Fantastic Failure: Cooperative Housing as a Would-be Solution for Wildfire Disaster Recovery

This year our husband and wife nonprofit team is finally getting around to building a home for ourselves. After seven years following the 2015 Valley Fire in Northern California, this should be good news, but it is actually the admittance of defeat and a fantastic failure.

During the intervening years, it must have seemed to our friends, family, and neighbors, and colleagues that our energy knew no limit. We supported ourselves and our community through the intense long-term recovery process – whether distributing supplemental funding for survivors, setting up a municipal advisory council at the epicenter of the fire so that our voices as a community could be heard more readily at the county board of supervisors, co-producing community fire safety workshops, or obtaining a large grant-supported fuels reduction program.

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