Senator Allen Seeks to Establish Low-Interest Loans for Home Hardening Renovations

SACRAMENTO – Few policy priorities go hand-in-hand like resilience and affordability. The benefits of increasing fire resilience, through thoughtful structural and community design, ripple beyond protecting homes and saving lives. These improvements simultaneously expand access to better, more affordable insurance policies and save public resources, infrastructure, and tax dollars.

SB 894, introduced by Senator Ben Allen (D-Pacific Palisades), hits at the heart of this policymaking intersection. It received unanimous, bipartisan support from the Senate and Assembly before it was sent to the Governor on Thursday.

“We’ve held a lot of conversations and demonstrations on how residents can make their homes safer from wildfire, but some of the renovations are too costly and out of reach for many Californians,” said Senator Allen. “It’s time to lower this financial barrier, so more of us can take the steps that have been shown to save lives and property.”

If signed into law, the bill would establish a first-in-the-nation program to provide low-interest loans for wildfire retrofitting. It’s modeled after California’s successful GoGreen energy-finance platform which provides similar state-backed loans for energy-efficient home upgrades, and has demonstrated the ability to expand access to home improvements that would otherwise be unaffordable for many working families.

The proposal arrives at the Governor’s Desk as the conversation on home hardening only grows louder. Insurance premiums continue to get more expensive due to increased fire risk, and Zone Zero regulations were recently finalized for communities most at-risk to wildfire.

“Many of us are now being asked to make expensive home hardening upgrades in order to maintain or even find homeowners insurance,” concluded Allen. “While the home improvements are shown to provide significant savings on the backend, the upfront costs are still difficult to meet. I’m grateful for my colleagues’ support on SB 894 that will meaningfully improve resilience and affordability across California.”

Governor Newsom now has until September 30 to make a decision on the bill.