Leslie Aitken’s eyes fill with tears as she remembers her Altadena neighborhood, where she’d pop over to her daughter’s house across the street to work on the garden. Now, all that’s left of nearly a half century of living there is an ash-filled lot and memories.
“That house was as much a part of me as anything has ever been,” Aitken says. “I moved in there when I was 22. And I lived in there until I was 71. I lived all of my best and worst days there.”
About 20% of Altadena’s residents before the Eaton Fire were retirees on fixed incomes, like Aitken. Starting over in your 70s, 80s, or beyond is different than trying to reestablish your life if you have a young family or are in the middle of your career. How do you even begin when you’re older and aren’t earning enough money?
“We’ve coached the ones that are here with us to not make any big decisions right now,” says Deborah Herbert, CEO of Monte Vista Grove Homes, a retirement community and assisted-living facility in nearby Pasadena that’s taken in fire refugees.
“‘Don’t sign any contracts. Don’t make any big decisions for probably three to six months,’” Herbert says she tells them. “They’re traumatized. They’re processing. And they don’t process as fast as you and I do.”
Herbert says some seniors she’s worked with still don’t know how to use the internet, while many of the forms they need to fill out are online only.
“Imagine you’re 85, 90 years old. You’ve lost everything and you have to figure this out?” Herbert says. “It’s just overwhelming.”
She says older folks need extra hand-holding – something she hopes local rebuilding coalitions will take into account.
Herbert says many seniors expected to live their lives out in their homes, making it extra hard to start over. Familiarity means independence.
“When you age in place in your own home, it works because you know where everything is. You know where the step is. You know exactly where the cups are and the silverware. And you don’t have to think about it and it’s comfortable,” Herbert says. “Everything’s new now.”
Leslie Aitken, who lost her home in the Eaton Fire, fiddles with her new microwave-toaster oven. This is her entire temporary apartment. It doesn’t even have a kitchen. And she can barely afford it. Photo by Susan Valot.
Aitken and her husband bought their home in Altadena in the 1970s because it was something they could afford, and she loved that it was a mixed-race neighborhood that felt welcoming to everyone.
Now divorced, Aitken says the house was the way she could retire. She lives on $1,300 per month from Social Security, while her son rented the upstairs of the house from her.
Since the Eaton Fire, Aitken’s adult son and daughter found other places to live.
It took Aitken a while to find a Pasadena apartment – and it’s less than 150 square feet, including the bathroom and closet. It doesn’t have a kitchen and costs her nearly her entire monthly Social Security check. Plus, she still has to pay the mortgage on her destroyed home.
Aitken says she feels lucky to even find this tiny room, in a rental market that’s a lot more expensive than the last time she had to apartment hunt.
Part of the problem is that Aitken, who runs the What’s Up in Altadena Facebook group as a hobby, is among many who were underinsured. She had the California FAIR plan, the state’s insurance of last resort. It covered $500,000 total, but about half of that will go to pay off her mortgage, because she’d taken out equity on her home. After deducting what it will cost to live in her little “dorm room” apartment, as Aitken calls it, that doesn’t leave much to rebuild.
“I’ve been to a lot of different meetings. They go, ‘Well, what you have to do is you have to get a SBA [Small Business Administration] loan. You can get a SBA loan at 2% right now.’ … That’s a great deal, right?” Aitken says. “But not me, because I get $1,300 a month Social Security, dude.”
Her friend set up a GoFundMe campaign to help keep Aitken financially afloat. She says it’s frustrating to be maneuvering this instead of enjoying her retirement years. She kind of feels cast aside.
“Chances are, we’ll be dead before any of this stuff is over anyway. We’ve got more of our lives behind us than in front of us,” Aiken says.
She is looking into things like modular homes or other ways to rebuild that might be less expensive. She’s worried about whether tariffs will raise building costs and other uncertainty in today’s political climate. So for now, she says she’s going to wait on deciding what to do.
Retired pastor Rebecca Prichard stands next to the retirement cottage where she’s staying as she decides whether to rebuild her destroyed Altadena home. She inherited the ceramic pots next to her from a friend who died before the fire. The planters survived the flames. Photo by Susan Valot.
For many, being displaced by the fire isn’t just a one-time displacement. It means multiple moves.
That’s especially hard for seniors like retired pastor Rebecca Prichard, who’s now living in a Monte Vista Grove cottage.
Prichard bought her Altadena home and moved in just a few months before the fire, so she was fully insured and can afford to rebuild. But that wouldn’t necessarily lead to long-term stability.
“Say it takes two or three years to rebuild the house and I’m living here,” Prichard says. “Am I going to want to move back up there, live there maybe for five years, maybe until I’m 80 or so, and then move back down here?”
Prichard says moves like that are both mentally and physically exhausting. And not knowing where you’re going to live adds to the uncertainty of aging, when you don’t have time to start over.
“When you’re in your 70s, you’re like, ‘Well, how much money am I going to need?’ You don’t know,” Prichard says.
She is leaning toward not moving back, but she has mixed feelings.
“I didn’t feel quite ready to move into a retirement community yet, even though it’s a beautiful place to be. I also think that moving back to that place would be sad,” Prichard says. “Even if I got to build this little house just how I wanted it to be, there’s something about living on that land where all my stuff basically turned to ash. That’s kind of creepy and sad.”
Prichard says she feels like a steward of her old home and neighborhood and doesn’t just want to sell her lot for maximum money and get out.
She says she’d like to maybe rebuild the historic cottage in the same 100-year-old style, with the same charm, but then sell it to someone else who can enjoy it for their lifetime.