LA wildfires displaced tens of thousands. With rents soaring, finding affordable housing will be their next challenge
CNN
Martin Johnson and his fiancé, Caleigh Chapman, had spent several years restoring and renovating their home in Altadena by hand. It took only hours to lose the home and everything in it last week.
Martin Johnson and his fiancé, Caleigh Chapman, had spent several years restoring and renovating their home in Altadena by hand. It took only hours to lose the home and everything in it last week. “We didn’t have a kitchen for a year and a half. We had just cooked the first dinner in the house just after Christmas,” said Johnson, who co-owns LA Woodshop, which provides woodworking spaces and lessons for people who want to do it themselves or build furniture professionally. “We spent many nights hand-sanding doors and window frames,” Chapman said. “The floors took 18 months to finish,” Johnson said. “We were weeks away from being done of making the house into a piece of art, and now it’s gone.” If dealing with that financial and emotional loss isn’t enough, they’re faced with what was already a difficult and expensive housing market in Southern California. The massive wildfires that have sent thousands of families scrambling to find some place to live, likely for the next several years, could make everything even worse. They’ve been staying with friends since they evacuated, dealing with the stress and anxiety that Chapman says has made it difficult for her to sleep.