Making Recovery Equitable & Inclusive with Anish Saraiya, Director of Altadena Recovery for L.A County Supervisor Kathryn Barger Episode 168

Anish Saraiya : Government alone is not going to be able to do this. We are here to support our communities. We are here to bring every resource available to the table. I've had numerous opportunities to go on the ground and I'm in Altadena three to four times a week to see the devastation people have faced.

And as much as you get tired and it feels overwhelming at the end of the day, our responsibility is to serve the communities that elected the supervisor and to make sure that we put in every effort to help bring them home, to make them whole and help them recover. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City College and host of this podcast and we are starting the conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable, and how to attain one of our highest goals, more internships and PCC students in the workforce.

We at Pasadena City College want to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our students are learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us, you, the employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions, and the community as a whole. This is the future of work. Dr.

Salvatrice Cummo : Hi, welcome back to the Future of Work podcast. I am your host, Dr. Salvatrice Cummo. Today we are joined by Anish Saraiya, Director of Altadena Recovery and Deputy Supervisor for Planning and Development with the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

With a strong background in civil engineering, land use planning and public infrastructure, Anish has played a key role in shaping policies that support community resilience and rebuilding, especially for areas impacted by the natural disasters. Which is why we'll be discussing what recovery looks like a year later after the Los Angeles fires in 2025, how we can incorporate equitable and inclusive approaches in recovery efforts, and what part community colleges can play in preparing the workforce for recovery related jobs.

Anish, welcome to the podcast. Anish Saraiya : Thank you very much, Dr. Cummo . It's a very warm day outside, so I'm glad to be inside and here talking to you.

Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Fantastic. Thank you. Now, one of the questions that I really enjoy asking in the upfront of every conversation and podcast is what led you here?

What led you to this point? Point. Your background in both policy and civil engineering feels to me like it's such a useful intersection for the work that you're doing now. So if you can just share a little bit with our listeners about your journey and kind of what led you to the work that you're doing now?

Anish Saraiya : Absolutely. Thank you for asking. So I graduated from college with a degree in civil engineering and wanted to solve a lot of problems and saw that there was a need for more infrastructure, building the foundations that support our communities, and followed my dad's footsteps into civil engineering. So I started with the county of Los Angeles immediately after college.

And then along the way I started to understand a little bit more about policy. As I transitioned away more from on the ground individual projects and into higher level public works engineering policy realm, especially in transportation, I really became interested in trying to find out how to make a more global impact. And global for me meant how could I make a better impact at the county. So an opportunity to work for supervisor Catherine Barker came up in late 2019, and I joined her office in January of 2020.

Anish Saraiya : The irony here being that immediately after I joined her, we were hit by Covid. And in the immediate months after that, I learned a lot about things I'd never done before. We had an all hands on deck approach. We understood that even though I came in here to oversee planning, development and public infrastructure, we had a mass public health crisis.

And so I became an amateur public health specialist. And so we got to working on setting up testing sites, vaccine sites, and all of the other things we did during those incredibly challenging times. But once things normalized, I assumed my real role, which was to oversee the. The development portfolio of both private and public development in the unincorporated 5th district with the supervisor.

Anish Saraiya : And so I oversaw some of our largest line development projects, including the five point Valencia project, the Tejon Ranch Centennial project, which are 15,000 home developments. And so I did that until January 8, 2025, when unfortunately, you know, the supervisor and our entire community were grappling with eaten fire. And so a few weeks after the fire, the supervisor looked at me and said, you know, although you oversee a lot in our very large district, I need you to focus entirely on Altadena.

Along the way. My background as an engineer, having worked for public works, I think has been an asset in my ability to help understand the problems our community is facing and then ultimately try to help develop solutions from a policy perspective that allow our engineering teams and department experts help get them either the funding, the delegated authority, or policy or legislative changes. So my goal has been to use my technical background in a way that can help our communities rebuild.

Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : And that said, let's lean in a little bit about rebuild and recovery. We are a year later, and through your perspective, your background and what you're seeing now and throughout this whole Year. How can we make recovery equitable and inclusive for people who often get left behind or are not protected?

For example, renters, the working class families, multi generational homeowners, et cetera, who may lack, you know, formal deeds or insurance coverage. Anish Saraiya : So that's been one of our biggest challenges. If you look at the demographics of Altadena, you have a lot of different cultural groups that engage with government in different ways. We have some groups that don't ever interact with government who now really need to work with us so we can help them in that recovery and rebuilding journey.

Prior to the fire, almost 20% of Altadena was the senior population. Right. They have very specific needs, a timeline, a horizon for rebuilding and recovery that may not look the same as young families, single individuals. And we know we had a very significant renter population in Altadena.

Right. Anish Saraiya : And one of the great things about Altadena is that it is really a bastion of what we call naturally occurring affordable housing. Right. So these are not covenant restricted units.

This was just the way the community naturally grew. The rents were affordable even though they were dictated by market forces. The other thing we had was a lot of intergenerational housing and non traditional housing situations. Right.

So you had multiple families, multiple generations, maybe all living on one parcel, and they're looking to rebuild in a way that brings all of their family back. Anish Saraiya : Right. We don't want to see the supervisors laser focused on making sure that we don't have a displacement of our community. We want our community rebuilt and we want the people that make Altadena great back in it.

Because I can tell you, I don't live too far from Altadena. My community does not have as strong of an identity and a tie that I see in this community. This community is not about the homes, it's not about the mountains, it's not about Lake Avenue, it's not about Lincoln Avenue. It's really about their identity as Altademons.

And I think that is honestly really inspiring because I don't have that in my own community. Anish Saraiya : And I kind of envy that. There's this love of who they are that is really driving them to come back. So the long and the short of it is there is no one silver bullet solution for the needs of such different groups of people.

So one of the things we've been laser focused on is the idea that we need to constantly be listening to our communities and developing solutions tailored to the different groups of our constituents we need to serve. Right? So we know that a lot of folks are Going to need gap financing. We know some folks are potentially running out of alternative living expenses.

And so our goal from the outset is to make sure that we are engaging our community through all of our community groups and engaging them directly where they are to better understand what those specific challenges are so we can develop the solutions for them. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : What does that look like when we listen to our communities a year later? The process is evolving constantly, but just kind of curious about what will be saying, we're listening to our communities.

How is that information gathered? What does that look like? Anish Saraiya : I can tell you from a perspective at a staff level. I know that I interact with a lot of residents.

Our senior field deputy, Susie Niemer, interacts with far more than I do. One of the really terrible things about my job is that the supervisor is always in the community and talking to people, which as a staffer, it's really hard because she will invariably run into somebody at the grocery store or she's out running errands, or she's just driving through the community. She will stop and talk to people, and then I will get a call and I will go, wait, what? But that's one part of it, right?

The other part of it is, is Altadena is home to some really great community groups. And so the supervisor created a coalition of them, the ones we've historically worked with and have always been champions of the community. And that group of about eight community based organizations, we meet with the leaders of each of those groups on a bi weekly basis. And so we're given the speed at which everything is moving, we are trying to keep a sounding board.

Anish Saraiya : We're providing direct information through those community groups. They're getting it out to their constituencies, they're feeding it back to us. And so, you know, the supervisor, for probably 11, 12 months after the fire, held weekly virtual town halls, bringing each of our county departments and topical issues to the table. So we've tried very hard to make sure that there's an accessibility to the office, to the county, to our resources.

But I'd be lying if I said there isn't more that we can all continue to do. And so we're always mindful that as different groups and voices make themselves known, we're very happy to engage with them and meet with them directly and learn more about the specific issues they're facing. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : That's wonderful.

