In the wake of the Los Angeles fires, UCLA Luskin’s Paul Ong provided historical perspective to underscore the scale of loss in Altadena and Pacific Palisades. The director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge spoke to CBS Evening News about the thriving Black community that had found a haven in Altadena since the mid-20th century. After the Eaton Fire’s devastation, “Altadena is a litmus test about how committed we are to racial justice,” Ong said. “And I have high hopes that we will respond. But I also have late-night nightmares that things won’t happen the way we want it to happen.” Ong also spoke to the Los Angeles Times for a piece about one of the first Black homeowners in the Pacific Palisades, a single woman who purchased her house in 1967. In 1970, according to Ong’s data analysis, about 20,000 Black women owned homes in Los Angeles County, fewer than 2% of all homeowners in the county, and most would have, at some point, had a man’s name on the mortgage. “Single Black female homeowners were very rare,” he said.