California’s $20B wildfires dubbed 'most expensive fire in history' and could push U.S. to 'uninsurable' brink

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u/l-isqof 1d ago

Land values in such a popular location are likely to remain high, so the figures seem all wrong to me.

Obv, some loss in land value would make sense, but you'd still be in one of the most popular spots on earth, that is likely to be rebuilt all over in a few years.

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u/GeneralAppendage 3h ago

I actually don’t see this happening. If anything I’m afraid that there will be a mass exodus. The uber rich are fine. They have 2&3 other homes. It’s the normal families needing immediate housing fleeing. Driving up prices elsewhere and collapsing the market. Lots of people won’t move back after the fire because, fire.

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u/local_eclectic 1d ago edited 18h ago

Good. Get rid of for profit insurance entirely. We can pool recovery funds through our state and federal governments instead.

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u/caitsith01 12h ago

Why would you want to subsidise insuring people who have willfully ignored climate change and remove the economic incentive to (a) act to limit it and (b) take it into account when building?

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u/local_eclectic 11h ago

If the government is in control of distributing recovery assistance, it's obviously in control of dictating which regions qualify along with what kind of and amounts of assistance will be provided. Zoning and permitting is already controlled by local government, so these work together for rebuilding, relocating, and repairing current buildings.

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u/certifiedtoothbench 2m ago

Because the everyday person and their innocent children has almost no say as to what the government and corporations do as far as climate change goes. For everyone rich person in California, there’s 12 people getting paid a barely living wage to wipe that rich person’s ass and read them a night night story.

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u/sassergaf 1d ago edited 2h ago

Good. Get rid of for profit insurance entirely. We can pool recovery funds through our state and federal governments instead.

This is the way.

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u/gromm93 8h ago

Yeah, um, about that.

You may as well just shovel money into the fire while you're at it.

Look. There's basically no way out of the disaster that we caused, predicted, and did nothing about, back when we could, and just said, "well, that would be expensive!"

I would personally recommend moving somewhere else and starting over again if you've been unhoused by this crisis.

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u/local_eclectic 8h ago

Recovery doesn't have to mean rebuilding in a natural disaster zone. It could mean providing relocation funds to build in a new location. If people are paying into this fund via property taxes, it'll be proportional to the value lost.

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u/lateavatar 19h ago

I wonder if anyone will notice that this will be working class neighborhoods taxed through higher premiums to rebuild the wealthiest neighborhoods.

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u/GeneralAppendage 3h ago

Some of us will. The government will pull another flash bang to distract us. Wonder that it will be?

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u/gromm93 8h ago

And naturally, the Republican party can't ever change an idea, so they're going to keep preventing progress on this.

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u/ikewafinaa 2h ago

$20b? Try $200b when this is said and done