The Volokh Conspiracy
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Easing Zoning Restrictions Can Facilitate Rebuilding After the LA Fires
The destruction of numerous homes exacerbated the city's already severe housing crisis. Curbing exclusionary zoning is crucial to addressing the problem.

Much of the debate over the horrible wildfires afflicting the Los Angeles areas focuses on issues outside my expertise. Thus, I'm not going to opine on such questions as the role of climate change in causing the fires, and whether federal, state, and local governments, have done a good job of running the LA fire department and managing wildfire risk more generally. There is enough ill-informed pontification on these issues already. One relevant issue, however, is within my expertise: zoning and housing policy. Easing zoning restrictions on housing construction could help the city rebuild faster and find new homes for those displaced by the fires. It could also help alleviate the area's longstanding housing crisis.
Even before the fire, the LA region had a serious housing shortage, caused in large part by exclusionary zoning. Some 78% of the residential land in LA is zoned for single-family residences only, which makes it extremely difficult to build new housing in response to demand, especially multifamily homes affordable for working and lower-middle class people.
The fires have destroyed an estimated 12,000 structures, a figure that is likely to rise before the conflagration ends. Not all these structures are homes. Some are garages, commercial buildings, and other nonresidential facilities. Nonetheless, there is no doubt the fires have wiped out thousands of homes, displacing tens of thousands of people. And while much media attention has focused on the losses suffered by wealthy Hollywood celebrities, most of those displaced are less affluent folk who cannot easily find new homes.
Zoning and housing expert M. Nolan Gray (in the Atlantic), and Reason writer Jack Nicastro have helpful articles summarizing how exclusionary zoning rules have contributed LA's housing crisis, and how easing them will make it easier to rebuild. They also explain how zoning restrictions made the region more vulnerable to wildfires, by pushing development into more dangerous areas, and making it difficult or impossible to build more fire-resistant housing.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom recently issued an executive order suspending some types of regulatory obstacles to housing construction in areas affected by the fire, such as burdensome review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). That's a step in the right direction. But its impact will be very limited unless state and local governments also suspend zoning restrictions that make it difficult or impossible to build multifamily housing throughout much of the region.
Moreover, Newsom's order also extends enforcement of anti-"price gouging" restrictions in the affected area. Such laws prevent sellers - including providers of construction materials - from raising prices in regions affected by natural disasters. As economists have long pointed out, such restrictions make reconstruction more difficult by reducing incentives for suppliers to increase delivery of needed goods.
In the aftermath of the fires, construction supplies will be more needed in LA than in most other regions. We want prices in the area to rise, so that producers will get the signal to send more of these types of goods there. Price controls will only exacerbate shortages, and make rebuilding take longer.
In a recent Texas Law Review article my coauthor Josh Braver and I have argued that exclusionary zoning restrictions on housing construction are unconstitutional violations of the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment. For a more succinct summary of our argument, see our June article in the Atlantic.
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Coming soon, Malibu Homes for Migrants.
moe generally
as opposed to larry or curly generally. 🙂
I'm a Shemp fan
1. I agree with the OP. This is a generational (really, one-in-a-lifetime) opportunity to rezone in LA. Even if the rezoning was limited to the affected areas; it could add thousands of housing units to the market over times.
2. I had a thought about the homes along PCH. (The following paragraph is for people unfamiliar with the LA area. Pacific Coast Highway is *directly* next to the beach, starting in Santa Monica [the 10 West freeway becomes PCH and goes north as it hits the beach]. For almost all of the first 20 miles, you have a single row of houses (plus a few restaurants, parking lots, etc) along the road on the west side of PCH. On the east side are cliffs, which have no homes built into them in SM, and then do have homes as you get to Pacific Palisades and then Malibu. These "west" homes are very pricey, of course, as they lead directly to the beach, and that's almost unheard of in Southern California.)
