Why We Are Taking This On
The January 7, 2025 Palisades Fire destroyed 305 of the 473 homes in Sunset Mesa. Whether you are rebuilding, rehabilitating a home that survived, or planning to return, one question comes up more than any other: how do we protect our homes, and how do we get them insured at a fair price?
Where things stand now
Before the fire, most Sunset Mesa homeowners relied on the California FAIR Plan or had limited private insurance options. FAIR Plan coverage can be considerably more expensive and often carries lower coverage limits. Depending on a property's location and wildfire risk score, FAIR Plan premiums may rise by as much as 50% in the next year or two.
Insurance decisions vary by carrier, policy, property, state rules, underwriting requirements, and market conditions, so it is still too early to predict what the private insurance market will look like one, two, or three years from now.
What is in our control
Sunset Mesa sits at the wildland-urban interface, which insurers regard as one of the highest-risk settings. We also live beside a state park whose priority is conserving wild land. We believe we need to work with the State Park System to increase its focus on the fire safety of homes bordering its parks, and to work more closely with L.A. County so the Santa Monica Mountains have the strongest possible fire-management and response plans and adequate funding. We intend to pursue both efforts, independently and with neighboring communities. These efforts will take time, and the results are largely beyond our control.
What we can do now is pursue science-based, verifiable mitigation so our homes and neighborhood are better prepared before the next wildfire. We can reduce known vulnerabilities and provide a credible, documented risk-reduction signal that homeowners can share with insurers, agents, lenders, and future buyers.
A voluntary effort
The SMPOA has no legal authority to require homeowners to meet any fire-mitigation requirements. This must be a voluntary community effort, and it will succeed only if enough homeowners choose to participate and maintain the required conditions over time.
Each homeowner is free to follow whatever guidelines they want, or none at all. But if we want to become one of the best-prepared and most insurable neighborhoods on this coastline, and we think that goal is within reach, then enough of us must choose to do the work.
SMPOA's immediate goals
- Help every homeowner understand the wildfire vulnerabilities that can be reduced through building materials, defensible space, and maintenance, using our emails, newsletter, website, and town hall meetings.
- Encourage voluntary participation in IBHS Wildfire Prepared Home, where appropriate, so individual homes can pursue a recognized designation.
- Explore whether Sunset Mesa can pursue Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood on a block-by-block or neighborhood-wide basis.
- Support stronger rebuilding and repair decisions now, especially where choices about roofs, vents, siding, windows, decks, fencing, accessory structures, and landscaping are being made.
- Help homeowners identify possible funding options for mitigation work as public or private programs become available.