titled East LA, on July 18 dedicated to their hometown. Between a catchy chorus that loops a sample of Santana’s 1999 hit Maria Maria, will.i.am and Taboo rhyme about being raised among “Aztec warriors” and getting stupid on “Whittier and Euclid.”
The track is a love letter to East L.A. and to the immigrant communities that shape the area. It’s also a response to what will.i.am and Taboo call "cruel and indiscriminate ICE raids terrorizing Los Angeles."
But the song didn’t start out that way. I sat down with Taboo to get the track’s origin story.
Jimmy Gomez, aka Taboo, one of the core members of the Black Eyed Peas, was born in Boyle Heights in 1975. Years later, when he was a B-boy in L.A.'s late-'90s freestyle break dancing scene, he met William Adams, aka will.i.am. They bonded over growing up in the same area and even realized that their moms went to rival high schools.
“My mom went to Garfield, and his mom went to Roosevelt,” Taboo says. “But it was all love for East L.A.”
Taboo has vivid memories of growing up in the area: “Carne asada, paletas, raspados and elote from the elote man.”
He remembers getting pan dulce and watching mariachis with his grandmother. One of the places he would see them perform, Mariachi Plaza in Boyle Heights, features prominently in the East LA music video.
According to Taboo, earlier this year, will.i.am reached out and said he wanted to put together a song where they “ talk about all the beauty that is East L.A. and our upbringing in our childhood ... and just the things that we were surrounded by.”
Taboo went into the studio, and will.i.am already had the looped Maria Maria sample and a sketch of how the flow would work. They started spitballing words they used as kids and also slang from the neighborhood.
“ We started laughing, like, what's some words that you remember? What about pan dulce? That's cool, right?” Taboo says. “ Oh wait, I'm on this Foos Gone Wild.” (Foos Gone Wild is an extremely popular Instagram memes page with a Chicano sense of humor). “We laugh all the time with Foos Gone Wild because it's very stereotypical, but it's funny and that's what we grew up with. So Foos Gone Wild set the tone for us. That's not typical to what people have heard from the Peas. It's L.A.-centric. It's a very Chicano, Spanglish vibe, but it's fun.”
For the music video, Taboo says they shot it "guerrilla style,” picking locations that were significant to them growing up and going with the flow: “Let's go to this landmark here. Hey, Will, let's go to where your mom used to live in this part of the project.”
Part of the video is shot in front of Frank Fierro’s 1970s Orale Raza mural, which is painted on the Estrada Courts building where will.i.am and his family lived as a child.
On June 6, two days after will.i.am and Taboo had wrapped shooting the music video, ICE sweeps began to roil Los Angeles. The two rappers immediately knew they had to incorporate what was happening into the visuals of the video and the meaning of the track.
“This is bigger than just a love letter," Taboo says they realized. "Now we have to go in and really advocate for raza, for our people. ... The ICE raids that are hostile takeovers with people in masks and unmarked cars that are taking families and people that are working and mothers that are with their kids — that's horrible. That's not right.”
Taboo and will.i.am went to a protest against ICE in front of Los Angeles City Hall to participate and film part of the video. “So that's why you see the American flag and the Mexican flag combined [in the music video]. That was at the protest downtown,” Taboo says.
As for what Taboo hopes listeners take away from the song?
“For those folks that may be like, ‘Well, we want our borders to be strict.’ I agree,” Taboo says. “We should have restrictions on our borders. But we should not execute hostile takeovers. I hope that we can stand together. Have empathy, have love, support. Learn ways that we can educate ourselves and do our part.”
Topline:
New coins begin to circulate today, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding. The coins feature pilgrims and early presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But other coins honoring civil rights figures and suffragettes won't be minted.
More details: But when the Trump administration unveiled the new anniversary coins a few weeks ago, the Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and suffragette quarters had been scrapped, replaced by coins featuring pilgrims, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address.
Pushback: In a break with tradition, the U.S. Mint is also considering issuing a $1 coin with the face of the current president, Donald Trump, a move usually shunned as a symbol of monarchy.
Read on... for more on the redesigned coins.
New coins begin to circulate today, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States' founding. The coins feature pilgrims and early presidents — George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. But other coins honoring civil rights figures and suffragettes won't be minted.
In a break with tradition, the U.S. Mint is also considering issuing a $1 coin with the face of the current president, Donald Trump, a move usually shunned as a symbol of monarchy.
That has sparked pushback from some lawmakers and members of an advisory committee whose design recommendations were overruled.
The special coins were authorized back in 2021 in anticipation of this year's big semiquincentennial celebration. That launched a lengthy design process that involved lots of focus groups and public outreach.
