The Brief

This first appeared in the Planet Money newsletter. You can sign up here.

Three decades ago, Nancy Wallace narrowly escaped death in what was then California's most destructive wildfire. Since then, the problem of wildfires has gotten much worse, so bad in fact that the state now faces a crisis in its market for home insurance. Solving the insurance crisis is something that's very much in Wallace's wheelhouse, and she's been developing some important ideas and tools to try to fix it.

Wallace is a professor of finance and real estate at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and she's a former adviser to the U.S. Treasury Department and Federal Reserve. She specializes in identifying and mitigating financial risks in housing markets, and she's conducted some eye-opening studies on the rising risk of wildfires. She's working with climate scientists to create forecast models that can help rescue failing insurance markets. And she's advocating for new insurance schemes and financial products that would help California homeowners retrofit their homes and lower the danger that they're destroyed by future fires.

But Wallace's expertise in this area is more than just academic. It's informed by her horrifying experience.

A story that begins with fire

On Oct. 20, 1991, Wallace smelled smoke wafting in the air outside of her home, high in the hills above Oakland, Calif. The day before, a fire had broken out down her street. Firefighters had put it out, but she was now on high alert. The air felt dry. The wind was picking up. And the smell of smoke scared her.

Wallace grew up in Michigan, never experiencing the danger of wildfires. She and her husband had moved to Oakland a few years earlier when she got a job at nearby UC Berkeley. They scraped together every penny they could and bought a fixer-upper in the Oakland Hills, near the ridgeline of the mountains above the city, surrounded by Monterey pine and eucalyptus trees. They had finished remodeling their home just one month before this fateful day.

After smelling smoke, Wallace and her husband grabbed family heirlooms and antiques, important documents, some paintings and clothes, and their cat. They jumped in their car. And that's when they saw a hurricane of fire engulfing the neighborhood below them.

The Oakland Hills fire burned thousands of homes and created a dust cloud that could be seen for miles. Picture taken on Oct. 20, 1991.<br>

(

<a href="https://www.gettyimages.com/search/photographer?photographer=San%20Francisco%20Chronicle%2FHearst%20Newspapers" class="Link" target="_blank" >San Francisco Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers</a>

/

Getty Images

)

They turned frantic. When they hit a fork in the road, they hesitated whether to turn right or left. Both directions were being enveloped by flames. Wallace insisted they go right.

" Seconds after going right, a car came out of the flames," Wallace says. "And they said, 'If you go up this road, you will die.'"

They said that power lines had fallen on a truck. A firefighter (who turned out to be Oakland Fire Battalion Chief James M. Riley Jr.) and a passenger he was trying to rescue were both dead, and the truck and power lines were blocking the road. Wallace and her husband were forced to turn around.

"At that point our cat shed her fur — literally shed her fur," Wallace says. "Because the fire was just beating on our car. I thought for sure the car would burst into flames."

They drove the other direction, down a winding, one-lane road through the heart of the inferno. Embers were flying everywhere. Houses and trees were bursting into flames. They saw a motorcyclist on fire. They saw frantic drivers crashing into trees. They saw a heroic policeman — officer John William Grubensky, who would soon die attempting to rescue a family from a burning home — on a loudspeaker, trying to keep people calm and get them out safely.

Wallace and her husband got lucky. Their 6-year-old son was miles away, safe and sound during the whole ordeal. He had spent the night at a friend's house. They were also lucky, of course, to escape with their lives. On the very same narrow street they had escaped on, vehicles after them got stuck behind a car that crashed, blocking their exit route. "Just on that one street, I think there were five people who died, along with Officer Grubensky," Wallace says.

The Claremont Hotel in October 1991

(

MediaNews Group/Oakland Tribune

/

Getty Images

)

About two weeks later, Nancy and her family returned to see what happened to their home. It had turned to ash. "In the middle of this ash was a porcelain bowl," Nancy says. Porcelain apparently doesn't burn. "It was just sitting on top of the ash by itself. It was surreal. Everything else was gone."

The Oakland Hills fire in 1991 ended up killing 25 people, injuring 150 others, and destroying around 3,000 homes. For a long time, it was the most destructive fire in California history. That is, until the last decade, when California has seen a mind-boggling uptick in even more destructive fires, including two in L.A. in recent weeks.

Why California properties got more valuable after fires

Around five years ago, Wallace recounted her incredible story in the Oakland Hills fire to her former Ph.D. student Carles Vergara-Alert, who was back in Berkeley on a sabbatical as a visiting professor, and two other Berkeley economists, Richard Stanton and Paulo Issler. And it inspired them to study how the rising risk of wildfires was affecting housing markets.

A pretty weird thing seemed to be happening to properties destroyed by fires. Nancy noticed it in her own community. After the fire, people got insurance money and rebuilt their homes. Their homes seemed to get bigger and nicer. And, like elsewhere in the Bay Area, their home values went on a rocket ship to the moon in the decades after the fire. It was like everyone had forgotten that it was still a risky area.

Of course, this was just a casual observation about one place. Wallace, Vergara-Alert, Issler and Stanton decided they wanted to build a comprehensive dataset to see what happened, more systematically, to California housing markets after they were scorched by wildfires.

The dataset they assembled is pretty amazing. After each fire in California, the state's fire agency, Cal Fire, sends a team of technicians to investigate. They create detailed maps of the burn areas and document, house by house, damages. The economists used this rich data on burn areas between 2001 and 2015, focusing on the houses that burned and the nearby houses that did not. They combined this data with their own comprehensive data on virtually every home in California.

You might think that property prices of the houses that burned would plummet. I mean, the house is destroyed, nearby parks, trees, hiking trails, and everything else is scorched, and the home's views become burn zones, at least in the near-to-medium term, before nature and man-made structures come back. Even more, you might think that the risks of living in the area would be top of mind for years to come, suppressing demand to live there. But no. Houses continue to be valuable investments in these fire-prone communities. Not only that. The economists found that, between 2001 and 2015, the properties that burned down and got rebuilt were actually significantly more valuable within five years of the catastrophe. Fire actually boosted their property values!

One sort of obvious reason for this is these rebuilt houses were newer. And they were built to follow a more modern, state-mandated building code, making them more resistant to fire and earthquakes and generally safer. And, just as Wallace had observed in her own neighborhood, these rebuilt houses tended to be bigger.

