San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
More homes in wildfire areas
Construction increases despite risk of blazes, climate change
As of Tuesday morning, over 53,000 people were under evacuation orders in El Dorado County because of the Caldor Fire. For days or longer, they won’t know whether they’ll be returning to their homes or to smoldering ruins.
This situation will only become more common as climate change exacerbates California’s wildfire season. And despite the increased risk of living in wildfire-prone areas such as El Dorado County, home construction in these areas has continued to proceed at a steady pace.
The Chronicle analyzed U.S. census data for the areas currently under evacuation orders within El Dorado County as of Tuesday morning. We found that nearly 1,500 new housing units were built in this region from 2010 to 2020, even while the area’s overall population has declined by nearly 500 people.
The majority of the new housing units were built in South Lake Tahoe, which, like the evacuation area overall, lost a small fraction of its 21,000-plus population over the past decade — about 70 residents.
Doug Rosner, a local real estate agent affiliated with Chase International Real Estate, said wildfire risk has jacked up home insurance premiums in South Lake Tahoe over the past several years. But that risk has not yet dented housing production in the region, he said.
Rosner spoke with The Chronicle as he was evacuating South Lake Tahoe with his wife. He said that the steady pace of housing construction has been driven largely by second-home buyers and people looking to rent homes out for short-term vacationers, such as Airbnb customers.
The city and county have begun imposing strict limits on short-term vacation rentals, Rosner said, such as Measure T, an initiative that effectively banned short-term rentals within South Lake Tahoe city limits. But demand for housing has not slowed, because the pandemic brought in a whole new class of buyers: Bay Area work-fromhome transplants.
“They’re scooping up Tahoe properties because they don’t
Crews monitor the Caldor Fire near South Lake Tahoe last week. In El Dorado County, nearly 1,500 new homes were built from 2010 to 2020, the demand driven by second-home buyers, those who want vacation rental properties and Bay Area transplants.
Wildfire risk jacked up home insurance premiums in the South Lake Tahoe area, where home prices have increased by 45% since July 2020, pricing many locals out of the housing market.
go into the office much anymore,” Rosner said. “They’re fleeing the cities — San Francisco, San Jose, Silicon Valley — to be able to work from home in beautiful Lake Tahoe.”
As a result, home values in South Lake Tahoe have increased by 45% since July 2020, according to Zillow data, making homes unaffordable
for local residents. As a result, Rosner said, many have left town — perhaps the reason South Lake Tahoe’s official population has declined in the past decade, according to the census data, even while the number of homes has gone up. (Second-home owners or part-time residents are not generally counted in the city’s population figures, as the
census asks respondents to indicate their primary residences.)
“You have a housing affordability crisis in Lake Tahoe right now for local residents and local workers,” Rosner said.
Now, thanks to the Caldor Fire, the region is also experiencing the immediate impacts of the climate crisis. And
depending on the fire’s outcome, Rosner said, it’s possible that this other crisis could change the calculus that real estate agents and wouldbe homeowners make when considering South Lake Tahoe’s real estate potential.
“The whole city’s evacuated, I’m evacuated, my wife’s evacuated,” Rosner said. “I don’t know where this is all gonna end up, (but) if we have a massive loss of property in South Lake Tahoe and in the county, then the game will change.”
Methodological note: We determined the number of new housing units inside the evacuation area by identifying the number of housing units counted in the 2020 census in all census tracts that had a boundary within the evacuation area and subtracting that by the 2010 census number. Census tracts are small geographical areas that generally have a population between 1,200 and 8,000 people. This method might have led to a slight overcount or undercount of new housing since part of the area of several census tracts analyzed lie outside the evacuation area.