Returning to Paradise: Intersections of Socioeconomic Status and Housing Recovery After Wildfire

Abstract

In this thesis, I sought to understand the relationship between income and wildfire. Who lives in wildfire-prone areas, before and after a fire? How well-equipped are they to rebuild their homes and their lives? My thesis looks at the relationships between socioeconomic status and residential properties after California wildfires through the lens of Paradise’s recovery following the Camp Fire. I predicted a strong negative correlation between income pre-fire and rebuild time post-fire. I anticipated that any bottlenecks in funding processes would disproportionately impact those who were already disadvantaged.

Using permit data from Paradise, I analyzed the speed of two parts of the rebuilding process: permit acquisition and construction. To provide context on income, I conducted a preliminary analysis of Paradise’s income distribution compared to the rest of California, finding that Paradise had proportionally more low-income residents, fewer high-income residents, and higher levels of income equality. I was unable to acquire income data attributable to individual households, so I used square footage as a proxy for income in my main analysis. I expected construction for small houses would be slower due to low-income residents experiencing delays in rebuilding.

I found a trend opposite to my hypothesis: as home size increased, length of time from permit application to build completion increased with moderate correlation. Notably, while average permit approval time in Paradise was on par with averages in American West, 4.4% of completed applications took more than 100 days to approve. A likely implication is that larger builds may take longer to approve and construct due to size or complexity. While approval time generally increases along with square footage, cases with unusually long approval times are all on the lower end of the square footage spectrum. Potential reasons include: 1) resource constraints, 2) permit evaluators found issues with these plans, or 3) most datapoints were already on the lower end of the spectrum. In-progress homes were generally larger than constructed homes, potentially implying that: 1) the pre-permit process takes longer for larger homes, 2) those who waited longer to rebuild want larger homes, or 3) those with greater urgency to return to permanent housing planned smaller builds to fit their financial constraints.

I supplemented quantitative analysis by evaluating barriers to rebuilding. I found that complications which could affect residents before permit acquisition, such as size restrictions and rising building costs, could have caused underrepresentation of certain groups in the rebuilding process and thus my data (ie. those who were under-insured.) Financial delays caused by contractor fraud and lawsuit and insurance payouts were likely to have affected rebuilding speed and start dates as well.

At the convergence of these findings was a strong likelihood that most barriers to rebuilding impacted residents before permit application submissions began. With this in mind, I recommended that towns that have suffered from wildfire-related property loss build to the extent necessary to support citizens and ensure equity in the rebuilding process, with the appropriate level of development determined by a new cost-benefit framework that I proposed be created by state and federal researchers in collaboration with towns and local nonprofits. I suggested that towns consolidate rebuild resources on one website with a digitized resident check-in process which would assist rebuilding residents prior to permit submission. I recommended that towns buy lumber and other raw materials in bulk to subsidize costs for low-income residents and remove minimum square footage restrictions on home rebuilds for fire survivors. The participation and support of residents and the funding and support from the state and federal agencies are crucial to the success of each of these efforts.