"In a democracy and a country as vast as this, the only way to do this is exactly the way Congress decided it should be done, which is to form a committee of people from different regions of the country, different perspectives, and let them talk it through," says Donald Scarinci, who has served on the Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee for two decades.
The committee ultimately recommended five commemorative quarters to roll out during the year. One would feature Frederick Douglass, to mark the abolition of slavery. Another would highlight the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote. A third coin would have shown 6-year-old Ruby Bridges, to celebrate school desegregation and the civil rights movement.
The idea of the series was to honor not only the 250-year-old Declaration of Independence but also some of the battles fought in the centuries that followed to help realize that founding creed.
"We struggled as a nation with civil rights," Scarinci says. "We struggled as a nation with women's suffrage. But we persevered and we've made, at least in some situations, some progress."
But when the Trump administration unveiled the new anniversary coins a few weeks ago, the Frederick Douglass, Ruby Bridges and suffragette quarters had been scrapped, replaced by coins featuring pilgrims, the Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address.
"We saw designs we'd never seen before," says Scarinci, who boycotted the unveiling ceremony.
A spokeswoman for the Mint says the new designs were selected by the Treasury Secretary, but that all had been reviewed at some point either by the citizens advisory committee or the Commission of Fine Arts.
The Mint has also floated the idea of marking the nation's 250th birthday with an unprecedented $1 coin featuring Trump's likeness.
"It's an absolute break from tradition," says Douglas Mudd, curator and director of the Money Museum, run by the American Numismatic Association. "This would be a first to have a sitting president on a coin that's intended for circulation."
George Washington's face didn't appear on a coin until 1932, more than a century after his death. The nation's first president was strongly opposed to that kind of personal aggrandizement.
"He expressly said, I, George Washington, will not have my portrait on United States coins. We are done with kings," Scarinci says. "And for 250 years, around the world, the only nations that placed images of their rulers on coins are monarchs and dictatorships."
Nine Democratic senators have written to the Treasury secretary, urging him to reject the Trump coin and avoid the appearance of a "cult of personality."
"This is not just a coin," Scarinci says. "It is American history that will last for an eternity. These coins that we produce reflect the values of a nation."
Copyright 2026 NPR
Topline:
Under Newsom’s tenure, health care has been expanded, but his housing goals and homelessness pledges remain unfinished. Can he deliver before eyeing the White House?
Why it matters: The governor, who will address the Legislature and present his budget proposal this week, has spent the past seven years pushing an ambitious agenda. Now in his final year, numerous interest groups will clamor for him to pass their preferred policies, nix the regulations they fear and protect the programs they favor. How he responds will follow him into his expected presidential primary run.
What's next: “This really is a pivotal year for him,” Democratic political consultant Kelly Calkin said. “What do voters in the rest of the country want to see? They’re feeling the pinch of affordability. … He’s probably going to look through that lens on what helps shape his agenda for the next year.”
Read on... for more on what to expect for Newsom's final year.
It’s Gavin Newsom’s final year in office as California governor — and his last chance to use his role as governor to audition for the national stage.
The governor, who will address the Legislature and present his budget proposal this week, has spent the past seven years pushing an ambitious agenda. Now in his final year, numerous interest groups will clamor for him to pass their preferred policies, nix the regulations they fear and protect the programs they favor. How he responds will follow him into his expected presidential primary run.
Will he, with his recent focus on affordability, make a dent in Californians’ housing and health care costs? Will he make progress on reducing homelessness? Will he continue pushing green energy as voters demand cheaper gas? Will he weather another dismal budget deficit without punishing cuts that would alienate the progressives whose programs he has championed?
“This really is a pivotal year for him,” Democratic political consultant Kelly Calkin said. “What do voters in the rest of the country want to see? They’re feeling the pinch of affordability. … He’s probably going to look through that lens on what helps shape his agenda for the next year.”
It’s also his final opportunity to make headway on some of the lofty goals Newsom made when he ran for governor in 2018 that he hasn’t always met.
He vowed to tackle homelessness, which has only gotten worse over his seven-year tenure, despite the more than $24 billion his administration has poured into it. He started off his term with an initial, headline-grabbing proposal to grant new parents six months of paid leave, but quickly pared it back to a two-week increase, for a total of eight weeks, and gradual boosts in how much the program pays.
In 2021 he said the state would add 200,000 new subsidized child care slots by this year, but the plan been delayed for two years and remains tens of thousand of slots short; he has since promised to resume the expansion this year.
