The Brief

If you need a new refrigerator, you go to a hardware store. But what if you need a thousand refrigerators?

This is a math problem in the era of urban mega-fires. A year after L.A. went up in flames, survivors are looking to rebuild quickly and affordably.

As just one person, the costs of rebuilding add up fast. But by pooling their purchasing power, neighborhoods — or what's left of them — are working together to curtail rebuilding costs.

It turns out needing a thousand fridges could be a good issue to have. In Altadena, fire survivors are working together to buy things in bulk. And they're trying to find the most efficient and fair way to do it.

" When you see that deal on the shelf: 'Buy four, get the fifth for 20% off,' all you have to do is consult your wallet," said Michael Tuccillo, whose home was damaged in the Eaton Fire. "But when you're bulk purchasing, it becomes complicated because you have to make a choice that's right for the entire community."

Morgan Whirledge first tried the group approach when he needed a land survey of his property. He's an Eaton Fire block captain, meaning he coordinates with neighbors and other block captains on all types of issues related to fire recovery.

" If you're bringing out survey equipment to an area … why not knock out a few properties at the same time in one day, as opposed to coming out over and over again?" Whirledge said.

A lot of other neighborhoods had the same idea.

This process allowed block captains like Whirledge to try out their negotiating skills — and understand the limits of their leverage. He made a deal for a handful of plots, including his own.

"The surveyor we ended up with was saying, 'Hey, there's kind of a threshold where it stops being more economical for me,'" Whirledge said.

It also revealed the challenges of making big financial decisions with other homeowners. Tuccillo scored a great deal for himself and two dozen neighbors: around $1,700 a lot for a land surveyor, compared to a one-off price of $5,000. But someone had to go first, and someone had to go last.

" It took like two months, maybe three months for some of these people to get service, which is a big deal," said Tuccillo, who is also a block captain. "And people were upset at me."

A house under construction in Altadena in June.

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Myung J. Chun

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Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

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'The gap'

Land surveying is simple compared to the decisions that lie ahead for most people rebuilding in Altadena and the Palisades.

Many face an issue that some fire survivors refer to simply as "the gap" — the financial hole between what insurance will give and what it will actually cost to rebuild.

Working together could be the difference that allows some people to return home.

Elizabeth Campbell has been thinking a lot about this problem. She negotiates bulk purchases for a living, and has worked as a buyer for companies like Saks Fifth Avenue and the North Face. When she lost her home in the Eaton Fire, she found a new arena for her expertise.

"Asking a vendor for a discount is not always the best way to get the best price," she said. "When you're purchasing a large amount of goods, you're thinking a little bit more broadly. Where are they manufacturing? Is it something that they need to manufacture six months in advance?"

In the first year of recovery, a lot of these logistical questions were playing out on Discord and in WhatsApp groups. Seeking a bigger fix, some fire survivors have teamed up with David Lee, a software developer.

Lee launched Buildnotes — an online platform to help more people do group purchasing with less logistical and interpersonal hassle. The site is a wholesale marketplace for materials and services needed for rebuilding. Right now, a big goal is to get homeowners and vendors to sign up.

" We try to line up homeowners and projects along three primary dimensions. One is geography. Two is chronology. What's the start date of your project and do the phases of your project line up with other homes? And then third is style of home," Lee said.

Some homeowners in Altadena scored great deals with other neighbors to pay for things such as a land surveyor. The cost went from $5,000 for a one-off price for one property to $1,700 for two dozen neighbors each.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

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The biggest group purchase: a home

The largest group purchase fire survivors can make is the home itself.

That's the route Brad Sherwood took after losing his house in Santa Rosa to the Tubbs Fire in 2017. He quickly realized that his insurance payout wasn't enough for him and his wife to rebuild a custom home, and they started talking with neighbors about rebuilding together.

In the end, Sherwood and around 20 other families in his neighborhood went in on the same builder: Stonefield Development of Orange County.

"They allowed neighbors to get into different focus groups, and based on how many bedrooms you wanted or your lot size, they allowed you to develop a floor plan," he said. "If we got enough people to do this particular floor plan, then we could do an assembly production of our homes. And that really benefited us in terms of construction costs, timeline, labor costs."

Sherwood said initial estimates were $700 a square foot. By purchasing his home alongside his neighbors, he spent $400 a square foot.

" The group buy was kind of like therapy in a way," Sherwood said. "Because we all were doing this together, and you didn't feel alone or scared."

Sherwood said custom finishes and small details made sure the neighborhood he returned to wasn't "cookie cutter" compared to the pre-fire hodgepodge of custom, older homes.

A familiar approach

Fire survivors in L.A. aren't the first to try out group purchasing after a large-scale disaster. Jennifer Gray Thompson, who leads the advocacy organization After the Fire, said that since her group launched in 2017, she has seen communities in California, Colorado and elsewhere purchase goods and services together to bring costs down.

In Maui, where the Lahaina Fire destroyed thousands of homes in 2023, many residents need trusses — structures made of wood or steel that form the base of a roof. It's inefficient to order them separately, especially in a place as hard to reach as Maui. So Gray Thompson said community members are working on placing a bulk order.

In Altadena, fire survivors are working together to buy things in bulk. And they're trying to find the most efficient and fair way to do it.

