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I bang this drum all the time, but you are the first other person I've seen state it online. If we stop subsidizing the foothills by creating urban utility dis

I bang this drum all the time, but you are the first other person I've seen state it online. If we stop subsidizing the foothills by creating urban utility districts it would solve the PG&E problem. We would have a new problem of causing a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas without some kind of off-grid program. Long term I think this is the only sane way forward though.

thatguy0900 2y ago
Long term I don't see how it's possible to continue to let people live in areas so fire prone that insurance cannot be done, it seems to me. Unless you want to live in a concrete castle or something
- mindslight 2y ago
  Construction itself isn't that expensive. It's certainly possible to self insure and accept that living in an area prone to fires means your house might burn down. It goes against the prevailing culture of the ever-growing housing bubble, but financialization has to hit its limits some time.
  - mauvehaus 2y ago
    Self-insuring is probably not going to fly with your mortgage lender. If nobody can get a mortgage, and everyone has to self-insure, it's going to 1) drive down housing prices (fewer cash buyers) and 2) guarantee that only people of pretty substantial means can afford to live there (even with lower prices, most people can't come up with a cash payment for a house).
    - coryrc 2y ago
      If prices were sane, anybody who bought a house ten years ago currently has enough equity to pay cash.
    - mindslight 2y ago
      I did acknowledge it would go against housing bubble culture. It certainly wouldn't be a financially prudent way of obtaining primary shelter, but rather for vacation homes or whatnot. We're mostly talking about rural properties in the woods, right?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- trinsic2 2y ago
  You mean like a brick building? like how structures were originally built? Seems like a good idea to me for house to be made of stone in high fire related areas. Obviously the cost would be astronomical.
  - arrosenberg 2y ago
    Brick buildings don't do well with earthquakes. California also happens to sit on a major, active fault line. While it is technically possible to make a brick or stone building earthquake-proof, I would imagine it's cost prohibitive for large scale single-family housing projects. Apartment towers are already built with a multistory steel-reinforced concrete base that is built to withstand earthquakes, but it would increase costs significantly to build to the top like that.
abeppu 2y ago
> We would have a new problem of causing a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas without some kind of off-grid program. But people in those areas are likely to be able to benefit from solar, so maybe being "off the grid" in the sense of not having long runs of power lines surrounded by trees to your house in the country is reasonable, and perhaps also cheaper for those rural residents anyway?
marssaxman 2y ago
> a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas That sounds like more of a solution than a problem: those places are going to burn, so it's better that people stop living there.
- UncleEntity 2y ago
  Ironically, if they just let them naturally burn in the first place there wouldn't be even a fraction of damage caused by these modern wildfires.
  - Qwertious 2y ago
    IIRC it's a funding problem - controlled burns require a ton of manpower to control, and the longer since the last burn, the harder it is to control.

thatguy0900 2y ago

Long term I don't see how it's possible to continue to let people live in areas so fire prone that insurance cannot be done, it seems to me. Unless you want to live in a concrete castle or something

mindslight 2y ago
Construction itself isn't that expensive. It's certainly possible to self insure and accept that living in an area prone to fires means your house might burn down. It goes against the prevailing culture of the ever-growing housing bubble, but financialization has to hit its limits some time.
- mauvehaus 2y ago
  Self-insuring is probably not going to fly with your mortgage lender. If nobody can get a mortgage, and everyone has to self-insure, it's going to 1) drive down housing prices (fewer cash buyers) and 2) guarantee that only people of pretty substantial means can afford to live there (even with lower prices, most people can't come up with a cash payment for a house).
  - coryrc 2y ago
    If prices were sane, anybody who bought a house ten years ago currently has enough equity to pay cash.
  - mindslight 2y ago
    I did acknowledge it would go against housing bubble culture. It certainly wouldn't be a financially prudent way of obtaining primary shelter, but rather for vacation homes or whatnot. We're mostly talking about rural properties in the woods, right?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
trinsic2 2y ago
You mean like a brick building? like how structures were originally built? Seems like a good idea to me for house to be made of stone in high fire related areas. Obviously the cost would be astronomical.
- arrosenberg 2y ago
  Brick buildings don't do well with earthquakes. California also happens to sit on a major, active fault line. While it is technically possible to make a brick or stone building earthquake-proof, I would imagine it's cost prohibitive for large scale single-family housing projects. Apartment towers are already built with a multistory steel-reinforced concrete base that is built to withstand earthquakes, but it would increase costs significantly to build to the top like that.

abeppu 2y ago

> We would have a new problem of causing a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas without some kind of off-grid program. But people in those areas are likely to be able to benefit from solar, so maybe being "off the grid" in the sense of not having long runs of power lines surrounded by trees to your house in the country is reasonable, and perhaps also cheaper for those rural residents anyway?

marssaxman 2y ago

> a ton of people to be unable to continue living in those areas That sounds like more of a solution than a problem: those places are going to burn, so it's better that people stop living there.

UncleEntity 2y ago
Ironically, if they just let them naturally burn in the first place there wouldn't be even a fraction of damage caused by these modern wildfires.
- Qwertious 2y ago
  IIRC it's a funding problem - controlled burns require a ton of manpower to control, and the longer since the last burn, the harder it is to control.