He campaigned on establishing a single-payer public health care system, even calling out “politicians saying they support single-payer but that it’s too soon, too expensive or someone else’s problem.” Then he pivoted to “universal coverage,” with the state slowly expanding coverage for low-income Californians, including undocumented immigrants, but abruptly halted that amid a budget deficit last year.
He spoke, like so many before him, of evening out the state’s boom-and-bust tax system that over-relies on stock market returns, but has largely quashed other proposals to raise revenue as the state stares down a deficit.
Newsom’s penchant for big promises and first-in-the-nation ideas has been both a blessing and a curse for the ambitious politician. Advocates of those policies say the lofty goals have made a difference, even if the state ultimately falls short of achieving all of them.
Newsom has left his mark on state government: He started new programs like the expansion of public school to all 4-year-olds, created an office to control rising health care costs, flexed the state’s regulatory powers to achieve its greenhouse gas-reduction goals — only to run into resistance with the Trump administration — and pushed state leaders into overseeing thorny issues like homelessness and the mental health care system that had long been left to local and county governments.
“I don’t think there was a lot of stuff lacking,” said Anthony Rendon, the former Assembly speaker who led the chamber during Newsom’s first five years in office, of policy issues the governor has yet to address. After years of working with Newsom’s predecessor Jerry Brown, who was focused mostly on fiscal restraint and building up the state’s reserves, Rendon and former Senate President Pro Tem Toni Atkins recalled Newsom starting off his first term in 2019 pleasing the mostly Democratic Legislature with a long list of progressive ideas and a willingness to spend on them.
“In retrospect, it never seems like enough,” Rendon said.
Case in point: housing. It’s perhaps the most visible measure by which Newsom will be judged after he leaves office and it comprises a bulk of the recent national Democratic platform focused on lowering the cost of living. About 40% of California households are “burdened” by their rent or mortgage, Census data shows, a policymaker benchmark meaning housing eats up more than a third of their income.
Newsom ran on lowering those costs by boosting production and said it was “achievable” for the state to build an ambitious 3.5 million new homes by 2025. In 2024, the state added just under 120,000 new units, about a fifth of the annual rate needed to meet that goal. In media appearances the governor now downplays his original figure as a “stretch goal.”
Yet those who favor building more say he’s still accomplished more than any other governor on housing. They blame local resistance to housing density, high interest rates and the persistently high cost of building as reasons for the slow progress.
“You can’t solve a systemic problem overnight or even in seven years, but what you can do is change the trajectory of the issue,” said Ray Pearl, executive director of the California Housing Consortium, a nonprofit that advocates for building affordable housing.
Pearl pointed to actions Newsom has taken, like an early budget move to quintuple the state’s tax credit for low-income housing construction, backing laws that relax rules on where housing can be built and picking legal fights with cities that refuse to plan adequate housing units for their populations.
“Leadership sets the tone,” he said. “It’s changed the focus and the conversation to where the state of California has finally gotten serious in planning for and producing affordable housing.”
Pearl said in Newsom’s final year in office he hopes the governor will support a proposed $10 billion bond lawmakers want to put on this year’s ballot to boost a state affordable housing fund.
Newsom acknowledges California has yet to see his promised building boom, and last month expressed interest in alternative forms of construction, such as modular housing, as another solution. On The Ezra Klein Show, he hinted at an upcoming legislative debate over how the state can promote modular housing, a cheaper way to build in which houses are assembled in factories then shipped to sites to be installed. An Assembly committee chaired by one of Newsom’s allies on housing, Democratic Oakland Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, is set to discuss the method this year. Its use in the Bay Area has already exposed familiar debates about the use of union labor in housing.
“This holds a lot of promise. It holds a lot of political peril, in the context of the politics within labor. And that has to be accommodated and dealt with,” Newsom said. “By the way, if there’s a big preview for California in my last year, it’s in this space legislatively to take it to the next level.”
It’s the closest Newsom has come in recent weeks to stating a new policy goal or proposal. Izzy Gardon, Newsom’s spokesperson, would not provide any details on his housing or any other agenda, telling CalMatters only to “stay tuned.”
Gardon refused interview requests to discuss the governor’s policy goals for his final year. Newsom is expected to deliver his State of the State address on Thursday.
Already, advocates for the comprehensive safety-net services that Newsom has championed — another hallmark of his tenure — are urging him to maintain those programs as he stares down another tough budget deficit estimated at $18 billion. The agency overseeing those services accounts for nearly 40% of the state’s general fund spending and many of its programs are projected to lose significant federal funds through President Donald Trump’s tax and spending bill.
During Newsom’s two terms, he added subsidized child care slots, boosted cash assistance for the poor, installed a state surgeon general who has focused on childhood trauma and the racial health gap and most significantly, incrementally expanded health care coverage to different groups of undocumented immigrants.
