INGLEWOOD, Calif. —Thirteen months ago, the eyes of the nation and the world were on Southern California as devastating wildfires swept through the region. In the end, at least 27 people died and more than 15,000 structures were destroyed — many of those homes that have left people and families scrambling.

Susan Blumenthal and her family are among those people. She had just retired and figured out how to make it work financially with an ADU rental unit on her property, her savings and Social Security. Then the fires burned those plans to the ground.

What Blumenthal and thousands and thousands of other families have found out the hard way is that rebuilding those lives is hard — insurance does not cover all the costs of rebuilding a home (once they eventually get some money from the companies), and the maze of dealing with contractors and city permits can be overwhelming.

When the eyes of the basketball world return to the Los Angeles area this weekend for the 2026 NBA All-Star Game, they will see how NBA Cares has partnered with the LA Clippers and Habitat for Humanity to help people like Blumenthal get back on her feet by helping her and others rebuild.

On Friday, downtown Los Angeles, is one of those work days, with NBA legends — Dominique Wilkins, James Worthy and many more — on hand to help families in need, both with building and with supplies for students in schools.

"We have more than 1,500 families that were working through rebuild navigation," said Erin Rank, the President & CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Los Angeles (Habitat LA). "So whether they pick their own contractor or work with Habitat, we want to help be there for them to review bids, and to select contractors, and give them advice, because building is what Habitat does every day, especially in Los Angeles County — and it's intimidating."

The Clippers have worked particularly closely with families devastated by the Eaton Fire, which started in Eaton Canyon but the strong Santa Ana winds blew it into the working-class town of Altadena, killing at least 19 people and destroying more than 9,000 buildings.

"We have over 550 people that we're working with currently, and it's ranging from low to moderate income families..." said Bryan Wong, CEO of San Gabriel Valley Habitat for Humanity
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"I can tell you about the first almost 30 families that we were looking to help: The average age is about 71 years old. They had lived in their homes for about 30 years or longer. About half of them were multi-generational, meaning that they had one or more families either living on that property or in surrounding homes. Altadena is a fairly unique community, and so as we're trying to rebuild, we're trying to make sure we maintain that uniqueness that made Altadena so special."

Going back to before the season even tipped-off, the Clippers hosted Habitat for Humanity work days in the parking lot of the Kia Forum (former home of the Lakers, just down the street from the Clippers' Intuit Dome) where Clippers players and hundreds of volunteers gathered to build wood wall frames and more that could be transported to the homes and put up quickly.

Clipper players were hands-on in wanting to help and be part of this. So were volunteers from NBC Universal companies in the Los Angeles area.

"So NBC Universal and Comcast was the first corporation to donate to our Rebuild LA campaign, not even a week after the fires hit," Rank said. "They knew early on that the real cost was going to be in the cost to rebuild all of these homes that were lost, over 12,000 homes lost overnight, and so they partnered with Habitat LA and Habitat San Gabriel Valley, because this is what we do, day in and day out. And so they gave us a huge $2.5 million, three-year commitment to help serve families and help rebuild their lives."

What Habitat For Humanity did in Altadena was work with architects to develop nine home designs, which it then got pre-approved by city and county agencies, taking a lot of the legwork out of the process.

"We're hearing a lot of people that are either frozen by decisions or crazy prices to recover," Rank said. "And so Habitat is working with contractors to ensure that they lock their prices in at reasonable rates.

"And we also created the home design so that people have something affordable to choose if they wish…. It's hard to think about,' How am I going to design my own homes for every square inch?' Or you can look at some options and say, I like that one."

"The way we designed these houses was we went through a lot of the old Google Maps to see what the prevalent styles of the homes were before the fires," Wong added. "So the first styles were the ones with their most common, and these are what the community wanted to see."

Designing the homes is only the start of the process, navigating the bureaucracy to get the permits to build in Southern California is famously challenging.

"If someone selects one of these home designs, they've been pre-permitted, and we're pre-approved by the city and the county, and so they will start about a third of the way through their rebuilding process if they pick one of these designs…" Rank said. "The house itself is already run through the city and the county for approval. Now, all they have to do is figure out how it fits on their home site."

That's a big leg-up in the rebuilding process, but the hard part and manual labor are still ahead for many families. That's what NBA Cares and the Clippers are there to help with — not just this weekend during the All-Star Game, but for the long haul.