The Washington Post reported last week out of Santa Rosa, California, population 175,000 and not rural, about how wildfire in the West is destroying housing that can't be re-built for the same cost, thus aggravating the state's housing crunch, which has implications for rural places, too. Scott Wilson reports under the headline, "Gentrification by Fire." Here are some key paragraphs:
The concerns arise everywhere, although much of the discussion centers on the areas where Siemering and many other builders are working now, known as the Wildland-Urban Interface. The zone skims the rural, oak-and-manzanita-edged limits of many built-out California cities. (Planners created an acronym, WUI, which slipped into the local vernacular as “woo-ee,” often used in everyday conversation.)
In rebuilding in fire-prone areas, new construction materials, “defensible” minimalist buffers around homes, and other sometimes-expensive new measures have been required, bumping up the costs to homeowners.
For the first time, the state announced last fall that it would begin requiring insurance companies to discount the premiums of homeowners who take such steps. But whether the discounts will be enough to make neighborhoods affordable is doubtful.
According to U.S. Census figures, Sonoma County’s population was 500,000 in 2015, two years before Tubbs tore through its largest city and surrounding land. Today 15,000 fewer people live in Sonoma — a result, at least in part, of a post-fire exodus. Many who left were the underinsured and the elderly, according to city and county officials here.
1 comment:
Thank you for this post Professor! This post makes me wonder what impacts insurance policies have on this issue. I know that insurance companies nationwide as well as specifically in California are conservative in their breadth and often limit what disasters and harm they cover. On top of high housing costs, the insurance costs are equally high and exacerbate this issue.
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