A report published this week by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute found that a fragmented network of recovery resources has contributed to slowing down the Altadena community’s rebuild from the Eaton fire.
Researchers analyzed more than 1,200 GoFundMe campaigns created as of June to look at what the biggest needs were for both homeowners and renters in the wake of the fire and to examine the financial need and gaps in aid.
Nine out of 10 campaigns did not meet the set goal, according to the report. The median homeowner campaign asked for $35,000 with the median renter campaign setting a goal of $20,000.
Gabriella Carmona, a senior research analyst at the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute who co-authored the report, said the distinction between homeowners’ and renters’ needs in recovery and rebuild is essential to properly meeting the complex needs of fire survivors.
“These two groups are navigating very different circumstances, but also navigating very different networks … your network is going to shape how prominent or how well your campaign is going to do,” Carmona said.
In addition to housing loss, the report found that displacement, mental health challenges and unmet basic needs appeared together in many GoFundMe campaign descriptions emphasizing the interconnectedness of post-disaster needs.
GoFundMe campaigns do fill an important need for survivors, Carmona said, providing immediate flexible cash that is not available through traditional benefit programs. However, researchers said GoFundMe should not be relied upon to be a safety net for disaster survivors.
Carmona said the findings validated the work researchers have been doing since the fire to track the rebuild process and understanding who was impacted most.
Researchers had hypotheses going into the GoFundMe study about what had been contributing to the slow rebuild pace in Altadena and hoped to find answers within the array of narratives. Carmona said they found just that and identified patterns across the campaigns.
One was the extent of the loss that so many people suffered in the fire. A third of the campaigns involved people who described leaving their home with only the clothes on their back and having to start from zero. Another was the multiple fronts that survivors had to manage all at the same time as they worked to piece their lives back together.
Survivors were dealing with several concerns all at once but Carmona described the recovery systems as being fragmented making it more difficult for people to get the help they needed.
“For us it wasn’t ultimately a surprising finding, but just how systemic and how clear it was across the narratives to us was just very telling of the fact that all of the anecdotal evidence, all of our initial hypotheses around what’s happening on the physical side and why we’re seeing these delays were really starting to be teased out,” Carmona said.
Earlier this month, Alex Athenson co-founder and executive director of the Foothill Catalog Foundation, presented at the Altadena Town Council about the pace of the ongoing rebuild and highlighted that despite significant progress overall many survivors still have not even begun the process.
The nonprofit created a catalog of more than 70 pre-approved designs to help fire survivors move forward with their rebuild in a more affordable and efficient process. Athenson said that as of his Aug. 18 presentation, 101 families had signed on to rebuild with a catalog design and 43 pre-approved plans were under construction in Altadena.
Citing county data, Athenson said 57% of impacted single family lots have filed some kind of permit for rebuilding leaving 43% that have not made any progress. For those who have embarked on the rebuild process, submitting permits is just the beginning, Athenson said.
“We’ve had over 3,000 permits applied for, but only 91, around 2% of the projects, actually completed,” Athenson said of single-family home projects. “What that tells us is that construction is difficult. That journey is long and it is fraught with risk.”
In addition, Athenson said permit applications in Altadena peaked in September 2025 and have been decreasing every month since.
The UCLA report offered a series of policy recommendations for county and state leaders for future disaster response. They included:
-Institutionalize rapid, flexible household disaster assistance within the county’s existing fire recovery fund and emergency grant infrastructure.-Establish equity-centered county standards for wildlife preparedness and evacuation readiness with clear performance metrics and accountability mechanisms.-Build a permanent, state-supported household recovery continuum for disaster-impacted tenants and homeowners by codifying, integrating permanently financing existing functions.-Establish a standing disaster behavioral health recovery grant program.
“Our report showed that so many households had more than one need and maybe we could kind of tackle all of them in a more holistic way rather than have the household themselves carry that burden of reaching out to the right program to get that service,” Carmona said.
Despite the fragmentation in the recovery services available to survivors, Carmona said the pieces are all there locally to create a more responsive system for people moving forward for the inevitable next disaster.
“Which programs have worked well, which ones could be tinkered with, which ones could be better connected to community and put all of those pieces together to really think about a permanency of these systems, so it’s not something that we have to recreate,” Carmona said.