The Brief

A year and a half after the Eaton Fire burned thousands of homes, Altadena residents are grappling with a question shaping the community’s future: Should rebuilding efforts make room for dense, more affordable housing, or should they seek to recreate the same kind of single-family housing that existed before the fires?

The debate has triggered advocacy around a new bill, lawsuits against L.A. County from developers, petitions from neighbors and emergency town council meetings.

On one side are Altadena residents rallying behind proposed state legislation to temporarily block developers from using California density laws to build multi-unit housing on single-family lots.

They say they want to stop out-of-town developers from building structures like duplexes and bungalow courts, which residents say threaten the neighborhood’s identity and will lead to congestion on narrow roads.

On the other side, developers are looking to build denser housing under existing laws that expedite lot subdivision.

But the county has delayed or denied some of their applications, leading at least three developers to file lawsuits in L.A. County Superior Court.

How we got here

In July 2025, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order allowing local governments to prohibit new duplexes in burn zones such as the Pacific Palisades and Malibu. But the order didn’t include most of Altadena, which technically isn’t in a very high fire-hazard severity zone.

“When residents from my community had initially seen this executive order, they were pretty concerned and upset that they were not included,” state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez said.

“We need protections as well,” said the senator who represents the area.

That’s why some residents are supporting Pérez’s Senate Bill 1090 — which is headed to a full Assembly vote in August.

The frames of new buildings rise next to 411 Punahou St. in Altadena, where a multi-unit complex has been at the center of a rebuilding controversy.

(

Sena Chang

/

LAist

)

On the ground

On Punahou Street, near Farnsworth Park, nearly every single-family home was destroyed by the Eaton Fire.

More than a year and a half after the fire, rows and rows of empty lots remain scraped raw and swallowed by untended weeds. “Altadena is not for sale” signs lay strewn among fallen branches and charred shrubs.

On a handful of properties, wooden frames are beginning to take shape.

Altadena residents began noticing plans to build multi-family complexes this spring.

Their focus was drawn to 411 Punahou St., where a single-family home once stood. In March, neighborhood captain Angela Uriu spotted digital renderings showing a sleek, multi-unit complex with parking spaces.

At a community rally in support of SB 1090, the project at 411 Punahou St. was a topic of discussion.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

For Beautiful Altadena

)

Her home on the same block, a one-story Cape Cod-style house built in 1939, burned to the ground in the fire.

“We have a small street, and it felt like [the developers] made no attempt to be neighborly in the aesthetics of the structure and how they faced our street or the neighbors on either side,” Uriu said.

She soon started a petition opposing the development, which was one signature shy of 1,500 on Thursday.

Uriu is among a growing number of residents who say the rebuilding process has opened the door to predatory outside developers.

“You have speculative developers for whom their entire business plan relies upon purchasing these lots, getting plans approved for the lots, and then flipping them,” said Shawna Dawson Beer, who founded the community activism group Beautiful Altadena in 2015.

“That should not be easier than getting people home and getting people to rebuild their homes,” she added.

A legal battle brews

Recently, developers in Altadena haven’t gotten housing applications approved under SB 1123, leading some to sue the county. Only a few SB 1123 applications were approved after the fire, according to the county’s permit finder.

This spring, L.A. County sent out one-paragraph rejections of SB 1123 applications to developers, saying that the properties’ perimeters were not substantially surrounded by developed parcels — a requirement for projects to qualify for SB 1123.

“We actually voided all applications because [SB 1123] was meant to be infill building, and there’s nothing around,” L.A. County Supervisor Kathryn Barger told the California Assembly at the beginning of July. Barger’s district includes Altadena.

The decision to void the applications was based on guidance from the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development, according to Anish Saraiya, the director of Altadena recovery in Barger’s office.

Kensington Homes, Caldev and other development companies quickly sued the county, alleging that the rejections were based on “a pretextual political decision to prevent increased density in post-fire Altadena.”

The county Department of Regional Planning wrote in a statement to LAist that new applications for multifamily projects under SB 1123 can’t be approved “based on current law.” The department did not elaborate.

At least three lawsuits allege that the delay and denial of these applications were inconsistent with the county’s past actions and messaging.

Brick Work, a land use startup suing the county, submitted applications to build multifamily homes in late 2025.

“We were just going about business as usual,” founder John Jung said.

But county officials in March declared the project ineligible due to the urban infill requirement, Jung said.

