After the Ashes: A Beautiful Altadena Podcast
We are Beautiful Altadena, the online community group that launched in 2015 and the Substack by the same name, and we started this podcast to ask: Who’s writing the rules of recovery, who benefits, and who’s being left out? This podcast will deep dive into the issues of recovery and rebuilding through the lens of policy.
Each episode, we’ll dissect the policies and bills impacting Altadena post Eaton Fire. We’ll break down what they say, what they really mean, who they affect, and what – and who – they leave out.
Your hosts:
Shawna Dawson Beer / Beautiful Altadena, Eaton Fire Total Loss Survivor
Stephen Sachs / AltaPolicyWonk, Eaton Fire Survivor, Current Altadena Resident
Every episode closes out with a local small business shout out. We are not advertiser, sponsor or grant funded and have no agenda beyond ensuring our Altadena neighbors are as in the know as possible so that we can all be our own best advocates for ourselves and our town.
After the Ashes: A Beautiful Altadena Podcast
Episode 10: Philanthropy & Power — Who’s Rebuilding Altadena, and Why?
In this episode, we explore the deep and often unseen role that philanthropy plays in shaping disaster recovery, including Altadena's. Building on our co-host Stephen Sachs’ AltaPolicyWonk Substack series — Philanthropy I, II, and III — we unpack the current nonprofit climate and how we got here.
We cover:
- The influence of institutions like Annenberg and where some of that FireAid money went
- How the California Community Foundation (CCF) is funding local efforts like the Department of Angels and Altagether
- Where recovery dollars are flowing — and where they aren’t — and what happens when they run dry
We also talk candidly about the importance of transparency, local accountability, and the challenges ahead for a community trying to rebuild without losing its soul. And just a reminder — this podcast is not sponsored, funded, or backed by any organization. We do this independently and out of our own pockets because we think it's important for everyone to understand all of the issues at play.
This episode’s local business shoutout: Altadena Ale House. A longtime neighborhood spot, Altadena Ale House is a cozy, community-rooted pub and wine bar known for its rotating craft beers and its French wine selection. Gail, its longtime owner has spent a lot of time in France and the wine list shows it! This is the spot for footy (aka soccer) and rugby games and a casual meetup. Find the Ale House at 2329 Fair Oaks Ave and on Instagram at @altadenaalehouse
Let’s keep going. Tune in and stay activated.
Welcome back to After the Ashes. This is the beautiful Altadena podcast that breaks down legislation recovery after our little wildfire up in Altadena. I'm your co-host Steve here, and I'm here with Shauna Dawson Beer.
SPEAKER_00:Hello.
SPEAKER_01:And uh this is episode 10 Philanthropy and Power. Who's Rebuilding Altadena and why? And this is the one I think where I get in trouble, right, Shauna?
SPEAKER_00:This is the one where Steve's definitely gonna de get into it. If the last episode was heavy on me, this one is the Steve show. So Steve, let's talk about our philanthropy and how did we get there? Get frame it up for us. All right, yeah. So like so many homes, frame it up for us.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I don't know if we can frame any more. I think we have to modular build. Um so philanthropy is an interesting topic. It's it's it's the hidden dynamic in all of this rebuild because so much of what we're doing, everybody's looking to philanthropy to be the leader on this. And you know, philanthropy has a tremendous role in our community, and these fires have really brought it out as the role of you know helping stand people up, dealing with the the gaps that exist between gut federal or government money and you know industry. But philanthropy is it's changed a lot. And so, you know, back about a month ago, I wrote three pieces in on the Substack about philanthropy.
SPEAKER_00:Philanthropy one. Philanthropy one, two, and three.
SPEAKER_01:And philanthropy three very creatively uh you know titled. But you know, the first one was obviously like the background. Why is philanthropy in the role it is today? How has it kind of changed and morphed over the years? And, you know, if you think about it, you know, the early part of the 20th century, philanthropy was the primary driver of community well-being and community good. And as the growth of the state took place, you know, through the New Deal and then the Great Society in the 1960s and the subsequent legislation in the 70s under Nixon, you know, you had this shift where the government kind of moved into a lot of the roles that philanthropy took, and philanthropy kind of was more a side card to the government as opposed to the government be a side card to philanthropy. And, you know, as it exists today, philanthropy, I think the number is something like four trillion dollars in assets under management for private foundations nationally. I mean, that's a tremendous amount of firepower available. Um, I'd have to look at the numbers again. It was in philanthropy too for LA, but I think that number is over around 50 billion in assets available uh here in the city of Los or the County of Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00:It's incredible.
