The Pasadena Senior Center was bustling on a recent Monday afternoon.
But in the post-Eaton fire era, the crowd gathered wasn’t there for a friendly tutorial in the art and joy of sewing, or the basics of playing bridge, which the popular downtown Old Town center still provides, among an array of services.
The headliner on this day was Los Angeles County Assessor Jeff Prang, there to answer Eaton fire-rebuilding questions on property tax assessments.
It was the third installment of rebuilding seminars hosted at the senior center, which has become a “lifeline” for fire-affected senior citizens — not just for information on rebuilding, but community, said Pasadena Senior Center’s Executive Director Akila Gibbs.
Other sessions have focused on navigating insurance claims and other arduous tasks in the rebuilding process.
“We feel a profound responsibility to not run people around looking at different places, because they’re already doing that,” Gibbs said. “We want them to come here, and we want to find the answers for them. So many people have come up to me and said that this is a lifeline for them.”
Since the January wildfires, Gibbs says she’s seen a 10% to 15% uptick in the number of daily visitors to the senior center, becoming a kind of refuge for those coming from the fire-pummeled Altadena Senior Center, but also people looking for clarity.
She sees 300 to 400 visitors to the center daily. The phone is constantly ringing, mostly from the seniors’ children.
But the help didn’t begin at the senior center. The center’s staff rushed to the evacuation center at the nearby Pasadena Convention Center in the immediate aftermath of the fire to help volunteers with the specialized help the seniors needed.
For example, the food provided at the shelter contained high amounts of sugar, but many seniors are diabetic, so the senior center brought protein drinks and sugar-free snacks. Other supplies, such as canes and walkers and adult diapers, were needed for seniors’ mobility and independence.
Then, after surveying 3,000 seniors, the center started a support group. People said that mental health support was what they needed the most. Then, in partnership with the Pasadena Assistance League, the Pasadena Senior Center created a Navigator Program to help seniors rebuild after the Eaton fire. And because a hefty amount of the rebuilding process is done online, the center has a technology center to walk seniors through.
Thanks to support from the Wildfire Recovery Fund from the California Community Foundation, the Pasadena Senior Center was able to provide food, medicine, clothing and help put on seminars such as Monday’s information panel with the L.A. County assessor. Since the wildfires, the CCF has provided over $30 million to more than 200 nonprofit organization in L.A. County, including the Pasadena Senior Center.
The Eaton fire sparked a difficult mix of fear and questions within a senior community, many of whom saw themselves living out their golden years in Altadena.
When the mammoth fire hit, they were faced with an uncertain future. Do you stay? Do you rebuild? Do you move on?
And then there’s the task of finding entities to trust in working out that future.
“Seniors are afraid of the insurance company. They don’t know how to hire a contractor. Who has ever built a house? Where do you start?” Gibbs said, referencing the kind of questions and concerns many have.
Mary Washington, an 83-year-old resident from Altadena who lost her home in the Eaton fire, said her days have been filled with attending sessions trying to get more information, wishing it can all be consolidated in one place.
“Listen, dear God, help me find one faithful person,” Washington pleaded.
Her biggest challenge is trying to navigate the rebuild without her late husband, who died in 2019. Washington plans on rebuilding in the same lot she’s owned since 1976, but needs some guarantee that she will be able to so.
“We’re already seniors. They’re saying two to three years, maybe five years,” said Washington, referring to the timeline for rebuilding. “What do you do in the meantime…what can you guarantee us? No one is willing to go that far with it.”
Washington isn’t alone in feeling that way. Others at the Pasadena Senior Center feel overwhelmed and don’t know where to even begin in the rebuilding process.
Mercedes Matua, 69, has been driving to the Pasadena Senior Center nearly four times a week from Glendale, where she’s temporarily relocated since her home burned down in the Eaton fire, despite not liking to drive on the freeway.
She does this to maintain community with the people she hasn’t seen since the fires and to get all her information on rebuilding.
Right now, Matua is struggling the most with itemizing everything in the home she owned for 38 years, pre-fire, for her insurance company.
So she planned on attending another information panel at the center later in the week — she says she’s attended all previous rebuilding sessions — which will focus on helping seniors with just that.
The itemization process has been so overwhelming for her that she decided to give up on obtaining the remaining 20% of her insurance claim. And some items, like her graduation ring and anniversary rings from her husband, hold too much emotional sentiment that can never be replaced.
“I think people are ashamed of what they don’t know… We’re trying to tell people, there’s a lot not to know… we try to tell people that no question is a dumb question,” said Gibbs.
During Monday’s panel, an Altadena homeowner asked Prang about how she can prove that certain parts of her house existed before the fire, so that when rebuilding, they won’t be considered new additions that would trigger a property tax reassessment. Yet, without proper documentation, she doesn’t know how she’ll be able to do that. When asked if those additions were done by permit, she responded, “You know, you never really think about these things. You just live there, right?”
It’s questions like these that made Prang want to come to the senior center.
“The devil is in the details,” said Prang. “And there are a lot of details, a lot of moving parts. There are a lot of different layers of government regulation. It’s complicated. It’s confusing.”
Prang said he’s observed that people are very concerned about what type of construction will trigger a tax reassessment. Both in the Palisades and Altadena, he’s seen a range of options in what people want to do in the aftermath of the fire. But for senior citizens who are navigating the rebuilding process, he especially stressed signing up for the county-wide anti-fraud program called Homeowner Alert Service, especially with the number of scammers attempting to report a deed against homeowners’ properties.
Yet the fraud warnings are just another small detail in the daunting task of rebuild for senior citizens, which is why Gibbs says the center is constantly focused on finding ways to help.
“It’s going to be a long, hard struggle.”
Julianna Lozada is a freelance writer in Southern California.