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CA's
expensive homes become dirt cheap
California
is once again making national news because,
much to everyone's surprise, the state has
weather. This deep amazement is centered
around torrential rain and the occasional
story of a collapsing hillside home.
It
is increasingly unimpressive, however, to
read about multi-million dollar homes becoming
part of a chunky mudslide. People need to
stop building in geologically dangerous
areas. It's monumentally unfair for everybody
who has homeowner's insurance to pay an
increased premium so somebody in Malibu
can have a cliffside ocean view.
Floods,
droughts, earthquakes, wildfires and mudslides
are part of California's palette of natural
disasters. This is not new, nor should it
be surprising. For decades, this state has
dealt with droughts that lead to wildfires
and mudslides that are caused by subsequent
rains. Erosion is also part of the California
landscape. Surprising though it may be,
erosion has been a part of life for billions
of years. Things break down.
The
run-up to a mudslide begins when hillside
vegetation shrivels up and dies from lack
of water. A carelessly thrown cigarette
can turn the newly formed tinder into a
roaring blaze. After the blaze, the scorched
ground is no longer capable of sloughing
off torrential rain. Instead, a large water-logged
chunk of land will slide off the hill. This
mass of earth destroys anything in its path.
Ocean
cliffsides collapse when waves eat away
the bottom of the cliff. The newly formed
overhang falls into a briney grave because
of its weight. When a house is sitting on
top, the house goes into the water along
with the land under it.
This
has been going on for years. Everybody knows
about it. Insurance companies deal with
the problem with "risk-appropriate
premiums." But the entire cost is not
passed along to the fools on the hill. If
it was, they would be paying through the
nose.
Insuring
a multi-million dollar house on the cliffs
of Malibu is a tad more expensive than insuring
that same house on Naples Island in Long
Beach. It's more likely to be damaged or
collapse. The insurance premium is higher,
but the added cost of insuring all the houses
in such an area is, in part, spread out
among all policy-holders.
It's
all very well and good to share the pain,
but when people make a conscious decision
to move to an area where houses have been
falling into the water for years, or hills
have previously collapsed onto neighborhoods,
let the buyer beware.
People
are more than welcome to live wherever they
want. But when somebody moves into a dangerous
location and then expects to have the rest
of society carry any of the cost of that
danger, that's asking too much.
Every
location has inherent dangers. The entire
Los Angeles basin is at risk of flooding.
But something as obvious and localized as
collapsing cliffs or fire and mudslide-prone
hillsides are problems that have to be avoided.
Otherwise, the costs needed to be exclusively
borne by the people who chose to live there.
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