The latter, a controversial and costly policy, has allowed the governor to pivot from his original promise of a universal, state-paid health care system that was the pie-in-the-sky dream of progressives and still say he was achieving “universal access.” After passage of the Affordable Care Act, more than 90% of Californians were insured by the time Newsom took office. His expansions, first for immigrant young adults and then for older ones, pushed it to nearly everyone in 2023.
Policy allies generally don’t fault Newsom for shifting away from a single-payer system, which would have required billions more in state funds and complex agreements with an increasingly un-aligned federal administration. They are particularly satisfied that his administration has laid some of the groundwork for such a proposal by attempting to rein in the growth of health care costs through price limits imposed by the Office of Health Care Affordability. But now, they’re worried he’ll walk away from his expansive coverage goals altogether.
Last year, facing higher than expected costs in the Medi-Cal program and needing to close a $12 billion deficit, Newsom undid coverage for the last group of undocumented residents to become eligible: working-age adults. A freeze on new enrollment of adults took effect Jan. 1. Later this year, undocumented immigrant adults will lose Medi-Cal dental coverage and next year most will face monthly premiums that are expected to force some off coverage, to the disappointment of health advocates who are urging Newsom to reverse the cuts.
Amanda McAllister-Wallner, executive director of the advocacy group Health Access California, said she’s worried the administration will consider further cuts this year, after Newsom has come out heavily against other proposals to raise revenue for the health system, like a nurses’ union proposal for a wealth tax. She doesn’t like that the governor appeared willing to back down on coverage at the same time the state’s provision of social services for immigrants became an increasing political controversy nationally.
“The hope was that the Health for All expansion would be considered the baseline, that that would be something we budget for long term because it’s just something that’s part of who we are as a state,” said McAllister-Wallner. “Health care has been an area where the governor has really made a name for himself in a way that I think he can and should be very proud of, and to see … a backing-off of those commitments would be the biggest disappointment for me.”
This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.
Topline:
The year of the Eaton Fire, the election for Altadena Town Council saw more participation than ever before in its 50 years.
What happened: Nearly 900 people cast their ballots — almost double the normal turnout.
Why it matters: It's a small number for the community of around 41,000 people. Yet, for those involved in public service, the surge in participation reflects a bittersweet side effect of the devastation in Altadena.
What people are saying: As the region marks the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire, local representatives and activists say their community is stronger and more engaged than ever.
Read on ... for more on the town council and how it changed in the year after the L.A. fires.
The election for Altadena's town council takes place in person: pencil on paper, no mail-ins.
That didn't change last year, despite the mass displacement caused by the Eaton Fire. Voting happened in November at library branches, the Grocery Outlet and a local pizza joint. It was a small dose of normalcy for a community still scattered with empty lots.
The results were surprising. The small-town election saw more participation than ever before in its 50 years. Nearly 900 people cast their ballots — almost double the normal turnout.
It's a small number for the community of around 41,000 people. Yet, for those involved in public service, the surge in participation reflects a bittersweet side effect of the devastation in Altadena.
As the region marks the first anniversary of the Eaton Fire, local representatives and activists say their community is stronger and more engaged than ever.
" The majority of Altadena is displaced," said Morgan Whirledge, a newly elected town councilmember whose home was destroyed last January. "That still almost double the amount of people came and voted was a testament to how much Altadenans want to return home."
Altadena is in unincorporated L.A. County. It has no mayor or city council. Instead, County Supervisor Kathryn Barger represents the community. The town council is its smallest and most direct form of government.
The council doesn't write legislation. It weighs in on county decisions and provides a forum for neighborly debates. Victoria Knapp, who was chair of the town council in 2025, said that before Eaton, council meetings were full of the types of disputes you'd imagine in a small but animated community: tree removal, speed bumps and sidewalks.
Then came the fire and, with it, a whole new role for the small council for a town largely without its own governmental structures to face the fire with.
" The Eaton Fire changed everything," Knapp said at the council's holiday party and last meeting of the year in December, which was held in a large room at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. "It changed the scale of the work, the urgency of our decisions and the meaning of public service itself."
The town council became a central hub for fire recovery and coordination.
"I have watched residents become organizers, strangers become collaborators and survivors become the heartbeat of our recovery," she said.
Anton Anderson is another new town councilmember in Altadena. He told LAist he decided to run to make sure his community in West Altadena would have a greater voice.
" The rebuild is going to change and impact Altadena forever," he said. "The opportunity that presents us is to really make sure that what's actually happening in Altadena can go up to the people who make decisions."
