The Bank of North Dakota has a proven record of responsiveness to natural disaster, providing more than $200 million in assistance to state residents in seven crises since 1997. As Los Angeles public bank advocate Trinity Tran writes, a public bank can provide the same assistance to Angelenos rebuilding from the January wildfires. Her essay is a terrific argument not just for a Los Angeles public bank, but for public banks anywhere.
She notes that the Palisades, Eaton, and smaller fires took out entire neighborhoods; residents lost not only homes and memories but, in many cases, generational wealth. Following the fires, land and mudslides threatened more damage. With insurance companies backing away from covering areas prone to natural disaster, she asks, “Who pays to rebuild? And how can we do it faster, smarter, without sinking deeper into debt?”
Tran looks to the 1997 Grand Forks flood in North Dakota, where the public Bank of North Dakota quickly funneled around $70 million in credit and paused payments on mortgages to help stabilize and rebuild. BND stepped in again during the COVID pandemic with exceptionally fast and directed assistance. Public banking, Tran writes, is “swift, people-focused, and designed for crisis response. Unlike profit-driven institutions, a public bank—owned by a city or state—would reinvest public deposits into local resilience rather than shareholder dividends. Imagine transforming tax dollars into a renewable resource: funding fire-resistant infrastructure, upgrading aging power grids, and keeping families housed during disasters.”
Massachusetts has been lucky in avoiding the major floods and fires that have struck in other parts of the country. But that doesn’t mean we’re invulnerable, especially to storms and rising sea levels. As in Los Angeles, a public bank makes sense to provide Massachusetts residents with quick, needs-focused responses to disaster.