00:00California Governor Gavin Newsom has come in for a fair amount of criticism over his management or mismanagement of the
00:06California wildfires.
00:07But Newsom signed a series of bills on Tuesday that many people in communities affected by wildfires are praising.
00:14These bills do essentially two things.
00:17The first is they set standards for insurance coverage for smoke damage.
00:22Smoke damage is what happens when your house doesn't burn down or doesn't burn down completely, but is inundated with
00:28smoke and particulates and other contaminants that make much of your property unusable and that have other effects on the
00:34house.
00:35In my case, for example, our house is still standing, but we had extensive smoke damage.
00:40Now, homeowners have had a lot of trouble getting compensated for that smoke damage, and these bills set new standards
00:46for making sure insurance companies do cover that.
00:49The second thing that these bills do is they extend mortgage forbearance, and they also give much greater flexibility to
00:56homeowners.
00:57Forbearance is what happens when you delay paying your mortgage, usually for a period of several months.
01:01In the aftermath of the wildfires, many homeowners had real trouble paying their mortgages because they had so many other
01:06immediate emergency expenses.
01:08And so many took forbearance from their banks for six months, sometimes 12 months.
01:13These bills extend that period for 24 months, but in addition, they allow homeowners to tack on an extra year
01:20or two to their mortgages so that when the forbearance ends, they're not liable for the full amount of the
01:26mortgage payments that they didn't make during the period of forbearance.
01:28They actually just get time at the end of the mortgage period to pay those mortgage payments off.
01:33These bills will really help homeowners in California keep their homes and get compensation for their property in the event
01:41of wildfires.
01:42And that is why people are praising Governor Gavin Newsom, even if they may have been critical of his handling
01:46of the disasters overall.
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