Taping up my 93 year old grandma’s windows with duct tape and reposting mask mutual aid efforts was not on my 2025 bingo card. But here we are, another wildfire, another scramble to limit smoke inhalation, and another time I wonder if it was always this hard to live in Southern California.
The land is no stranger to fire
Fire is a necessary aspect of our ecosystem and essential for our native soils, plants, animals, and peoples to thrive. Fire kinship, or having a relationship with fire, is a foundational practice within Indigenous cultures across the region now known as California. Native peoples evolved advanced fire stewardship and fire-dependent-cultures via hundreds of generations of scientific observation and knowledge sharing.
Although these practices are integral to steward the land, over the course of three centuries Indigenous people have been stripped of their right to burn by the policies of Euro-American governments. Only within the last century has fire suppression been questioned. Indigenous burning is returning to the land via an excruciating slow power shift from governmental agencies to tribal nations.
But the land is changing faster than the speed of government.
Within a century, Southern California has transformed from a series of independent dirt-road ranchos to a continuous sea of hardscape, home to 25 million people. From mansions to multiplexes, individual homes and multifamily housing developments sprang up across the region. Just within my hometown, the housing stock increased 73% from 32,437 residential units in 2000 to 56,240 in 2020.
My family has been in the region for six generations to witness this land change. The transformation of land from ag fields to housing and business districts was built on their labor. My great-grandfathers, grandfather, uncles, and cousins have built, roofed, and retrofitted homes and businesses for the past 60 years. These buildings have housed generations of families, built wealth for hundreds of store clerks, and allowed our campesino community to move from agricultural labor camps (campos) to houses safe from the elements.
But something is shifting. The house built by my great-grandfather, a home that survived 30+ winter seasons, is not as warm as it used to be. The family home that my father renovated fills with wildfire smoke every year. The homes are the same. So what has changed?
Two words: extreme weather. It’s increasing in frequency and intensity. In the past 5 years, California has experienced our top largest fires in history. The homes built, roofed, and renovated by my family for the past four generations are not holding up to our current weather. We need homes with central AC during heat waves, and ventilation during wildfires.
We need homes that will serve the next seven generations
of my family and the broader community.
“Seven generations thinking,” or implementing actions that will benefit the next seven generations, is not a new concept. Indigenous peoples have stewarded their lands, waters, and other-than-human relatives (aka animals, plants and fish) by “seven generation thinking” since time immemorial. Now it’s time for our decision makers to catch up, and implement solutions that will serve my great, great grandchildren.
Making Southern California homes climate resilient for generations
Rethinking how our homes are built
It begins with how we build our homes. Building codes, specifically building codes that set requirements for a building’s thermal performance, can ensure a home is cool enough in the summer and warm enough in the winter.
The International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) outlines what building designs, materials, systems, and equipment are most suitable for a specific climate region. This ensures new buildings can withstand heat waves and cold fronts more efficiently. It also allows for new buildings to stay at a survivable temperature for longer, even in times of power outages.
Housing decision makers, such as a city’s or jurisdiction’s Building Division or Environmental Office can ensure new buildings in their city are more resilient against extreme temperatures by adopting the most recent IECC.
Reimagining our current housing stock
Building codes cover new homes, but what about existing housing? Building performance policies can redefine how we retrofit our existing homes. Policies like a building performance standard (BPS) can encourage updates such as sealing up housing envelopes, and upgrading heating and ventilation systems (aka HVAC systems). Updates like these could reduce wildfire smoke in homes, and keep homes more resilient during heat waves and cold fronts.
Now, BPS usually only applies to larger buildings that are over 50k sq ft – 25k sq ft. This covers some condos and apartment complexes, but does not cover smaller residential homes.
Local governments can and should support programs that aid climate resilience in single family homes and smaller housing developments such as the Weatherization Assistance Program.
Integrating ‘Passive Survivability’ into building codes
Homes, schools, public buildings should be redesigned to maintain safe indoor conditions and temperatures, even during extended power outages or loss of energy supply, relying solely on design features like insulation, natural ventilation, and building orientation, without the need for active systems like backup power generators (Just Solutions).
Continuous learning
Many cities are starting to understand how homes and buildings intersect with people’s lives. Everything from health and affordability, to climate resilience is dependent on the quality of our buildings. We need to push decision makers to continue to learn about these intersections, and update building policies to create generational resilience. Whether it be about community priorities and education to address the community needs, new technologies to address climate disasters, or Traditional Indigenous Knowledge, learning is essential to anticipate the climate issues of future generations.
Holistic fire resilience requires indigenous peoples and other
marginalized communities to be at the forefront of climate resilience.
This blog was prompted by the 2025 Southern California fires that pushed California’s fire ecology into the national conversation. The above recommendations are strategies to mitigate the effect of extreme climate (fires, floods, heat waves and cold fronts) on individual families. A holistic approach to increase fire resilience in Southern California requires a combination of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and western knowledge. Please check out Storytelling Through Fire by Dr. Melinda Adams to learn more about the role of fire in Southern California’s ecology and how to live with fire instead of against it.