SPEAKER_01:So there's I mean, and that was just the bigger ones. Now, again, a chunk of that is the Getty philanthropy, which focuses on the museum. But nevertheless, like these are these are asset pools that are hugely valuable. Uh, there's community foundations which are part of this as well. And again, I don't forget, universities are also philanthropies, and they have billions of dollars available as assets. So there's a whole industry here or a whole sector here that you know we can look to to be part of this catalytic funding um stack that we're looking at as we're looking to rebuild. The knee-jerk originally, and I've talked to many in philanthropy, has been philanthropy is going to rebuild Altadena, Pasadena, you know, the Palisades. Like that's their job. It's not. Philanthropy doesn't have the asset base to do it. It's very much like tax increment financing. It can do a portion of it, it can do targeted areas.
SPEAKER_00:It has a role.
SPEAKER_01:But philanthropy is more of a convener. And what philanthropy can really do, and you know, the community California Community Foundation is a great example of this, and their Department of Angels that they stood up, is they act as sort of a clearinghouse for aligning the various groups around specific policy questions. And so that's sort of what we need to look at philanthropy as, as you know, yes, they have the assets, but they also have a tremendous amount of resource capability in our community. And that's the way I've looked at philanthropy. So as a as another aside, one of the things I've been working on prior to the fires is reimagining the nonprofit world and looking at philanthropy as making, you know, Mackenzie Scott, who is the ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, and she has this organization called Yield Giving. She has billions of dollars she's giving away, and she literally just calls you up and says, one day, we're gonna give you$25 million, but you're only gonna get it once, and you need to make it sustainable. So, really, that's what this is all about is how can we looking at philanthropy, reimagine it again, like everything else we're looking at with these fires, to make it sustainable and regenerative, and sustainable not from an environmental perspective, but sustainable from an investment perspective, where we take in some money and we make that money continue to seed again and again and again. We're not going back for subsequent rounds of funding to support our community as we stand up Altadena.
SPEAKER_00:Can you walk us through kind of what the landscape is? You just mentioned CCF, DOA.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Again, back to letters and so many letters. So many letters and letters. I just for the sake of well, we we just saw that as an example. But can we talk about kind of what the landscape looks like and currently for Altadena and how these orgs are going to be a piece of this? Like we have uh an LTRG now, a long-term recovery group.
SPEAKER_01:Right, but they're getting money from the private philanthropy five private foundations. So here in Los Angeles, the major player is from a so there's community foundations and then there's private philanthropies. Now, private philanthropies are what you would think of when you think of very wealthy people creating a trust that then uses that money to invest in communities to help, you know, for charitable intent. You know, the Getty family for one. Uh Annenberg is the big one here that's involved with the fires. Amundsen, you've seen the name all over uh the city, the city, yeah. The Brawl, the Broad family, the you know, these big the Milken family, like these are big names of big wealthy families that are using their money to help give back to the community, right? That's the private foundation side. The other side is something called a community foundation. Now, a community foundation is think about it not so much as yes, it's a philanthropy, but it also manages money on behalf of wealthy donors. They're called donor-advised funds. So I, as a wealthy donor, says, say, I'm gonna give five million dollars to California Community Foundation, but I want you to give it to, you know, three universities and four other charities, and you just manage it for me, and that's the donor-advised fund. Now, what California Community Foundation then gets to do is then take those donor-advised funds and invest those, and whatever's left over, the profit they make after their expenses, is what call it's called discretionary money. And that is the money that CCF gives to community groups or nonprofits, or we call them um you know, CBOs, community-based nonprofits. Those groups are getting their money out of that discretionary fund. Now, Pasadena also has a community foundation, it's smaller than the CCF. CCF has something like two or three billion dollars under management. I think Pasadena's is about$50 million. So, I mean, it's there there's a different scale, obviously. But at the end of the day, you know, cal the these community foundations are they're sort of seed money to initiatives, and then they catalyze other private foundations that are associated with them to grow them, and that's sort of what they do. So back to your question, you know, that these the it's these two groups that are sort of driving a lot of the funding that's occurring here among the community groups in Altadina.
