Dixon Trail in Escondido, California, is the first purpose-built, wildfire-resilient neighborhood in the United States.

Though only half of the 64 homes have been constructed, the development had its grand opening in April.

The gutters and vents are enclosed in a thin wire mesh.

Each window is double-paned, the glass tempered to withstand the heat of a wildfire, the stucco around the shutters resistant to flame.

Hardening a home means covering up nooks where embers can collect, replacing material that burns with material that doesn't, and clearing a five-foot non-combustible buffer around each house, an area state regulators call Zone Zero.

Building a fire-resistant home from scratch is one thing.

Bringing older homes up to that heightened standard is a more daunting and costly challenge, one that California lawmakers at the state and local level are only beginning to grapple with.

An unknown number of Californians live in homes built before 2008, when the state introduced its wildfire-minded building code for new construction in high-hazard areas.

Some home-hardening retrofits are cheap and DIY-able, others are less so.

A report from 2024 by the independent research group Headwater Economics put the cost to harden a two-story, 2,000-square-foot single-family home at anywhere from $2,000 to more than $100,000.

The insurance industry is beginning to offer discounts to some homeowners who make firewise changes, though the promised savings are often smaller than many homeowners expect or demand.

The closest thing California has to a statewide home-hardening campaign at the moment is a $117 million pilot project.

The California Wildfire Mitigation Program is run jointly by CAL FIRE and the Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

It's funding half a dozen neighborhood-wide retrofits in especially fire-prone and economically distressed corners of the state.

The pilot is currently set to expire in 2029, though the legislature is considering a bill to make it permanent.

For CalMatters, I'm Ben Christopher.