How Altadena became the L.A. dream for Gen X and millennial artists, writers, musicians
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A decade ago, if you were a writer, artist or musician who had finally saved enough of a nest egg to consider buying a home, one appealing area in L.A. that might have still seemed affordable would have been Altadena.
In 2015 the median price for a detached single-family home in Altadena’s 91001 ZIP Code was about $500,000. In the increasingly elite Silver Lake, similar digs would have cost about $1.4 million. In West Hollywood the number was more like $1.9 million, and you could forget about Santa Monica and neighboring Pacific Palisades.
As a musician in an indie rock band, I hung out with plenty of young artists of that era. Many of us rented apartments or homes — with roommates — throughout Silver Lake, Echo Park and Eagle Rock. We played shows at Spaceland, the Echo and Silverlake Lounge; we hung our art at Stories cafe and the Mustard Seed in Los Feliz.
And when some of us finally scraped together enough money, many looked for a home in Altadena. The joke was that when you were young and single you lived in Silver Lake or Echo Park, but when you had kids you headed to Altadena.
We could have gone elsewhere, of course — to Koreatown, Sylmar or Van Nuys — but Altadena had a magnetic draw. Something about the untamed, inventive spirit of the place. The feral pockets and the generous creative community.
The Eaton fire cut a brutal swath through Altadena and a cherished way of life in this eclectic foothill community it upended.
I remember all the times my husband and I toured two-bedroom bungalows in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains when I was pregnant with my daughter. We trekked up the 110 to Pasadena, and then north up Lake Avenue, crossing the 210 into the areas that are now largely ash. I had a mortgage calculator on my phone, and I’d rattle off what a monthly payment might be on whatever house we were scheduled to see, the anticipation like static electricity. Could we afford to start a new life in these hills with their towering oaks, riot of wildflowers and abundant hiking trails? Would we build a tree house in the backyard?
In a cruel coincidence, the Palisades and Eaton fires wiped out two neighborhoods with unique significance in L.A.’s music industry.
We ended up renting in Pasadena instead. But many of our friends did buy in Altadena — and have now lost their homes. They had flocked to the unincorporated community for all kinds of reasons. An intangible energy drifted in the air, like it does in places that become counterculture touchstones. No highway ran through its foothill neighborhoods, and in freeway-dependent L.A. that made the place feel like a bit of a secret. Yards were filled with orange, lemon, avocado and persimmon trees — as well as owls, frogs and raccoons.
“One thing that really impresses on your mind when you’re there, whether you notice it or not, is that you’re at the end of the city. Once you pass through Altadena, it just goes to the mountains,” said video installation artist and mother of two Jean Robison, whose home was nevertheless only about 15 miles from downtown L.A.
Laura Begley and Evan Dresman had just moved into their dream Gregory Ain home and were preparing to sell their fixer-upper in Altadena’s Janes Village. Fire destroyed both.
The mountains are omnipresent and ever-changing. Sometimes they are covered in clouds, and other times with flourishes of fall color. “The mountains are giving us a good show today,” Robison remembers telling her daughters when they walked around town and on the trails near home.
Robison — an old friend of mine — is also a digital media lecturer at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design. She and her family moved to their starter home in Altadena on election day in 2016. During the pandemic, they upgraded to a more spacious house in historic Janes Village, a collection of 1920s cottages that was poised to celebrate its 100th anniversary in May.
Coverage of the fires ravaging Altadena, Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena, including stories about the devastation, issues firefighters faced and the weather.
Along with her home, Robison lost her garage studio where she made her stop-motion videos. Robison is object-obsessed, and she had filled the studio with weird little knickknacks, cameras, drawings, editing and shooting tables, as well as loads of books.
With large swaths of Altadena gone — and the housing shortage in California more acute than ever — many artists I’ve talked to, already hurting in the post-pandemic economy, are feeling priced out. Those displaced by the fires are having trouble finding affordable housing in a constricted market that is more competitive than ever.
Robison hopes to return to Altadena. Her girls’ school is still there, and it is the place she built a life with her family. But for now she is at a friend’s home in Van Nuys.
“My brain says, ‘Let’s rebuild,’ that’s what I would love. But I don’t know what that means,” Robison said. “First we need to just be able to put our stuff down and try to get back to life a little bit.”
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