The reaction when houses burn should be "should have built using fireproof materials" or "that happens when you live in a forest" not "here's billions of dollars from more-responsible people".
https://www.capradio.org/articles/2021/06/23/newsom-misled-t....
By fueling 'climate change' anxieties the California supermajority and the monopoly power company PG&E mask their deadly incompetence with massive media spends, stoking fear and with the inevitable result of insurance being withdrawn and businesses leaving the state.
It's a shame there's no credible political opposition in the state, the infrastructure is crumbling, street dwelling drug tourist visitors are out of control, we are not on top of water storage during the heavy rain cycle years that occur every 5-7 years.
The adjustment in cost is simply facing the reality that more homes are burning nowadays. They pay for your flood insurance as much as you pay for their fire insurance, and their premiums are moving up faster than yours..
Today them, tomorrow you
The purpose of insurance is to socialize losses. But if a few participants in the insurance pool engage in outsized risky behavior, that’s not fair to the rest of the pool that chose significantly less risky decisions.
You may have not seen what a forest fire, like those NorCal gets, does to a house. The insurance companies will have to pay just as much to replace a yard with some scorched brick in it where a family of four used to live, with their cars, possessions, appliances, etc. The house is ruined whether the walls survived the 1000 degree heat or not, because everything in and around it is lost.
Now there's certainly a class of old wooden houses on grasslands that are vulnerable to becoming infernos from stray sparks.
Assuming they weren't always that vulnerable (and that's what we're talking about here: new risk), I'm just not clear who would pay for it to be torn down and rebuild with (magical?) bricks. Did the homeowners have to do periodic risk assessments and decide when to do this? Who would pay for it? What's their motivation? They have insurance after all. They'll just rebuild.
If the insurance companies were caught off guard by this, how is a home owner to know and preemptively rebuild?
If you exclude everything in an area with those issues, there will be very little left to insure in California.