We shouldn't have to pay for Jack Dorsey's $40m estate when it crumbles into the sea

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/08/california-climate-crisis-jack-dorsey-home

Adrian Daub
Sun 8 Mar 2020 06.00 EDT
Last modified on Wed 11 Mar 2020 06.26 EDT

Even by the standards of overpriced San Francisco, the Sea Cliff neighborhood is astronomically expensive. Nestled between two gorgeous parks and with what a realtor might describe as commanding views of the Golden Gate, it could hardly be different. Homes in the area routinely go for more than $10m. Jack Dorsey, the CEO of Twitter and the payment service Square, recently bought a place here for $21.5m – next door to his $18m present home. The 0.62-acre compound is recessed from the street and perched on a cliff overlooking the beach.

And that’s where things get interesting, because cliffside living has become an increasingly risky proposition in California. Warming ocean temperatures are whipping up stronger surfs and more brutal winter storms, causing cliffs to crumble ever faster into the sea. The consequences for thousands of cliff-top houses such as Dorsey’s could be catastrophic. Still, @Jack’s bet isn’t a bad one: depending on when the house goes over the edge, it might well be the rest of us that gets stuck with the bill.

That’s because most of the cost of protecting California properties from coastal erosion, wildfires and other effects of the climate crisis will eventually have to be met by the state, with public money. This means those costs won’t fall on the disproportionately white and wealthy people who own property. Rather, they’ll be increasingly borne by the working- and middle-class Hispanic, black and brown Californians that make up the majority of the state, many of whom don’t own real estate. Without really grappling with this reality, the state is slipping step by step towards a massive wealth transfer from the general public to the owners of private property. It’s one more way in which the climate crisis is also a crisis of racism and inequality.

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