Multiple lawsuits cite a now-offline brochure published by the L.A. County Planning Department, which provided guidance on using SB 1123 and SB 9 to split lots for Eaton Fire survivors. They allege that the county changed its position by replacing the brochure this spring.

“Content on the Disaster Recovery webpage is updated regularly to reflect the latest information in the most accessible form, and this particular brochure has been replaced by other content,” the Department of Regional Planning wrote in a statement to LAist.

At the heart of the lawsuits is a thorny question: What counts as urban infill after a neighborhood has burned?

One lawsuit filed by Kensington Homes argues that the definition of a “qualified urban use” can also include remnant residential structures left following the fire. Therefore, it argues, “virtually all of the land in Altadena qualifies for the program.”

Jung argues that although the lots are currently vacant, “the use is still residential, and they’re all in the midst of rebuilding — they’re not going to stay vacant,” he said.

The county’s current interpretation stands contrary to the purpose of SB 1123, according to Jacob Pierce of Abundant Housing L.A., a pro-housing nonprofit.

“The county’s interest in reading a temporary post-disaster condition as disqualification does not pass the smell test,” he said.

But supporters of SB 1090 say that SB 1123’s urban infill requirements were never intended to include burned lots. They argue that fire-scarred blocks should not be treated the same as intact urban neighborhoods.

“There is no question that an entire town that was wiped off the map overnight is not urban infill,” said Dawson Beer, the community activist.

UC Davis law professor Christopher S. Elmendorf says that the statute doesn’t directly address the issue.

But, Elmendorf noted, “it would be strange for the city to declare that the sites are ‘not urban’ because the existing uses burned, while at the same time it issues permits for the rebuilding of single-family homes.”

Rebuilding on their own terms

SB 9 projects, on the other hand, are still being approved by the county. More than 5,600 parcels were damaged or destroyed in Altadena. Fifty-seven, including 411 Punahou Street, have active permits invoking SB 9. Only two have been completed, and 14 are under construction.

But this was enough to unite Altadena residents in opposition. Similarly, a handful of SB 9 applications brought the Palisades community together against “opportunistic developers” last year, leading L.A. Mayor Karen Bass to suspend SB 9 in very high fire-hazard severity zones.

At a June 16 town council meeting in Altadena, more than 450 residents packed the overflow space to voice concerns about the developments and push for housing density exemptions under SB 1090. An “emergency” community meeting on Zoom was held later that month, gathering more than 100 residents.

Recovering and rebuilding after a traumatic event like a large-scale fire can cause friction within communities, said Megan Mullin, a public policy professor at UCLA.

“There can be a tension between what individuals and households need for their own recovery and the vision that a community has for what it wants to be in the future,” Mullin said.

Altadena town council Chair Nic Arnzen addresses Altadena residents at a June rally for SB 1090.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

For Beautiful Altadena

)

Among those who are critical of SB 1090 are residents who plan to earn additional income by renting out secondary units.

Geoff Ramsey-Ray’s insurance claims were not enough to cover the cost of rebuilding his home on two acres of land, leading him to pursue a lot split under SB 9. Selling the second lot is “the only feasible way” he can stay in Altadena, he said.

The SB 9 approval process has been slow, Ramsey-Ray said.

“Ironically, preventing the speculators is also hurting some of us in Altadena who are trying to find a way to afford to rebuild here,” Ramsey-Ray said.

Many SB 1090 advocates say they’re targeting only out-of-town developers, and the latest version of the bill carves out an exemption for community land trusts and affordable housing organizations.

Veronica Jones, president of the Altadena Historical Society, hopes for a middle ground.

“We just want to protect what makes Altadena Altadena,” she said.

Whether that middle ground can be reached — or even exists — remains a question.

What comes next?

After swiftly passing two committee votes in the state Assembly in early July, SB 1090 awaits a full Assembly vote in August. Then it would go to the Senate and, if passed, on to the governor for his signature.

If passed in its current version, the bill would go into effect starting Jan. 1, 2027, which residents say leaves too much time for developers to continue building. They’re now fighting to get an urgency clause added to the bill, which would have the moratorium take effect as soon as the governor signs it.

An "Altadena is not for sale" sign lies on the ground of an empty lot near Punahou Street.

(

Sena Chang

/

LAist

)

“We might still be able to move forward even if the moratorium passes, because there might be language in there that allows existing projects to still move forward,” said Jung, one of the developers suing the county.

