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California housing crisis podcast: When a big earthquake hits Los Angeles or San Francisco

Earthquake damage check
K. Dirk Bondy, president of Seneca Structural Engineering, checks the Soroptimist House at Cal State Long Beach after the Ridgecrest earthquakes earlier this month. Bondy says the damage was not necessarily caused by the earthquake.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
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Earlier this month, two major earthquakes struck the small city of Ridgecrest in Kern County. The incidents highlighted the dangers of big quakes across the state, especially ones that might hit population centers in the Bay Area or Southern California.

On this episode of “Gimme Shelter: The California Housing Crisis Podcast,” we discuss how an earthquake could worsen the state’s housing problems. For instance, a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that at least 800 people could be killed and more than 400,000 people could be displaced from their homes in a hypothetical magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault centered below Oakland. Our guest is Maiclaire Bolton Smith, a seismologist with real estate data firm CoreLogic.

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Gimme Shelter,” a biweekly podcast that looks at why it’s so expensive to live in California and what the state can do about it, features Liam Dillon, who covers housing affordability issues for the Los Angeles Times Sacramento bureau, and Matt Levin, data and housing reporter for CALmatters.

You can subscribe to “Gimme Shelter” on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Soundcloud, Google Play and Overcast.

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