That spirit was on display at the town council's holiday party, which Supervisor Barger attended. The first thing she noticed when she walked in was that the crowd was double the size, compared to last year.
" Even though they may not reside in Altadena as we speak, as they rebuild, they're coming back," she said. "They're coming back even without the bricks and mortar."
Topline:
It’s been a year since the most destructive fires in L.A. County history reduced neighborhoods to ash and instantly changed the lives of tens of thousands of Angelenos. Where are those survivors now?
Their stories: Every survivor’s situation is unique yet connected by loss, obstacles to recovery and a deep sense of connection to the places they called home.
Their challenges: Most survivors remain displaced. Temporary housing insurance funds are dwindling. Many whose homes still stand continue to fight to get the structures properly cleaned. And the majority of residents, underinsured or not insured at all, face a wide gap in the funds needed to rebuild.
Read on ... to meet people whose lives were upended by the Eaton and Palisades fires but who are persevering.
Most survivors remain displaced. Temporary housing insurance funds are dwindling. Many whose homes still stand continue to fight to get the structures properly cleaned. And the majority of residents, underinsured or not insured at all, face a wide gap in the funds needed to rebuild. Survivors are digging into savings and taking out new loans.
At the same time, the grief, trauma and emotional devastation wrought by the Eaton and Palisades fires remain at times overwhelmingly present.
Every survivor’s situation is unique yet connected by loss, obstacles to recovery and a deep sense of connection to the places they called home.
To understand how residents are continuing to pick up the pieces, LAist spoke with six survivors — some families, some individuals — a year after the L.A. fires.
It was a typical day at Altadena’s oldest salon, Lawrence and Colbert, a Black-owned business that has served the community for some 46 years.
Well, it was a typical day after the Eaton Fire.
Geoff Cathcart expertly styled the hair of longtime client Jason Fulton, the buzz of the shaver the backdrop to their conversation — also typical for the barbershop, yet all its own, about men and their mental health.
But the rest of the barber chairs were empty.
A year after the Eaton Fire, they’re empty much of the time.
The barbers and stylists here have seen their business plummet. The majority of their clients — mostly elders in Altadena’s tightknit Black community — lost their homes in the fire.
Cathcart, who grew up in Altadena, lost his rental and now commutes from Glendora.
“ I used to walk to my shop ... didn't have to worry about gas or commute or traffic or any of those things,” Cathcart said. “And now it's just different, just adjusting. But I still want to show up and be here for the community. This is where I made my roots.”
He plans to return to Altadena permanently, eventually. But finding an affordable rental in the area has proved impossible — prices have shot up since the fire. So he’s waiting for prices to go down or for his own family members to rebuild — three homes his extended family owned burned down.
Cathcart says most of his clientele have had to relocate to Glendale, Pasadena, Lancaster or even out of state. Half of the salon’s stylists have been forced to move on because of the lack of business. Cathcart, who has been barbering for more than 25 years, says he’s applied for other jobs to supplement his income.
“When you come up to Altadena, there's not a lot here at the moment, and so it's very depressing,” Cathcart said. “I've had clients who don't want to come back until things are built back. It's heartbreaking to see. I've kind of become desensitized to some extent because I witness this every day coming to work.”
A year later, though, he sees the community starting to come back.
“It's slow, definitely slow,” Cathcart said. “But I do see progress. I do have hope.”
Meanwhile, he’ll keep cutting hair and having the conversations he’s always had with his clients — often intimate and personal, though the tune of them now is dominated by the fire’s aftermath.
“Every conversation is, 'Where are you at in the rebuild? and, 'Do you need help?' 'What stage are you at?' And I find, at least for my clients and the people I've run across, there are some people making great progress, but there's some people that are just completely lost still,” Cathcart said. “ Every conversation is really a psychological and emotional evaluation of how everyone is doing.”
That’s something the fire couldn’t change, he said — the role of the Black barbershop, long a sanctuary for the community, a hub of information sharing and support. The shop may have physically survived the fire, but the loss of business since is an ongoing threat.
“If we lose this, then it's just one less place for us to go as a community, as a people and as a culture,” Cathcart said. " We've been trying to rebuild the community one step at a time by just showing up and coming to work.”
Donna and Howard Burkons have lived out of four suitcases since January 2025. The longest they’ve stayed in one place is a few months — a friend’s condo in Redondo Beach, a six-week road trip to Colorado and Arizona, a couple of furnished rentals in Woodland Hills they found on a website for traveling nurses.
Only recently did Donna Burkons buy linens for the carousel of beds they’ve been sleeping in, plus a skillet and some utensils of their own.