Sadly, since the Pacific Palisades fires blew almost directly west this past Tuesday and Wed (the worst days of the fire), the fire roared towards the ocean. And, when it hit this long trail of beach houses, it burned them and then the fire stopped, as it ran out of things to burn. A few houses survived in some areas, and all the houses survived in other parts. But, for now, there are many many empty lots where there were 3-to-15-million dollar homes a week ago.
Here is my thought. The city and/or state should acquire many of these lots via eminent domain, and fully compensate the owners. (Heck, start with the lots where the owners didn't have fire insurance.) With these now-govt-owned areas, put in a crapload of parking lots, expand the bike paths, and add some businesses, like restaurants and bars. Goal? To make these world-famous beaches actually accessible for LA's 6,000,000+ residents. Getting access to this natural and public resource has always been extremely difficult for 95% of Angelenos. Very few parking lots right now. And homeowners (in)famously illegally blocked access (that was part of their permitting, when they built these houses) that was supposed to be available between homes. With the result that, in some areas of PCH, you couldn't find a way to get access from PCH to the beaches that were 20 seconds of walking away, since you had to know where and how to walk a half-mile, until there was an opening.
Downside: 50+ current homeowners will lose this prized location. That's absolutely a downside.
Upside: The other 99.999927% of residents will gain access to the beaches, and will continue to enjoy this for decades or centuries to come.
Downside: The city (and state??) will lose income from these homeowners paying property taxes on these now-eliminated beachfront homes.
Upside: All or most will probably relocate to other parts of SM, LA, Malibu, and will continue to pay property taxes.
What are your thoughts? I think it would clearly be legal (access to our beaches is an obvious public benefit, so it's not a scam like "Kelo."), and it's my personal opinion that the massive public benefit could be a fair trade-off for the absolute harm to homeowners who are told, "No, you can't rebuild here. You have to live in a different location."
What are some other downsides (and upsides) that I haven't thought about?
I think it's a typical statist reaction.
Markets and prices have this wonderful way of replacing all that bureaucratic central misplanning.
If that land were more valuable as parks, restaurants, bars, parking lots, bicycle trails, etc -- then the people who would run those endeavors would have bought out those rich fuckers.
I've driven around Lake Tahoe a few times. I know what it's like to have only a few access points. But the unseen possibility for both Tahoe and the PCH is that maybe, just maybe, the rich fuckers would invest their money elsewhere if they couldn't do it there, property taxes would decline, and the rich fuckers might take the talents which made them rich and go be productive somewhere else.
Maybe those rich fuckers are all celebrities who would stay in the area. Maybe none of them can up and move like Elon Musk or Bill Gates. But it is the height of statist presumptuousness to assume you know better than markets composed of everybody else.
And maybe, just maybe, private property should be important for a lawyer who presumably claims to value the rule of law.
Do you understand how zoning works?
More than you understand individualism and property rights.
Where is the money going to come from?
The state (and, I presume, the various cities) do put aside money each year for parks, riverfront or oceanfront development, etc. This would qualify as one of those things...except I think the public benefit would be orders of magnitude greater than your average park...where almost no one who is not local ever goes there.
Perhaps fire prevention is a better use for those funds.
Perhaps. Or perhaps we should do both??
What sort of fire prevention should be done, do you think? We could build additional water storage tanks? But where, if so? In Pacific Palisades? In West Los Angeles? In Beverly Hills? Or, perhaps everywhere...a thousand more tanks, spread out across Los Angeles County? That might be helpful, indeed. Of course, they would be worthless if the next huge fire were farther south, in San Diego, next time.
