There's a prefab 'village' in Altadena, but time is running out to visit

On a small, formerly vacant, county-owned lot on Lincoln Avenue in Altadena, fire survivors can get a glimpse into one of the fastest and most affordable ways to rebuild — prefabricated and modular housing.

The Altadena Prefab Showcase has staged six models of factory-built homes and ADUs on the lot this month. Time is running out to visit — the showcase closes up shop after Sunday.

The factory-built “village” is an “educational tool to help Altadenans understand what might be a really stable, predictable, economical pathway home,” said Ryan Conroy, director of architecture at UCLA’s cityLAB, a housing and urban design research center.

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The homes range between about $50,000 to more than $200,000. Prefabricated housing is built at a factory offsite, and designs already are approved at the local and state levels, so the process is often cheaper and faster.

“So you can get a home in months, not years, essentially,” Conroy said. “Things can move concurrently, where your home is being built in the factory while you're working on permits with the county, while you're getting your site ready for foundations.”

The homes also are built up to fire codes, and survivors can use them as a permanent dwelling, a temporary home while they rebuild their main house, or as an ADU.

The showcase is a partnership between the UCLA’s cityLAB, nonprofit LA4LA, L.A. County, prefab housing manufacturers (largely local) and a variety of community-based organizations. Several of the companies, such as AMEG and Liv-Connected, helped rebuild or provide temporary housing after other disasters and recent fires such as in Lahaina, Maui.

A 3D-printed ADU by Gardena-based modular homebuilder Azure.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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A prefab housing showcase has been installed on Lincoln Avenue in Altadena over the past month.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Option to stay on property

Tameka Alexander and her daughter still are staying in a hotel — their home was spared by the Eaton Fire, but severe smoke damage has made it unsafe to move back in. She says they’re currently waiting for their home’s insulation to be replaced. That’s why she was at the showcase on a recent Saturday — to see if a prefabricated home may help them return to their property sooner, while their house gets remediated.

“It's been nine months, and I just don't know how much longer it'll be, but I would prefer to actually be in something that would allow me to be on the property,” she said.

Various prefab housing designs at the Altadena Prefab Showcase.

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Erin Stone

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LAist

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Casty Fortich also was at the showcase one recent Saturday with his wife. They and their two teenaged daughters, plus their dog and cat, have been living in a small apartment in Monrovia since losing their Altadena home of more than 20 years in the Eaton Fire. The rent was affordable for them for up to three years — the time Fortich estimated it could take to rebuild.

But the apartment is cramped — and with their rebuild still years in the making (Fortich hopes it can be complete by summer 2027), the family is considering purchasing a prefab unit to live in while they rebuild, and then they can rent it out as an ADU. Even with insurance, they estimate they have about a $300,000 to $500,000 gap to rebuild.

“A lot of us are unable to pay for a replacement, and so I think this is an option for many to stay on their property,” he said.