And, in big wildfires, the houses in whole neighborhoods got built back bigger and better. Because the value of your house is influenced by the value of houses in your neighborhood, that was another boost to property values. Meanwhile, nature recovers — and, Wallace says, it recovers rather quickly in areas with Mediterranean climates — and the amazing beauty of these Californian communities returns.

Now, fires are obviously devastating in terms of lives lost, people hurt, disruptions to business and so on. And for people who don't have insurance, they cause huge financial losses. But — at least in the period the economists studied, when, for the most part, there were functioning private insurance markets that offered full coverage and generous payouts — it seems like fires were actually a financial win for the average insured homeowner who lost their home. They were also a win for developers and construction companies, which rebuilt the homes. And they were at least partially a win for municipalities because rebuilt, more valuable homes meant higher property taxes, offsetting the tremendous taxpayer costs of fighting the fire and cleaning up afterwards.

Of course, there was at least one huge financial loser in all of this: insurance companies. They had to foot the massive bill for home reconstructions.

In normal insurance markets, that's fine. People pay premiums, and those premiums are estimated based on the probability of losses. When those losses materialize, the insurance company pays. It's the whole game.

But, Wallace says, something funky began happening in California's insurance markets, and the state's insurance system ended up breaking down.

How California's insurance market failed

First, the state has had restrictive regulations on what insurance companies can charge. Wallace says that a big force behind that was Proposition 103, which was championed by Ralph Nader. In the 1980s, Nader and other consumer activists argued that insurance companies should be strictly regulated when setting their premium rates. This ballot initiative, which was narrowly approved by California voters in 1988, required insurance companies to get rate hikes approved by the California Department of Insurance, and it introduced a bunch of measures that made rate hikes much harder to impose.

In this post-Prop. 103 regulatory scheme, for example, the state prevented insurance companies from using forward-looking estimates of risk — so-called "catastrophe models" — when setting their rates. Consumer advocates saw these kinds of models, which use computers to forecast an uncertain future, as a Trojan horse for price-gouging. The state forced insurers to only use backward-looking estimates of risk. They figured it was more transparent and fair to use hard, verifiable data from the past. The state required insurers to base their premium rates on a 20-year average of historical losses. It also prevented insurers from pricing into their premiums the cost of "reinsurance," or insurance for insurers — something that insurers sometimes need after extreme weather events require massive payouts.

With these and other measures, the California Department of Insurance effectively kept home insurance premiums artificially low. And, Nancy says, that had some big side effects, like incentivizing more people to live in fire-prone areas.

"Prices are important, especially for things like where people locate, where houses are built," Wallace says. Artificially low insurance prices, for example, may have encouraged cities and developers to build neighborhoods closer to the flammable wilderness. In fact, in recent decades, fire-prone areas have seen some of the fastest population growth rates in the state.

And greater density in fire country may have contributed, Wallace says, to problems like narrow roads prone to traffic jams, making escapes from wildfires — like the one she personally made — much harder. And this increased number of people living in fire-prone areas meant that taxpayers had to invest much more in firefighting and other public services to keep people safe.

For a time, California's insurance system was maybe workable. Big, destructive fires used to be rarer, so the insurance system didn't experience as much stress. But, Wallace says, around a decade ago, there was a tipping point where big wildfires started becoming more frequent and more destructive. California has seen hotter temperatures. Droughts have increased. Wind speeds have picked up. And big, destructive fires have become more commonplace.

With climate change, it has started to become clear that the future will not look like the past, and California's regulations requiring insurers to make pricing decisions based on backward-looking models of risk have started to look pretty dumb.

In a free market for insurance, a higher risk for catastrophe would result in higher insurance premiums. But since California regulations prevented that, insurance premiums stayed artificially low. As big fires began demanding big payouts and the specter of more mass destruction loomed larger, insurance companies struggled to make the math work. And so they began fleeing the state.

"The California Department of Insurance is seriously at fault," Wallace says. "They destroyed the markets."

With no ability to get standard private insurance, many Californians, especially in high-risk areas, were forced onto the state-created insurance plan of last resort, the California FAIR Plan (which is funded by private insurance companies and their policyholders in exchange for these insurers being able to sell property insurance in the state). This plan was not meant to be a permanent solution. It's a high-risk pool. It's expensive and it caps insurance payouts, so people with valuable properties, for example, can't get the full value of their homes insured. (For more on the Fair Plan, listen to The Indicator's recent podcast episode, "Who's on the hook for California's uninsurable homes?")

Last year, seeing insurers fleeing their state — and perhaps seeing the studies by Wallace and others — California regulators came to the conclusion that the state's insurance regulations were unworkable. California's insurance commissioner, supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, ended the ban on using forward-looking catastrophe models for setting premiums, giving the green light to the insurance industry to start actually trying to price in the rising risk and cost of wildfires. As part of this deal, insurers have agreed to underwrite more policies in fire-prone areas. Those changes took effect mere weeks ago, just before the outbreak of fires around Los Angeles.

Newsom recently touted the fact that, after these changes took effect, a private insurer agreed to insure homes in the town of Paradise, which notoriously burned entirely to the ground in 2018 (listen to this 2021 Planet Money episode about efforts to rebuild the town).

" I thought that was an absolutely crucial step," Wallace says of California's recent reforms to how it regulates insurance markets. "Now we have to get to work and figure out what the true pricing should be."

What is the right price for living in fire country?

Finding the right price for insurance premiums entails building and refining statistical models that can nail down the risks of wildfires for houses and businesses around the state. The current models, Wallace says, are not good enough. Insurance companies and the government, she says, "literally do not know" what the real risks are. There is quite a bit of uncertainty about, for example, how far fires can spread, which exact homes are the most at risk, and whether big fires in certain places are like 50- or 20- or 10-year events. Inaccurate estimates of fire risks, Wallace says, could result in premiums that are too low, as has been the case for a while in much of California, but also too high in some cases.

And that's why she and her colleagues at UC Berkeley, and, more specifically, Wallace's lab at the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics, have been building bridges across disciplines, marshaling the data and intellect of climate scientists, computer scientists, engineers, economists and more to create high-tech models that can better estimate the risk of wildfires.

