They took inspiration from an early 20th-century Sears program that let buyers pick from an array of home designs. The retailer then shipped some 30,000 pre-cut pieces for homeowners to assemble onsite. While Athenson and Sigler weren’t interested in mail-order kits, they liked the idea of a catalog of pre-approved homes from which buyers could choose and bypass lengthy review processes.
Los Angeles County didn’t have a mechanism for pre-approving plans for primary residences, so the couple worked with officials to get one in place. By mid-June, just five months after the fires, the county had pre-approved the Foothill Catalog Foundation‘s first plan: a 1,200-square-foot bungalow called “The Lewis.” Today, the nonprofit offers more than 70 pre-approved housing plans. More than 100 homeowners have chosen designs, with more than 40 structures under construction in Altadena.
The plans cost $5 per square foot. For a 1,200-square-foot home, this is just $6,000, compared to custom architectural work, which can run upwards of $100,000. All the plans are designed to comply with California’s Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone requirements, which mandate things like non-combustible exterior materials, vents fitted with ember-resistant wire mesh, and roofs made with Class A fire-rated materials.
Athenson and Sigler worked closely with designers to ensure each model preserves the unique character of Altadena, a neighborhood with more than a century of history rich in diversity of race and class.
“What we are really trying to advocate for is to honor the regional specificity of the place where we’re working and listen to the people and study the architecture [so we know] what and why people love the place that they call home,” Sigler says.
The group is also using this “place-based design” approach for the Palisades, which Athenson and Sigler say has a very different aesthetic from Altadena, despite being just 30 miles away. “In housing today, there’s a flatlining in a lot of what we see built,” Athenson says. “And as natural disasters accelerate and the housing shortage grows, you see an exacerbation of that flatlining [and a loss] of the really unique regional character that defined a lot of these communities.”
The Foothill Catalog Foundation’s model has the potential to be replicated across the country. “There’s a lot of lessons to be learned that can serve other communities in times of disaster,” Athenson says. “But we really are just trying to find more efficient ways to make quality housing more attainable.”