97-year-old woman loses home of 60 years in Palisades Fire

LOS ANGELES - Louvenia Jenkins would have liked to celebrate her 97th birthday at the home she has lived in for a good 60 years — the home she bought in the Pacific Palisades as a single African American woman, at a time when segregation kept non-whites away from such neighborhoods and banks didn’t grant home loans to women.

But her home was one of the thousands destroyed in January's Palisades Fire.

The backstory:

Getting her home wasn’t easy. Owners wouldn’t accept her offers. But she joined the Fair Housing Council, which fought discriminatory housing prices. It was a member of the council who sold her the home.

Now, she's working to start over. It isn’t easy, but Jenkins is embracing it with the grace and strength that has been guiding her all her life.

The retired teacher has been breaking barriers her entire life. She said she just didn't see them.

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Why you should care:

Jenkins was a teacher and administrator for LAUSD, funding a scholarship for Black college students in her brother’s name. She traveled the world, teaching in Japan and Malaysia; visiting the Louvre in Paris; and making her way from Coastal Ghana to the Swiss Alps. She managed to win over people wherever she traveled.

Labeled a pillar of the community by Pacific Palisades neighbors, she would often be seen volunteering at the library to work with children on their reading. No wonder the community gathered to create a GoFundMe campaign when she lost her home and everything in it.

Overwhelmed by the support, Jenkins says she may have lost a home, but not her community, which now includes a whole new group of friends at the retirement home she is presently staying at.

"At the end" she quotes a poem from one of her Getty Museum volunteer journal articles: "I am responsible for being what I want to be in spite" of whatever may come her way.