SPEAKER_00:So with that, what happens next? Right? What happened because you know we're talking, you're you just gave us some numbers, millions, even hundreds, tens of millions. But we know that what we need and what we're talking about, and this goes back to all of our conversations, is billions. Yes. Uh we we are a multi-billion dollar project, not tens of millions, hundreds of millions, even though you know tens of millions or even just a million dollars is a significant number for an MPO, right? Especially for some of our um very grassroots orgs that are off.
SPEAKER_01:What$50,000 a lot of money? Yep, exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Well, some got a hundred, hundred and fifty, you know?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um but but that's the thing is that then what? But those are the those are the seeds.
SPEAKER_01:Like that is what the community foundations will do is they seed them, see which organizations survive, which organizations thrive, which organizations the the charitable intent of those organizations, does it meet the need of the moment? At the time, they were doing what's called capacity building, right? So the idea was to build up the capacity of these organizations to be able to attend to a certain function, whether it's you know you know, a certain community, whether it's a certain cause, whatever it is. And we had uh what dozens of groups that were stood up and built out or that were catalyzed through this process. So they were already existing, but they were you know brought together and you know, really pushed up through the process of you know, the the initial money. Now we're at that point where it's okay, what what's the follow-on money going to be? Right. And you know, one of the questions I've asked, and I haven't seen anybody else ask it, and I'd love to see a study on this, is how much of the money that's been distributed to the community groups is I would say original money versus money that came from the wildfire aid fund?
SPEAKER_00:Fire aid money. Yes. For anyone listening, the fire aid money, because a lot of those grants that went to community MPOs, because much to the chagrin of all the fire survivors, there was no mechanism for direct funding for people to just for fire survivors to be directly funded from fire aid money, it goes to all the nonprofits, community groups, orgs doing the work on the on the ground. So um many of them were funded this way. Yep. And now what? And what happens when that money runs out?
SPEAKER_01:Well, and that's a really good question. And who's gonna follow on with that money? Like, is there going to be I mean, there's still some money left at Annenberg and at the Pass City of Community Foundation?
SPEAKER_00:And Annenberg, for anyone who does not realize this, Annenberg is administrating the fire aid money.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So there's still money there that hasn't been spent, and the question is, is that money then gonna go as follow-on funding to the organizations that survive? Or, you know, what? I mean, this is sort of one of the the questions that I have. Um, but many of these groups have been used in our community to try to align, you know, around initiatives like AB SB 76 uh 782 and some of these broader policy questions. And so they brought community alignment around these objectives, working in conjunction with the electeds and you know the policymakers. So they've had it, they've served a purpose. The question is, what is their purpose gonna be post next week when these bills are signed or vetoed?
SPEAKER_00:Right. And so and we say next week right now, but when you listen to this, it'll be this week.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. When you when you when you hear this, depending on when you post it.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, yes. When you hear this pop podcast, we'll probably be, you know, it'll be a matter of um well, well, what happened? And there's gonna be some very interesting follow-up steps.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so I mean, I I think that there's gonna be a shakeout there, so that'll be interesting. Um I I think also one of the things that is being very overlooked right now is the macro level questions that are occurring in philanthropy. If you look at my philanthropy three, this is something that I was really talking about, is the federal funding environment is shifting. And many people look at it as the federal government is cutting money that otherwise was spent, you know, given to communities. What in some respects, I get that, but on the other hand, what the federal government's also doing is they're scaling back their role to being the sidecar to philanthropy because you have four trillion dollars in assets that need to be allocated. Why isn't philanthropy taking on a more active role in a community? Why are we reliant on the federal government to do seed money and capacity building and these types of initiatives for you know projects that have grown tremendously over the years? And whether you're right or wrong, that's just where we are. And you know, we are spending trillions of dollars more than we have, and we need to start scaling things back. So it's not a Republican talking point. I'm just telling you what they're saying in DC.