The only thing from their home that survived the Palisades Fire was a 100-year-old iron skillet that Donna Burkons’ great-grandmother used to cook on a chuckwagon back in Indiana. They’re reluctant to buy much of anything — their constant moves since the fire have become something like momentum to keep up until they rebuild.
The Burkonses lived on a rented lot in the Tahitian Terraces mobile home park overlooking the Pacific — one of the few middle-class havens in the Palisades. Their deck was bigger than their home. Donna would watch the sunset every evening with a glass of wine. Howard would watch her watching it. They’d keep an eye out for the “green flash” to light up the horizon just before the sun dipped below it.
“We’d see cars parked along the ocean just to see the sunset, and we had it every day,” Donna Burkons said.
“And we didn’t ever take it for granted,” Howard Burkons said, finishing the thought — a common occurrence for the couple who have been together since they were 18, just two hippie kids from Scottsdale, Ariz., who fell in love, moved to L.A. to work in film and TV and built this dream life by the ocean.
That is until all but one of the 158 mobile homes in Tahitian Terraces burned in the Palisades Fire. One of their neighbors died. The mobile home park next door, home to another 150 or so residents, also burned.
Now in their 70s, the Burkonses are caught in a waiting game. They owned their mobile home but not the land it sat on. So they have to wait for their landlord to complete the necessary infrastructure and permitting before they can start to rebuild. On top of that, like most survivors, they’re deeply underinsured.
It’s not the fire, or the controversy about how it started, or Small Business Administration loan applications or the 55 pages of inventory they had to put together for insurance that are their biggest enemies. Right now, Howard Burkons says, their enemy is time. They estimate it could be years before they rebuild. Yet their temporary housing insurance will run out this summer.
“At our age, it felt like the pandemic stole a couple of years of our life, and now the fire is stealing another four or more years of our life,” Howard Burkons said.
Before the fire, a typical day was spent with their four grandchildren, babysitting or helping with carpooling. Donna Burkons loved to play pickleball with friends. Howard Burkons would swim in the mobile home park pool every morning. They’d go out dancing the two-step together — a hobby they fell in love with in their 50s and one they’ve kept up since the fire to hold on to something normal and joyful. Their grandkids help with that too.
The Burkonses thought about moving back to Arizona, where they own some rental units. But they couldn’t be so far from the kids and grandkids. And they can’t afford to buy a “stick-built” house elsewhere. So for now, they’re taking it day by day, waiting to get back to their mobile home paradise, their little lots overlooking the grand Pacific.
There’s an old water well outside of Ana Martinez’s house in west Altadena. At first glance, the spiraling metal design, charred and rusted, seems intentional, evoking a country charm.
But the metal was blackened by the Eaton Fire.
“ It's just a reminder of what we went through,” Martinez said. “We did lose a lot of pieces that melted, but it's there. Just like us, you know? We survived.”
The Martinez family home still stands — Ana, her husband, Carlos, and their sons fought the flames throughout that terrifying night a year ago. As the wooden fence and tree in front of their house caught fire, they hacked them apart with a chainsaw. Their neighbor’s house burned to the ground.
In the time since and in the absence of sufficient insurance, Ana said the family has spent down their savings and maxed out credit cards to repair the house — putting up a concrete fence, replacing the melted windows and singed roof, cleaning smoke and ash and installing new insulation, rebuilding the carport that was reduced to ash.
“We got less than $70,000 from the insurance, and we've spent almost $200,000 with everything that needed to be done,” Ana said. “So we're starting at zero again, but at least we have a home.”
The family’s determination to protect their property — a place Ana and Carlos Martinez raised their three children, where one of their sons lives with his own children now, in the front house — brought them all together, closer than ever.
But over the months following, as funds dwindled, as Carlos Martinez, an electrician, and their sons worked around the clock to make ends meet, as Ana Martinez, who is in charge of the bills, watched the costs pile up, tension grew.
“We've never had money, but we've never had problems paying our bills,” Ana Martinez said. “At the beginning, it brought us together. Now, it's been a lot of problems because it doesn't matter how much work gets done, there's not enough money. There’s been a lot of arguing.”
They’re giving themselves at least five years “before we could say, hopefully, that we’ll be back to normal.” The money will come back, Ana Martinez is sure.
She’s not as sure about their health — the Martinezes never left their home, breathing in the smoke of the fire, then the dust of the debris cleanup and construction surrounding them since.
She and her husband developed asthma — they now use nebulizers and carry inhalers. Both of them have started losing their hair from all the stress. Ana Martinez had a cancerous growth removed.
