Nor have they communicated a cohesive philosophy about mitigating the current and future development risks linked to climate change.

The problem is Newsom and his administration have required little oversight of where all this housing is being built. Flood insurance typically has to be purchased separately.Ĭalifornia Rebuild | Reburn: Should we be rebuilding tiny, vulnerable Northern California towns?Ĭalifornia needs a plan for how and where we will live in the future. State Farm, California’s largest home insurer, announced in May that it would no longer take on new residential and commercial properties, a devastating blow that will be felt most keenly in fire-prone areas where coverage is costly and hard to find. It’s a big part of the reason several insurance companies are refusing to issue new policies and otherwise limiting their financial exposure in the Golden State. Our most vulnerable communities often lie in our most vulnerable regions: mountains marred by years of unprecedented wildfires, or Central Valley farm fields drowned in record rains and now epic snowmelt. But if it does, and if families like the Bedollas do rebuild, we can be certain that the town and its beleaguered residents will remain vulnerable to future floods.įrom Planada to Paradise, the urgent fallout of climate change on California’s already terrible housing crisis is undeniable - except perhaps to our state politicians who pay it lip service but have dodged the big questions about where we should build and rebuild in the future. In a community of mostly undocumented farmworkers, no one is sure whether Planada will recover. But after a few months, Bedolla already felt as if the rest of California had “forgotten this happened.” “It was so quick,” she told our Times colleague Jessica Garrison, recalling the speed with which the water rushed into her town and then her home, destroying almost everything and displacing hundreds. Back in January, on a dark night of pelting rain, Erica Lopez Bedolla had only minutes to evacuate her family from the impoverished Central Valley town of Planada after a levee broke.

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