Yesterday, on Fox, and CNN, and CBS, I listened to a few fire experts (ie, former fire chiefs) being interviewed on TV. They said (I'm paraphrasing here) that with gale-force winds, there was no way this could have been prevented. When the first fire hit, at around 10:30 in the morning--assuming you had almost unlimited resources, which no one on earth has--you would have sent 2-3 fire trucks to the first report of a structure fire. It takes about 5 minutes (at least, that's the goal of fire departments) to get there. Around 50 seconds at the station, to get from your bed, dressed, into the truck, etc. And 4-5 minutes to drive there, full-speed, sirens on. Okay, first call comes in at 10:30. At 10:33, second call: That one house on fire is now 8 houses on fire...the winds blew embers that quickly.
So, you change the order to all 10 trucks that your station has. The first 2-3 trucks arrive at 10:35, and the other 8 trucks arrive at 10:38. By the time those trucks get there; there are now 30 houses on fire. Not just on one block--now it's on a block, and also across the street, and on the streets behind and next to the first one. Which of the 30 houses should you try to save? Trick question: as you are aiming your hoses at those 3 or 4 or 10 houses...within another 5 minutes, there are now 100 houses on fire.
Moral: When kindling is bone-dry (dead plants and wood structures), and when winds are whipping around at 50 mph, or 70 mph, or 90 mph, there are 5,000 embers per minute flying at you and around you and over you--50 feet above the ground. There was literally nothing that could have been done to stop the fires on Tuesday, once they started. It's like giving a man a big sponge and saying, "Now, prevent any more flooding." Or, giving 1,000 men each a sponge and telling them to prevent flooding.
If there were literally 2,000 fire trucks, with 5,000 men, just in Pacific Palisades, then maybe the fire could have been contained. Two or 3 or 4 trucks on each and every block, ready to immediately attack any blown embers that happened to blow from half a mile away and land on a home. If God had come to us and said, "You can bring every single fire truck in all of California and all California fire fighters, and move them all to this one tiny, specific, part of Los Angeles...and ignore the rest of the danger to the rest of the state."; well, then Pacific Palisades could have been spared. (Of course, if God had done that, and if we had listened; the Altadena fire would have burned out of control, along with the other LA fires, and would have caused even more damage city-wide.
Fire prevention for this particular event? I'm genuinely at a loss to know what our govt should have done. Other than mandate that people change their structures from wood to brick, mandate non-flammable roofing, etc..
Without intending to be a smart ass, why would you think an incompetent government that couldn't protect existing structures would be competent to redevelop this area?
Also, isn't the western side of the PCH made up mostly of unconsolidated soil subject to slumps and falling into the sea/
No, it's not subject to falling into the sea. Evidence: That people have been allowed to build houses there. And they have lasted for a century.
I have no idea if the LA govt would or would not be competent enough to handle this sort of project. I think it's sort of idiotic to expect this California govt (where the infrastructure was built up over many many Republican administrations, and [exclusively, recently] Democratic administrations to be able to protect against this sort of doomsday event.
If you made me governor of California today, and said that I could enact any laws I wanted, to prevent this sort of thing happening again. Okay, you want to protect against catastrophic wildfires? No problem. Every wood house and building must be demolished and built out of brick, or adobe, or steel, or concrete. At least, all homes not dead center of an urban area where there are no parks or trees. Everyone's taxes will triple, to pay for this, of course. Everyone's property taxes will double. But that will take care of this sort of event. Only in LA? Of course not. The next wildfire could be anywhere in my state, so we better enact this statewide. Oh, we really should triple the number of firefighters, to make sure that we can overwhelm the fires that no human can prevent, when those happen during huge windstorms. I guess we will need to add another 12% on those taxes. 🙁
Oh, while we are doing this...I just realized. The next catastrophe might not be a fire. It might be a major earthquake. No point in protecting California from fires, when a quake can be just as deadly, or more so. Okay, in addition to building or retrofitting all houses to 2025 fire codes, we need to retrofit each and every house in California, to protect against collapse in a major quake. Grandfather in houses for people who can't afford to do this? Hell no!!! Protection of life and property are the only considerations? Yes, 25% of people will have to sell and move out of state. Maybe 50 or 75%. But everyone remaining will be safe.