And that's important. As we've seen, the costs of fire destruction are enormous. And someone has to pay for it. If homeowners want to continue living in fire-prone areas, Wallace says, they need to bear more of the risk and, in effect, pay higher insurance premiums.

"This risk cannot be borne exclusively by insurance companies," Wallace says. "It's also got to be borne by homeowners." Bearing more of that risk would, she says, incentivize homeowners to take more actions to protect their properties (and fight what economists call "moral hazard," or people's tendency to not take steps to mitigate risk when they're insured).

Beyond just accurately pricing wildfire risks, Wallace says, the government and insurance companies should work to incentivize and help homeowners to retrofit older, more flammable homes. Wallace points to a study by economists Patrick Baylis and Judson Boomhower. The economists find that California houses built after the mid-1990s — and, even more, those built after 2008 — are far more likely to survive wildfires. That's because the state strengthened its building codes during those years, requiring that homes be built with, for example, more fire-retardant siding and roofs.

" In Paradise, in Sonoma, in Napa, the Woolsey Fire, the houses that survive are those with the post-2008 building code requirements," Wallace says. "The major problem in California is that our [older] housing stock is not built to withstand the embers and the radiant heat of fires."

But updating California's older housing stock is expensive. Which is why Wallace wants policymakers and businesspeople to create new home loan programs, which would make it feasible for California homeowners to invest in making their homes more resistant to fire. She believes this could even be a money-making product for financial firms. " If you're a bank, wouldn't you like to invest in home loans that make the mortgages that you're also planning to make safer?"

Wallace also hopes that, going forward, insurers could offer discounts on home insurance for taking anti-fire measures that lower risks, further incentivizing homeowners to protect their homes and reduce costs. This could be facilitated by technological innovations. For example, Wallace points to a former grad student of hers who created an app, Firebreak, which helps homeowners identify fire risks around their properties.

What happens after the L.A. fires?

As Wallace and her colleagues found in their study, for a long time, California homes that were destroyed by fires ended up getting bigger, better and more valuable. Will the same thing happen again in Los Angeles hillsides after the latest shocking fires?

Wallace suggests that it's possible this time is different. For one, "We don't have that insurance market anymore," Wallace says. "It's been broken  by not allowing firms to price the risk."

Many homes in the L.A. hills were forced off of private insurance policies that gave them full coverage, and they had to turn to the California FAIR Plan, which caps residential coverage at $3 million. There are a significant number of destroyed homes that were worth more than that. Wallace also points to less affluent neighborhoods, like Altadena, where many homeowners did not have insurance (only people with mortgages are required to have fire casualty insurance). Absent some sort of government help, many fire victims will likely be unable to afford reconstruction. In the wake of natural disasters, construction costs tend to surge because tons of people need to build all at once and there are shortages of everything.

Another big cost will be building back better. If the city and state are being sensible, Wallace says, they will make investments in better infrastructure, like a less fire-prone electricity grid and better water systems to fight fires, making it less likely for future fires to break out and spread. Even more, she says, the state should continue mandating that builders of new houses follow the building code that has proved to be more resilient to fires. " It's absolutely nonsensical to build back in the same risky way," Wallace says. (Newsom recently issued a vague executive order on this issue, directing state agencies to waive building regulations to speed up construction, but only those regulations "that can safely be suspended.")

Because of high costs and more limited insurance coverage and other factors, Wallace says, there may be fewer homes built in the L.A. neighborhoods devastated by fires. And, with higher insurance premiums reflecting the risk for buildings there, these neighborhoods will likely become even more exclusive dens for the rich.

Despite the current tragic circumstances, however, these burned-down neighborhoods still have a lot going for them. Their views of the ocean and the city are often incredible. Their charred parks and hiking trails will recover. And they're still close to a legendary metropolis, with a vibrant culture, an incredible economy and a housing shortage. Land in L.A. is still very valuable.

"L.A. is a major, metropolitan, gateway city of the world," Wallace says. "And it is not going away."

And whether it's floods or tornadoes or earthquakes or wildfires, human beings have a remarkable knack for comfortably living in areas with lots of risk.

Wallace expects that, if the state pursues the right path to make these neighborhoods more resilient to future fires and follows through with fixing the state's broken insurance system, destroyed properties in L.A. will be rebuilt, insurable in the private market and they'll eventually "return to trajectory," increasing in value like they were in the years preceding the devastation.

As for the victims who lost everything in the fires, Wallace, reflecting on her own experience losing her home, advises people to begin creating inventories of the things they lost and working with builders to get real estimates of the costs to rebuild, keeping in mind that construction costs will likely climb as everyone else seeks to rebuild. Such information can be crucial for getting adequate payouts. Insurers may provide a vital service, she suggests, but they're not really your friends.

Our most recent Planet Money episode has more on the fires in California. Hosts Sarah Gonzalez and Nick Fountain report on conditions inside the Altadena burn zone, and how one father and son are approaching the difficult choice of how, or whether, to rebuild.

Annnnnnd they're off — blockbusters chasing award contenders everywhere you look. Disney animation, a new Knives Out mystery, an afterlife romance, a bazonkers Brazilian thriller, and a tale of Shakespeare and the healing power of art. Good thing you caught up with Wicked: For Good last week, right?

Here's what's new in theaters for the holiday weekend. (And here's what came out last week, and the week before.)

Zootopia 2 

In theaters now 

Back in 2016, Zootopia grossed over a billion dollars worldwide — so it's no surprise we now have Zootopia 2. In the first movie, our heroes, Judy Hopps, a bunny voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin, and Nick Wilde, a fox voiced by Jason Bateman, became partners in the Zootopia Police Department, having worked together to catch a corrupt assistant mayor and put her away. Now, they're settling into their new jobs, trying to get used to the fact that she's a strict rule-follower, and he's a little more laid-back.

