We steward and build community-owned housing and spaces to bring and keep Altadena home.
In 2025, Altadena Earthseed Community Land Trust was conceived amidst smoke clearing from the Eaton Fire as a community-led and community-based vehicle to address the inequities facing Altadenans as our community rebuilds.
Our mission is to bring and keep Altadena home.
We are fire survivors, community members, and allies building pathways to community ownership in Altadena to recover from disaster in ways that are rooted in justice.
We seek to preserve the diversity of Altadena, with attention to Black, Brown, Indigenous, and working class communities who are particularly susceptible to displacement.
Unified by our shared love of Altadena’s vibrant communities and the desire to preserve all that makes our home special, our goal is to restore community access to land for future generations to come.
We are using the community land trust organizational model to connect us together in order to protect the land and its people.
We recognize and honor the Gabrieleno Tongva as the original people and caretakers of this land, and understand that Altadena is located within Hahamog-na, the ancestral and current home of the Gabrieleno Tongva tribe. We encourage all who reside on the land as a guest to practice Kuuy Nahwá’a (Guest Exchange) with a local Gabrieleno Tongva-led organization, such as Tongva Taraxat Paxaavxa Conservancy and Gabrieleno San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians.
Why a Community Land Trust?
A community land trust is a community-led non-profit that owns land to keep homes and spaces affordable, now and for the future.
The community land trust model was chosen due to its legacy in land justice and its ability to acquire and steward land in community with permanent affordability.
Check out this video from the Grounded Solutions Network to learn more about the history of community land trusts.
History of AECLT
In February of 2025, Athena Fulay and Rayne Roberts co-founded Altadena Community Land Trust as a grassroots effort, in collaboration with a group of displaced families.
In Spring 2025, the group grew in membership and a Steering Committee assembled to provide early governance. In partnership with allies in the local community land trust (CLT) space, we advanced a State budgetary request for $200 million to create a community land acquisition fund championed by Sasha Renee Perez. The fund was not adopted, however, it later evolved into the Community Aid for Rebuilding and Equity Fund in the 2026-2027 legislative cycle, which was signed into State law allocating $15 million to anti-displacement measures including nearly $5 million for homeowner insurance gap subsidies and $10 million for community land banking.
Through an online series in Summer 2025 to connect community members interested in a CLT and better understand community interest and visions, a new name was agreed upon through consensus: Altadena Earthseed Community Land Trust, commemorating Octavia E. Butler and her novel, Parable of the Sower.
The grassroots effort became a fiscally sponsored project of Community Partners late 2025. The organization is now incorporating as a standalone 501(c)3.
The organization is a grateful recipient of grants from the Sparkplug Foundation, California Community Foundation, Weingart Foundation, and Common Counsel Foundation.
Our founding Board of Directors currently leads the work of developing the organization, along with our Inaugural Executive Director and Strategic + Feasibility Partners.
Zella Knight, Board President
Zella Knight is a product of West Altadena and serves as disabled, generational activist and a servant leader. Zella's lived experience of homelessness, housing instability and housing insecurity leads in the discussion of policies and solutions. Zella volunteers and serves with many organizations and agencies, with the aim to keep those with lived experience and expertise at the center of the decision making and policy making tables at the forefront, and to make every effort to ensure that there is a permanent seat at the table. As a forever advocate in the inter sectional topics of housing, health, education, social and racial justice, Zella seeks to acknowledge the ills and provide comprehensive solutions to eliminate the barriers and obstacles, such as institutional and systemic racism, sexism, disability bias, gender bias, economic bias (source of income discrimination) that hinder and prevents access and opportunity for all in any intersectional areas.
Adriana Bautista, Executive Director
Adriana is a lifelong Pasadena resident, born and raised at the border with Altadena, and a local community organizer. She and her family were displaced due to smoke and soot damage. An advocate for housing justice, racial justice, and societal models of care, Adriana has a wide-range of administrative experience in local government including budgeting, management, contracts, ethics reporting, and accounting for City of Los Angeles Departments of Cultural Affairs, Recreation and Parks, and the Bureau of Engineering. She is honored to serve the community she grew up in as our first dedicated staff member.
Matthew Vu, Treasurer
Matt is Board President of the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust, and Campaign manager for Los Angeles Community Land Trust Coalition. Matt is a “student, activist, and community builder” whose line of work is in empowerment. Matt has been rallying for Altadena and connecting the community and Steering Committee to policy makers and community land trusts nationwide. He has been working on a nearly daily basis to help us empower ourselves and our community at large.
Maryam Hosseinzadeh, Secretary
Maryam grew up and lives in Altadena, along with her parents, extended family and friends, who still reside in or are rebuilding in the community. Her professional background includes over 15 years of leadership experience with civic agencies, local government, and non-profit organizations in roles dedicated to public art and history, arts and culture, public space, housing, transit, climate resilience, and land use.
Nicole Buhles, Vice President
Nicole’s children lost their school in the Eaton Fire, deepening her commitment to Altadena’s recovery. As a building design professional, she supports rebuilding efforts that reflect the community’s history and lived experiences, bringing experience in design and technology to empower communities to imagine and shape their future.
Sylvie Andrews
Sylvie is a lifelong Altadenan, who lost her Altadena home in the Eaton Fire. Sylvie organizes with Altagether neighborhood captains, Altadenans for Accountability, and owns a business helping elders with tech. She represented the community in Sacramento when lobbying for a community land acquisition fund and serves on the Leadership Council for the Eaton Fire Collaborative’s Long Term Recovery Group.
Strategic + Feasibility Partners:
Monique King-Viehland is our Strategic Planning Partner, advancing a justice and equity lens into the foundational pillars of our organization.
CTY Housing and Sandra McNeill are working with us on Financial Feasibility.
Collective UNBound is co-designing our Community Housing + Anti-Displacement Planning engagement series, Planting Earthseeds.
Thank you to our Strategic, Feasibility, and Design Justice partners. Your talent, expertise, and mission-driven work means the world to us.
Thank you’s
The Board also thanks the CA CLT Network, Public Counsel, Impact Matters, Beacon Housing, Dena Rise Up Coalition, San Gabriel Valley CLT, Greenline Housing Foundation, Professor Marques Vestal of UCLA Urban Planning, the Rent Brigade, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and Common Counsel Foundation for their technical knowledge, research and/or support.
Many thanks to our fellow Altadeneans, fire survivors, and local organizations engaging, supporting, working, and keeping the faith to bring forth this vision of a thriving, resilient Altadena— collectively sustained for generations to come. Solo el pueblo salva al pueblo. We got us.
AECLT is a proud member of the Eaton Fire Collaborative, the Dena Rise Up Coalition, the Altadena Black Cultural District, and the California CLT Network. We are onboarding with the LA CLT Coalition.
Connect with us.
Would you like to support our work? Please donate and connect with us.
Are you a fire survivor who needs support navigating resources? Please reach out through our contact page.
We do not provide disaster case management and our housing is in pre-development, however, we will do our best to assist you.
“God is Change—
Seed to tree, tree to forest;
Rain to river, river to sea;
Grubs to bees, bees to swarm.
From one, many; from many, one;
Forever uniting, growing, dissolving—
forever Changing.”
— Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower
