[Carry_Okie]

Are the homeowners there trying to get the hillside below them cleared? Nope...it's too expensive.

That's bullcrap. The cost of vegetation management is far less than the cost of a new house and all its furnishings as you know quite well. We just hide that fact by pooling the risk statewide as you pointed out.

So, when their hillside catches fire and burns down all those expensive houses, I'll be paying the bill, not only to fight the fire, but to my insurance company in increased rates.

The question always is: Who pays for this?

It is a rhetorical question at best, considering that all the insurer in a oligopoly market has to do is to raise the rate base statewide. They get to make money in the market playing with more of your cash.

The way it ought to work is to discriminate insurance pricing based upon an independent and individual assessment of the risks involved on that unique property. That way the homeowner has to choose between the cost of maintaining that chapparal versus the cost of other risks, such as landslides. There is a full proposal for how the system should work in the last part of this section in my book.

[MineralMan]

"Are the homeowners there trying to get the hillside below them cleared? Nope...it's too expensive.

That's bullcrap. The cost of vegetation management is far less than the cost of a new house and all its furnishings as you know quite well. We just hide that fact by pooling the risk statewide as you pointed out."

I agree, of course. My point is that the developers should be clearing this stuff and passing the cost on to the buyers of those particular homes. They are not doing that, so we all end up paying for this. Of course it's cheaper to clear the brush than it is to fight a fire and pay for burned houses. But, it's not being done by those who should be paying for it.