Building to Last: Land Use and Insurability in California's Fire Country

California's next housing decisions will be made in the shadow of fire risk, and the hardest choices sit in the wildland urban interface, where development pressure, thin land use regulation, and a strained insurance market collide. Lauren Ashley Week of Reuben, Junius & Rose, LLP and Dan Veroff of Merlin Law Group examine the problem from both sides of that collision, moving between the land use framework that governs WUI development and the insurance reality that decides what can actually be built and rebuilt. On the land use side, the discussion covers the regulatory framework, the case for concentrating density near existing communities, and the argument for limiting construction in the most hazardous zones. On the insurance side, it covers the growth of the FAIR Plan, the state's Sustainable Insurance Strategy, forward-looking catastrophe modeling, and how home hardening translates into coverage and rate outcomes. Responsibly reshaping where and how California builds is the long-term path forward, yet none of it holds without an insurance market willing to write the risk. Attendees will leave with a working understanding of how land use and insurability shape each other and where the practical leverage points sit for building fire-resilient communities.

The Insurance Law Section is chaired by Stacy Monahan Tucker.

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