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:And so when you look at things like the Section 8 money that's being potentially cut, what the vouchers are gonna go down by 50%. We've increased the number of incentives to build the homes, but I think what the government is saying is okay, if you're gonna catalyze your money now, figure out how you're gonna do your economic development to bring in jobs to break the cycle, as opposed to continuing to put out, you know, everybody. We're gonna cut back the the money that's gonna be available and make it more targeted. And I think that who steps into that basis? Is it gonna be to philanthropy to step in and fill that void? We got a$700 million potential shortfall in the county's health budget in terms of you know operating the hospitals and county, you know, county USC and some of the others. Who's gonna step in to do that with the$700 million? That's typically where philanthropy was. This is where philanthropy typically stepped in. Two-thirds of the continuum of care that was typically funded through HUD for homelessness is going to be cut. Again, who's gonna step into that void? I mean, look, when you talk about like community development block grants outside of the disaster recovery ones, it's four billion dollars a year nationally. So, I mean, for us here in LA, it's probably 50 million or so that's available. Can philanthropy step in and take a chunk of that? Philanthropy has uh tens of tens of billions of dollars available in terms of assets, are they being properly allocated? And I think that that's sort of the the theme that's being asked here is are we properly using the assets? And I think that what's happening in Altadena, and I think that this is the pressure we're gonna feel, is as this macro level pressure is coming from up top, we're gonna feel it down below because we're gonna be the ones sitting there going, hey, we need your help, philanthropy, and philanthropy is gonna go, look, guys, you got bigger things, we got bigger fish to fry. And are these community groups gonna continue to be funded? If I was, I've said to people who are funded by community groups in philanthropy, I said, You guys better look at this funding very seriously because I don't know how long it's gonna last with these macro level trends. And I I think that this is something that's very serious and something very real. And I think that the expectation that philanthropy is gonna solve all of our problems or even be a huge part of the solution is probably misplaced right now.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I've had these conversations too with a few people where I've candidly asked, how how long of a runway do you have and what's next? And the answer is always we don't know, we're working on it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, and that's I mean, that's the nonprofit world. That's very typical. Yep. However, I think the big shift is going to be the competition from these bigger issues that philanthropy typically was created to solve in the first place. Philanthropy is gonna have to go back to its core, it's not gonna have time for a lot of these peripheral questions. And again, while Altadena where's the major question going to be? I think it's gonna be affordable housing. I think if if there's anything that that philanthropy is gonna focus its attention on, it's gonna be affordable housing. It's gonna be getting people with minimal resources back into homes and figuring out a way to do it in a way that's affordable for them to maintain what they had before.
SPEAKER_00:And what does that mean? Is that is that you know supporting CLTs?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:Is it supporting a foundation like GreenLine that's trying to buy up lots to get it?
SPEAKER_01:I think it's gonna be a broader.
SPEAKER_00:Is it supporting SB9 and densification because we all believe misguidedly because people are because builders, developers are forced to have X number of quote unquote low-income units, that that's the fix because as we know it's not the fix.
SPEAKER_01:But we don't even know if builders are gonna come and build big units that are gonna have that. I think you've got to go back to the basics. I think you gotta go back to the ground level. And this is what I've said to Annenberg is I've said, I think you got to go back to the heart of the issue here, which is how do you get somebody back into a house for$800,000? Right. How do you create that model to get somebody back into an$1,800 square foot house and get you know, one of the questions that we need to have answered is the the assessor question, but putting that aside for a minute, how can you get somebody who lost everything, who had no insurance, into an affordable model that's gonna be less than them going and renting an apartment in the community? There's a way to do it, and philanthropy can be a big part of this. The thing is, is it's gonna take leadership and it's gonna take skills and it's gonna take a lot of people bringing really interesting dynamics together.
SPEAKER_00:So how do we do it? It's a simple question, Steve.
SPEAKER_01:I wrote a substable. It speaks all of our problems. I I well I can't because you know I've written the sub stack on it, but there's a way to break it out where we we can get there.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And I I don't want to belabor it, it's it's a long, drawn-out process.
