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Incentivizing Your Fire Hardening Efforts!

Incentivizing Your Fire Hardening Efforts!

According to an article from CalMatters, California Insurance Comissioner, Ricardo Lara, is convening a hearing today (December 10th) with fire and home hardening experts and wildfire catastrophe modeling experts to discuss incentivizing home hardening in order to increase insurance availability and affordability.

At this point in time, we, as a state, lack incentives to encourage homeowners to "fire harden" their home. Fire Hardening is a term that you've probably heard in recent years, referring to the process of preparing one's home for fire season through cleanup and extensive preparation. You can learn more about this process from Cal Fire here.

Think about your auto insurance...that "Good Driver" discount? It's an incentive for you to drive carefully and it has direct implications, enabling a discount on your premiums in exchange for a clean driving record. Why not apply this to fire hardening your home?

If you haven't heard of Firewise, you can learn a bit more about that on our blog from November of 2019, Firewise Communities: Preventative Actions for Wildfires. This program is a top contender for incentivizing our communities to connect, work together, and create more resilient neighborhoods.

We're hopeful for these renewed efforts behind making fire insurance affordable and available to our fire-prone communities. Stay tuned for updates to California's policy on this!