Or...wait a minute. Maybe the next major event (ie, threat to life and property) will be mass rioting. Well, the only way to protect against this is to hire literally 10x as many policemen. Yes, your taxes will double again, but that's a fair trade-off, since the 12,300 remaining people in California who can afford to still live here will be as safe as possible against fire, and earthquake, and mass civil unrest.
Problem(s) solved. You're welcome, California. Royal Swedish Academy; you can just give me my Nobel Prize right now. 🙂
"if the LA govt would or would not be competent "
If you cannot tell that the city and state governments are incompetent after failing to assess risks and act to mitigate before the fire season, you are being willfully blind.
BTW, have you heard anything from Bass or Newcom about how they are coming to reduce the threat from mudslides when the rains do start in a couple of weeks/
Your last point is your only serious one. I suspect that mudslide damage is on the front of some people's minds, and deservedly so. But surely you do not blame any public servant for publicly focusing on the danger that is right in front of us, right now, no? OF COURSE we have not yet heard anything from our public officials about the dangers and risks from future rains.
But, once the smoke clears (literally and metaphorically), it should be addressed, of course. This thread would be a great place for you to talk about what *you* would do to prevent mudslides in the LA area, if you were in charge. I suspect that people in our local govt would be anxious to hear all good ideas...esp if they don't take funding and man-hours away from dealing with the actual ongoing fires and the resulting recovery efforts.
In CA it is incumbent on officials to do detailed risk assessments every year prior to the fire season. I am dead serious. Anything else is a dereliction of duty. Of course after the fact there are recriminations. What's new. A proper risk analysis would not support draining a reservoir prior to fire season UNLESS not doing so would expose the community to a greater risk.
You would not accept lack of anticipatory planning from the operators of a nuclear power plant, would you? The fuel load was especially high this year. And that is also true in the flat expanses of Palisades; yes, home owner share some of the blame in their own community.
Did you notice that while people we having difficulty driving out of the fire zone that cars were still allowed to drive in. It is hard to believe that evacuation plans were well thought out.
Sure after the fact there will be more detailed blame to assess. The job of public officials is to minimize the risk to the public. It is very hard to see that was done. From what you write, you seem to expect that we will not hear about mudslides until th earth starts moving.
" A proper risk analysis would not support draining a reservoir prior to fire season UNLESS not doing so would expose the community to a greater risk."
I wouldn't blow off the fact that they'd had a bond issue to build more reservoirs, and then didn't build them, either.
A fair point. But the tipping point here was not the lack of water. It was the brutal winds. No reasonable fire department, even with unlimited water and a more-than-reasonable amount of men and equipment, could have prevented this thing. The winds (a) spread the fire incredibly quickly and widely, and (b) prevented aircraft from fighting the fire from the air. The only thing that could have--and eventually did!!!--helped the situation was lowering the strength of the wind. And when the wind died down, LA has been able to slowly get a handle on the situation.
Today, now that the winds have picked up again, we shall see what happens.
LOL!
OK. I guess those houses in Dana Point and San Clemente that either fell off the the cliffs they were built on or are condemned didn't have permission to build there.
Your trust in the government making good decisions is misplaced.
Evidence: LA is on fire.
Bumble - Good point - Its California
Where is the money going to come from?
Who's gonna babysit it?
The merits certainly feel good in an "eat the rich" sense. What I'm not quite clear on is if it's Kelo-worthy today, why wasn't it Kelo-worthy two weeks ago, or two years ago?
IOW, are we just sticking it to them now because we think the fire gives political cover that wouldn't normally exist (aka, "never let a good crisis go to waste")?
That aside, sticking a thumb in the collective eye of a bunch of people with bunches of money and turf to guard seems like a surefire recipe to have the whole mess tied up in litigation for a LFT, where nobody gets to use it.
