Nearly two years since a historic wildfire leveled most of Pacific Palisades, signs of a comeback are on the horizon.
Several restaurants and stores are open for business, an estimated 10% of homes have been rebuilt, and friends are playing bocce ball at the park again.
But ordinary residents still face steep challenges.
About three in four Palisades Fire survivors remain displaced. While some have been able to rebuild, the typical homeowner in the Pacific Palisades and Malibu faces a “gap” — the amount between the cost of rebuilding and what insurance covers — of more than $1 million.
Now, Habitat for Humanity is working to fill it.
The week of Sept. 22-25, some 500 volunteers from across LA pitched in at a four-day community build event organized by Habitat to benefit wildfire survivors who want to return home but lack the resources to rebuild on their own. Many were from Habitat for Humanity LA’s “Catholic Coalition,” which includes members of 16 Catholic parishes, local Knights of Columbus councils, and Loyola High School.
“We just felt it would be great for LA to have a space to rally together to support the ongoing wildfire relief efforts,” said Chris Untiet, faith relations director for Habitat LA. “So, we decided to do something big for this fall.”
Untiet said the Catholic Coalition played a “big part” in making the build possible.
“It’s still kind of soaking in,” Untiet said of the number of people who showed up to help, many of them parishioners of Corpus Christi Church, which was destroyed in the Palisades Fire, and St. Monica Church in nearby Santa Monica.
As temperatures rose throughout the week, camaraderie at the build sites was on full display. Volunteers powered through, clearing overgrowth at the sites of now empty lots so that foundations can be laid. Others helped serve food. More than 100 people framed walls in the parking lot of Pacific Palisades Presbyterian Church, which was lost in the fire.
The morning of Saturday, Sept. 25, a few celebrities, including members of the Clippers and Rams, were on hand to help. Msgr. Lloyd Torgerson, pastor of St. Monica, led more than 100 volunteers in a group blessing.
Carmen Kahlberg, a parishioner at Corpus Christi, said Torgerson’s presence on Saturday — and that of her pastor, Msgr. Liam Kidney, for a similar blessing on Tuesday — gave the volunteers “a lot of hope.”
While helping volunteers park at Will Rogers Beach, Kahlberg met a 70-year-old woman who worked for the city and wanted to participate in the effort.
By the end of the day, Kahlberg ran into the woman again on the shuttle back to the parking lot.
“I’ve never done anything like this before. Everybody was so nice to me,” the woman told Kahlberg, who has been a member of the Catholic Coalition since 2017 and participated in the Palisades event for all four days.
Habitat LA currently has 160 Pacific Palisades and Malibu households approved for rebuilds, with another 167 “in the pipeline” that meet eligibility criteria, according to Barry Smith, who belongs to the Catholic Coalition. Several homes being rebuilt by Habitat LA since the wildfire are already nearing completion.
Residents who will benefit from the new homes include “longtime residents, seniors, renters, and households with modest or fixed incomes who face significant barriers to returning home.”
Funding for the new homes comes from private donors, among them Palisades residents, and a long list of corporate sponsors that includes Airbnb, the American Red Cross, Samsung, and NBC.
Smith said the project is not just about rebuilding homes.
“Recovery is about restoring stability, community, and hope,” said Smith, a parishioner of American Martyrs Church in Manhattan Beach.
In the Palisades, Habitat has already completed work on Casa Gateway, an affordable housing development with condos for seniors and qualifying families.
“There was some damage from the fires at one of those apartments that we were able to help with some basic repairs,” explained Untiet.
Kidney believes the kinship at the building projects is helping bring the scattered community back together.
“They are literally trying to create a humanity that lives in the same home, and that is we take care of each other,” said Kidney, whose church was destroyed in the fire. “We love each other. We respect each other, and we’re there for each other. And Habitat for Humanity has succeeded in doing this.”
As volunteers gathered at the site of Corpus Christi, they drew inspiration from a physical symbol of hope that was hard to miss: a blue angel sculpture — one of several from a citywide public art installation in 2000 — that had been decorated by parish school students. It had once faced the crosswalk where kids walked on their way to school, and was one of the few objects from the church that survived the fire.
Carol Sanborn, longtime co-chair of the Catholic Coalition and also Corpus Christi’s director of pastoral ministry, remembers the day a landscaper called her over to point out the word “hope,” which was written on the angel’s lips. On the wing was a painted image of longtime former Corpus Christi Principal Sister Patricia McGann, whose funeral was held just days before the Habitat build.
“We just all felt like we had a guardian angel who was looking over us,” said Sanborn, who lost her family’s home of 40-plus years in the fire. “That word, hope … we felt that that was very much a theme of these last four days.”
