More than 300 Home Depot volunteers came together to help raise the walls of a future home and move another Altadena family closer to returning home.
Brookside Park in Pasadena became a construction site—and a powerful symbol of community recovery—when San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity and The Home Depot brought together 300 volunteers from across the country for an extraordinary day of building.
Working side by side, volunteers framed a complete “Lewis” home, one of the pre-approved designs from the Foothill Catalog developed to help Eaton Fire survivors rebuild faster while preserving the architectural character of Altadena. The California bungalow-inspired Lewis features three bedrooms, two full bathrooms and a welcoming front porch.
Piece by piece, the volunteers transformed lumber into a complete house frame in a single, seamlessly executed event. Once completed, the frame was carefully transported from Brookside Park to Altadena, where it will continue its journey toward becoming a permanent home for a family rebuilding after the Eaton Fire.
The event also marked a major investment in that recovery effort. During the build, The Home Depot Foundation presented SGV Habitat with a $250,000 check, providing critical funding to help accelerate the organization’s ongoing rebuilding work in Altadena.
The scale of the event drew national and local attention. CBS News, KCAL and This Old House were on hand to document the build and the remarkable collaboration bringing volunteers, corporate partners and disaster-recovery efforts together.
What began as a pile of lumber at Brookside Park left as a tangible piece of Altadena’s future: a complete home frame, built by hundreds of hands and headed back to the community it was designed to serve.
