Climate disasters are often said to be the great leveler. They do not discriminate between the rich and the poor, destroying neighborhoods, destroying communities, and turning lives upside down.
But, of course, it's not that simple.
As wildfires rage across Southern California, the class divide is as clear as ever. It's true that even the rich and famous were not immune from having their homes burn down. But it's also true that while most residents have to wait for public assistance, wealthy people have more resources to help. For example, civilian firefighters are in high demand and, in some cases, even protect individual mansions from fires.
A real estate investor appealed for help on social media, asking if anyone could contact civilian firefighters to save his home. “I will pay you any amount,” he wrote to X.
No matter how much money you have, natural disasters are relentless and losing your home is always a tragedy.
But once the fire is finally extinguished, inequality will almost certainly increase due to the class divide that is already entrenched in Los Angeles. Wealthy people can rebuild their homes and neighborhoods, but middle- and low-income people may be permanently displaced.
Studies of past California wildfires show that they accelerated gentrification. Hawaii residents have been dealing with this problem ever since wildfires devastated residential areas on the island of Maui. There have already been reports of landlords raising rents in and around Los Angeles, even though large rent increases are illegal in California during a state of emergency.
The ongoing wildfires have already destroyed more than 12,000 structures, including homes, schools and places of worship. The question for some of these communities, particularly those in low- and middle-income areas, is whether they will return or whether post-disaster gentrification will make them unrecognizable.
How wildfires drive gentrification
When a natural disaster strikes a community, home prices almost always increase. In the short term, the reason is clear. As apartments and houses have been damaged or destroyed, their number is decreasing, and rents are rising due to reduced supply.
However, as reconstruction efforts drag on, many middle- and low-income people are unable to return to their hometowns because they cannot afford it.
“One of the reasons gentrification happens is that everything becomes more expensive,” said the founder and CEO of After the Fire, a nonprofit that supports wildfire preparedness and recovery. Jennifer Gray Thompson says. One reason is high construction costs, but there are also other reasons, including landlords raising rents to take advantage of high demand and real estate investors buying up properties to convert them into short-term rentals. There is.
Rebuilding can be a time-consuming and difficult process. In late 2018, wildfires virtually destroyed the town of Paradise, California, destroying 95 percent of the buildings. Five years after the fire, only about a third of the town's pre-fire population of 27,000 has returned, and the median home price has soared from $236,000 to $440,000. . As a result, many of the fire's victims became permanent victims, and the town began to attract people from wealthy areas like the Bay Area.
“In Paradise…more than six years after the disaster, about 30 percent has been rebuilt, but the population has changed dramatically, with many of the residents elderly and completely under-resourced,” Thompson said. spoke. “In most cases, there will be significant demographic changes.”
Nicole Lambreau, a professor of urban and regional planning at California State Polytechnic State University, Pomona, has found a similar pattern. Lambreau studies wildfires and the displacement that follows, and while she points out that there is no single concrete measure of gentrification, she and her colleagues do see signs of deepening inequality after disasters. I discovered many.
“We looked at data from the American Community Survey. [in communities affected by wildfires]”And because of age-related vulnerability to wildfires, we found that disability decreased, education rates increased, renter-occupied housing decreased, and median age also decreased. ” Lambreau said. good area.
“Disasters” and “climate gentrification,” in which neighborhoods attract wealthy newcomers after natural disasters such as wildfires or hurricanes while pricing out longtime residents, are nothing new. . Many communities devastated by various storms are struggling to regain low-income residents. And while it generally has the same contours as non-disaster-related gentrification, natural disasters quickly displace significant populations and accelerate the process, as they open up more land for speculators to make money. There is a tendency to That's why in Lahaina, Hawaii, where wildfires killed more than 100 people and destroyed more than 2,000 buildings in 2023, residents are trying to raise money for a local land trust – Speculators They are buying up land ahead of time and renting or selling the houses. More affordable rates.
One notable trend that is helping to drive down prices in post-disaster communities is the influx of people looking to buy second homes. As Lambreaux and her colleagues were fielding in Paradise to assess the effects of the fire, their housing agent told them: We've noticed a trend of Bay Area residents buying second homes just a few hours away.
“In fact, when we looked at the data, we found that to be the case,” Lambreau said. “Secondary home ownership rates are increasing significantly in these areas.”
What can California do to prevent further gentrification?
Wildfires undoubtedly displace many people, but that doesn't mean all communities will follow the same pattern of gentrification in the ashes. First, Paradise was almost completely destroyed, whereas the current fires have destroyed a much smaller portion of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The LA metropolitan area may fare better than places like Paradise. Part of the reason is that the city's strong, diverse economy means people who lose their jobs in the fires are more likely to find and stay in work more easily.
“If you have a place like Santa Rosa that is part of a metropolitan area, or a place like Ventura that is very close to the Los Angeles metropolitan area, you can find alternative jobs, you can have alternative jobs for your kids. You can find a job.'' Lambreau added that these areas tend to recover faster from previous wildfires and retain much of their pre-fire population. “Conversely, we lost a lot of schools in Paradise, our main employer was an Adventist hospital, and we lost a lot because that hospital burned down and we decided not to rebuild it.”
Still, recovery efforts can be planned to minimize the potential for disaster-related gentrification, and states are already taking steps to do so.
For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to eliminate bureaucracy by halting environmental reviews so that fire-impacted areas can rebuild at a faster pace. The executive order also ensures that homeowners avoid higher property taxes after rebuilding their homes by preserving their pre-fire tax assessments.
Countries also need to ensure that funds are managed in an equitable manner. Past research has shown that wealthier, whiter communities are more likely to receive government assistance after a fire.
But in the end, California already had some of the most expensive real estate in the world. The state has missed housing production targets, and an ongoing housing shortage, exacerbated by the fires, is a major driver of gentrification. Building more housing and doubling down on population density is the key to lowering housing prices in the long run.
But wildfire victims won't be able to wait that long for home prices to fall. What the state does next and how it directs its resources will therefore be critical to enabling communities to rebuild. Ultimately, the reason natural disasters don't become a major leveler is how governments respond.