I've been involved in a lot of those conversations, and I've seen the outreach, I've seen the connectivity. And you're right, Supervisor Barger is very much in Your community very much talking to all our constituent groups. And I don't envy you at all in getting those calls. Yeah, I did still did a little bit of research.

And last year, last April you were at a summit and you said something really interesting that you touched upon. Actually yesterday when we met, you talked about systems. And one of your quote specifically at the summit last year was we can't keep using the systems that failed us. Dr.

Salvatrice Cummo : We need a universal approach, one plan with all utilities coordinated before home construction begins. That was your direct. If you can share what that approach became and where we are now in rebuilding home construction. Everyone is constantly asking and I know, but there's listeners who may not.

And so can you give us a little bit more detail about that? Anish Saraiya : So there was initially, in the immediate aftermath of the fire, utility restoration was really a critical aspect of it, right? Not just for the homes that were unfortunately lost, but for those standing homes where families were starting their process of returning. And so the county worked very closely with public and private utilities to get them whatever they needed to get their systems restored.

But ultimately it goes back to really one specific utility. It's power. And so the supervisor worked to get Southern California Edison to commit to undergrounding 63 of their 83 above ground miles of distribution lines. And so that means all of their above ground poles and cables would be going under.

But at that same time we have a number of other utilities that had an opportunity to do the same thing. And at the same time we have utilities that either had existing damage to repair or infrastructure they needed to upgrade. Anish Saraiya : So the supervisor directed public Works, county public works to create a utility coordination group. The idea there is to make sure everybody's at the table, everybody is talking about their plans.

And even though at the outset we didn't all understand what that looked like, they've been working constantly to make sure that as their plans are updated, the county and Public Works are saying, hey, we know that Edison is going to start in the northeastern part of our community. We need all of you utilities to think through your phasing plan so that you can either go in at the same time as Edison or follow right behind them so that as we move through the community, we minimize impact disruptions, traffic issues and potentially access to utilities.

So the idea here is that we want to do this once, right? To the extent that we can joint trench, we are doing that. We are reducing the costs of this process by sharing a little bit of that burden. And then the idea is that if this can move in a coordinated fashion, we can do it far more efficiently, far more cost effectively, and then hopefully do it quickly and actually get the rest of our infrastructure right.

All of our horizontal, our roads, sidewalks, curbs, all of the things that get disrupted during that kind of construction that can be final, paved, finished, and then we give the community back that landscape that they deserve. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Speaking of community, a huge part of our community is our business community. And sometimes we don't always put as much emphasis on the business community, not because we don't want to, but simply because there's greater numbers in residents than there are in businesses.

Right. And we at PCC quickly mobilized and became a hub for resources for those impacted by the fires. Businesses, specifically through the small business Development center and the women's Business Center. And they played a huge part in that effort.

Can you speak how you're working with local businesses now and how much like housing can we approach that with inclusiveness? Anish Saraiya : Not that any of this is easy, but I will say that navigating the needs of business owners versus commercial property owners has been one of our challenges. I think each of these groups has different needs, much like when you have renters and homeowners. Right.

But it's a bit more disparate. And so, you know, obviously we have a great relationship with the Altadena Chamber of Commerce, and our department of economic opportunity has begun a very extensive canvassing effort to try to reach each and every one of our businesses and property owners to try to figure out what is the world of need, what is the scale of need that they see that is going to be needed to help them rebuild. You know, immediately after the fire, we had a few existing businesses that survived, and they became hubs.

They became hubs for people to come back, to commiserate, to meet, and just to feel back in their community. There's places like the good neighbor bar. Anish Saraiya : Right. So one of the things that we did through the supervisor was to kind of create the parking lot activation efforts that we did during COVID Expanding outdoor dining, expanding opportunities to create spaces for people to join, eat, and be with one another.

And so that was one immediate step. Since then, the county's launched multiple programs related to displaced workers, individual households. But they all, in reality, pale in comparison to the scale of need. Right.

