Some of the nation’s major insurance companies have stopped issuing homeowners policies for many households in California that are considered “at high risk of fire.” Many homeowners are left turning to specialty insurance, which can cost “about twice as much as a standard policy.”
According to RFF’s Sheila Olmstead of the University of Texas at Austin and Carolyn Kousky, “Mother Nature isn’t the sole culprit for [the] billion-dollar disasters.” They write: “Certain public policies potentially are leading to too much development in some places we know are dangerous. . . . US wildfire suppression, for example, is largely funded by federal and state taxpayers, not homeowners in fire-prone places, creating an implicit incentive to develop in these areas.”
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