“There's days that I wake up and I feel like I've been punched in the stomach,” Ana Martinez said. “My throat always hurts ... this burning sensation in my throat.”
Then there are the less tangible reminders: like when a neighbor recently had a barbecue and Ana ran outside, smelling smoke, frantically scanning for flames. Or the spike of terror she feels when the Santa Ana winds start up, or when the sun sets, its orange glow reminding her of the fire’s apocalyptic days. The apparently random moments of grief that well up, painful in her chest.
“ I've never been a person that would cry for no reason,” Ana Martinez said. “It's changed me.”
A year on, those emotions are lessening, or at least, she’s finding ways to let them move through her more easily. Ana says she feels more present, she notices the little things more. The lemon trees in her yard that somehow returned, that have borne fruit despite the flames. The beauty of the massive surviving oak that continues to shade their home. She says she’s less inclined to grow angry when someone cuts her off in traffic or is rude at the grocery store.
“We don't know what people are carrying around, you know? If we lash out for no reason, it's because we have so much internally that sometimes we just don't know how to control our emotions,” Ana Martinez said.
Despite the stress of it all, and the survivor’s guilt she continues to feel, watching neighbors sell their lots or struggle through the process of rebuilding, she finds solace in gratefulness.
“ That's what I've learned so far because there's been days that I'm just grateful that I'm able to get out of bed,” she said. “It's made me very mindful to appreciate what we have. ... We have life, and that's all that matters.”
Rachel Schwartz lived in a house way up on a hill, where she could see the ocean. She loved clear days when Catalina Island emerged from the haze on the horizon, its rugged silhouette vivid on a glittering sea.
Schwartz called the Pacific Palisades home for nearly three decades, and all she wants to do is get back. In the meantime, the 94-year-old is living in an apartment off a busy road in Westwood.
“It left me, I'm afraid, with a severe depression,” Schwartz said. “The doctor said this is part of losing everything.”
She said she’s no longer the person she used to be — upbeat, always ready to try new things.
“Right now, nothing interests me except my wish to rebuild my home,” Schwartz said.
This is not the first time Schwartz has lost everything.
Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1931, she and her older sister were the sole members of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust. After the war, the two girls landed in Detroit, where they had some relatives. Schwartz was just 15.
Eventually, Schwartz, her husband and their two young children moved to L.A. She and her husband divorced, and Schwartz built a career as an accountant, then real estate agent — she still works to this day. She eventually remarried. In 1997, she and her future second husband were able to purchase a townhouse in the Palisades, a dream. It was the house she planned to stay in the rest of her life.
Then came the fire.
“ I told my mother, ‘Mom, you've been through three concentration camps and a three-week march,’” said Bruce, Schwartz’s son. “You can survive this fire if you survived that.”
“This fire is like a second Holocaust. Everything gone, everything burned,” Rachel Schwartz said. “If not for Bruce, I wouldn’t have made it.”
But now, Rachel and Bruce Schwartz, who lived with her, are racing against a seemingly stuck clock. They haven’t been able to start the rebuilding process because of complications with the rules of their homeowners association — 17 units burned; eight didn’t. The HOA requires 75% of the members to approve a rebuild in the case of calamity, and the majority of residents voted against it.
“There are many unanswered questions as to what is going to happen to us,” Bruce Schwartz said. “ We're stuck in limbo, and I think it's going to be three to five years before we have a clear picture.”
Not only are there complications with the HOA, but they’re also severely underinsured — just a few months before the fire, State Farm dropped them, and residents had to instead get on the California FAIR plan.
Meanwhile, their temporary housing insurance is running out. And anger about the cause of the fire — a reignition of a fire that started a week before and wasn’t completely put out — and the ongoing lack of accountability remains a constant.
“I feel that it was a great negligence why the fire was not put out,” Rachel Schwartz said.
But a year on, they are both growing tired of the anger and the grief like a constant cloud hanging over them.
“We just have to move on from it because there's been so much sorrow and so much feeling bad, that it's time to start feeling good,” Bruce Schwartz said. “It's time to move forward and rebuild our community.”
Rachel Schwartz nodded as her son spoke. She still can get her nails and hair done, she joked, so things can’t be all that bad.
“ I came from Europe as a small girl, and even in this tragedy, we still have enough to eat. We have comfortable beds to sleep,” she said. “I look out and the sun is shining. And I still feel very grateful to be in America.”
On a quiet street of mostly empty lots in Altadena, a celebration recently took place. Steve and Charlotte Gibson’s new home is nearly finished — they expect to move in at the end of this month.
“It seemed like nothing was happening for a long time. ... We didn’t see any movement for months and months,” Steve Gibson said. “And now it feels really rapid.”
