WILDFIRE VICTIMS MAY HAVE TO MOVE
The Bay Area already had high housing prices. The wildfires will make it worse and some residents may have to start over somewhere else.
Even before fire wiped out the home she rented for 17 years, Suzanne Finzell had thought about leaving this city on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area because of rising prices. A spike in housing and other living costs had driven her friends to Nevada and Oregon.
Now Finzell wonders if that will be her fate too, as the wildfires that charred California wine country send thousands of people who lost their homes scrambling for new places to live in one of the nation’s tightest and most expensive housing markets.
“My generation heads into retirement with no chance of living in the places we grew up,” Finzell, 62, said.
Meanwhile, authorities reported more progress against the flames. The deputy chief of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said Wednesday that crews had stopped the movement of all fires. At least 42 people died and 6,000 homes were lost.
The flames were especially devastating in Sonoma and Napa counties on the northern edge of the Bay Area. In San Francisco, an average one-bedroom apartment rents for more than $3,000 a month, and the median home price is about $1.5 million.
Before the fires, the rental vacancy rate was 1 percent in Santa Rosa and 3 percent in Sonoma County. Then the city lost an estimated 5 percent of its housing stock to the flames.
“We had a housing crisis before the fires,” Mayor Chris Coursey said.
Housing for displaced families is “going to be a really big challenge,” said Ana Lugo, president of the North Bay Organizing Project, an organization that advocates for affordable housing in Sonoma County.