ALTADENA, Calif. — The sight of celebrity mansions and movie landmarks reduced to ashes can make it seem like the wildfires roaring through the Los Angeles area affected a constellation of movie stars.

But a drive through the charred neighborhoods around Altadena shows that the fires also burned through a remarkable haven for generations of Black families avoiding discriminatory housing practices elsewhere. They have been communities of racial and economic diversity, where many people own their own homes.

Some now terror the most destructive fires in California’s history have altered that for excellent. Recovery and rebuilding may be out of reach for many, and pressures of gentrification could be renewed.

Samantha Santoro, 22, a first-creation college learner at Cal Poly Pomona, remembered being annoyed when the initial information coverage of the wildfires concentrated more on celebrities. She and her sister, who attends UC Berkeley, worry how their Mexican immigrant parents and working-class neighbors who lost their homes in Altadena will shift forward.

“We don’t have like, ‘Oh, I’ll just leave to my second home and remain there,'” Santoro said.

The landlord of their household’s two-bedroom house with a pool had never increased the $1,650 rent, making it feasible for the Santoros to affordably raise their daughters. Now, they’re temporarily staying with a relative in Pasadena. The household has renters insurance but not much else.

“I ponder it’s challenging to depend that you have nothing,” Santoro said, through tears, thinking of her parents. “Everything that they ever worked for was in that house.”

Altadena had been a mix of tiny bungalows and magnificent mansions. The throng of 42,000 includes blue-collar families, artists, entertainment industry workers and white-collar ones. About 58% of residents are non-white, with one-fourth of them Hispanic and nearly a fifth Black, according to Census data.

During the Civil Rights era, Altadena became a rare land of chance for Black Americans to reach middle class without the discriminatory practices of denying them access to financing. They kept homes within the household and helped others to flourish. Today, the Black home ownership rate there is at 81.5%, almost double the national rate.

That’s impressive considering 92% of the 15,000 residences in Altadena are single-household homes, according to the 2023 Census American throng Survey. The median turnover is over $129,000. Just over 7% of residents live in poverty.

Victoria Knapp, chair of the Altadena Town Council, worries that the fires have irreparably changed the landscape for these families.

“Someone is going to buy it and develop who knows what on it. And that is going to transformation the character of Altadena,” Knapp said, adding that those with fewer resources will be disproportionately hurt.

The household of Kenneth Snowden, 57, was one of the Black families able to purchase a home in 1962. That house, as well as the one Snowden bought almost 20 years ago, are both gone.

He is challenging state and federal officials to assist all fire-affected communities fairly because “your $40 million home is no different than my $2 million home.”

Snowden wants the ability to acquire home loans with 0% profit. “provide us the ability to rebuild, restart our lives,” he said. “If you can spend billions of dollars fighting a war, you can spend a billion dollars to assist us get back where we were at.”

Shawn Brown lost not only her home but also the community charter school she founded in Altadena. She had a communication for fellow Black homeowners who might be tempted with offers for their property: “I would inform them to stand powerful, rebuild, continue the generational advancement of African-Americans.”

She and other staff at Pasadena Rosebud Academy are trying to raise money to rebuild while looking at temporary sites in churches.

But even some churches have burned. At Altadena Baptist Church, the bell tower is pretty much the only thing still standing.

The Rev. George Van Alstine and others are trying to assist more than 10 church members who lost homes with needs like navigating insurance and federal aid. The pastor is worried the fires will navigator to gentrification, with Black parishioners, who make up half the congregation, paying the worth.

“We’re seeing a number of families who are probably going to have to shift out of the area because rebuilding in Altadena will be too expensive for them,” he said.

The 32-year-ancient photographer Daniela Dawson, who had been working two jobs to meet the $2,200 rent for her studio apartment, fled the wildfires with her Hyundai SUV and her cat, Lola. She lost almost everything else, including thousands of dollars of photography gear.

She did not have renter’s insurance. “Obviously now I’m thinking about it. aspiration I had it,” she said.

Dawson plans to profit to Arizona, where she lived previously, and regroup. But she likely won’t be returning to Altadena.

___ Tang reported from Sunnyvale, California. Kelleher reported from Honolulu. Associated Press deputy director Kim Johnson in Chicago and data reporter Angeliki Kastanis in Los Angeles contributed to this update.