And there's a new problem: a snake has appeared in a reptile-free zone, and he brings to light a mystery from Zootopia's complicated past. New voices like Ke Huy Quan and Andy Samberg add something new to what has already been a winning formula for Disney. Judy and Nick get a little help from a friendly beaver with the voice of Fortune Feimster, and they naturally cross paths with lots of their old pals from the first movie. — Linda Holmes 

Eternity 

In theaters now 

Larry (Miles Teller) chokes on a pretzel, and the next thing he knows, he's on a train with just one destination: a version of purgatory known as the Junction. After that unfortunate event, however, he has two strokes of luck. The first, his assigned Afterlife Coordinator is Anna (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), an efficient, compassionate guide to help him figure out where he wants to spend eternity. The second? His wife of 60+ years, Joan (Elizabeth Olsen) joins him at the Junction shortly thereafter.

But there's a hitch in this story co-written by Pat Cunnane with director David Freyne: Joan's first husband, Luke (Callum Turner), who died in the Korean War, has been waiting there at the Junction for Joan ever since, determined to pick up where they left off in the hereafter. So Joan has a big choice to make: stick with Larry, or gamble on a forever with her first love. — Sarah Handel 

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery

In limited theaters; on Netflix Dec. 12 

The following trailer contains an instance of vulgar language. 

Rian Johnson's deliriously topical Benoit Blanc threequel is as gothic as its upstate New York church setting. A young pugilist-turned-priest named Jud (Josh O'Connor) is sent there to assist the hate-filled but popular-with-his-flock Monsignor Jefferson (Josh Brolin). Variously sketchy parishioners Glenn Close, Kerry Washington, Jeremy Renner, Andrew Scott, and Thomas Haden Church remain loyal no matter how vile, crude, or destructive their Monsignor becomes. So Jud, being the only person in close proximity not in thrall to him, is immediately the lead suspect when Jefferson drops dead during a service. The filmmaker's jests this time are often jabs at religious hypocrisy and how blind faith binds followers to leaders who are entirely focused on themselves and the power they wield.

If there were any doubt about who exactly is being poked here, it's laid bare when Daryl McCormack, playing a craven conservative politician who's seeking favor with Jefferson, runs down a quick list of far-right talking points that have failed to land for him. There are twists enough to tangle a spider in its own web, jokes and sight gags aplenty, and Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc is as sharply etched as ever, in what is, to my mind, the most rewarding episode in the series. — Bob Mondello

Hamnet

In limited theaters

A woman in scarlet curled up among forest tree roots awaits her hawk's return from hunting in the film's opening image. Agnes (Jessie Buckley) is thought by townsfolk to be the daughter of a witch, and she certainly bewitches young Will (Paul Mescal), the Latin tutor teaching her brothers. The year is 1580, the place, a town near Stratford-upon-Avon, and the two young lovers will soon have three lovely children: firstborn Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Based on Maggie O'Farrell's acclaimed 2020 novel based on the lives of William Shakespeare and his wife, better known as Anne Hathaway, Chloe Zhao's breath-catchingly beautiful film luxuriates in these joy-filled early scenes, painting the family and the natural world around them in sumptuous, earthy tones before bringing that world crashing down around them.

Will, who by this time is writing plays for a theater troupe, is in London when tragedy strikes at home. Buckley's Agnes faces the death of their 11-year-old son alone, and can't forgive Will for not being there. Her grief all-encompassing, she barely registers that he also grieves as he rushes back to London and the theater. The film, though, is more than a portrait of a family tragedy. In its final quarter-hour Zhao shows us that this story has always really been about the transcendent, healing power of art. That sounds almost simpleminded, and it takes some directorial sleight-of-hand and historical fudging to make it work. But work it surely does, in a knockout climax that reduced me, and much of the audience at various film festivals, to sobs. Agnes reaches for the son who is no more, Will brings forth a play that will never die, and if there's been a more staggering cinematic catharsis in recent years, I've not experienced it. — Bob Mondello 

The Secret Agent 

In limited theaters

Marcelo (Wagner Moura) is a dissident on the run in director Kleber Mendonça Filho's bizarro Brazilian thriller, which takes place during Carnival, and mixes (among many, many elements) hitmen, corrupt cops, a '70s movie palace showing Jaws to a shark-obsessed public, a supernatural "hairy leg" that hops around gay cruising spots, officials intent on undermining science and marginalizing women, and an underground resistance movement that operates safe houses and a fake document mill. The central storyline involves Marcelo trying to escape the long reach of a casually brutal regime that's branded him a troublemaker. He needs papers for himself and his young son, and is also trying to find information about his late mother, for reasons that will be revealed in a modern-day framing sequence (in which Moura appears in a second role).

If that all sounds complicated, rest assured it's just the start of a rousing, suspenseful, occasionally hilarious, and ultimately unnerving 160-minute tale of battling political oppression. Mendonça began his career as a journalist and film critic, and his stylistic choices suggest a fondness for the work of De Palma, Scorsese, Fellini, Antonioni, Hitchcock and Tarantino, among others. What he's concocted, though, is strikingly original and speaks to the current political moment. — Bob Mondello
Copyright 2025 NPR

This story is part of ICE vs. LA, a collaborative reporting project by LA Public Press, Caló News, Capital & Main, Capital B, LA Taco, and Q Voice.

Four months after nearly 5,000 federal troops descended onto Los Angeles, Marsha Mitchell, a Black organizer in South Central, explained what made it impossible for her not to act: her neighbors.

At the peak of the federal immigration raids this summer — when U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was arresting an average of 540 people per week in the city — her neighbor, Erica, and her husband and friend were taken by federal agents while eating breakfast in their home.

All three were placed in a van and driven toward downtown Los Angeles.

But Erica knew she had to get back to her small children, recalled Mitchell, a lifelong South Central resident, from a conversation she had with her neighbor.

“As a mother, her whole thing was, I got to get to my babies,” Mitchell said.

When the agents opened the van doors in downtown L.A., Erica broke free — still tied up, still terrified — and ran. While Erica managed to escape, her husband was placed in the detention center, where he said conditions were unbearable. According to Mitchell, he self-deported rather than endure them, choosing to escape the system that had trapped him.

Erica was the family’s breadwinner through her tamale stand, but with her husband gone, she is too afraid to leave her home. The family has collapsed financially under the weight of a single raid, Mitchell said.

“Not only has she lost her business, but also her husband and the ability to give her family what they need to survive,” said Mitchell, an organizer with Community Coalition, the long-standing anti-violence and drug addiction group founded by now-Mayor Karen Bass in 1990.