And so we've lost a number of commercial structures, and so the cost to rebuild those commercial structures is going to be significantly more than it is to replace homes. And so the supervisor has been very vocal in her request to work with federal partners to try to bring greater disaster aid to help US work through some of the common programs in federal disaster aid that can help businesses more directly. Anish Saraiya : And so we're continuing that work. We plan to keep in touch with a lot of our business community.

At one point, on behalf of the supervisor, we hosted a roundtable and brought in business owners and we brought in our county departments. And it was an uncomfortable conversation because those business owners spoke to the difficulty of working with the county. And it was a really painful, but I think a very beneficial conversation because our county departments took that personally, but they took it in the right way. They started to recognize we have to change.

We have to adjust our systems so that we are not an impediment to what is already an incredibly difficult time for these businesses. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : I think that was one of the huge. The largest lesson learned in this experience, responding, recovering, and just in general with our systems, is that our systems don't speak to each other, and they are complex because we are public.

But it really humbled us in a way that brought some truth into where our systems are failing, where there's gaps, where there's needs for improvement. And that goes for higher ed too. Right? So we.

Our system is designed to produce talent, to make sure that we are helping our communities get back into the workforce or create new talent to enter the workforce. And so I'm interested in hearing your perspective about how we as higher ed consider approaching workforce preparation during this time. You know, what kind of jobs are in demand, what are you hearing as it relates to community rebuilding and what kind of programming do you think it would be best to serve during this timeline?

You know, just get folks ready back into the workforce. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : What do we need? What are you hearing?

And how can we as higher ed prepare to meet those demands? Anish Saraiya : So I think, and I forget who said this yesterday at sort of this, the roundtable discussion we were having, but I think, you know, this is not just me flattering our hosts, but I think one of the things that was said that I really agreed with is that our community colleges are a far greater resource in times of immediacy and urgency because of your flexibility and your ability to meet the moment right.

Larger institutions play an incredible role in our communities and serve incredible purposes. But I have to say, from the beginning, PCC was the immediate place where we were able to stand up immediate resources, bring people together, give them access to information. I know probably three to four days after the fire, we were all on your campus using your gymnasium as a way to bring survivors together, to keep them in the flow of information. But I think things like you guys are doing with the Career Technical Institute CTE.

That's exactly what we need. Right. We have roughly 3,000 applications that have been received for rebuilding single family homes in the Eden Fire impacted areas in Altadena. Anish Saraiya : Of that, almost 2,000 have building permits issued and almost a thousand are in construction.

And right now we're not seeing any big supply chain issues, but I can tell you they're coming. And the biggest supply chain issue that is going to impact us all is skilled, highly skilled, and trained late. And so whether that's through the construction trades, whether that's in architecture, in design and engineering, the programs and the students that you guys prepare are the ones we are going to need. Not in five years.

Right. We're going to need them tomorrow because this demand is only going to continue to grow. And I want to give you guys kudos. Anish Saraiya : One of the things I was really impressed with when we stopped by PCC last week was your construction inspection program.

That is the thing. That is the single biggest thing the supervisor thinks about in the construction process. She keeps looking at me and our public works director and saying, you're ready, right? You will have the workforce, you will be ready.

Because we've made a lot of strides in reducing permit times. But if we cannot meet our inspection goals and timelines, it will all be for naught. So she is laser focused. So I'm very excited about potential partnerships between us, the county and PCC to see if there's a way to make sure that your future students and graduates can help be part of that solution for us as well.

Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Yes. Thank you. So are we.

So are we. The last time I looked into the data and the forecasting of jobs within construction, specifically around the highest occupation within the next three years is going to be building inspection, but also project management. And then of course, the skilled trade itself. Of course, yes.

The technical labor. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Absolutely. The growth that's going to happen here in the San Gabriel Valley area, the sole industry that's taking a 10% increase is construction.

And this was actually even slightly before the fires. We saw an uptick, but then after, you know, naturally we're seeing it a little more. But we are absolutely dedicated. We are thrilled to have a partnership with the county supervisor's office in doing this work.

