More and more people are building homes in the western “wildland urban interface,” the forested areas where housing borders undeveloped public lands. Headwaters Economics has prepared maps and graphs illustrating this emerging problem for western communities. Our analysis takes a long view, looking at the potential for more home construction next to fire-prone public lands and implications for future wildfire fighting costs. Click here to read this article in our newsletter (600K Acrobat pdf) or click here to go to the full wildfire report and see statistics for your state and county.

Highlights

• Only 14% of the available “wildland urban interface” in the West is currently developed, leaving tremendous potential for new home construction in the remaining 86%.