Homeowners in high-risk wildfire areas in the West, like the one around Yosemite National Park that has seen a fire rage through 200 square miles in the last several days, don’t have access to traditional fire insurance. Instead, some of them tap into statewide pools of money under a state’s “Fair Plan” — which every insurance company in the 31 states it exists in contributes to — that help the affected homeowners rebuild their fire-damaged homes.
Only 1.25 percent of the California market is covered by its Fair Plan, but a large percentage of that segment lives in the heavily populated Santa Monica Mountains in Southern California.
“(With the Fair Plan) we are incentivizing the capacity of people to move up into these mountains to live in these canyons and to enjoy that gorgeous real estate” with the risks paid by everyone, environmental policy professor Char Miller told Marketplace.
Source: Marketplace