SPEAKER_00:So I know we had a reader question actually. A reader had had asked, if people are not building apartments in LA, why is Altadina going to become an apartment mecca? And I think that we discussed that this question is very nuanced and complicated, and and you said it goes back, you know, to the fact that this isn't 94, recovery may be longer and slower, then investors can handle. We could have you know vacant buildings like downtown does. And actually, I I love that this is where you you've um kind of framed this because I was actually you know with a journalist from a major national publication yesterday, and we were talking about all manner of things as the story that you know they're working on largely is around housing and um access and uh rebuild. And this is one of the topics we touched on, and I was like, you know, this isn't new, right? We we'd already we were approving these mixed-use projects in part because of SB9, but also because you know, there are ways that they fit within our CSD prior to SB9, um, into our commercial corridors on Lincoln, on Fair on Lake, um, to some degree on Fair Oaks. And, you know, we have a couple, right? Like we have um that one, what is that? Where the there's a yoga studio, or at least there was, it's across the street from Coffee Gallery, kind of cat a corner from Cal Coffee Gallery, just south of there, but still on the Altadena border, and it's a bunch of loft units above. And I don't know if those are, you know, if they're at capacity, but both the retail spaces took forever to lease out, and those lofts took forever to lease out because, you know, shocker, they're still not affordable. And who wants to live in a loft in Altadena? It was like that, right? Like a modern downtown loft. It was it's a very curious thing. So it was like, great, it's working out so well already. Let's build more.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I this is sort of this is one of those questions that I had, and I was talking about this before. Is you know, you have this dual narrative that's going on right now. On the one hand, you have this idea that we're gonna just densify everything and that's gonna solve all of our problems. Build, build, build, build, build. I mean, you go to Sacramento, that's all anybody's talking about build, build, build, build, build. That's how we're gonna get out of our housing crisis. Yet you have that report that, you know, I went back and forth with a reader on um that came out of the state that said by 2060, Los Angeles is gonna lose 20% or almost 20% of its population that they're projecting. 20% people, that's two million dollars.
SPEAKER_00:So who's base, who is that who's projecting it? Because I know, okay, it's the state's this is the state's belief.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, this is the state's budget analyst is saying, or something, the fine Department of Finance is saying we're expecting to lose 20% of the population here in Los Angeles County.
SPEAKER_00:Even though, and I think it is important to position that that you know, a lot there's been a lot of you know fuss around the fact that, oh, you know, everyone's leaving California, California's too expensive, California sucks, everyone wants to go to Texas and Vegas and wherever the heck is. Well, exactly. But also those numbers are largely, you know, skewed. As many come in as go out. Like we're not we're not bleeding people.
SPEAKER_01:We we are bleeding population, we're not growing. And this is the thing is that California And who is growing? Is anybody growing? Yeah, Texas, Florida. But I mean, what it is is that if we're gonna lose 20% of our population and we're gonna have the portion of the population that's gonna be over the age of 65 selling in the next 10 to 15 years, what's that gonna do to the single family home? If we go build all this capacity and you're gonna have all these properties go on the market, what's that gonna do to housing prices? And then how does that implode our economy too? Yes, it's good to bring down the affordability costs to a point, but at what point does that become detrimental to us? We're on this weird cycle where it's not just a continual growth, we also have a situation where, yes, we have a people come to California, but a lot of people are leaving if they have to raise a family. They can't afford to raise a family here. Right. And so they come here when they're 20s. If they can stay, they stay. If they gotta go, they gotta go. And you know, we're losing Hollywood. We're we're we're we're nobody can dispute the fact the entertainment industry has to has fallen on tough times. People are going to Vancouver, they're going to Canada, they're going to New York, they're going to the UK. Exactly. They're leaving the country. They're paying lower costs in labor, and they're paying, they're getting tax credits to do the whole thing. I don't agree with the tax credit piece, but that's a whole different story of my own. But it is what it is. And you know, at least when we lost aerospace in the late 90s, we still had Hollywood. We don't have Hollywood to back us up. And aerospace, while it's a growing part of our economy, if you read all about it, it's it's a huge part of it. It's not going to ever employ people like it did in the 90s and 80s. You're not going to have the big plants building C 17s down in Long Beach.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I mean, even if you're NASA JPL, what is it? 80 plus percent of their workforce is currently being laid off?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's a huge, huge problem.
SPEAKER_00:And I think And that's a federal problem, which I think it's important to make that distinction. But as much as it's a federal problem, it's an Altadena problem.
SPEAKER_01:Because guess what? Where do those people live? Yep. And so who's gonna buy$1.5 million homes in Altadena if there are no jobs? If the entertainment industry is declining, if JPL it doesn't have the jobs to pay, these good paying jobs for engineers and support staff and people that are you know taking rockets to Mars and putting telescopes out into outer space. I mean, people, it's it's real.