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Libby Rainey

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LAist

)

"Trusses are really hard to get on Maui," she said. "So what you have to find is what in the market is the barrier, and then you can often unlock that barrier by group buying."

But this type of coordination depends on a number of factors, including how tight-knit the recovering community is, how close together homes are, and how affluent the disaster zone is.

The collective decision making seen after the Tubbs Fire in Santa Rosa was harder to pull off in more rural communities destroyed in the 2021 Dixie Fire in Northern California, according to Gray Thompson. People lived farther apart and were scattered to the winds after their town was destroyed.

Still, she said, the idea that it's better to work together, as a community — the ethos of group purchasing — applies to all fire survivors.

" Nobody can walk through this alone. It's an inefficient way to do it. It's not healthy — emotionally or financially or politically or socially," she said. " All of rebuilding is a group project.”

That's what Morgan Whirledge is finding in Altadena.

" If you are a survivor, being able to turn that corner from dread ... that's like a huge part of this effort," he said. " We're all looking for those steps in this process that give us the resiliency and the optimism to carry forward."

Wherever they may fall in the spectrum, engaging in the idea of group purchasing has given some fire survivors something that's in even shorter supply than building materials: hope.

Lines stretched around the block Sunday at the Original Saugus Cafe in Santa Clarita. It was supposed to be the restaurant's last day before closing after 139 years — making it the oldest continually operated restaurant in Los Angeles County.

But earlier this week, a sign was posted on the door saying, "Reopening under new ownership soon," although there were few details about who would be running it.

The sign was a surprise to the Mercado family, who have operated the restaurant for nearly 30 years. The family now is in a legal dispute with the Arklin family, who owns the property, about the potential re-opening and who owns the historic name.

The background

Alfredo Mercado worked his way up from bartender to restaurateur, purchasing the business in 1998. Since then Mercado and his daughters have operated the restaurant, leasing from the Arklin family. For most of that time, according to the Mercado side, the two families maintained good terms. Property owner Hank Arklin Sr., a former state assemblyman who owned other properties in the area, kept a verbal month-to-month agreement with the Mercados — no written lease required.

That changed when Arklin died in August at age 97.

New terms, failed negotiations

Larry Goodman, who manages multiple properties for the Arklin family's company, North Valley Construction, took over the landlord relationship. In September, the Mercado family say they were presented with a new written month-to-month lease.

Yecenia Ponce, Alfredo's daughter, said the new terms included various changes to the existing agreement, including a rent increase and charges for equipment.

Months of back and forth negotiations about different options, including selling the business, ultimately fell apart. Their attorney, Steffanie Stelnick, says they are being forced out, without proper legal notice, and has sent a cease-and-desist letter to Goodman saying the family has plans to continue running the business.

LAist reached out to Goodman for comment repeatedly Wednesday and Thursday by phone but did not hear back.

Goodman told The Signal, a Santa Clarita valley news outlet, that Alfredo Mercado had changed his mind several times in recent weeks about keeping the business.

“I said, ‘Fine,’ then I got out and got someone to take it over,” Goodman said.

He said he'd been in contact with Eduardo Reyna, the CEO of Dario's, a local Santa Clarita restaurant, and that the cafe could re-open as soon as Jan. 16.

Who owns what?

The dispute also focuses on who owns the rights to the Original Saugus Cafe name.

Ponce said when her father purchased the restaurant in 1998, it was called The Olde Saugus Cafe, but the name was then changed to The Original Saugus Cafe. State records show that name registered as an LLC under Alfredo Mercado.

After Arklin’s death, however, the Arklin family filed a pending trademark application to lay its own claim to the name.

The Mercado family is resisting.

"As long as they don't buy the name from us, we're not handing it over," Ponce said.

Ponce said the family had no idea the landlord planned to continue operations.

"We truly did think we were closing," she said. "We were not aware that they had plans to continue."

She apologized to customers for the confusion.

Whether the decades-old restaurant name survives — and under whose control — may ultimately be decided in court.

Community leaders and politicians in Los Angeles are responding in outrage after an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minnesota on Wednesday.

The fatal ICE shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good has sparked anger and fear in Los Angeles, which has been an epicenter of federal immigration enforcement since the summer.

Jorge-Mario Cabrera with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, or CHIRLA, says the killing was upsetting but not surprising.

" Los Angeles has been witness of the escalating aggressiveness of these federal agents against the community," he told LAist.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has defended the shooting, saying Good was trying to run agents over with her car. That account has been disputed by eyewitnesses, the mayor of Minneapolis and other officials. Bystander video also challenges the federal narrative, according to MPR News.

L.A. politicians have joined a chorus demanding justice for Good. Mayor Karen Bass posted on X, saying that ICE agents are waging "a purposeful campaign of fear and intimidation" on American cities.

"The senseless killing of an innocent and unarmed wife and mother by ICE agents today in Minneapolis is shocking and tragic and should never have occurred," she said in the post.

L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn called on Noem to withdraw ICE from U.S. cities.

“These ICE agents are undertrained and trigger happy and everyone who has seen this video knows ICE murdered this woman,” she said in a statement.

Some protesters also gathered outside the federal building in downtown L.A. Thursday morning to condemn the killing.