{"id":4046,"date":"2025-04-16T18:30:38","date_gmt":"2025-04-16T18:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/?p=4046"},"modified":"2025-04-18T21:04:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T21:04:15","slug":"up-in-flames-its-a-long-hard-road-to-recovery-for-altadena-family-child-care-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/up-in-flames-its-a-long-hard-road-to-recovery-for-altadena-family-child-care-providers\/","title":{"rendered":"Up in Flames: It\u2019s a Long, Hard Road to Recovery for Altadena Family Child Care Providers","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For nine years Francisca Gunawardena rented a house where she lived with her family and ran her family child care business. Then, last summer, she finally achieved her dream job and dream home in the same stroke of a pen. She spent her savings to purchase the house from her landlord, remodeled the kitchen and bathrooms to accommodate her family child care<\/a> serving 17 children with three staff members, and figured out how to pay the nearly $6,000 mortgage payment from her earnings.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Francisca Gunawardena poses proudly in front of her Altadena home before the fires.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

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Six months later, the house, both of her cars, and her dream job went up in flames. The wildfires that ravaged her Altadena neighborhood in January 2025 also brought a heavy load of grief and uncertainty. \u201cNow, I just don\u2019t know what I\u2019ll do. I just live with this fear all the time. I\u2019m 55 years old. I thought I would at least be able to pay off my house before I retire. But now I\u2019m caught in a vicious cycle \u2026 with no work and no home. I don\u2019t know if I can even go out for coffee. I don\u2019t want to use my credit cards. I have to buy a car. I still have to pay the mortgage. I got a small business loan in 2020 during COVID<\/a>, and now that is coming due with interest. And I have to find a place to rent for my business, so that I can earn money again to pay for all the rebuilding.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

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According to Child Care Providers United-SEIU Local 99, the union Gunawardena belongs to, more than 50<\/a> licensed family child care homes, serving hundreds of families, closed at least temporarily after the fire. Many have not reopened. For family child care providers, whose businesses and only source of income are in their homes, an already severe housing crisis<\/a> has transformed into a nightmare of red tape, bureaucracy, and desperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the night of Jan. 7 when  Gunawardena received the evacuation order, she \u201cjust grabbed [her] handbag and left. The fires were very far away on the other side of the ridge. I didn\u2019t think they could get to my house.\u201d Ever since, Gunawardena and her two 20-something sons have been living with friends or, now, in a hotel room paid for by FEMA. \u201cWe\u2019re in Riverside now, which is cheaper, but I need to be back in Pasadena because that\u2019s where the families I serve live. I\u2019m looking for a space I can rent, but places large enough for a child care business are $7,000 a month. I\u2019m talking to a church about using their space, but I would also need to renovate it and buy all new materials. I think it would cost me $200,000 to reopen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Landlords are hesitant to rent to fire victims because of their financial insecurity<\/a>. \u201cThey want information from my employer to show my monthly income,\u201d she says. Despite her past success running a business, when she explains that she is a self-employed child care provider whose business and home went up in flames, many landlords balk at the prospect of renting to someone whose financial future is so unsettled. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To make things worse, the compensation Gunawardena has received from various disaster relief agencies is paltry as compared to the cost of reopening. \u201cI applied for a small business loan,\u201d she says. \u201cThey finally called me this morning\u2014three months I\u2019ve been waiting\u2014and I\u2019m getting $26,000. How can I reopen with that? We got $1,200 from the Red Cross for housing. Places are giving out water bottles and used clothing and shelf-ready food. I don\u2019t even have a room to put those things!\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n

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Compensation is available for fire victims, but it often takes a long time to get the cash in hand. Gunawardena is grateful for the $500 in emergency funds she received in January from Home Grown\u2019s Home-based Child Care Emergency Fund for Severe Weather and National Disaster Response<\/a>, and will likely receive more during the second phase of the program. Her house was covered by her homeowners insurance, but she\u2019s still waiting for mortgage company endorsement and other paperwork from the bank. \u201cWe will get money to rebuild,\u201d she says. \u201cBut all the steps, all the trips to the bank are exhausting.\u201d So far only the phase one debris removal of hazardous materials has been done. She dreams of rebuilding, but the reality of that is hard to grasp.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI applied for unemployment, but I haven\u2019t gotten a penny yet. It\u2019s a big mess. I can\u2019t work because I don\u2019t have a space. I can\u2019t earn money, so I can\u2019t pay for a space. And it\u2019s going to take years to rebuild my house once I do get the insurance check. In the meantime, parents are calling me saying, \u2018When are you opening? The grandparents can\u2019t keep doing this forever.\u2019 Soon they will have to look for another child care because they have to go back to work. I miss those kids. I miss my job. I love teaching children, but it looks like recovery is going to take a really, really long time, and it\u2019s going to be hard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January 2025, Home-based child care Francisca Gunawardena provider lost everything in the Los Angeles fires. Today, Francisca is still trying to figure out how to move forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false,"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"html"}]},"author":9,"featured_media":4048,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"resource-categories":[53,57,64],"class_list":["post-4046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","resource-categories-family-child-care-fcc","resource-categories-finances-sustainability-compensation","resource-categories-housing"],"gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"link","format":"url"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4046"},{"taxonomy":"resource-categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/homegrownchildcare.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/resource-categories?post=4046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}