Over 140 displaced after fire at Sunnyvale's Twin Pines Manor

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (KGO) -- Sunnyvale is going through the unprecedented task of finding homes for over a hundred people after a fire broke out at the Twin Pines Manor Apartments on Friday and left scores of families homeless.

It's all hands on deck at Sunnyvale Community Services.

Social workers here busier than ever, trying to find homes for 140 people. "We're not used to waking up on a Monday and saying well we now have 50 to 75 families who are now displaced," Sunnyvale Community Services Executive Director Marie Bernard said.

It's unclear what started the fire at Twin Pines Manor, but the fire department is still investigating.

Although the flames were contained to just four units, everyone was told they couldn't return.

The apartments look fine, but they were declared uninhabitable because of all the smoke damage, smoke that traveled throughout the entire building. "It was a lot of what am I going to do now. Based on rent and other things like that, here I'm getting by and everything seems to be working, and then all of a sudden it's not," Sunnyvale Mayor Glenn Hendricks said.

Sunnyvale's mayor said the city has launched a GoFundMe campaign, which at last count, has raised nearly $30,000 for the fire victims.

Other government agencies and corporations are also helping out.

The challenge, though, is to find housing the families can afford long term, which can be hard to find in Silicon Valley. "We had a lot of folks who were squeezing into tiny apartments, multiple families so we're also seeing that as a risk. Well, how do we safely house them in an appropriate housing that they can afford," Marie Bernard said.

For now, the families are being housed in motels as their old apartment building remains off limits.