SPEAKER_00:It is real. I think there's um as we think about it and talk about it, there's you know, a few a few sides to the story, right? A few a few sides to consider. On, you know, we we've heard quite a bit about how, you know, like for example, LA Times had a big story that broke um recently comparing, you know, all the various rebuilds and how you know ultimately two-thirds of populations were lost after these, after fires like this. And um I maintain, you know, a lot of people post that as very much like, oh my gosh, the sky is falling, we're dead, like we'll never have the tax base, we need to do anything ever again, the towns be half empty. Um, I don't think that's real. I do think that despite all the very real challenges that you just laid out, and they are real, and they're real for the not just for us, not just for county, for the entire state. These are very real ongoing problems that were not created by the fire, but are exacerbated now by the fire. Yeah. Right? And that we have to now live with and contend with. But you know, the I do still maintain that, you know, here we are going to be different. There people do want housing here, despite there are a lot of people who have remote jobs, other things, and there will be, but it's gonna be a very, very different community when you have all these new people coming in who are spending 1.5 north of 1.5. It was already changing during the pandemic when we had people, you know, like for example, on my block, someone moved in who is new uh to the to the community, you know, who paid a million over a million dollars cash for their little Jane's cottage in the middle of the pandemic. That was a very different neighbor than the rest of our neighbors. Not that they were bad, they weren't great, but you know, it's a very different kind of neighbor and a different community. You do start to have it, you lose some of the funk and the quirk that has made our very creative community, diverse community what it has been and why it is so special. But I I do want to say that I don't think, you know, we're gonna lose it all. People are gonna come back, a lot of people are gonna come back, but perhaps not at the pace people believe.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I think if you want it to be done right, this is the part. Everybody's focused on real estate, everyone's focused on development. You know, when I came out to LA after being dealing with my stuff in DC, and my readers will know this story, I was brought in to look at the West LA VA. They were gonna do homeless housing there. And they were renegotiating the enhanced use lease and all this other stuff that was going on down there. And, you know, they said, Steve, we want you involved with fraud, waste, and abuse. I'm like, nope, thank you. Because, you know, I'm a procurement guy, like I get that side of things. And I go, you know, I I it was just too political. And then they go, no, no, Steve, we really want you to look at this. I said, All right. And then the people in DC that I talked to said, give us an idea of what's going on on the ground. Half of LA City Council is gonna be indicted in the next little while anyway. That was when Wheezar was getting indicted. And it was, it was, it was a really interesting time politically. I want to write a story, I want to write a play.
SPEAKER_00:I have some things to say about Wheezar too, but not for this podcast.
SPEAKER_01:A book about this. But anyway, or even a uh TV show. Um but the point was when I looked at it and I actually got to understand it, and the guy I work with who's a finance genius and a CPA, you know, looked at it. We started learning about LaTeX, low-income housing tax credits, and we saw the deal was all about lie tax. And we said, well, where's the economic development side? Like you want to do mixed use, but where are the jobs? You've got people who are homeless, but 40% of people who are homeless are homeless because they can't afford to live in the house that they're the housing that they're in, not because they're destitute and on the street. They're on the street because their jobs are not meeting the need of where they are. And if we take we look at homelessness and we talk about this, and we look at 70,000 people who are homeless every day right now in LA County.
SPEAKER_00:I would like to know how many more just in Altadena, as I'm aware of neighbors still living in tents on their properties and neighbors now recently running out of ALE and living in their cars. I think we've talked about this before.
SPEAKER_01:So, but my point being if 40% of those of the people who are 70,000 and we can knock, we can find good employment for that, that would be a significant drop of homelessness and a huge victory for the model. But the problem was the money is around real estate. The money is allocated to that job training, breaking the cycle, creating a sustainable job, building wealth, doing all these things. It wasn't at the top of the list for the philanthropic organizations and the the government organizations that were addressing this problem. They want to build assets and get money. And so that's where it is. It every dollar you took away from a real estate project was one dollar less that was available to put somebody into something, you know, uh put a roof over someone's head head. So it was a competition for dollars, and those dollars were what they were. Here we are, we're we're in Altadena. Think about this on a macro level, right? Like the money is going to be allocated to building our community back and building homes to get people into them, which is the primary concern. We also need to figure out how the hell we're going to be able to fill these homes and keep these people employed and keep our residents employed. And that's the economic development piece. And that's the part that nobody's talking about, except for me. And that's the part that I think, you know, philanthropy is part of this. The the we have a window here for 24 months after the fire left, because we've already used up 12 of the months trying to get this stuff moving to grab money from the banks to be able to bring businesses in. We got JPL on on its ass, to be honest. We've got tremendous challenges, but it's also opportunity. And this is where our leaders really need to start stepping up and looking at it and catalyzing the assets we have. Philanthropy can be part of this. They have four, you know, fifty billion dollars in assets. Why can't they take some of that corpus, which is the money that the assets, not the profit they earn, which is what they distribute to their, you know, to their recipients, but the actual corpus and invest in our stuff and be seed capital to some of these broader initiatives. We need to start thinking different. And we have a city that is looking at, we can look at it from we can exacerbate the decline, or we can shift to the future. And that's the crossroads we're at right now. And so that's why I'm so passionate about this because I feel like we can either sit there and lament about what's happening, and we can't change what's been done, but what we can change is how the future is going to look. And so that's really where my head is, and that's what I've been fighting for. So sorry, that was my rant. I apologize.