Meanwhile, the land on 411 Punahou Street was sold, with site plans for a multi-unit building approved last December. The empty lot has been cleaned and leveled.

Uriu, the neighborhood captain who lost her home nearby, is distressed.

“To think,” Uriu said, “that I’m spending my retirement and going to have to work the rest of my life to build this new home and have a five-unit complex with two stories next door looking into my backyard — it’s just a really hard pill to swallow.”

Residents say that the debate around SB 1090 is only one piece of a much larger recovery process mired in permit delays and insufficient insurance payouts. More than 18 months after the Eaton Fire, only 1% of homes have been rebuilt, and some survivors have left L.A. altogether.

“Everybody who wants to come home should be able to,” said Katie Clark, the co-founder of the Altadena Tenants Union. “And the reality on the ground is that for many of us, that is an uphill battle.”

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

The contract Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium was built on is void, a judge ruled, upending a 10-year-old deal at the center of a larger fight between the city and the stadium developer.

Companies tied to Stan Kroenke and his Hollywood Park stadium property say Inglewood owes them about $400 million under the agreement that had the companies pay for the development’s infrastructure up front in exchange for future reimbursement.

But Inglewood said it shouldn’t have to pay, and claimed the agreement was not enforceable, prompting several businesses that operate SoFi, YouTube Theater and other real estate developments on the site to sue in December 2025.

The city claimed that the process used to greenlight the stadium construction in 2015 was no longer legitimate after a court ruled a similar development agreement in the Inland Empire was void a couple of years later.

Now, Superior Court Judge David Reinert has not only agreed with the city, but said in a Sept. 1 ruling the process leading to the contract had been problematic from the start. Developments similarly based on signature-gathering campaigns that skirt voter feedback had been overturned in the 1990s, according to his ruling.

The order calls into question the future of the financial arrangement the city and the stadium developer have maintained for more than a decade, one that promised Kroenke’s companies reimbursement for the infrastructure and services they paid for and that has generated millions in tax revenue for the city.

It’s also the latest public signal that the once-friendly relationship between Kroenke and Mayor James Butts, which paved the way for the NFL’s return to LA, has grown increasingly tumultuous.

A spokesperson for Hollywood Park said they could appeal the order but haven’t yet done so.

“We respectfully disagree with the Court’s ruling,” they said by email. “Hollywood Park has fulfilled every one of its commitments under an agreement that the City unanimously adopted, described as ‘the best [stadium deal] ever’, and benefited from for more than a decade. We remain hopeful that the City and its leadership will reverse course from their unilateral decision to abandon their commitments under the agreement and will honor their part of the deal.”

An attorney representing Inglewood described it as an important win for the city.

“This decision has huge repercussions for the 300-acre SoFi Stadium/Hollywood Park development,” Skip Miller, lead counsel for the city of Inglewood, said in a press release. “It means that without a valid development agreement, Hollywood Park/SoFi Stadium no longer has vested rights and that the City has no further obligations under the 2015 Development Agreement.”

Butts told The LA Local he wants to negotiate a path forward with the stadium developer but didn’t say if those talks have been scheduled.

“I look forward to talking with them and seeing what we can do to move forward as partners,” he said.

The backstory 

The arrangement that cemented the development agreement in 2015 was: Kroenke’s companies would pay up front for the infrastructure needed to build Hollywood Park, and Inglewood would reimburse them later.

The deal landed Kroenke a new home for the Rams and the opportunity for more real estate development on the site in the future. And it helped the city move forward with reworking the site of the former Hollywood Park Racetrack into one of the nation’s premier stadium complexes.

The reimbursements were designed to be delayed until the city could afford them: When the city earned $25 million in tax revenue from the development in a given year, it would pay down the debt.

Kroenke’s companies say Inglewood owes them about $400 million for those improvements and other investments they made. They claim that the city began surpassing the $25 million revenue threshold in 2022 and each year since.

Butts first told Hollywood Park that he believed the development agreement was void in letters he wrote to Kroenke and his employees last year. He was frustrated that the stadium businesses were fighting the city’s plan to work with an LA advertising agency to install dozens of digital billboards near the stadiums.

The city’s lawyers had found that a similar development agreement had been voided in 2018 and asked that the city be paid back the $20 million in reimbursement payments it made, Butts wrote Kroenke.

The stadium companies sued soon after.

