Rebuilding Paradise: Nonprofit’s $500 ‘defensible space’ grant helps reduce residents’ insurance costs

PARADISE, Calif. (AP) — The letter from the insurance company arrived just before Brian and Morgan Gobba finally finished building their new home: Their homeowner’s policy was canceled.

The Gobbas were among the first families to return to Paradise after the 2018 camp fire killed 85 people and destroyed 90% of the homes here. Morgan’s childhood home burned down. The couple wanted to participate in the city’s recovery, but the process was exhausting and expensive.

“A lot of people don’t realize that when you rebuild in a burned-out city, you don’t start at ground zero,” said Brian Gobba, who worked as a construction estimator and is now a fire prevention inspector for the city. of paradise. “You start at minus five or ten, because you have to cut down the trees and remove a lot of things that are destroyed or poisonous.”

Faced with the prospect of not getting protection for the home they had worked so hard to build, the Gobbas last year enrolled in the California FAIR plan, the state’s insurer of last resort. Their annual premium is now $6,000.

“When you think you’re slowly making money and adding to your safety net and your bank account for your kids, your family and the future, and all of a sudden, ‘Hey, here’s a $6,000 bill,’ it really blows a hole in your mind. to live. your heart,” Gobba said.

Households across Paradise are facing an insurability crisis as companies, reeling from unprecedented wildfire losses, increase premiums and cancel policies in California. But a local foundation is trying to help these families find ways to regain eligibility for and afford private insurance by giving them money to make their properties more resilient to wildfires.

The Rebuild Paradise Foundation last month submitted applications for the Defensible Space Gravel Grant – a $500 voucher for enough gravel to create a six-foot-wide buffer around a 2,000-square-foot home, protecting the structure against vegetation or other flammable material.

The foundation hopes the vouchers will help homeowners qualify for rebates that California insurers must give to customers who take certain risk mitigation measures, including creating defensible space. After years of enduring the financial and emotional pressures of rebuilding, many fire survivors may lack the ability to make these types of modest improvements on their own, said Jen Goodlin, executive director of Rebuild Paradise.

“People are just maxed out,” she said. “The new phase of reconstruction consists of landscaping, but there are no resources to do this.”

Creating defensible space is also an important part of fire safety, said Megan Fitzgerald-McGowan, director of the National Fire Protection Association’s Firewise USA program. “When we look at how a wildfire spreads, it’s not often the big wall of flames that people think of,” she said. “It’s the little embers flying through the air.”

Those embers can set vegetation on fire, especially if it is dry and overgrown. Allowing space between vegetation and the base of the house can prevent flames and embers from reaching the structure itself.

Many new homes in Paradise have not yet been landscaped, leaving plenty of room for tall weeds to germinate in the spring and become highly flammable in the dry summer months. Gravel edging can prevent those weeds from growing, but it can be expensive and labor intensive to establish them. The voucher can be redeemed at a local rock shop and includes delivery. If an applicant cannot lay the stone themselves, volunteers will come and help.

“This idea that a little bit of funding goes a long way is what we hear all the time,” says Fitzgerald-McGowan. “Sometimes it just takes that extra step, because the costs do increase.”

Rebuild Paradise has paid out nearly $2.3 million since the fire, helping households with construction costs not covered by FEMA or insurance, such as replacing septic infrastructure or surveying lots. The foundation was just winding down its largest grant program when, just before the five-year anniversary of the fire, insurance companies began raising premiums and dropping customers.

“It kind of drove everyone crazy,” said Goodlin, whose own annual premium rose from $2,500 to $12,000. “We have built new homes that meet the highest fire safety measures, yet we get these astronomical increases.”

Since 2017, home insurance premiums in California have increased by an average of 35%. Seven of California’s 12 largest home insurers have halted or limited new business in California since 2022, saying it has become too risky to write policies in the disaster-prone state.

The state’s insurance department is working on new rules to address businesses’ concerns in exchange for writing more policies near areas prone to wildfires. These rules are expected to be ready by the end of this year.

About 150 families have signed up in the five weeks since the subsidy opened, and Goodlin said some insurance companies have even started suggesting their clients apply for the subsidy. The organization has received so much interest that it is pausing new applications while it reorganizes its processes. “We knew it would be a very popular grant program, but I don’t think we really realized how extreme it would be,” Goodlin said.

The foundation aims to help 1,000 families, but will need to raise more money to do so, which means Goodlin itself is applying for grants to expand the program. She said she even approached some insurance companies herself for donations, but none responded.

Brian Gobba applied for the grant as soon as it opened. The Rebuild Paradise Foundation had already helped him with the costs of investigating and installing a new septic system.

Without that kind of help, Gobba says, many of his neighbors would not have been able to return to Paradise. “The help from the grant money in all its small forms helps people get back to the ridge.”

Gobba, a Marine who has served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, knows how important being with people who have gone through similar experiences can be in overcoming trauma. “The people who retreated after the fire can lean on each other,” he said. “That is very good for the healing process.”

The gravel should be delivered this week. Gobba hopes that creating defensible space will not only allow them to do landscape parking in a fire-safe manner, but also get rid of the FAIR plan. “Maybe somehow we can get our premiums and our annual costs down,” he said. “It felt like he was grasping at straws, but we had to try.”

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