In South L.A., where Los Angeles City Council Districts 8, 9, and 10 have transformed from predominantly Black to predominantly Latino, and where the highest percentages of undocumented residents in the city now live, Erica’s story is part of the new normal.

For some South Central residents, the raids have triggered economic and social catastrophes. During the first weeks of concentrated immigration enforcement, 465,000 fewer workers reported for work. One local business owner told the economic justice group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy that he’d lost 80% of his business in the first month of the ICE crackdown. Other shops across South Central and downtown lost business for weeks.

The raids are posing a new hurdle for Black and Latino families to pay rent in one of America’s most expensive cities. But they’ve also catalyzed Black neighbors to act.

“[Erica] is a member of our community, and she is afraid to come outside,” Mitchell said. “She is not alone, and that is why we’re helping with mutual aid.”

Immediately, that looked like bringing her family groceries and referring them to resources for free mental health care.

Community Coalition, known as CoCo, is training dozens of block captains to canvass their communities and coordinate food drop-offs, safety check-ins, and care referrals in real time. They’re organizing their neighbors around the threats facing everyone, regardless of their race or residency status.

The immediacy of this care network — 18 block captains now, with hopes to reach 28 — emerged after Erica’s abduction by ICE, according to Mitchell, who works for CoCo.

L.A. County’s Black residents — 20% of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants — are standing in solidarity with their Latino neighbors, saying they are part of a shared fight against over-policing and racialized violence. Nine out of 10 ICE arrests have been of Latinos.

“Seeing families torn apart is so reminiscent of the white supremacist playbook that we’ve seen historically in communities of color, and that starts with our Indigenous siblings to slavery and through these latest ICE raids,” Mitchell said.

Neighbors moved to action

Pamela Riley envisions her South Central neighborhood with all the resources it needs to thrive, but that starts at the block level, she said.

(

Adam Mahoney

/

Capital B

)

On a quiet stretch of 92nd Street, Pamela Riley propped open her front gate around 8 a.m. For one Saturday in October, her front yard — one of the typical South Central flair caged in by a sagging iron gate — became the heartbeat of a block fighting back against abandonment.

Within minutes, her neighbors began to gather. Grandmothers sipped coffee, young mothers munched on donuts, and teenagers organized flyers printed in Spanish and English.

Just steps from the 110 freeway and the ghostly remains of shuttered shops and clinics, her community is forging new lines of solidarity amid chronic neglect and a deep need for connection. This is the new frontline in South Los Angeles, where a coalition of Black and Latino residents is launching a network of “Neighborhood Action Hubs” along the Vermont and Broadway corridors to keep mutual aid alive as official support shrinks.

The goal: to weave a grassroots shield against ICE crackdowns and social services cuts and offer a model for how neighbors, not institutions, can bridge fear and isolation.

“That blueprint of success is there. The road is paved, we just need to walk it together,” said Riley, a 64-year-old lifelong South Central resident.

Later that morning, as the sun tried to fight through the gloomy sky, a group of three of the women who showed up at Riley’s event — two Black, one Latina — passed the same mural-painted utility boxes and chain-link fences that mark so many South L.A. blocks. Old-school Chevys, some missing hubcaps, were parked next to pickups and battered minivans, while the sound of cumbia drifted from a doorway where a woman watered her agave under the music’s sway.

As they moved from house to house, the group stopped at gates and asked neighbors about the specific issues facing their blocks and individual households. At one, a longtime Latino immigrant, gray-haired and smiling, shared how she planned to vote in the now-passed November election.

Riley’s block has become a lot more quiet and less frequented since ICE raids began.

(

Adam Mahoney

/

Capital B

)

Deeper onto the block, the canvassers encountered two undocumented migrants — one a young father, the other a middle-aged woman. The father spoke to tangible issues in the neighborhood: “People have started stealing car tires at night and cutting wires from light poles for quick money,” he said.

The mother spoke quietly about work drying up and more neighbors “laying low” as rumors of ICE sightings swept through the area. The Latina canvasser asked directly about food access and whether anyone still sold homemade snacks. The woman hesitated, then explained in Spanish that she stopped selling crepes out of fear.

The canvassers turned to the others and suggested a solution: organizing a block-wide food vendor party, so people could sell their products safely.

Walking farther, they found themselves cautiously welcomed by a Black city worker who had lived on the block for decades. She described losing sleep as the city’s racial demographics shifted and her worry about Black and Latino votes being split or erased.

At each stop, the canvassers handed out cards with voting information and explained how to register, where to find drop boxes, and how to access rapid response teams if ICE was spotted or the lights went out again.

“Solidarity is literally in L.A.’s DNA,” Mitchell said. “We know that when communities come together, we weather all kinds of storms — governmental, financial, whatever comes our way.”

L.A.’s long-history of racial coalitions

Neighborhood canvassers speak to a women. This specific Saturday, these two canvassers knocked on dozens of doors for over 2 hours.

(

Adam Mahoney

/

Capital B

)

Riley said her memories are filled with better days: bustling shops, a hospital on 94th, neighbors who’d send their kids to college together. She has watched her neighborhood swing from prosperity to depression and now, uncertainty.

Today, Riley’s yard and days are devoted to strategizing — she and other block captains count names, rehearse response plans and dream of new “welcome to South Central L.A.” signs at every corner. During meetings, they talk about how, in other parts of the city, neighbors stand by each other in crisis; here, too, unity could mean survival. The terror of recent abductions — a beloved tamalera torn from her routine and dayworkers swiped off the streets — still haunts these blocks, sharpening every knock at the door.

“I grew up in a civil rights era of the ’60s, and I’m starting to realize this is the new era of civil rights,” Riley said, explaining that the attack on civil rights today has extended far beyond immigration raids. “It is requiring more from all of us.”

Having lived through what she considers broken promises following the devastation of the 1992 L.A. Riots, Riley said she understands that revival cannot rely on state intervention alone, and it bridges racial divides. Instead, she insists, “what’s going on in Washington DC is showing us we need to join together and support each other.”

It also reminds her of the power of community. During the 1992 protests against police brutality, Latinos constituted the largest portion of arrests despite making up a smaller percentage of the overall population at the time.