It's also kicking one of their most devoted factions, rich Hollywood stars, in he nuts. They must be protected at all costs, lest the "I'm only permitted one brand of political opinion" evaporate further. It's already taken a few good socks to the chin this election with a number of rich entertainers saying, "Screw that!"
If that even partially rolls over, there go endorsements and donations, elections are lost, and the corruption gravy train derails.
"But the Republicans...!" Yes, I do not disagree. I'm trying to wake up people from their secular pseudo-religions.
Brian, that is absolutely a valid question. And, frankly, part of the real-world answer is, "Yes." Not to the "eat the rich" part. But to the part of the real world that is: "We want to do something very politically ambitious and difficult. It moves from difficult to impossible if we don't get buy-in from lots of politicians, and we don't get that without a good measure of public approval.
I'm not sure if "sticking it to them" is entirely fair. Certainly not for those who didn't have insurance. (And I know several people who own their homes outright, and don't carry fire insurance any more.) If a filthy-rich person owns a $5 million dollar home with no insurance, she very well might want to rebuild, swallow the millions of dollars in loss, and would resent the hell out of a govt trying to take away her home. *Even though* she would get reimbursed for the millions in loss she would otherwise suffer. But if you are not incredibly wealthy and you just don't have the $1.5 million to rebuild your 5 mil. home...well, I think a lot of those people would be willing to get that $5 million check, and buy elsewhere. There are going to be A LOT of people who live in Pac. Palisade, or Malibu, and who simply cannot afford to rebuild. The market would take care of those properties, certainly. But why not, WHY NOT, take advantage of this terrible situation to effect some real good? (I'm assuming that, in the abstract, you agree that turning "Almost no access for the public to much of the coastline beaches" into "Lots more access" would be an absolute good thing.)
[I'll also note that, after the 1994 Northridge quake, some important buildings in some of LA's poorest neighborhoods were destroyed. The local and state and federal governments "took advantage" of that situation to build much nicer gyms, and school buildings, and libraries than what had been destroyed or damaged. So my plan is not at all aimed at the rich--for being rich--although it's not surprising that people living directly next to a spectacular beach tend to be much more wealthy than your average bear.]
So in your original proposal you talked about 50+ property owners on the west side of the PCH. While I don't doubt for a minute that there are "A LOT of people who live in Pac. Palisade, or Malibu" that might want to (or need to) cash out, it would surprise me a bit if there were many in the "crown jewel" strip you'd need to seize to put more public beaches/needle disposal zones in their place. And even if there were a few here and there, that wouldn't give you the large contiguous blocks you'd need -- which of course is why you're proposing eminent domain. So what other unfortunate folks in the area might want to do seems like a bit of a distraction.
If I had a beach house and could no longer have a beach house, I'd leave the state.
Yes. Or you would move to one of the 8,000 other beach houses that are not in this "almost no public access" areas. I think you would be a bit (or quite) annoyed that you had to move a half-mile above or below where you wanted. But heartbroken enough to move out of state? Taking your ball and going home? Nah...sounds like typical Dr Ed hyperbole.
Dr. Ed is being an all-talk blowhard as usual. The guy can’t even muster the courage to move out of New England.
Downside....cost.
I mean...look at the size of some of these lots. The larger ones look to be 50 feet wide. And the price range is $3 million to $15 million. Let's use your math of 20 miles. 20 miles equates to 5280 feet * 20 miles or ~100,000 feet. Divide that by a 50 foot wide lot*, and you're looking at 2122 lots. (*Keep in mind, 50 feet was on the larger end, many were smaller). Multiply that by 3 million as a low end estimate, and you're looking at $6.3 Billion in eminent domain costs. Low end estimate, and that doesn't include the likely lawsuits from motivated homeowners.
That's ~50% of LA's city annual budget. (Yes, I know it's not in LA technically). Meanwhile, you've got LA cutting tens of millions (not billions) from it's Fire budgets due to lack of funds. Meanwhile you have the public beaches at Topanga and Malibu, not to mention Will Rogers and Santa Monica... Which to be honest are wider, nicer beaches, rather than a narrow strip 50 feet deep...at low tide.
