once this is over - there will be a huge bonanza, once the insurance money flushes in … I clearly recall the 2010 quake in Chile - suddenly everybody and their dog were rebuilding and improving infrastructure - its somewhat like a deficit spending, but financed by insurance companies (and their re-insurers).
So, given the timeframe, I think that in 25-27 there will be a huge boom (w/ lots of secondary effects (10s of 1000s of construction workers need to eat and drink as well) …
People will build “better” homes (in the context of wildfires).
Longer term - little change - people tend to go back to where they were, even after having lost half of their family in a tsunami, etc…
It would be my hope that the state and local goverments would allow for more access to the seashore to the general public and better building codes.
But realistically, the rich are going to have a bidding war over what is now going to be the best prime real estate on the planet. The money flowing in will just corrupt the system in ways we never thought of before.
Will the homes be better, oh yes. But you and I will still be on the outside looking in at the uber rich.
Is that a problem in Los Angeles? I’ve never been but I do watch a handful of home reno & real estate shows. Seems like every home is a custom built Capital M Mansion, or a little house on a residential street. Pictures I’ve seen from the fire in Pasadena look like rows and rows of California Bungalows.
I thought McMansions were more of a suburban thing, like where I live in suburban Cleveland.
… then pls disregard the term McM … I don’t want to sidetrack the thread with that …
I understand that is true.
I live in a country that is considered (one of, if not) the most sismic countries (Chile) on the planet. There is very little stick-frames here and yet we had no mayor problems with collapsed buildings in a 8.8 quake in 2010.
So there are other ways to keep a house standing in sismic events. Probably not as cheap as stick-framed, but that is another discussion.
This sounds like it’s true but I haven’t seen it verified…I’ve read that newly-built apartments aren’t subject to rent control, and many people lost their rent-controlled apartments in the fires. So even when they’re built back, former tenants will be priced out of their own neighborhoods. Can someone confirm that?
I’d suspect current fire prevention regulations are more strictly adhered to and enforced in the future. Controlled burns, thinning of vegetation, controlled overgrowth, etc. I understand there were laws in place but rarely enforced.
A big part of the problem is (the extremely well-funded) CalFire tends to short change urban and suburban areas when it comes to fire risk mitigation compared to smaller rural/wilderness communities.
You said that it was not true that CalFire tends to short change urban and suburban areas when it comes to fire risk mitigation compared to smaller rural/wilderness communities. That is essentially what the article is about.
I’m thinking about the poorer neighborhoods that are being wiped out, and probably will not be reconstituted in anything like their pre-fire make-up. I suspect that many of the single family homes in those neighborhoods were rentals, and that could lead to a couple of undesirable outcomes: one is that the owners are under-insured or uninsured (if they owned outright) and will not be inclined or able to rebuild, so they will sell the land for what they can get for it, leading for a while to a Detroit-like situation of a few houses scattered among blocks of nothing, followed by Urban Renewal style (i.e. awful) rebuilding; another is that where they are adequately insured, they will be building new homes for which they will surely charge higher rents. There will be immense immediate pressure on the LA area housing supply, leading to higher sales prices and higher rents. The working poor will, once again, be screwed.
I’m not worried about the well-to-do neighborhoods, they will rebuild better than before. Middle class neighborhoods with lots of mortgages will also be mostly insured, and will probably rebuild because it will be cheaper than almost any alternative.
That’s the message that the author was trying to pitch. I’m not sure that the evidence that they provide supports it, though.
The article seems to support a view that CalFire prefers to spend their money on actionable work that can be undertaken (performing controlled burns, chopping down trees, hauling junk away, etc.). When they evaluate proposals of that nature, versus proposals to do something like “homeowner education”, they aren’t as enthusiastic. But it doesn’t ask CalFire for any explanation of that preference.
Yes, that could be because they don’t care about city-folk. But, alternately, they could have found that you can show people all the dead brush and dry wood all over their lawn, how they could swap their fences for steel, etc. and the end result is that the homeowners all just nod, go “Yup, it would probably be smarter if I did that.” And then proceed to do none of that. You just wasted everyone’s time and money.
Now, the article doesn’t say that. But the reporter didn’t ask so, fundamentally, we don’t know. I don’t find the alternate unlikely, though.
This seems to be the crux of the matter- this one issue- In August, Cal Fire declined to award nearly $3 million for seven communities in the Santa Monica Mountains, including Big Rock in eastern Malibu and Topanga Canyon, both of which have been heavily affected by the Palisades fire. The funds would have gone toward “a trailblazing partnership which will help bridge the gap between professional first response agencies and local communities during major disaster events,” according to state records. The goal was to create “more wildfire and risk adapted communities.”
Brent Woodworth, chairman and chief executive of the Los Angeles Emergency Preparedness Foundation, the nonprofit that made the grant request, said it had planned to use the money to conduct what’s known as home ignition zone assessments. The detailed assessments, which the organization offers for free, identify specific steps homeowners can take to reduce the risks of a destructive fire.
Henning said Cal Fire was concerned about “the high cost” of the foundation’s proposal.
Note that this proposal was in Aug 2024, so by the time ig had been approved and funded- it wouldnt have started to take effect until later in 2025, in other words- too late in the Palisades Fire. That program wouldnt have actually done anything physical- just “assessments”.
We had a small fire a few years ago nearby. One home was slightly damaged, the other seriously - and according to the firefighters their backyard had not been cleared of brush.
Myself, I hire a gardener to do all that- and now we have County Fire dept inspections and my house passed.
People are seeking blame here, and except for SCE and the two suspected arsonists- there is no blame.
The insurance companies will abandon Cal. I think they were already doing it. This basically means the end of middle class housing, since without insurance you cannot get a mortgage. Maybe the state will take over insurance entirely.
New building codes. Concrete or equivalent cladding, metal roofs, gravel lawns, no trees near houses, etc.