The couple had lived in their 1923 wood-framed house for 22 years before it was reduced to ash by the Eaton Fire. Their new house is dramatically different — a 900-square-foot, hyper modern, steel-framed prefabricated home. It’s all electric, with solar panels and a battery. The Gibsons plan to landscape with mostly California native plants, as well.
They had concerns about being one of the first to rebuild. Would their old neighbors return? Would they be alone and surrounded by construction for years to come?
But on a recent day, as they looked at the modern, rectangular boxes that will become their new home, “the hope, the promise, the future outweigh those concerns by a mile,” Charlotte Gibson said.
It’s why they hosted a “construction viewing party” in December — to show their neighbors rebuilding is possible.
Another couple from up the street stopped by to say they were going with the same Gardena-based prefab housing company, called Cover.
“ We're nowhere near this yet, but we’re very excited,” the wife said as a toddler gripped her hand. “We came to stalk your house to see what it's going to look like, so thanks for doing this.”
The Gibsons still face a several-hundred-thousand-dollar gap in how much their insurance paid out and how much they’ve had to spend on their rebuild. They hope the Small Business Association disaster loan they applied for will cover that.
Despite the uncertainty and the grief of all that’s been lost, their determination and stamina to rebuild and return has remained in large part due to community ties made long before the fire.
“Thankfully our neighbors on this block ... the ones that are closest to us and that we're closest to, they're all rebuilding,” Charlotte Gibson said. “ And that was a huge lift.”
The family next door, the Pattersons, are among those neighbors. They hope to move in by summer.
“ I feel so hopeful for the future and for Altadena,” said 22-year-old Mona Patterson. “It's just nice knowing that our community's coming back and that the Altadena that I knew and grew up with is still here.”
The block may end up looking very different. But as long as the people who made it what it was come back, the Gibsons are sure it will once again feel like home.
“We’ve heard from people who were here today, the progress they've made, so that's encouraging,” Steve Gibson said. “That makes me think, 'Hey, we're not going to be here all alone for long.'”
The sound of construction is a constant on a formerly quiet street in the Marquez Knolls neighborhood of Pacific Palisades.
A foundation is being laid on one lot. Next door, the new wood framing of a single-story house is getting finishing touches. When they’re done, three generations will live side by side. Again.
The sound of hammers and drills is a welcome symphony as Andrea Horusicky Heindel, her husband, Jason Heindel, and their teenagers, Misha and Jakob, enter the partially built home.
Andrea Horusicky Heindel grew up in the house that stood here before, a place that encompassed the family’s history — her father, Michael Horusicky Sr., and mother, Jana, landed in the Palisades after escaping from Czechoslovakia after the 1968 Soviet invasion. Andrea was born soon after.
In 2012, Andrea and her husband were able to purchase the house right next door. They built a little gate in the fence between them so the kids could easily visit their grandparents.
“We’ll try to bring that back again,” Andrea said.
Michael Horusicky Sr., now in his 80s, built a successful construction company for over 40 years in the Palisades — a reason he has the know-how to move so swiftly on his rebuild today, as well as the friends to get it done, electricians and contractors, many of whom lost their own homes in the fire.
He hopes he and Jana can move in by May, but he knows it won’t be the same. His daughter and her family hope to be in their house by late fall.
“ I don't have a problem building a house, but I have problem with losing the house — it’s going to be empty,” Michael Horusicky Sr. said. “And my age is another problem. So I have to do it quick.”
Meanwhile, the family of six and one dog are living in a rental nearby. The kids are rotating paying for Ubers to see displaced friends whose houses they used to bike to. The parents are navigating insurance and contractors as they both work full-time jobs. Their temporary housing insurance is running out, and the family is having to take out loans to afford the rebuild.
“We’re determined to make it work, but it’s stressful, and there’s a lot of uncertainty,” Jason Heindel said.
A year after the fire, the timeline to recover seems to be getting longer — permitting is moving slowly, the rains have caused delays, and they say there’s little guidance from the city about connecting to new infrastructure.
“ We have to just keep going, it seems like, at a marathon's pace since Day 1,” Andrea Horusicky Heindel said. “The list of things to do is endless.”
Being back in the Palisades, despite being surrounded by destruction, feels more comfortable. The family doesn’t have to explain themselves. Everyone they run into here lost something.
The family is sure the jacaranda tree out front, though a bit charred, will bloom again. Despite their love-hate relationship with the tree’s sticky purple flowers, they can’t wait for spring this year.
“We're saving our tree because that was the only thing we had left,” Andrea Horusicky Heindel said. “We decided if it survived, it deserves to stay.”