SPEAKER_00:You're you were due for a rant, you haven't had one in. Few episodes. Um, I do want to bring it back though, you know, because we had some things to discuss on the timeline, right? For rebuild, like what this looks like for real in Altadena. Some neighbors are already building. Some of those are developers, some of those are people who had permits um prior to the fire and who lost construction during the fire. So they were able to get going quickly. Um, others are new rebuilds, which is fantastic. And it looks like all in all, you know, we have about 150 permits issued currently. That was the last number. I don't know if that's gone up a bit since, but the last number was 150. And again, for context, the context, that's 150 of at least 6,000 single-family homes and another 3,000 multi. Um, that's a lot of housing. Uh, that's it's we're talking about 2%, you know, maybe. So it's a lot to be done. And um while I do maintain and truly believe that Altadina will rebuild and will be largely rebuilt uh much more rapidly than we have seen from after other catastrophic events like this, like ours, um, because of the nature of who we are and where we are, I think it's also important to understand the timeline of that, that we will be a construction zone for seven to ten years. You know, that even, you know, some of the uh developers who who people have been thinking, you know, maybe philanthropy, who it seems are not philanthropy, you know, had I'll I'll leave because there are some stories that are going to break, I will leave details of who and what out. But I mean, one person who was spoken to who had purchased um 15 lots shared that their timeline for developing those lots and building the homes and selling them was about 10 years, because it was 10 years that they thought it would be take for the town to be back to where it should be for them to recoup on that investment. So that's that's our food for thought. That that's it. That's the real talk. And you know, I I get I get you know a lot of shit for being negative that oh, I'm negative. I'm I'm not even remotely negative. I'm one of those positive fucking people you're gonna meet. But also, I'm a realist. The trend is your friend, I'd like to say, because it's true. Like the data often doesn't lie. And you know, this is what we're looking at. I'm also aware of uh, and Steve, I shared this with you, you know, um, in another conversation that, you know, we have a number of neighbors, just people I personally am aware of on on the streets surrounding us, who are elder, who do not plan to rebuild or cannot rebuild anytime soon, but who also have no plans to sell. Those lots are gonna sit empty a real long time. Um, you've got even people like myself who, you know, I won't even consider the rebuild because I financially cannot until after the lawsuits are settled and I see where we land and what we've got or what we don't, right? So that is it's a lot of us are in a very precarious spot. There are a lot of balls up in the air, so many unknowns. Um, but ultimately I think this all circles back to the money. Where is it? Where is it coming from? Philanthropy is not gonna be the you know there to save the day as much as we would like them to be. Uh noble projects like CLTs, which I am fully, fully support, are very sadly not going to have the money they need to do anything in time to make a meaningful impact. Uh, I I maintain it is all about scale. I maintain that every lot saved and every family kept in in Altadina is a worthy endeavor and an it's it's worth it, right? But it's it's going to be a few, not hundreds, and certainly not thousands. And that's the scale that we need, and how do we get there?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I and I and to close out, I go back to I think we also have to broaden broaden our our our thoughts on this one because I think it's more than just housing. It's how are we going to build back our town and all the things that we have and take advantage of the assets that we have available to us right now. You know, we we've been uh relatively negative, as you said.
SPEAKER_00:I don't think negative, but but real.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, critical. That was critical. I I think though that uh if you really want to, there's a tremendous opportunity here too. Tremendous opportunity for the community to rebuild itself in a way that I think allows it to sustain for many years beyond, and a lot of assets we can put in place that can continue to pay dividends and support a lot of the initiatives that people want to have initiatives or want to have supported, and and give us self-sustaining models that can exist way beyond what anybody's ever imagined. Now we have to start square one, which is you know, get through the here and now. But the tools are there. I mean, that's let's be honest. We can do this, and I know exactly how to do it. I've been writing about it. Anyone who's been reading knows it's in there.