And you absolutely can count on us. Just, you know, we are kind of close to time here. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Anish, you and I can talk forever about this stuff because we do this all day, every day.

But I just wanted to make sure that the listener understood your role. The capacity at which the county is working tirelessly and frantically and productively and quickly, then, now and in the future, like we see it. I see it because I'm so close to it. And I know that our communities see it too.

And so we have gratitude for the county and the work that you're doing, your team is doing, the supervisor is doing, and we are incredibly grateful. What I wanted to kind of ask you in sunsetting this conversation I'm sure will help others is you have had and you shared in the upfront a long career rooted in service and those who are listening. Because our listener includes faculty, staff, administrators, policy folks just like you and I. Dr.

Salvatrice Cummo : What's one piece of wisdom you would want our listener to carry with them, Especially those working and rebuilding their own communities. Anish Saraiya : So the one thing that has really stood out to me in this whole process is something I think my boss continues to echo. Government alone is not going to be able to do this right. Government has a role to play.

We are here to support our communities. We are here to bring every resource available to the table. But again, going back to something we discussed yesterday, we cannot operate in silos. We have to build coalitions.

Those coalitions have to be at the table. Anish Saraiya : And those coalitions cut across public and private industry, the nonprofit sector. So the one takeaway I hope anybody listening to this leaves with is that yes, the work is tireless, the work is ongoing. This has been the most challenging year of my professional career by tenfold.

But at the end of the day, I've had numerous opportunities to go on the ground. And I'm in Altadena three to four times a week to see the devastation people have faced. And as much as you get tired and, you know, it feels overwhelming, at the end of the day, our responsibility is to serve the communities that elected the supervisor and to make sure that we put in every effort to help bring them home, to make them whole and help them recover. But I will say the bottom line for me is that we cannot do this alone.

Right? And we have to continue to coalition build. Anish Saraiya : We have to bring additional partners to the table. And while the supervisor is laser focused on making sure she leverages every state and federal resource we can bring to the table, she doesn't stop there.

She's talked to private sector folks to make sure they know that on a rebuilding, we need builders to come in to help us reduce the cost of rebuilding. We also need nonprofits on the ground to help us reach directly to individuals who need assistance, who aren't government savvy. And so My clear takeaway to anybody I talk to is as much as the supervisor is leading this, she understands that she needs a coalition with her to make sure we meet every need to the best of our abilities.

And her commitment and my commitment is that as long as we are here, we're going to continue to do everything in our power to help this community get back on its feet and get back to thriving the way it was and really make sure that whatever we can do better, we will do better. So we will deliver 21st century infrastructure, we will deliver housing opportunities. And that's our goal. Dr.

Salvatrice Cummo : Excellent. Thank you. And those who want to learn more about your work or work with the LA County Board of Supervisors, how can they best find you? Anish Saraiya : Sure.

So for survivors and others that have been impacted, the best thing to do is to go directly to recovery.lacounty.gov and all of our resources that are available are there and we'll continue to keep them updated as we move forward. Dr.

Salvatrice Cummo : Fantastic. We'll be sure to enter those into the show Notes. Anish, it was such a pleasure. Two days this week in a row.

Fantastic. Love it. All right, thank you so much for joining the Podcast. Our doors, our phone lines, everything is open to you and supervisor's office.

Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Anything that you need from us, please count on us. We look forward to working closer together. Anish Saraiya : Thank you.

Same here. Thank you very much for having me. Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Thank you.

Dr. Salvatrice Cummo : Thank you for listening to the Future of Work podcast. Make sure you subscribed on your favorite listening platform so you can easily get new episodes. And every Tuesday, you can reach out to us by clicking on the website link below in the Show Notes to collaborate, partner or just chat about all things Future of Work.

We'd love to connect with you. All of us here at the Future of Work and Pasadena City College wish you safety and wellness.