Dozens of volunteers began their Saturday at 9 a.m. to door knock.

(

Adam Mahoney

/

Capital B

)

The roots of Black and Latino collaboration go back to the founding of L.A. itself, where 26 of the city’s 44 original settlers in 1781 were Black/Afro-Latino with Spanish surnames — establishing a tradition of mixed neighborhoods and joint political action. This foundation was later strengthened during the Great Migration and again throughout the 20th century, when Black and Latino residents forged working alliances in the face of shared exclusion from citywide power.

In recent decades, the demographic mix in South Central has shifted further. Where once the community was predominantly Black, Latino residents now form the majority. The change created new opportunities for solidarity, as well as challenges, especially after Latino L.A. City Council members were caught on tape using racist anti-Black language while discussing concerns about the political power of Black residents. The tapes reopened wounds over neighborhood displacement.

Today, the skepticism remains real for a lot of Black people in L.A. In June, a viral moment spread across the internet after Latino protesters hurled racial insults at a Black L.A. police officer.

“A significant number of Black folks don’t see this as their fight,” author and commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson said after the protest in June. “They’ve seen anti-Blackness in Latino communities. They’ve felt left out when it came to our issues. That breeds skepticism.”

But “if anything, the debate over whether Blacks should link hands with Latino activists in the immigration battle seems age old,” Hutchinson wrote on his daily blog.

Hector Sanchez, CoCo’s Deputy Political Director, agreed.“It takes a lot of work. I’m not going to say it’s very easy … but it’s people that are willing to have those difficult conversations at times to ensure that we have each other’s back.”

Just a day after the city council tapes leaked, more than 400 people came together in Boyle Heights “to talk about the importance of multi-racial solidarity,” he said. Despite the tensions, neighbors continue fighting side by side for justice and belonging.

When canvassers could not get in contact with residents, they left behind these door hangers with a list of resources.

(

Adam Mahoney

/

Capital B

)

In the years since, organizers have responded by promoting cross-cultural events, joint canvassing efforts, and language exchange programs. Language exchange workshops and “know your rights” sessions — alongside mutual aid deliveries — have become linchpins of the hub approach.

“We are not just helping Black folks, not just one population. It’s for all of us,” explained Sequarier McCoy, a 49-year-old lifelong L.A. resident.

“I grew up in a Black and Brown community,” she added. “I smelled Black-eyed peas, but I also smelled tortillas. I like corn on the cob and Esquites.”

McCoy is also acutely aware that the issues of migration, detention and deportation are far from just Latino issues. “It’s also for Dominican folks. It’s also for Belizean folks. It’s also for Caribbean folks,” she said. She said her partner, a Belizean migrant, is living in fear too.

Black undocumented migrants are deported at a rate four times more often than their numbers would suggest, according to an analysis of federal data by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.

It is why this practical solidarity spans crises, organizers said. When SNAP benefits run dry, when an ICE van is spotted, or when a neighbor’s lights go out, the same phone trees and rapid response plans kick in.

“This work is an honor as a human being, not just as an activist,” McCoy said.

Botox has become increasingly popular with people in their 20s seeking to stave off wrinkles.

Clinics market what is known as "Baby Botox," lower dose treatments administered less frequently than those for midlife adults — perhaps only once or twice a year.

Patients share the process in online videos filmed from injectors' offices, asking for a touch up to blur away any hint of crows feet or 11 lines between the brows.

It may seem absurd that anyone so young would be worried about aging. But like putting on sunscreen, patients say their use of Botox is preventive.

Botox is a brand name for botulinum toxin type A, an injectable neurotoxin derived from the bacterium that causes botulism. Other brand names include Dysport, Xeomin and Jeuveau. When administered in small amounts, the treatments block the nerve signals to the muscle causing it to relax, thereby temporarily reducing the appearance of wrinkles.

Attorney Stephanie Moore started getting Dysport when she was 27 to slow the formation of wrinkles around her eyes, which she attributes to her expressive face.

She pays about $460 per visit, and says these thrice-yearly injections are one of her favorite ways to treat herself: "I feel a lot more confident."

With Baby Botox, is age just a number?

There aren't comprehensive stats on what age groups are getting Botox, but data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons shows that between 2019 and 2022, the use of injectable neurotoxins grew by more than 70% across all age groups under 70, including Gen Z adults.

It is not approved for use in minors, so the youngest someone can get Botox is 18.

Demand for other types of aesthetic procedures and surgeries, including cheek implants and fillers, has also jumped since the COVID-19 pandemic.

This timing is no coincidence says sociologist Dana Berkowitz, author of the book Botox Nation: Changing The Face of America.

During the pandemic, people's lives migrated to virtual spaces. That included younger people who had this experience at a formative age. They attended high school or college on Zoom during the day, and then logged onto TikTok and Instagram for socialization in the evenings.

Berkowitz says by looking at curated images of others far more frequently, inevitably, people were comparing those faces to their own.

At the same time, Berkowitz says some celebrities, along with social media influencers, now openly earn income through endorsements of various cosmetic procedures, further normalizing it.

While the 20s seem young for Botox, Dr. Kristy Hamilton, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Houston, says young adults can start to show signs of aging — a lot of it comes down to genetics and sunscreen.

"Sometimes we see people in their mid-20s that have a lot of wrinkles, and that's just life," she says.

But what's wrong with having wrinkles?

Ageless beauty is seen as a "status symbol" in today's society, says Berkowitz. Young women she researched told her these treatments show they were able to invest in themselves at a very early age: "It was like they were part of this elite kind of social club."

As Berkowitz explores in her book, falling short of society's definition of feminine beauty can incur a professional tax. "Our ideal femininity is a youthful one," she says.

Research shows that people who are perceived as beautiful get better treatment, says David B. Sarwer, who studies the psychological aspects of appearance and cosmetic procedures at Temple University's College of Public Health.

Sarwer points to a robust body of literature on how attractiveness can positively influence one's academic performance, professional advancement and legal outcomes. One study even found that newborns who are seen as more attractive by hospital nursing staff get picked up more frequently.

"It may make some, dare I say, strategic sense for people to say, 'I want to find a way to improve the way that I look,'" he says.

Are there any risks to starting young?

