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Center for Biological Diversity
SB 610: Senator Wiener attacks Fire Hazard Maps as impediments to housing.
There is a new and dangerous assault on local control. Senator Wiener is not content to merely wrest zoning from cities. He is now targeting Fire Hazard Severity Zone Maps as “impediments” to housing.
SB 610 upends local considerations — and would eliminate the State Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps and familiar terms — most noticeably “ember resistant zones.” A whole new system would instead declare portions of the state “Wildfire Mitigation Areas.” There would be no comparative maps to see where changes were made.
Wiener introduced SB-610 “Fire prevention: wildfire mitigation area: defensible space: State Fire Marshal” as a “gut and amend” bill, meaning the contents were completely changed after it had already passed the Senate in an innocuous form (a proposed annual report by the chair of the State Energy Resources Commission).
The Assembly had no time to digest the language or its ramifications and it has sailed through.
Wiener bluntly states the reasons to ditch a functioning system in his SB 610 Fact Sheet:
“to keep localities from weaponizing the fire hazard mapping as anti-housing/development tools.”
“LRA (Local Responsibility Area) maps can functionally result in restrictions on growth in those areas through imposing costly building standards, increased disaster planning and mitigation requirements, or increasing home insurance premiums.”
“Local jurisdictions have the ability to misuse this process and make the majority of their community a high or very high FHSZ (Fire Hazard Severity Zone) map that could impact housing development.”
In other words, the Maps must go in order to keep cities and counties from cheating their way out of “fair share housing.”
Recognizing the threat of SB 610, The Center for Biological Diversity distilled the issues them into a letter, and immediately organized a tremendous, statewide, coordinated sign-on effort. Within the time it took for the Park Fire near Chico to explode into the 8th largest wildfire in California history, 90 organizations had signed on to the Center’s letter. At the time of this writing, several days later, the Park fire has grown to the #5 spot.
The Center’s Coalition sign-on letter is attached as a PDF, below. Here are the organizations that signed on.
It is addressed to the Governor, State Senate and Assembly leaders, and the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where it will be heard in early August.
The letter begins:
“On behalf of thousands of our members and supporters in California, the undersigned organizations are writing to express our deep concern with Senate Bill 610 (Wiener) which will fundamentally reshape California fire and housing policy and make Californians more vulnerable to wildfire. The bill would completely abolish the Fire Hazard Severity Zone maps that guide mitigation strategies and land use planning for development in fire-risk areas. The bill would also centralize all decision making in the hands of just one person: the State Fire Marshal.
"SB 610’s stated intent is to increase development in high-risk areas, and—quite shockingly—do so without existing regulations designed to protect communities. The bill’s fact sheet inappropriately dismisses such regulations as “costly building standards, increased disaster planning and mitigation requirements.”
"This proposal is directly at odds with the recommendations of the Governor’s Strike Force, which urged the state to “begin to deprioritize new development in areas of the most extreme fire risk. In turn, more urban and lower-risk regions in the state must prioritize increasing infill development and overall housing production.”
"We were therefore shocked and surprised to see this bill—which was introduced near the end of the legislative process via a “gut-and-amend” tactic—backed by the Governor’s Office.”
A wet winter’s fuel, dried by early summer, is already feeding catastrophic fires well before our hottest months. Inadequate and incurable evacuation routes are all many of us can count on in the face of explosive fire.
The State should take a hint from science and the insurance industry: some areas are destined to burn. Repeatedly.
The traumatized town of Paradise, currently under evacuation warning, has struggled for eight years to replace the 14,000 homes lost in the path of fire. It has been an arduous process; only about 2,400 units (houses and apartments) have been built so far. But Paradise still has a huge state mandate (RHNA) to contend with: build 7,179 more units by 2030 or face steep penalties. It remains to be seen how many of the 2,400 recently added units will survive the season.
Our laws should focus on protecting public safety, not preventing it. Housing density must be balanced with safety. All residents — current and future — are at risk together.
Senator Wiener’s SB 610 trivializes legitimate, visceral, life threatening concerns. Local elected leaders should retain authority to designate fire zones within their jurisdictions; the maps are a critical tool in wildfire risk reduction, and are doing their job.
Not all local leaders are concerned with allowing density in hazard areas. This past June, in a split vote, The Marin County Board of Supervisors removed lowest density protections of our most environmentally sensitive, hazardous areas — even those without roads or utility access. Why? The protections were considered “inhibitive to housing,” though it was acknowledged the move would only encourage more market rate development.
California’s punitive housing policy isn’t working, as evinced by the SANDAG video (link below) in which the cities of the San Diego area clearly describe how the system sets up all localities for failure.
Yet the State is still seeking to inflict density in areas where it is doesn't belong. The “housing crisis at all levels,” has been debunked.
There is plenty of housing for those with money. Affordably priced housing, left to the private market, doesn’t exist because it’s not profitable. Instead of stepping up with rational policy that produces subsidized affordable housing in areas that can safely accommodate growth, the state clings to its “one size fits all” “fair share” housing mandates that require every locality to grow by 15%, regardless of conditions.
Many localities — most cities and Unincorporated Marin County among them — alarmed by the huge amount of housing required by state mandates, appealed for lower numbers based on fire hazards and limited evacuation access. All were denied.
The mandates are bloated, failed audit, and the quest to site them can literally kill us. SB 610 brings us one step closer.
As the Coalition letter from the Center for Biological Diversity urges, the State should “table this bill until next year and instead engage with stakeholders on improving the state’s fire and housing policies.”
Amy Kalish is an activist fighting against overblown state housing mandates, following Marin-specific and statewide issues as they relate to housing policy. Her organization, Citizen Marin, alerts members to current issues and actions they can take. The citizenmarin.org site is a growing resource for all cities regarding issues related to state housing policy. To contact / sign up for updates, email: 1citizenmarin@gmail.com