By Hannah Merickel, Sustainability and Resilience Policy Fellow at SPUR, August 17, 2026
Republished with permission from SPUR.
As wildfire risks rise and insurance premiums climb sharply in California, state lawmakers have introduced numerous bills aimed at helping homeowners finance “home hardening” upgrades—retrofits such as fire-resistant roofs, vents, windows, and siding that can cut wildfire losses by roughly half, especially when done at the neighborhood scale.
The high upfront costs of these improvements (ranging from a few thousand dollars to over $100,000) remain a major barrier. Between 2023 and 2026, legislators proposed 16 bills offering tax credits or exemptions, insurance incentives, grants, and loan programs. Most of the tax-credit proposals died amid budget concerns. Two measures did pass and become law: AB 1 (Connolly), which requires insurers to consider wildfire mitigation measures, and AB 888 (Calderon), which creates the California Safe Homes Grant Program, though it still lacks full funding for grants.
Loan programs show more promise for scalability. SPUR is currently supporting SB 894 (Allen), which would establish a statewide revolving wildfire-resilience loan fund similar to the state’s existing GoGreen energy-efficiency financing model. The bill has already passed the Senate unanimously and faces no registered opposition.
Merickel notes that effective risk reduction works best when communities act together, and that sustained, well-designed financing will be essential to improve both housing resilience and insurance availability. SPUR plans to release further research and recommendations on the topic in early 2027.