The judge’s ruling

Public projects on the scale of SoFi Stadium typically require a series of hearings, reviews and voter approval — which can take years to achieve. Instead, the stadium developer and city truncated that process by collecting more than 22,000 signatures supporting it.

The City Council voted unanimously in favor of the stadium development in February 2015, and the project broke ground not long after. Butts was a booster of the plan, the LA Times reported at the time. “Now we can celebrate,” Butts said after the winning vote to a cheering crowd in Rams jerseys.

Hollywood Park’s lawyers said in interviews and court filings that the city never questioned the validity of the subsequent contract until last year.

“Its announcement that the Development Agreement is void comes only after the Project was painstakingly built in reliance upon the [agreement], and after the City has reaped enormous benefits from the economic boon created by the project,” Hollywood Park’s lawyers wrote.

State law requires legitimate development agreements to meet various standards. They need to be negotiated between the involved parties, for example, and subject to voter referendum. But the initiative process the city and the developer pursued did not meet those standards. California courts had already found similar agreements “wholly void” dating back to the 1990s, Reinert wrote in the Sept. 1 ruling.

“Therefore, here too, the Development Agreement must be set aside,” he wrote.

Butts said the city was not aware of the legal issues the development agreement could face back in 2015, but he declined to talk more about it because the case could be appealed.

“This is the ruling right now, and we agree with it,” Butts said on Friday.

What happens next

Lawyers for both Hollywood Park and the city released statements saying they remained committed to the success of the stadium development. But how they will arrive at or proceed with a new framework remains unclear.

Hollywood Park said it is exploring its legal options and could appeal the decision. If the ruling stands, the city and Hollywood Park will have to determine what, if anything, replaces the agreement that governed their financial relationship for more than a decade.

The timing adds urgency. SoFi Stadium is set to host the 2027 Super Bowl and the Opening Ceremony of the 2028 Olympics.

Meanwhile, the disagreement over the city’s and stadiums’ digital billboard programs continues. The competing billboard networks have sparked an advertising turf war that has jumped from the courts into the Nov. 3 election.

Ballmer Group is a funder of The LA Local, but their support doesn’t influence our coverage. To learn more about our funders and commitment to editorial independence, click here.  

Los Angeles County has exotic wild animals roaming about, such as wild parrots and peacocks. But what about camels?

No, we’re not talking about that ancient camel found in the La Brea Tar Pits — these animals were brought over for a U.S. Army experiment.

How camels got into our military

We’re going back to the mid-1800s, before gas-powered automobiles changed the way we travel. The U.S. was on the brink of civil war and in the middle of westward expansion.

Typically, the army relied on mules and horses as beasts of burden, but in the new states and territories, they had a hard time hauling supplies over long distances. That was especially true for the Southwest’s dry deserts and mountains.

Meanwhile, camel brigades (also known as Camel Corps) were already in use in armies around the world. These were made up of camel drivers who ferried supplies, transported troops and conducted military cavalry operations.

Great Britain and India used the animals in the 19th century, according to London’s National Army Museum. The Imperial Camel Corps was also established during World War I, with British, Australian and New Zealand forces in the Middle East.

The Camel Corps caught on in America around the 1850s, according to the Army Historical Foundation. The idea bubbled up to Maj. Henry C. Wayne — a camel fan himself — who recommended their use to a skeptical War Department and Congress.

After some years of political finagling, they gave the experiment $30,000 in funding in 1855 (about $1 million today). The money was used to buy 74 camels from the Mediterranean and put them into military service.

The Los Angeles arrival

They were brought over on the Navy store ship USS Supply and went to Texas first, to Camp Verde. As the camels got used to their new home, the time came for one of their first test missions. The federal government planned to build a wagon road to connect the eastern U.S. to the California/Arizona border.

The Secretary of War at the time required the land surveyor to take 25 of the camels on the expedition in 1857, according to the foundation. These “ships of the desert” ended up thriving where horses and mules couldn’t.

The camels could carry a 700-pound load with ease, traveling up to 40 miles a day. They ate off the land and could go over a week without water. After the camels completed the job, the army sent them to L.A. in 1860.

This was for another test to see if camels could be used for mail delivery. They were essentially racing against mules to see who could get from Camp Fitzgerald (a short-lived Civil War camp in L.A. County) to the Colorado River fastest. What the army didn’t realize was that speed wasn’t the camels’ strong suit — several died from exhaustion.