I mean, how many of LA's residents are going to drive 40+ minutes to a strip at 20920 Pacific Coast Hwy, when they could go to Santa Monica or Venice or Playa de Rey which are all closer, with better facilities, with lifeguards and a nice deep beach?
Seems like this is a vanity project that would cost billions, and not really benefit anyone except a few people who like isolated beaches and have the time and money to enjoy them...but can't quite afford their own beach-side house.
You misunderstand my point. (Quite possibly I did a poor job writing it out.)
I am NOT suggesting that we acquire by ED *all* the houses along PCH. Nothing remotely like that. First off, I'm talking ONLY about destroyed homes. There are huge swaths where each home is untouched. Some parts of PCH where pretty much all the homes are destroyed. And some stretches where some burned down and some were fine. I think it would be dumb to put up 2,000 parking lots. 🙂
But a dozen parking lots, spread out along a 3 or 4 or 5 mile stretch? I'd have a few restaurants and bars put in, to add to the tax revenue that would be lost to the ED of homes. What I'm suggesting would be really limited in scope. Maybe 20 properties, or maybe 50 at most, out of your calculation of 2,000+ lots. That seems pretty limited in raw numbers and in percentage.
"The city and/or state should acquire many of these lots via eminent domain, and fully compensate the owners. "
Like that ever happens. The whole point of eminent domain is to NOT fully compensate the owners.
Oh, and why didn't they have the insurance? State insurance price controls, that prohibited the insurance companies from raising rates to agree with risk.
So, just the usual statist proposal that the state take advantage of a problem it caused itself.
That land is very expensive, but much less so without the homes that have burned to the ground.
Once in a lifetime opportunity for a government (local, state, or even federal) to swoop in and ED it. Turn in into a lovely dog park or a strip mall to service the tourists that will flock there for the sunsets.
Whatever happens won't happen quickly. Lawsuits galore.
If they're targeting uninsured homes, they probably could find willing sellers without the use of eminent domain if they offer what the market value was prior to the fire.
Only Ilya would say something this asinine.
The same number of single family homes will house the same number of families -- it's 2nd grade math.
The code needs to ban wooden framing and shingled roofs.
Like the cities that burned did...
The codes need to be stricter -- as the LAFD argued after the Bel Air fire -- in 1961. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxnC1WW95XE
They has dry hydrants back then -- and had comments about infrastructure back then.
And the City must immediately issue demolition permits. In the past CA cities wait a year+ to do this. Gotta extract max property tax revenue.
The one thing I was glad to hear from Mayor Bass was her pledge that LA would streamline all the permitting, from demo to new construction. (Yes, I know; we'll see if that actually does happen. I'm skeptical too.)
The only thing one should be happy to hear from Mayor Bass is is that she would be resigning immediately.
I hope Rockford was able to save his trailer
The Town of Kennebunk, Maine has a large town forest because lots of people just abandoned their property after the 1947 fire, some died in it.
That might happen here...
No zoning, no permits, no insurance.
Let them run wild with it.
I wouldn't insure it.
Sigh...
Let's not do any zoning! Let's put up a large apartment building on a 2 lane road that has no other access point for miles in any direction? Whatever could go wrong? And let's put up a few other apartment buildings too.
Oh, we need to evacuate the entire apartment buildings, all 1000 residents... On the single 2 lane road. With a fire coming. Oh, and the nearby apartment buildings, each had another 1000 residents. Gosh...there was traffic, and we couldn't get everyone out. Turns out the road couldn't handle 20,000 people in an emergency. So many people died...
But at least we didn't have zoning!
Right, because that's what smart investors do with their own money, build large apartment buildings on 2 lane roads with no access for miles and miles.
