As Climate Warms Santa Cruz County Thinks Home Rebuilding

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(TNS) -As many in Santa Cruz County can attest, surviving a natural disaster is one thing, but recovering from it is something else entirely.

More than three years after the CZU Lightning Complex Fire destroyed approximately 911 homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains , only 236 rebuilding permits are in process, 175 have been issued or are ready for pick up and only 38 have completed building, according to the county’s recovery permit center dashboard as of Friday. About 45% of CZU fire victims that still own their property have not initiated any action to rebuild.

More recently, 3,135 home owners in the county applied for individual damage assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency after devastating storm activity in January and 1,554 more did the same after the barrage continued in March.

Now, local leaders say the number of impacted homes and people displaced will only grow as the climate crisis intensifies and they have set their sights on exploring a new tactic they think could both aid in the recovery effort and help residents prepare for the future.

At its meeting Tuesday, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors directed its staff to begin an outreach effort aimed at better understanding obstacles to rebuilding and to gauge interest in a potential Transfer of Development Rights Program. For victims of natural disasters, the program would enable rebuilding on a different site than the one that was destroyed.

“When natural disasters destroy peoples homes, how do you rebuild in places that are safer?” said Santa Cruz County Supervisor Manu Koenig , who sponsored the item alongside Supervisor Bruce McPherson . “This survey is just a first step to see if it is something people would be interested in and if we can use it here and if it’s worth further investment in creating this policy resource.”

How it works

According to the county staff report, a transfer or development rights has two sites:

—Sending site: The property with certain restrictions or development rights that the local government aims to preserve such as agricultural land, historic districts or areas that need protection from excessive development. In the prospective county program, this site would be the property that has been damaged, destroyed or is at risk from a natural disaster.

—Receiving site: This is a property where increased development is permitted or desired by the local government such as an area within the urban services line that is not within a federally-designated floodway.

The transfer process would allow the sending site owner to sell their development rights to a developer or landowner with a property in the receiving area. In addition to specifications that incentivize including a residence for the disaster victim, the developer would then be permitted to increase the density or intensity of a receiving site development beyond what is typically allowed. A conservation easement would be put on the sending site to prevent future building at the disaster-prone area.

Koenig told the Sentinel that transfer of development rights have been used across the country, but this potential county program would mark its first-ever use in the context of helping disaster victims rebuild in safer areas.

“This program is not meant to force people out of their homes and it’s not meant to prevent people from rebuilding their homes wherever they want,” said Koenig. “It’s meant to create an alternative option in a way for people to either rebuild somewhere else or capture the value of their home even if it has been destroyed.”

According to the staff report, more than half of the county’s population, or about 167,000 people, live in the Wildland Urban Interface zone which is considered to be the highest risk area for wildfire in the county. This is the highest percentage of any county in the state.

Moreover, several unincorporated parts of the county are within FEMA -designated floodways including regions near the San Lorenzo River , Soquel Creek , Corralitos/Salsipuedes Creek and coastal zones in Aptos , Rio Del Mar and East Cliff.

“We’re trying to identify ways (to) help disaster victims recover and rebuild and the transfer of development rights program might be a very good option,” said McPherson. “We look forward to having a lot of input from the public on this proposal.”

A changing climate

Santa Cruz County Office of Response, Recovery and Resilience Director Dave Reid told the Sentinel that county officials planned to meet Oct. 20 to discuss preliminary survey details, but that he tentatively hoped the process would kick off in early November.

He said creating this new tool will take significant staff time and effort, so connecting with the community to gauge level of interest is key because “the worst thing we could do is to create a tool that gives people a sense of hope and nobody uses it because it’s not actually what they want.”

Reid added that he hopes the survey goes beyond the development rights program and builds on the momentum of two previous surveys done by the county in an effort to better understand rebuilding hurdles among CZU Fire victims. But where those focused on pre-clearance issues, Reid hopes this new survey could shed a light on financial challenges such as rising building costs or skyrocketing insurance premiums. Reid thinks this economic demographic information has potential to help the county assist residents in getting financial assistance from new federal recovery programs that are in development.

“We want to talk to (everyone) and get current data on what the rate-limiting challenge is,” said Reid. “My hypothesis is that people that have not started anything at all, or who have a high hurdle to getting all three clearances, could be interested in a solution like the transfer of development rights.”

Similarly, Koenig is optimistic about the potential benefits of the program and referred to it as “the true ethos of ‘build back better,'” the phrase championed by President Joe Biden .

“Part of my reason for bringing this forward is I haven’t found another way to help people rebuild out of harm’s way … if there is one I’d love to hear it,” said Koenig. “This is really the beginning of reconciling with a changing world and a changing climate.”

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