A historic marker on the L.A. Times' old building in downtown Los Angeles on September 30, 1967. The plaque mentions that the area was used as a "corral for camels from Fort Tejon", which is one of the places the animals were sent to in California.

(

Mildred L. Harris

/

Los Angeles Public Library/L. Mildred Harris Slide Collection/Los Angeles Photographers Collection

)

As the Civil War continued, the camels’ future became uncertain. The army was tired of the experiment and the money it cost. The camels were never officially designated as the U.S.’s “Camel Corps” and thus given no real purpose. In California, they essentially floated around L.A.-area outposts, such as the Los Angeles Quartermaster Depot in downtown, Culver City’s Camp Latham and the Drum Barracks in Wilmington.

The U.S. Army eventually sold the camels in California for about $50 each ($1,000 today) in 1864, according to the foundation. These noble animals, roped into what many called a failed military experiment, ended up as circus attractions and on ranches as pack animals. Some were even let loose.

The last of California’s “Camel Corps” is believed to be Topsy. After the experiment shut down, she was used in the Ringling Brothers Circus and movies.

Topsy was eventually sold off to what’s now the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, according to the Natural History Museum, which found her bones. She died there in 1934 at approximately 80 years old.

A new space celebrating the art of autistic and neurodiverse youths has opened on Abbott Kinney Boulevard in Venice, amid the trendy coffee shops and boutiques.

Called “Limitless,” the space is a project of Help Group, a nonprofit that has served people in Los Angeles with autism and mental health challenges for 85 years.

“What art does is it allows people to have a voice who can’t communicate typically. It gives you an insight into who they are as a being,” Susan Berman, CEO of Help Group, told LAist.

Berman said the prime Abbott Kinney real estate was a gift from a board member. Help Group is using the square footage for a community space and gallery to feature neurodivergent artists.

Among the artists included is Noah Remis, 15, whose piece “I <3 NY” incorporates watercolor over the titles of famous musicals like Hamilton and Sweeney Todd.

“Those are different musicals that I know and love,” Remis said.

“Some I saw on Broadway. Just so you know, I also put Cats on there just to anger my dad,” he joked. He said his dream is to act on Broadway.

Noah’s dad, Rich Remis, might not be a fan of Cats, but he is a fan of seeing his son’s love of theater expressed in his painting.

“To hang it up in a gallery with everyone else’s work, it just really adds a special weight to it that I think is certainly not lost on Noah,” he said.

Noah, in response, added: “Don’t get emotional.”

Noah said he hopes other kids will be inspired by his work and maybe even take it home.

Berman, who’s been with Help Group for more than four decades, said she has big plans for the space, which opened last week.

“Our plan is for the community to see the gifts that our neurodiverse artists have, not only in their art but as human beings,” Berman said.

Tanaka Day, an epic meet-and-greet of people with the Japanese surname, is happening the weekend of Sept. 19 and 20 at — wait for it — Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

"I'm the idea guy around here," said proprietor Glenn Tanaka — aka Farmer Tanaka — who dreamed up the inaugural event. "Some of them [were] pretty good, some turned out OK."

For this one, 400 people from across the country RSVP’d, bonded by a Japanese surname that is one of the most common in the U.S. — and one that speaks to the history of Japanese immigration that first brought laborers here starting in the late 1800s.

Glenn Tanaka runs the family Tanaka Farms in Irvine.

(

Courtesy Tanaka Farms

)

One of them was Glenn's grandfather, Takeo Tanaka, who put down farming roots in California that span four generations and counting — Glenn's father George Tanaka, Glenn himself, and Glenn's son Kenny, whose three children are a regular presence at the farm.

"Tanaka literally means middle of the rice field," he said — farmers, essentially. And because many early immigrants were from farming villages, he added, "a lot of Tanakas came over."

The 69-year-old figured, why not bring as many of them together as possible — to hang out, tell family stories and help fill in the tapestry of the Japanese American immigration experience united by the surname.

One example is how the incarceration of Japanese Americans in camps during World War II had touched those who worked and owned farms — and ended up having to sell their holdings on the cheap.

Already, stories are flooding in. Tanaka said different siblings from one Tanaka family had sent in their experiences.

One brother read them and wound up learning new things about the family.

"What's really good to know is I've helped create families that talk," Tanaka said. "Because now they're asking, 'What did, you know, great-grandmother do?'"