Since a historic fire destroyed the town of Paradise in November 2018, Willow Glen resident Suzi York has become a one-woman volunteer powerhouse. Her latest project: Decorating tiny homes for victims of the fire.
In the immediate aftermath of the fire, York began putting together backpacks with what she considered the essentials—balms and salves to help people deal with burns and dry, toxic air; hats and gloves; hair care items. In her first visit, York took 60 backpacks. She set up a meeting spot with tables, and she witnessed reunions between neighbors happening right in front of her. She saw the physical damage from the fire and heard people tell their stories firsthand.
“I will never be the same,” York said.
For a while, York kept up this work. She went on leave from her job as a decorator in order to devote herself fully to her volunteering. For the most part, she bought the supplies with her own money. She drove up to Paradise at least once a month. But the strain of the work and the devastation York witnessed began to take its toll.
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n September 2019, York knew she needed a break, but she said she couldn’t see herself walking away from all of the people she’d been working to help. That’s when she heard about another woman, 200 miles away in Butte County, who was building “tiny homes” for victims of the Paradise fire.
Alyssa Nolan lost her own home to a fire in 2008, and she remembers the support she received from friends and neighbors afterward. When she saw the devastation caused by the Paradise fire a decade later, she said it was time to pay it forward.
A religious woman, Nolan said she was called on by God to build tiny homes for the victims of the fire. With no construction or building experience, she said she was baffled, but she began watching YouTube videos—around 2,000 by her own admittedly conservative estimate—and launched a GoFundMe campaign. Now, she’s raised the funds to build 35 homes, and she’s built and given away 13 so far. But she said there are more than 500 people on the waiting list.
Nolan and York met about six months ago, when York asked if she could take care of the insides of the tiny homes, “because [Nolan] had her hands full with the outsides,” York said.
In the beginning, York enlisted the help of neighbors on NextDoor and Facebook to gather supplies, but she said well-meaning people were mostly reaching out with donations of used items. She wanted to be able to offer people in the tiny homes new things, a fresh start.
“I don’t want to be giving them other people’s throwaways,” York said. “They all feel like they’ve been thrown away anyway.”
So, again, York dipped into her own pocket for this project. She fills large storage bins with comforters, area rugs, dishes, pots and pans. She adds things like pottery and mirrors, and she’s begun hand-painting artwork for children, with special dimensions to fit the limited wall space available between the bunk beds. With as many as five people per tiny home, she said she wants to make as much use of limited space as possible.
She writes to the families whose homes she’ll be furnishing to get a sense of their tastes. For families with veterans, she’ll find unique ways of incorporating stars and stripes. For one family who lost horses in the fire, she found some art featuring horses. She spends the majority of her week looking for items, seeing what she can find at a discount or wholesale, and then coordinating based on color, design and each family’s tastes.
York said it feels natural to use her talents as an artist and a decorator to give victims of the fire—who have been living in hotels or in vans or tents, even a year and a half after the disaster—a place to call home again.
And although she can do this work mostly from her Willow Glen home, the project has taken quite the financial toll. She’s been using her retirement fund, which she said has all but run out. She said she’s looking for help to keep the project going, but she doesn’t want to push any of her friends or neighbors out of their comfort zones. She’s begun looking for sponsorships to help defray the costs.
Despite the difficulties, she believes the work she’s doing is critical.
“Now, what we’re doing in the grand scheme of things is very small,” York said. “But it can mean so much to those people. They’ve pretty much been forgotten.”