Wildfires continue to burn in and around Los Angeles Over 40,000 acres From last week, destruction More than 12,000 houses and other buildings, and murder At least 25 peopleTwo things are becoming clear: California must rebuild fast, and it must rebuild differently.
Housing affordability and availability in Los Angeles, and California more broadly, was already at a crisis point even before the wildfires began.
Since January 7, hundreds of thousands of families have been forced to evacuate and are now scrambling to find a place to live. Many were shocked to realize that they had virtually no rental options, even when they were willing to pay large sums of money to live in the area.
The region’s rental market was already tense before the fire. CoStar Group Inc. An analysis of it showed that the vacancy rate – meaning the percentage of vacant and available rental homes – is below Out at 2.1 percent in western Los Angeles County — now affected by the Palisades Fire — and 3.8 percent in Pasadena, where the Eaton fire is burning. The overall vacancy rate in Los Angeles was about 5 percent.
For larger apartments with three or four bedrooms, rental options are even worse. Almost all new housing built over the past decade has been studio or one- and two-bedroom apartments, designed with singles, childless couples and adult roommates in mind.
“I think the real wake-up call that’s being given is if you live in a city where it doesn’t matter how much money you have,” says Matt Lewis, director of communications for California YIMBY. “It is assumed that the fire happened to someone else.”
But the housing impact extends beyond the immediate needs of migrants. Facing increasing losses due to increasingly severe climate disasters, Insurance companies have increased rates Statewide and in high-risk areas have declined to renew coverage for nearly 3 million homeowners over the past few years. (The state updated its regulations to force more insurance companies to cover homes in fire-prone areas, but those changes took effect just before the recent fires.)
Losing their coverage has led many newly uninsured homeowners to turn to California’s FAIR Plan, a last-resort option that offers limited home coverage for high costs. FAIR plans are not publicly funded, and if their reserves and reinsurance decline, insured homeowners across the state help foot the bill.
“All policyholders, not just FAIR Plan policyholders,” could be on the hook for the fire, Dave Jones, director of the Climate Risk Initiative at UC Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and Environment, told Vox.
In other words, all Californians could face higher premiums next year, making it already more expensive to live. The most impossible state.
These wildfires could be the tipping point for California’s already teetering housing ecosystem. As insurance premiums soar, both current residents and prospective homebuyers are faced with impossible choices: absorb skyrocketing costs, abandon their properties or leave the state entirely.
Years of caution about this scenario have been vindicated. Policy decisions over the next few months will determine whether the state can stabilize its housing market, or whether the wildfires will trigger a wave of foreclosures, homelessness and emigration unprecedented in California history.
Is the build back good?
While California politicians have taken small steps so far to signal that they want to make it easier to rebuild homes quickly, housing advocates say bolder leadership is needed at this point: not just to restore burned homes, but to significantly increase fire resistance. Homes and apartments in low-risk areas for people of all income levels.
On Sunday, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued a The executive order calls for a waiver of the permit requirement Landmark is under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which is notorious for holding back housing developments. In order to quickly rebuild the properties, Newsom also suspended permitting requirements under the state’s Coastal Act, which ensures the protection of California’s coastal resources, including beaches and ecological wildlife.
But these flashy moves were not meaningful reforms. Single-family homes are already exempt from CEQA and the Coastal Act Exempts reconstruction of houses destroyed by disasters From the general coastal permit. He was a legal expert Doubtful it will lead to real changeRemodeled homes in particular still have to comply with zoning and building ordinances that have changed significantly over the years.
On Monday, LA Mayor Karen Bass followed suit with her own The executive order called for expediting reconstruction at Pacific PalisadesCritics, however, say the city’s already slow permitting is partly to blame for the city’s understaffing, and the order does not say anything about funding more workers.
Simply restoring what’s been lost — which would take years even after potentially rushed permit approvals — won’t be enough to stave off a mounting crisis.
As insurance companies begin to deploy artificial intelligence to assess an area’s climate risk, and as state insurance rules evolve to allow insurers to charge policyholders more for more vulnerable homes, there will be more pressure to rebuild suburban homes that are more vulnerable to fire. and can better withstand other natural environments. Disasters It will undoubtedly be more expensive both to build and to insure than before the wildfires.
These changes could force a long-overdue transformation in how and where leaders build: away from fire-prone suburban sprawl and toward dense urban neighborhoods that are inherently more fire-resistant. But without major zoning changes to allow such urban development, the crisis could instead accelerate displacement as middle- and working-class families — especially those who inherited their homes in communities like Altadena and Pasadena — are forced out of unaffordable neighborhoods where affordability is possible. not in go
University of Southern California policy and planning professor Dowell Myers told Vox that there is still no good data on how residents who inherited their homes are handling rising insurance premiums. Average annual cost of homeowners insurance in the state increased by $3,100 — a 62 percent increase over the national average — some California coastal and inland locations experienced double-digit percentage increases.
To build housing for people who can’t afford rising insurance premiums or multimillion-dollar homes, advocates are urging policymakers to make it easier to build housing in dense, relatively fire-safe cities, places that already incorporate modern building codes, urgently. response time, mandatory sprinkler systems, and updated infrastructure to reduce risk.
Communities must build differently — faster and more densely than they’ve traditionally been allowed.
A The bill was introduced again in 2020 A California state representative would have exempted infill housing from CEQA, but it died in the legislature. Lawmakers could reintroduce and pass it quickly, and advocates are urging Newsom to support such a measure.
“The real challenge is that we’re trying to do this too late, and so it’s not really going to solve the problems of people who need housing today,” says Lewis of California YIMBY. “This crisis will spread to other states as well, as those unwilling or unable to rebuild will find they have nowhere to live.”
The mounting barriers to home ownership
While the fire was devastating for homeowners, the crisis made the situation even more stressful for renters.
The ramifications of California’s insurance crisis extend far beyond current homeowners, threatening to worsen an already severe housing affordability crisis. For renters, who make up more than half of Los Angeles County residents, the impact can be devastating.
The insurance crisis creates what National Low Income Housing Coalition disaster recovery manager Noah Patton describes as a “three-pronged effect” on housing affordability. Rising insurance costs push more potential buyers into the rental market, increasing demand. Meanwhile, landlords pass these costs on to tenants through rent increases, and developers struggle to finance new affordable housing projects in disaster-prone areas that are “desperately needed.”
Stocks are especially high in California, where About 186,000 people Already living on the streets or in shelters – an 8 percent increase from 2022. Homeless people are already more exposed to the climate crisis and wildfire smoke especially when they cannot shelter inside. With many families spending more than half of their income on housing, even a small rent increase can trigger a cascade toward eviction and homelessness.
When residents are displaced by fire Temporary residence permit may be granted With their properties in recreational vehicles, tiny homes and other modular structures, this stopgap solution does nothing to help many Californians who are still struggling to own a home or pay their rent.
“While many millennials were able to take advantage of record-low mortgage rates during the pandemic, young people are still facing a housing affordability crisis that doesn’t show many signs of improvement on the sales side,” said Darryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “What’s more, these devastating wildfires are in Los Angeles, which already has the nation’s least affordable housing market, with median home prices exceeding $900,000.”
