California Wildfires: Exacerbating Housing Injustice
By Isobel Taylor
As wildfire season increases in intensity and duration, California residents’ sense of security about their housing situations declines. In 2018, the Camp fire damaged 19,531 structures (including the entire town of Paradise), becoming the deadliest in the state’s history. The fire destroyed 90% of the homes and less than 20% of the homes have been rebuilt. The town used to have 36 mobile home parks but only 6 of them have been able to reopen, displacing sixteen thousand residents. These patterns have only escalated and will continue to escalate as a consequence of global warming. One family, speaking at an assistance center for wildfire survivors, detailed their story: their rental house burned down in the 2018 Camp Fire, they then moved to Berry Creek and lost that home in the 2020 North Complex Fire, and the following year, after settling down in Plumas County, the Dixie Fire took their home again. Sadly, this story is becoming more normal in a state where annual wildfires are taking more structures and there is a severe shortage of affordable places to live.
California has had a housing shortage for years and demand for affordable housing has been skyrocketing. However, given the mass suburban sprawls and neighborhood opposition — going so far as lawsuits against new developments in wealthy neighborhoods — California is having an incredibly difficult time building new houses. As more and more houses are built increasingly farther from urban areas, they are encroaching on the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The WUI is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet and where wildfires are most frequent and severe. Between 1990 and 2010 the WUI has become the fastest-growing land area in the United States, with 97% of it as a result of new housing — creating large tracts of dangerous living conditions.
Affordable housing and environmental justice are inherently linked. Due to historical redlining practices, low-income communities and communities of color have a disproportionate exposure to pollution. Many of these communities are still forced to find affordable housing in these less desirable areas that are polluted and far from well-resourced and opportunistic areas.
Wealth is concentrated in the urban and coastal areas of California — areas far from the imminent threat of wildfires. A recent study shows that the census tracts that are majority Black, Hispanic, or Native American are 50% more vulnerable to wildfire compared to other census tracts — meaning they are much closer to wildfire danger zones. Analysis shows that these census tracts also have higher rates of poverty, unemployment, low-income residents, and little technology. This illuminates an issue of environmental justice in which historically disadvantaged families who cannot afford to move to wealthier areas of the state are at greater risk of dangerous wildfires that can negatively impact their health and further exacerbate socioeconomic inequalities.
Given the combination of California policymakers pushing to increase the supply of housing and climate change, it is clear that continually building into the remote areas of California will only result in greater rates of displacement of already disadvantaged communities. Tens of thousands of Californians were displaced by the 2017 and 2018 fires. People tried to flee farther away from the wildfire risk zones, leading to housing prices skyrocketing in these areas. Two months after the Camp Fire, Chico saw home prices rise by 21% and an increase in their homeless population of 16% — the overall population growth was equivalent to that of ten years. In other nearby counties, home prices rose by 47% and 58% within those two months. These skyrocketing home prices leave individuals unable to move and are then forced to rebuild and face the same risks. The lack of developer incentives or subsidies to either build affordable housing in safer areas or build affordable housing in a resilient way contributes to this pattern of rebuilding.
Current post-disaster recovery plans are often presented as an opportunity to rebuild sustainably. However, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, which serves as a model for many other disaster plans, calls for “building back better” and “building back green,” conveniently leaving out any mention of equity. Rebuilding requires money; changing infrastructure requires money. This sort of resilience gentrification exacerbates environmental inequality because low-income households can’t afford this build back approach. Safe housing then becomes a form of environmental privilege.
While there are plenty of wildfire relief programs put into place, there are just simply not enough shelters or funds. Many people are living in tents, waiting for FEMA’s help. The California Fire Foundation is giving out $250 cash gift cards, which can only go so far for large families. FEMA is stretched thin from all the climate disasters that require their assistance. Despite multiple requests to Congress, the gridlock and bureaucracy results in months and months of families left without food or money, intensifying environmental inequality issues. Notably missing from any of these discussions is the voice of the people living in these communities. Many anecdotes and stories are out there, but they are rarely involved in the policy and implementation discussion.
However, some projects are in place to work towards a solution. Justice40 and the Inflation Reduction Act were both introduced to dedicate funding for low-income communities to use at their discretion. The project Opportunity Starts at Home is looking to expand rental assistance programs and create mobility vouchers, as well as expand affordable housing in specifically urban, well-resourced neighborhoods. This project is run with the help of many grassroots organizations, focusing on bringing in community voices.
The California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) is another grassroots organization that engages local stakeholders in their recommendations. CEJA recommends that developer incentives be created to encourage affordable housing to be built in urban areas. This, combined with better transportation networks, would help prevent the suburban sprawl that encroaches into the WUI. They also recommend establishing and increasing funding for programs that provide natural-disaster resilient retrofits for low-income homeowners and investing in community resilience centers that would have medical services, clean air, cooling, shelter, food, and more.
While all of these projects are steps in the right direction, there is just simply not enough funding dedicated to making sure that new affordable housing is built in a way that adheres to our changing climate. In order to ensure that this happens, we need to make sure to ask the communities being displaced what they are most in need of. We also need to provide developer incentives to build more resilient affordable housing and overrule California’s wealthy neighborhoods that continually fight against more affordable housing. When it comes down to it, the right to safe and affordable housing eclipses the complaints about the increase in traffic or slightly smaller backyards.
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