Then they put a Home Depot right next door, and next to that, an airplane factory and associated airport with two mile long runways.
Because that's what smart rich people do, and only government can prevent that.
I think Armchair has been to Texas and Oklahoma recently. That is almost exactly how our suburbs and shopping/business districts are being built now.
For example my hometown has turned its most valuable commercial district into an areas accessible by only three two lane exits clumped into the start and end of a four mile stretch of road. Sorry, I forgot to mention the access points are one way.
As the LAFD spokesthing said, "if they put themselves in a position where I have to rescue them then they made a poor choice"
I think the solution is to allow unlimited immigration, especially of unassimilable third world peoples. According to Somin, that fixes all problems.
I suppose that "rebuilding" LA could be done. But does it follow necessarily that it should be done? I suspect that a zillion rebuilding plans will be put forward, and I feel certain that almost all of those would work to the advantage of the real estate industry, the construction industry, the contractor industry, the insurance industry, and the wealthy. When the fires are put out around LA, the money wars will begin.
All of that will happen in real time, and those who vie for position now will have much more influence than those who care to look at the future--LA 2030, LA 2040, etc. I suppose people feel brave, and like to be seen as brave, when they pitch in, fight the good fight, stay the course, and "Rebuild, baby, Rebuild!" Meanwhile there are thoughtful people who say, "We should explore options that encourage rebuilding, certainly, but we should avoid any that will cost us too many lives and dollars 5 and 10 years from now."
A huge part of the problem is that there are too many people living in regions like California and Florida that are at high risk of natural disasters (wildfires, hurricanes) and having insufficient critical resources (water; oops, too much water!). Instead of rebuilding atop the ashes (as did our ancient ancestors, over and over again, at Jericho and Troy), LA residents could be encouraged/enticed to live somewhere else. That would be very expensive, but it could be even more expensive to encourage in situ rebuilding that would be at high risk of destruction in the near future. What then? Plan to rebuild once again when the costs would be higher than they are now?
The other huge part of the problem is climate change. Everybody knows that. But the political sound and fury will prevent any widely acceptable progress in this area. They will also make the arguments about disasters, recoveries, and money ten times more poisonous than they have to be.
People OWN that land. Shouldn't they get to decide for themselves if they rebuild?
Only if they're doing so entirely with their own money, including the cost of protecting those homes from disasters.
Look, I'm fine with saying that building codes in areas subject to natural disasters should require homes be built resistant to those natural disasters. I'm fine with insurance companies getting to price insurance according to actual risks.
What I'm not fine with is what's proposed, which is to tell people who own land that had homes on it that they can't rebuild at all.
These people were paying for protection from disasters, by the way. They just didn't get what they'd paid for.
Shouldn't they get to decide for themselves if they rebuild?
Sure. Right after passage of a, "No Relief – No Insurance," law, to deny temptation to socialize nationwide the next round of private losses.
You know why the so-called, "Sun Belt," has lately proved so popular? Not because it is inherently inexpensive to live there. Just the opposite.
It is so inherently expensive to live in the Sun Belt that it took a long time, a lot of technical innovation, costly engineering inputs, and real estate-related jiggery-pokery to make that region economically habitable at all. So real estate values within it lagged for many decades, and eventually made a mess look like a bargain.
Prior to those adjustments, the whole Sun Belt regional economy had run its unpromising economic course for centuries, on the basis of a caste system. That empowered a tiny ruling elite to impose on others the losses inherent in settling under such marginally habitable conditions. Opportunity to suffer those losses was for a few voluntary, and for most notoriously involuntary.
While the Sun Belt theme of servitude played continuously, variations were rung down with a virtuosity to rival Mozart's: indentured servitude; hacienda-based feudalism; outright slavery; Indian reservation exploitation; Jim Crow; the Southern Strategy, and lately, "Get back in your lane, black people."
