Column: State Farm is right. California can’t keep building housing in high-risk places
Back in January, on a dark night of pelting rain, Erica Lopez Bedolla had only minutes to evacuate her family from the impoverished Central Valley town of Planada after a levee broke.
“It was so quick,” she told our Los Angeles Times colleague Jessica Garrison, recalling the speed with which the water rushed into her town and then her home, destroying almost everything and displacing hundreds. But after a few months, Bedolla already felt as if the rest of California had “forgotten this happened.”
In a community of mostly undocumented farmworkers, no one is sure whether Planada will recover. But if it does, and if families like the Bedollas do rebuild, we can be certain that the town and its beleaguered residents will remain vulnerable to future floods.
From Planada to Paradise, the urgent fallout of climate change on California’s already terrible housing crisis is undeniable — except perhaps to our state politicians who pay it lip service but have dodged the big questions about where we should build and rebuild in the future.