Botox was first approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cosmetic use in 2002. Physicians interviewed for this story note that since then millions have gotten it safely.

Reports of dangerous side effects are extremely rare, and typically linked to counterfeit or mishandled Botox.

There are still some risks. For one, it can stop working because your body forms a resistance to it.

This can be frustrating for patients, says Dr. Paul Durand, a Miami-based board-certified plastic surgeon. He hasn't seen any research explaining why this happens, but theorizes that younger people might be at higher risk because of their more robust immune systems.

Another concern is that too much Botox at too high a dose over time can cause excessive atrophy, or shrinking of the muscles. Since we lose volume in our faces as we age anyway, a person's face can start to look hollow instead of youthful.

Durand says well-trained clinicians can avoid that result by not overdoing it, i.e. not injecting too deep or using too much of the drug. But assessing a clinician's skill level may be difficult for patients.

Any medical doctor, regardless of specialty, can legally administer cosmetic injections without any special training or certification. That includes dentists.

Durand and Hamilton both recommend going to a plastic surgeon or dermatologist's office. Though Berkowitz says there are skilled injectors outside these specialties. She recommends that a Botox-curious patient ask friends or family for a referral.

Most people who get cosmetic procedures say they're happy with the outcome. Sarwer says the patients who are most satisfied are seeking to address discontent with a specific feature — like Moore's desire to soften the lines around her eyes.

But the evidence on how these procedures improve self esteem and quality of life are inconclusive, Sarwer says.

When cosmetic patients chase an unattainable ideal of beauty due to a mental health condition like body dysmorphic disorder or severe depression, Sarwer says Botox and other procedures don't improve their symptoms.

He explains these patients are, "better treated by a mental health professional than they would be treated by a plastic surgeon."

A life-long habit ... and expense

Durand turns away patients who want so much Botox that it would essentially freeze their face, blocking their ability to form expressions. "That looks terrible," he says.

But in his experience, a determined enough person will eventually find a clinician to say "yes," given that administering Botox can be a lucrative revenue stream with relatively few overhead costs.

Not only do clinician training and skill levels vary, so do prices. Discount treatments are unlikely to yield desired results, as Berkowitz warns. Amateur Botox can result in an obviously treated face.

And there's another problem: Once patients start with Botox or a similar injectable, they're unlikely to stop, says Berkowitz: "You get people in their 20s, you have a lifelong consumer."

Berkowitz herself is one of those lifelong consumers: She started getting Botox at 32 and now at 47, needs higher doses, paying about $800 per appointment.

For someone who starts young, that money — which could add up to tens of thousands of dollars in your 20s and 30s — could be spent paying off student loans, investing for their future, or traveling the world.

If you stop getting the injections, the effects wear off and wrinkles reappear.

In this way, Botox is addictive, argues Berkowitz, who admits that getting it feels in conflict with her feminist ethics, which aim to decenter appearance.

But Hamilton, the Houston plastic surgeon, says for many of her young patients, Botox is simply part of their overall investment in their health and appearance.

"Gen Z have this very different view on these things," she says. "This is part of their self-care. It's part of their wellness."

Stephanie Moore in Pittsburgh, says shaping her appearance with Botox makes her happy. She notes that her husband has tattoos, which she thinks are unnecessary and expensive.

"But that's his body and his choice," she says. "And this is my body and my choice."
Copyright 2025 NPR

The storm blew into Cozad, Nebraska, in the wee hours of Saturday, June 29, 2024. The wind felt like a hurricane. The hail was the size of softballs.

"I was in the window, I was crying," remembers Soledad Avalos, who has lived with her husband in their home in Cozad for 35 years. "Seeing all the damage [to] the cars and the house."

When the sun came up, the extent of the damage became clear. Cozad is a small town of about 4,000 people, surrounded by corn fields. Crops were flattened. Virtually every vehicle parked outside that night had a broken windshield. Nearly every roof in town was leaking, or worse. Siding was missing, paint had been stripped away. The storm came from the northwest, and so nearly every northwest-facing window was cracked. Both the hospital and the school were in disrepair.

"Those softball-sized hail stones just punched a hole through the roof membrane, and water was just pouring through the ceiling like a waterfall, or a shower," says Robert Dyer, the CEO of the Cozad Community Health System, which runs Cozad Community Hospital, the only hospital in town. "Tiles were coming down, hunks of old plaster. It was just pretty devastating." The hospital's emergency department had to shut down for several hours, and the building is still being repaired more than a year later.

Hail the size of softballs punched holes in siding, broke windows and stripped away paint. One local insurance agent estimates the storm caused $100 million of damage in a town of just 4,000 people.

(

Rebecca Hersher

/

NPR

)

Hailstorms like the one that hit Cozad don't often make national headlines, because they are usually hyper-local events that hit just one town, or one neighborhood in a larger city. Most hailstorms don't cause enough damage to trigger federal disaster declarations, or make it onto official annual lists of major weather disasters. And they are generally less deadly than flash floods, hurricanes and wildfires.

But extremely costly hailstorms are getting more likely in the United States, researchers warn. Across the central and eastern U.S., the weather conditions that can produce hail that's at least the size of a pool ball have gotten more common, according to Deborah Bathke, Nebraska's state climatologist. And the Great Plains are expected to have more frequent hail as the planet warms up.

That risk is driving up the cost of home insurance in the middle of the country, saddling average Americans with huge bills. Areas with the most hail risk are seeing some of the fastest growing home insurance prices in the U.S., according to two landmark federal reports released in the last year.

"In the Midwest, you've seen a surprising increase in losses," says Robert Gordon, a senior vice president at the American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the largest property insurance trade group. "It's particularly the hail, the wind. A lot of damage to roofs."

That escalating damage is a reminder that, as climate change drives more extreme weather, geography is no longer a guarantee of protection from skyrocketing insurance rates.

Marsden Rodon clears the walkway in front of the home he rents in a neighborhood southeast of downtown Greeley, Colorado, after a severe hailstorm moved over the area in May 2024.

(

RJ Sangosti

/

MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

)

Home insurance costs are skyrocketing in the middle of the U.S.

The central United States is home to the worst hail risk on the planet.

