Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Altadena Roundtable Tonight Closes LA Forum Series on Rebuilding at Town Scale

[Eddie Rivera / Pasadena Now]

Panelists from local affordable-housing nonprofits, UCLA’s cityLAB and two architecture practices gather at Good Neighbor Bar for the third Alt:adena conversation

A roundtable on rebuilding Altadena at neighborhood scale — affordable housing, alternative homeownership models and economic-development strategies — will convene Tuesday evening on the patio of Good Neighbor Bar, closing a three-week Los Angeles Forum for Architecture and Urban Design series on recovery after the Eaton Fire.

The event, called Alt:town, runs from 7 to 9 p.m. and is the third and final installment of the LA Forum’s Alt:adena roundtable series.

According to the LA Forum’s event page, the panel will explore how “affordable housing, new models of homeownership, and economic development strategies” can build “a familiar and resilient Altadena.”

The series has stepped up in scale week by week — from the home (Alt:home, June 2) to the land (Alt:land, June 9) to the town.

The LA Forum lists five panelists for Tuesday: Alex Athenson of the Foothill Catalog Foundation, an Altadena rebuilding organization profiled by Dwell magazine last year; Palin Ngaotheppitak, executive director of the affordable-housing nonprofit Beacon Housing; Brian Wickersham of the architecture firm AUX; Dana Cuff, director of UCLA’s cityLAB; and Jasmin Shupper, founder and president of the Pasadena-based Greenline Housing Foundation.

Each of those organizations has been visible in the recovery. The Altadena Builds Back Foundation, an initiative of the Pasadena Community Foundation, awarded Beacon Housing a $5.83 million grant in November 2025 to rebuild 14 units of affordable rental housing on East Pine Street, with affordability guaranteed for 55 years. Greenline, founded in 2020 to expand homeownership access for Black and Hispanic families, has been buying lots in Altadena through an emergency land-banking initiative to keep them off the speculative market.

Good Neighbor Bar is at 2311 Lincoln Ave, Altadena. RSVPs are accepted through a Givebutter link posted on the LA Forum’s Alt:town event page.

The Alt:adena series convenes “fire survivors, builders, organizers, and technical experts,” according to the LA Forum, “united by a shared curiosity, whether by choice or lived necessity.”