Longtime resident Pauline Ching has spent the last six months spearheading the rebuilding process.
As you enter the neighborhood, cleared lots with beige fences ready to be rebuilt line the streets, a sight many residents thought they wouldn't see for some time.
"I just called their [PLC Communities] president up and said, 'We just had a huge fire in La Viña. There's 53 homes that burned down. Would you want to rebuild all of us if I can get a group of us together?'" recalled Ching. "So they said, 'How many?' and I said, 'Well I don't know exactly. They're like me, we don't know what to do.'"
More than 50 homes burned in the neighborhood during the fire. Now, 24 homeowners have come together to take matters into their own hands, and as the saying goes, there's certainly strength in numbers.
"[There's] 24 different homes, 24 different home sizes ... knowing that we'd have to build it like for like within 10%," explained PLC Communities VP of Sales and Marketing, Jaime Todd. "We then said, 'We'd like to meet with your group.' We met with them about a month after the fire and just presented ourselves as a company and said, 'Hey, here's who we are. We want to be able to help you. Tell us how we can do it.'"
Ching and her neighbors helped form a partnership with PLC Communities, who already happened to be working on a separate project in the neighborhood.
With the neighbors united, the move has led to the largest and first group of homes being rebuilt, and it comes at a major discount.
"We were able to pass along a price to these buyers, with the economy and scale and all the various things, that's significantly lower than market," said Todd. "Right now, general contractors in this area are quoting people $650 to $850 a square foot to rebuild their homes. Turns out we were able to do it for these homes for about $350 to $400 a square foot."
Those beige fences now stand as a symbol of progress and resilience with a possible move-in date of next summer. Families will soon see what's possible with persistence and partnership.