Before all that got tuned up and working, circa the late-50s, Sun Belt real estate values languished behind the rest of the nation—where easier living conditions much earlier enabled at least marginally better alternatives to forced exploitation of labor.
Thus, the better-favored northern areas increased in value. The future Sun Belt areas lagged. Eventually that contrast became so notorious it inspired what looked at first glance like a Sun Belt boom—but it turned out in practice to be a boom founded more in desperation than in hope.
South-bound migrants began to pull up stakes in the north only after otherwise successful-looking economic policies served up price increases too many northern residents could no longer keep up with. They chose instead to flee, and accept lower wages to do it. That, at the same time, cut them off from ready access to a critically necessary class of economic goods which continued to be priced expensively, and nationally—such as top-quality medical care, and access to prestigious graduate education.
Thus, inequalities inherent in national economic policies proved almost as destructive in the North as challenging living conditions did in the South. But the Sun Belt continued to suffer both disadvantages together, to pit against a North with a more-expensive standard of living overall, mixed with stubborn blight in rust belt regions.
Against that backdrop of change, and widespread sub-optimal results, it is just now dawning that the habitability-inducing processes utilized to get the Sun Belt going economically did not deliver permanent improvement. Mere maintenance will evidently require an endless cycle of costly repetitions, while previous investments depreciate or get destroyed, and inherent livability not only fails to improve, but actually gets worse.
Even if underlying conditions stayed constant—as appears not to be the case—in such a marginally habitable region, just adding more people makes livability worse for all . . . except, of course, as previously, for a tiny ruling elite.
It is doubtful the Sun Belt region has capacity to pay such an endlessly renewable bill on its own. It is certain that it does not want to pay it. But as this nation has seen to its cost, where marginal living conditions encourage elite political rule, elite rulers will do whatever politics permits to make the entire nation serve their politics, support their rule, and alleviate their local economic burdens.
To put the latest economic crises, north and south, in broader context would prove a wiser approach. Why at this moment succumb to calls for national unity, to support heroically-described repetitions of past mistakes?
Long term, to support more of what has been happening across the Sun Belt, and in Los Angeles, and with the policies which created the northern Rust Belts, will make the nation poorer, not richer. It will narrow policy opportunities, not broaden them. And the right time to focus on such questions is surely now, while the issues remain salient, and their interactions apparent. It is not later, after attention recedes.
Before deciding on new policies, let's see a forthright presentation to inform real estate owners in all 50 states about the re-insurance industry. A political movement to end cross-subsidization between states might encourage rational real estate purchasing decisions in super-hazardous areas. Or it might not.
If good data on the subject exists, the public-facing folks in insurance companies I consult seem in the dark about it. Not that they aren't quick to use re-insurance costs as an excuse for startling rate hikes. It seems just explanatory specifics that they don't know how to find.
Let me tell you what is going to happen
1. A fleet of Winnebagos is going to descend on the empty plots of land. These rich areas are going to turn into a massive homeless encampment. They will be very difficult to dislodge and those that still have homes in the area will get to experience what those in downtown LA have had to endure for years.
2. Permits will take years. There will be endlessly environmental studies before they can lay a brick in there plots of land. Those that have funded the Democrats will experience the thicket of regulations and arbitrary & capacious bureaucrats they have created. Some will get red pilled, most will just move elsewhere
3. A lot of these people will never get permission to rebuild. The planning commissions for these areas don’t want environmental homes. They want no homes. The new climate change laws put in place after the houses were originally built will make rebuilding impossible
4. There will be no eminent domain. The state wouldn’t take their land. It will just make impossible to use.
Hypothetical outrage is just the worst, amirite?
Until fools are not in government power, that nice idea is maybe the
next flower the evil bee will head to. If you have fine leaders the solutions will come.
There's another possible reaction to this opportunity. You're supposed to have 100 feet of low flammability surroundings in fire-prone areas, rising to 200 feet in windy areas. Four acre zoning could allow for safe rebuilding.