"North America is the hail continent," explains Scott St. George, a climate scientist and the head of weather and climate research at WTW, an international risk analysis company. And he says hail is different from other types of severe weather because it does a lot of property damage without causing many fatalities.

"It basically damages anything that's outside. And we've got a lot of stuff in the way," according to St. George. "There are more houses insured, more expensive cars. Roofs, siding, car windows and exteriors."

That has led to enormous bills for property insurance companies. "You've seen some really big losses coming out of hail, mostly in the U.S." says St. George.

A flooded apartment in Greeley, Colorado, after a severe hailstorm in 2024.

(

RJ Sangosti

/

MediaNews Group/The /Denver Post via Getty Images

)

Last summer's hailstorm in Cozad caused an estimated $100 million in property damage, according to local insurance agent Brian Messersmith – an enormous sum for a town of just 4,000 people.

And, in 2024, hail damage contributed to $54 billion in insured losses from severe convective storms in the U.S., which include severe thunderstorms and other storms capable of producing large hail, according to the Insurance Information Institute, an industry-run think tank.

With losses mounting, insurance companies have raised prices in recent years. Nationwide, the cost of insurance rose about 8% faster than inflation between 2018 and 2022, according to a major report published by the Treasury Department in January.

The report found that the average price of property insurance in the Great Plains was significantly higher than the national average, with consumers in the Northern Plains paying about 20% more than the national average, and consumers in the Southern Plains paying more than 45% more. In Nebraska, the average cost of homeowners insurance this year is nearly $6,400, according to Bankrate. That's the highest in the country, and almost $4,000 above the national average.

In September, the Treasury report was removed from the department's website by the Trump administration. The Treasury Department did not respond to questions from NPR about why it was removed.

Hail risk is only one of many reasons that insurance is more expensive. The higher cost of labor, and of construction materials are also driving up insurance prices, says St. George.

"Insurance is very impacted by inflation," says Robert Gordon of the American Property and Casualty Insurance Association. "So if inflation suddenly spikes, then insurance losses go up." And the cost of building materials has increased even more than other goods in recent years, he points out.

Gregg Crouger shows ten large hail stones after a storm in 2018 in Louisville, Colorado.

(

Helen H. Richardson

/

The Denver Post via Getty Images

)

Insurance companies are bringing in profits. Small towns are struggling

Rising prices for homeowners appear to be translating into profits for the industry. After losing more than $10 billion in 2023, the industry saw $26 billion in profits in 2024, according to credit agency AM Best.

Insurers say that's largely due to the severity of disasters in a given year. "It can be a dramatic swing because some years you have huge catastrophes," says Gordon. When insurers raise prices, they are simply passing along the enormous costs of rebuilding from major disasters, he says.

But high prices are hitting many homeowners hard, particularly in places with historically low cost-of-living, like Nebraska.

"Insurance in our state really has skyrocketed the past several years," says Josh Tapio, an insurance broker at All Lines Insurance in Omaha, Neb.

A few years ago, an average homeowner would pay about $1,500 per year to insure their $300,000 home, Tapio says. Now, it costs between $3,000 to $4,500, a two or even threefold increase.

"There's a lot of sticker shock when somebody opens their renewal bill and they see that it's double from what they paid last year," Tapio says. His office has never been busier, as people shop around for a policy they can afford.

The high cost of insurance can make property ownership untenable. Before the storm, longtime Cozad resident Jennifer McKeone owned two rental houses in town. The hail caused extensive damage to both, and her insurance company refused to keep insuring them.

"I scrambled to find insurance, and the only insurance I could find was going to raise the rent to the point where I didn't think the people who lived in the houses could afford it," McKeone says. She ended up selling the homes, because neither she nor her tenants could afford the insurance costs.

John Purry secures tarps on the roof of his house in Pearl, Miss., after a hailstorm in 2013.

(

Holbrook Mohr<br>

/

AP

)

Seniors are hit particularly hard by rising insurance costs

In the year and a half since the storm hit Cozad, most of the broken windows have been replaced, and most of the leaking roofs have been repaired. "The town is doing well," says McKeone, who runs the Cozad Development Corporation, a local group that builds housing in town and works with businesses.

But under the surface, McKeone says, many are still trying to finish repairs to their homes. Seniors have been hit particularly hard, she says. Many older residents live on a fixed income from a pension or social security payments, and can't afford drastically higher bills.

Baltazar and Soledad Avalos, whose home was severely damaged in the storm, have experienced insurance problems firsthand. The home that they've lived in for 35 years had an insurance policy, but that policy didn't cover the full cost of all the repairs to the roof, windows and siding. Baltazar is still out on a ladder most days, fixing damage at age 72.

On top of that, the cost of their insurance has gone up by about 10%, which is significant for a retirement-age couple. Baltazar is retired, Soledad is still working.

Insurance is more expensive, and it covers less

One of the biggest complaints among Cozad residents is that, even as they shell out more for property insurance, that insurance is covering less.

Many people in town now have policies with higher deductibles, meaning that they need to pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars out of their own pockets before the insurance kicks in. And many new policies also don't cover the full cost of replacing a damaged roof, which is often the most expensive repair after a hailstorm.

Megan Fales has worked as an insurance agent in Cozad for more than a decade, and handles hundreds of home insurance policies in town. "A lot of people have just gotten to the point where, like 'Let's just take a higher deductible,'" she says, because it costs less each month, even though they agree to pay more for repairs if there's a future storm. She says many homeowners in the area hope to save money by doing repairs themselves, instead of relying on insurance to pay.

Businesses in town are also paying more money for less coverage. After the storm destroyed the roof of the local hospital, the insurance company refused to renew the policy. The only policies available are more expensive, and also have a much higher deductible for the roof. That means the hospital must pay more each month for insurance, and also must keep more cash on hand in case there's another storm.

In an effort to avoid catastrophic damage in future storms, the hospital's governing board chose to upgrade the building. Instead of simply replacing the damaged roof, they are investing in roof materials that can withstand high winds and small hail.

That choice saved them money on their monthly insurance premium, Dyer says. But even with those savings, they are paying more money for less coverage, compared to two years ago.

"It's to a point of unsustainability," says Dyer. "If we got hit by another storm right now, it would drain all our cash."

NPR's Robert Benincasa contributed to this story.
Copyright 2025 NPR