Here at Zillow we know home as a heartbeat—central and essential to life.
When wildfires in California destroy people’s homes, we believe it is important to lend a hand by supporting the local organizations working to care for those affected and help them rebuild.
As fires continue to burn throughout California, Zillow is keenly aware of the impact on our employees, their families and friends throughout the state. Our thoughts remain with the victims, and we are grateful for the brave firefighters who work to take control of these disasters.
Financial Support
Since 2017, Zillow has donated more than $25,000 to nonprofits in California addressing the needs of wildfire victims and providing assistance to those who need to repair and rebuild damaged homes.
We have provided financial donations to:
- California Community Foundation
- North Valley Community Foundation
- Napa Valley Community Foundation
Leveraging our Skills and Platform
When wildfires devastated Northern California in 2017, Zillow Group’s HotPads teams and Sonoma County’s CIO, Eric McHenry, collaborated to provide technical solutions for families in need of housing.
Seven days after the fires began, HotPads designers and engineers connected to deploy a rental listing resource—Northern California Rental Resources—targeting the affected areas. Knowing displaced families and individuals needed to find a place to rent temporarily and that inventory is very low in the area, we created a resource with the newest available rental listings. Many of the shelters did not have desktop computers, so we made the resource mobile-friendly.
In conjunction with HotPads, Sonoma County developed a full resource center that utilized a new API endpoint which was also built by HotPads engineers. It included additional detailed listing information for the surrounding areas.
Finding housing options for the approximately 6,000 destroyed properties in the Sonoma County area was a top priority:
- Approximately 3,000 homes and structures were destroyed in Santa Rosa.
- About 3,000 also were destroyed in the unincorporated Sonoma County areas.
- One in six (17%) of the doctors in the Santa Rosa area lost their homes.
- 62 (out of 1,100) city employee’s homes were destroyed.
Many Zillow employees in San Francisco volunteered to supported the recovery efforts with physical donations. Several truckloads of non-perishable food, water, clothes, bathroom essentials, diapers, toys, infant car seats, and strollers were delivered to the Petaluma Fair Grounds distribution center, which was operated by the National Guard.