California Fires Fuel Housing Crisis

There was a 1 percent housing vacancy rate in Santa Rosa, Calif., before their recent fires. Now 10K households are without a place to call home. One highlight is the fact that individual businesses and organizations have been hit hard, see this, "One industry that’s been impacted up and down the economic ladder is health care. At the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital, and affiliated clinics run by Saint Joseph Health, 152 staff lost their homes, including more than 50 physicians."

When you have that much impact to families of your workers, it can be terrifically disruptive to trying to provide services based on your mission. The fact that the hospital above is working on the housing issue with their workers is a smart move. They will also need to ramp up the employee mental health services. Disasters put tremendous stress on the psyches of everyone involved.

See the entire PBS article here, California housing shortage adds stress for now-homeless fire victims.

It will take many years to resolve this housing shortage, and it is sure to redefine the demographics of the community. Rebuilding to updated building codes is a good thing and not something to be ignored. There will be fires again in the future of those new houses that will likely stand for more than 100 years.