The day after the Eaton Canyon wildfire, still reeling from the destruction of her home and her business, Gaby Murguia scrawled a message against climate gentrification on the windows of her truck: “Altadena is not for sale.”

In the month since historically destructive fires raged across Los Angeles, the same slogan has been appearing on posters at local protests, on fliers at restaurants and across new and old social media accounts in the small and racially diverse suburb of Altadena.

Locals here and in neighboring Pasadena are deeply aware of the struggles that residents of Maui and other communities faced in the wake of devastating fires, such as skyrocketing rents, increased evictions and expensive rebuilding efforts that force longtime residents out. Locals say the flames were still raging as people who had just lost their homes started receiving calls from developers.

It’s “plain and simple. I’ve heard it. I’ve said it,” Brandon Lamar, the president of the local branch of the NAACP, said of the slogan. “Everyone that has been displaced – we want them to have the ability to come in and build back. We don’t want price gouging. We don’t want people to come in and try to buy people’s lands.”

Altadena has a proud history of Black homeownership. For decades, it has nurtured Black actors, writers, musicians and activists, while providing a refuge for a racially diverse assortment of creative people who relished their small enclave in the hills north-east of Los Angeles.

The Eaton Canyon fire, which destroyed more than 9,400 structures across Altadena, Pasadena and Sierra Madre, had a disproportionate impact on Black residents in west Altadena, razing nearly half of the Black households in Altadena, according to early estimates from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). A majority of Black homeowners in Altadena are over 65, meaning they are likely to face additional financial and logistical hurdles in the rebuilding process, the UCLA report found.

Read the full article about climate gentrification following disasters by Lois Beckett at The Guardian.