Why the City Must Help Build Strong Services for Home Wildfire Hardening

Scaling Up Boulder Wildfire Protection, Part 1

The short version. Boulder's Wildfire Ready 2030, presented on October 22, sets a new path to make our community safer from wildfire. It aims to harden homes across our highest-risk neighborhoods, with increased attention to helping residents access home hardening services. In the year ahead, that services work deserves a big new push. That's because:

• Services determine whether and how installations get done.

• Public money goes furthest when good services unlock private investment.

• Service partnerships can give reporting and coordination dependable owners.

• A well-working services marketplace can drive costs down and quality up.

So a strong ecosystem of services, guided by the city, is both an enabler and a multiplier for other home hardening tools like assessments, public spending, and requirements. Let’s elevate this work and develop it fully.

The full article

On Thursday, City Council reviewed Wildfire Ready 2030, a new framework to significantly strengthen Boulder's protection from wildfire. A major part of it is hardening homes, both the buildings and yards around them, starting in our highest-risk neighborhoods.*

The highest priority is the western side of our wildland-urban interface, a little over 2,000 properties where neighborhoods meet open space west of Broadway. Staff's 2030 target is for 20% of them, or roughly 400 homes, to meet an insurance-recognized hardening standard. The longer-term aspiration is for every home across the wildland-urban interface, about 16,000 properties, to meet that same standard.

So far, the city's main tools to increase home hardening have been home improvement information and assessments, public funding for hardening work through Wildfire Resilience Assistance Program (WRAP) grants, and standards for new construction and remodels. Looking ahead, we have opportunities to develop those tools further, consider wider mandated requirements, and play a more direct role in building an ecosystem of services that helps residents get the work done.

As we move wildfire protection forward, a key question is how to harden homes at scale in the most timely and cost-effective way possible. Among these tools, developing an ecosystem of strong services deserves a big new push in the year ahead, because it's both a crucial enabler and a force multiplier for all the others.

Staff elevated hardening services in the proposed 2027 enhancements, with a plan to explore contractor coordination and low-cost financing. A majority of council expressed support for this type of work across the August 27 and October 22 study sessions. We're on the right track.

To succeed, we need to concentrate on what it will take to make the home hardening services ecosystem work well, build on what's been defined so far with new ideas, and make services central to our budgeting and our wider policies and plans. What follows are some ideas to help inform that work.

What a strong home hardening services ecosystem could look like

A home hardening services ecosystem is the network of people and organizations that work together to get homes hardened. The core is a marketplace of qualified private providers residents can hire to do the work. Around that are suppliers, lenders, HOAs, landlords, and community partners, with the city as facilitator. When residents are completing home hardening fully, quickly, and affordably, we'll know the ecosystem is working.

We need it to work for residents and for the city. For residents, it means…

Read more ➜

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The Daily Camera recently reminded voters of its endorsement. "When we endorsed Ryan Schuchard for his first term, we called him a force of nature," the editorial board wrote. "That holds true today." The Camera added that after a term on council, "he feels like a completely well-rounded leader with knowledge and depth of input on every issue," and that "his long-term thinking and ideation are and will continue to be essential to setting up Boulder for a resilient and successful future." Read here.

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Did you catch KGNU's City Council candidate forum on A Public Affair? I joined fellow candidates on Thursday to talk about affordability, wildfire, and climate resilience, including why I think Boulder should build a system that cuts wildfire risk steadily year after year across tens of thousands of homes. Listen here.

I also spoke at a community town hall on housing, hosted by State Rep. Junie Joseph, where we answered community questions about a range of housing topics. My focus is housing for a balance of ages, stages, and incomes, so families, workers, and seniors can build their lives here.

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• 10/27 Tuesday @ 9:00-10:30 am: My Office Hours at the Main Library cafe

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Ryan and team