Solution Create a special district parcel tax on properties inside a defined wildfire hazard boundary, generating stable multi-year revenue for place-level vegetation management, evacuation route protection and fire patrols that no individual property owner can deliver alone. Key challenge Wildfire mitigation in the Oakland Hills competed for general fund dollars against every other city priority amid a USD 177 million budget shortfall, leaving the risk-reduction work that determines whether homes in the area remain insurable both chronically underfunded and repeatedly interrupted. Context The 1991 East Bay Hills fire burned 1,500 acres, killed 25 people, destroyed more than 3,500 homes and caused about USD 2.99 billion in losses in 2023 dollars. Since then Oakland has funded fire prevention through a succession of assessment districts that lapsed repeatedly: a Wildfire Prevention Assessment District from 1992 to 1997, only basic services from 1997 to 2003, a ten-year reinstatement from 2003, and a failed ballot measure in 2013. The affected area is the peri-urban wildland-urban interface of the Oakland Hills, where the median household income is greater than USD 120,000. Insurers have issued non-renewal notices and raised premiums across the area, and non-renewals continue to grow and expand into locations previously considered insurable by carriers. In May 2024 the city adopted its first Vegetation Management Plan, a ten-year plan covering approximately 1,924 acres of city-owned land and 308 miles of roadway - but with no dedicated funding to deliver it, leaving mitigation competing against other priorities within a general fund facing a nearly USD 177 million shortfall. Solution in practice In November 2024 voters inside Oakland's Wildfire Prevention Zone - Cal Fire's Very High Fire Hazard Severity Zone plus adjacent properties, around 25,000 parcels - approved Measure MM with roughly 70% support, clearing the required two-thirds threshold. The tax took effect on 1 July 2025 and runs for 20 years, levying USD 99 per single-family home and USD 65 per apartment or condominium, with non-residential parcels charged by frontage and square footage and annual CPI-linked increases capped at 5%. It raises an estimated USD 2.67 million in its first year, dedicated to implementing the Vegetation Management Plan: expanded roadside clearing to protect emergency evacuation routes, enhanced fire patrols on high-danger days, expanded goat grazing for fuel reduction, and public education for residents, businesses and property owners. Annual parcel inspections deliberately remain on the general fund so that new revenue goes to mitigation rather than administration. An oversight committee receives an independent audit of expenses and an annual report, and makes recommendations directly to City Council. Exemptions apply for very low-income homeowners (at or below 60% of area median income) and seniors below 80% AMI; the tax is halved for nonprofit-owned senior, disabled and low-income rental housing; and the city's Rent Adjustment Program prevents the cost being passed to most tenants. In parallel, the 2024 cohort of the Howden / Resilient Cities Network / Sustainable Markets Initiative Global Risk and Resilience Fellowship worked with the City of Oakland resilience team from March to October 2024, giving city leaders an understanding of underwriter and carrier perspectives, a toolkit for engaging carriers on withdrawal decisions, and a realistic view of what can be done locally to reduce the protection gap. Impact / outcome Measure MM passed with about 70% support; about USD 2.67m in year one for vegetation management across ~25,000 parcels. Next steps The Howden Fellowship’s key recommendation to the City of Oakland and its counterparts was to continue mitigation and education efforts, with a view to ensuring homeowners can reduce their risk exposure as much as possible; a focus on risk reduction matters because a solution to the lack of access to affordable insurance relies heavily on changes to State regulation in California, which the city has no direct control over. Educating the public about mitigation and insurance matters will support more informed and timely decision-making and can help communities avoid underinsurance or lapses in coverage, and in addition to preventing the start and spread of wildfires, mitigation efforts will encourage carriers to begin or continue to write policies in Oakland. The Fellowship gave City stakeholders a better understanding of underwriter and carrier perspectives on homeowners insurance, a toolkit to engage with carriers around the factors resulting in withdrawal of cover, and a clear understanding of what can realistically be done to reduce the insurance protection gap. On the regulatory side, the playbook cites Colorado’s HB 1182, passed in 2025, which requires insurers to account for property, community and landscape-scale mitigation in both pricing and coverage decisions, and offers a model other jurisdictions could adopt to incentivize this behavior. Under Measure MM, an oversight committee receives an independent audit of expenses and an annual report on funded activities and makes recommendations directly to Oakland City Council. Organizations involved Authoring: Resilient Cities Network; SPUR Actors: City of Oakland; Howden; Sustainable Markets Initiative Implementation partners Local Governments; Regulators & Policymakers; Civil Society Organizations; Insurers