Many citizens of western states have become greatly concerned about their personal safety and access to housing options because of the growing wildlife crisis. The costs of home fire insurance within the expanding Wildland Urban Interface (WUI) has created drastic limitations of housing options for the elderly, Native American populations, Latinx populations, and low-income communities.
In her 2015 article for Vox, Eliza Barclay describes how worsening wildfires in California have caused billions of dollars of damages to homes, and will likely get worse in the next 30 years. Barclay explains that in the 2018 California wildfire season, 10 large fires burned more than 500 acres each, and the Camp Fire, which left 86 dead in Paradise, California, caused more than $16.5 billion in losses alone.
Barclay states that 11.3 million people in California live within the WUI, which is described by scientists as homes within fire prone areas with an abundance of potential wildfire fuel––2.7 million of those California residents live in “very high fire hazard severity zones,” and that number is expected to keep growing as the WUI expands because of the effects of climate change.
Barclay describes how social scientists are recommending a “planned retreat” to move housing construction away from high-risk areas; however, California has done little to discourage this type of construction. The California housing crisis has made it especially difficult for people to find places to live outside of the WUI. For example, the residents of the Paradise community who lost their homes now must face the high rent rates and housing costs of rebuilding in the Bay Area. This is in combination with insurance companies beginning to refuse to renew fire and homeowners’ liability insurance and hike rates due to the losses from the recent wildfire seasons, making it both difficult to live securely in fire-prone areas and to find an affordable home outside of fire-prone areas.
In an October 13, 2021, article for Grist, María Paula Rubiano and Zoya Teirstein describe how the California Department of Insurance reports that in the state’s 10 most fire-prone counties, nonrenewal of insurance increased by 203 percent from 2018 to 2019. This has left residents with the options of using the state insurance program, known as the FAIR plan (which is extremely expensive and not very comprehensive), move out, or remain in place without insurance. For many low-income residents, living uninsured is their only choice.
In his 2021 article for Politico, Zack Colman describes how data compiled by the climate services firm, risQ, which analyzes financial sector climate risk, shows losses for single family homes are currently $13 billion annually, and are likely to climb to $14 billion by 2050 without climate change mitigation measures. Colman goes on to state that escaping wildfire zones is getting more difficult as climate change has been making areas more wildfire prone due to hotter, drier conditions that feed fires.
The wildfire crisis is not affecting all populations equally, as Colman describes that new analysis of census, insurance, and wildfire data has shown that Latinx residents in western states face the greatest danger. Latinx residents are twice as likely to live in areas most threatened by wildfires relative to the overall U.S. population, according to data compiled by risQ. The Latinx population makes up about 18 percent of the United States, but represents 37 percent of the people who live in the areas that risQ identified as facing the most extreme wildfire risks. Rising housing costs is one of the major causes of this disproportionate danger as it has forced Latinx residents to move into areas facing high wildfire risks. Colman describes how risQ has collected data that shows that the Latinx population in areas with the highest wildfire risk jumped by 223 percent between 2010 and 2019, indicating that Latinx people were moving to the areas that were the most threatened, while the white population in those areas fell by 32 percent. Data has also shown that Latinx residents that moved to rural agricultural areas where land is cheaper have less access to firefighting services. In these rural areas, fires in 2020 destroyed more than 4,000 homes in Oregon alone.
In an April 2021 article for the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health by Shahir Masri et al., the authors describe how they examined areas burned by wildfires over the entire state of California from the years 2000 to 2020 to understand how wildfire activity has changed over time and to identify how impacts have varied according to individual socioeconomic factors. The study used fire perimeter data compiled from the California Fire and Resource Assessment Program and National Interagency Fire Center along with California Census tracts. The results from the study showed a clear increase in the area burned by wildfires across California over time, with a doubling in the number of Census tracts that experienced major wildfires and a near doubling of the number of people residing in wildfire-impacted Census tracts. The authors found that rural areas not only saw three times more wildfire on average, but also tended to be characterized by higher rates of poverty, unemployment, and vacant housing, as well as higher proportions of low-income residents and residents without college degrees.
The authors report that Census tracts with a higher fire frequency and burned area had a greater proportion of Native American residents. They also found that Census tracts most impacted by fire tended to have substantially greater proportions of elderly residents, which is a cause for concern due to their vulnerability to the health effects that come with wildfires, such as air quality.
The findings from these articles emphasize the importance of environmental justice in the fight against the wildfire crisis. While western states have begun to increase funding to fire suppression and fuel reductions, government action is needed to bring focused aid and recovery efforts to protect communities that are being disproportionately affected by wildfires due to socioeconomic factors. The shortage of affordable housing has pushed people with limited financial means deeper into remote locations that are more susceptible to wildfires. There is not one clear, easy solution to this issue, but possible steps to increase protection to these communities is access to affordable housing away from wildfire prone areas, and better allocation of fire-prevention and relief services in low-income and rural areas.