SPEAKER_00:And that, everyone, will be the subject of another episode entitled Philanthropy 2. Electric Boogaloo. And then maybe we'll be on video and we'll get Steve to dance for us. I think we're gonna wrap this one up. And um, as we know, I like to wrap these up with a small business shout-out. Um, so we'll get right into that. This week it is Altanina Alehouse. Um, if you're not familiar, they are on Fair Oaks. Um, the proprietor, Gail's place, is uh one of the few on that stretch of Fair Oaks that survived the fire. Um they're directly across from Mountain View Cemetery. They're one of our longer standing businesses. Gale's been around um before kind of what I would call the new wave of business and bars in particular and wine shops hit Aldadina. There, it was them and the Rancho. That's it. And you know, sadly, we don't have the Rancho. Rancho on fair on um North Lake did not make it. Um, Rancho, for those who didn't know, was like our very illustrious, fabulous dive bar. Uh, and I really and who I believe is rebuilding. I don't know how you rebuild a dive bar.
SPEAKER_01:I hope it's not like the boat where they kind of built it and it's just more, you know.
SPEAKER_00:A bar?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's not the same.
SPEAKER_00:I know. I get I only hope that the crowd at the rancho will make it the same. And if Beth comes back with that bloody Mary, I think there's hope. But um for the ale house, again, for those who haven't been, you know, the ale house has indoor space, a really cute little bar, um, a little back patio, um, and very kind of always surprisingly to me, a really great French wine collection beyond just beer, because Gail spent a lot of time in France and does spend a lot of time in France. And I know Steve was saying the ale selection's good too.
SPEAKER_01:The beer's great.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I can't drink beer, so I I don't it's off my radar, but I know I'm a beer snob. They've they've got there you go, they've got some good stuff. They also have a nice little um charcuterie plate if you feel the need to eat something when you drink. Uh sometimes it's advised. They have pizza too. You can well, well, I mean the the open policy, the unspoken policy was that you could bring pizza from Pizza Venice. Oh okay, which does. Yeah. No, Gail does do some pizzas too. So you know, so if you ask, you can get a pizza. And if you ask really nice, she will bring in a gluten-free pizza, but you've got to become a regular for that. But um, it's it's a great spot, it's a great community spot, especially if you're like me and you just kind of miss being around your people, our people. It's a good one to drop in and um and have a drink. And it's also, I I believe, um I say I believe because as we're recording this a second time after a little technical difficulty, and I don't want to miss anything. It's also a great spot for footy. If you're Brit, it's footy. If you're in the rest of the world, it's football. Not American football, what the rest of the world calls football. They also play rugby, they also do, you know, major uh US games, but um, it's a really great spot if you want to catch um the football and rugby leagues.
SPEAKER_01:Do you find it funny that three of the organizations we've talked about in this conversation? Well, we didn't bring in the uh good neighbor bar, but it's all about alcohol up there in Altadena.
SPEAKER_00:Uh it needs to be right now, Steve. I think you know, even if you have to take solace in a mock tail, yeah, you need something to drown your sorrows in. It doesn't even have to be alcohol. Right? It's true though. So um I'm Shauna Dawson Beer, Beautiful Altadena. You can find Beautiful Altadina online um on all of your socials, um uh Instagram, Facebook, where our private groups are for locals only. Um I don't post a TikTok, but we're there. Um we are everywhere, beautiful Aldzina, and also on our Substack, which is also where you can find Steve.
SPEAKER_01:Yep, the Alta Policy Walk.
SPEAKER_00:On Substack.
SPEAKER_01:And that's uh the only place you're gonna find me.
SPEAKER_00:And as always, if you want to drop us a note, a line, a comment, just say hi, beautiful Alzadina O G at gmail.com.
SPEAKER_01:Um you can send all your nasty grams for me to Shauna.
SPEAKER_00:I'm cool with that. I can't wait to read. I can't wait to field those. Great. I've nothing else to do. And um, if you want to find our podcast, um you can find it anywhere you're streaming. A podcast from uh Spotify to Apple Podcasts to YouTube, um, anywhere you find your podcast, you should be able to find us, beautiful Altadina, after the ashes. We'll see you next time. Bye.
SPEAKER_01:Bye.