The Future of Climate Adaptation in America: A Q&A with Matt Sedlar

This article is part of The Rooftop, a blog and multimedia series from New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. Featuring insights from experts across diverse fields, the series is a home for bold ideas to improve housing in the United States and globally.

New America’s Tim Robustelli sat down with climate analyst Matt Sedlar to discuss the climate adaptation efforts that states and local governments can pursue as federal support is cut. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tim Robustelli: Hi everyone, welcome to The Rooftop. My name is Tim Robustelli and I’m a senior policy analyst with New America’s Future of Land and Housing program. The Rooftop is a housing blog and multimedia series hosted by the Future of Land and Housing program and it’s shaped entirely by its contributors. It’s a forum for individuals and organizations across the housing sector to share innovative ideas, big or small in scale, public or private, well-trodden or experimental, that seek to make housing more affordable and plentiful in the U.S. and globally.

Today, we’re so excited to be joined by Matt Sedlar, climate analyst for the Center for Economic Policy and Research, a think tank based in DC. Matt’s written and spoken extensively on climate and housing issues, including for The Los Angeles Times and The Hill.

Matt Sedlar: Thanks for having me.

Robustelli: Let’s start with federal support for climate adaptation efforts or the policies and programs at federal agencies that respond to current and anticipated climate impacts in order to protect communities around the country. We’re a housing program, so I’m particularly interested here in housing-related issues like hazard mitigation and community-driven relocation. What has the federal government historically done on climate adaptation, and with the recent change in administrations, what has the Trump administration done in its first 100 days or so?

Sedlar: It might be difficult to run through absolutely everything the federal government has done! But in recent years, including Trump’s first term, a lot has been done around hazard mitigation and community-driven relocation. For example, Congress passed the Disaster Recovery Reform Act in 2018, which created the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, program. Funding for that program started in 2020, and communities were able to apply for grants each year for hazard mitigation projects, regardless of whether a disaster had been declared or not, because usually funding is limited under the Stafford Act to post-disaster mitigation. I should note this program has bipartisan support.

Then at the tail end of the Biden administration, the White House released a report on ways the federal government could support community-driven relocation efforts in areas that experience repeated climate-driven disasters. It was a collaborative effort by a multi-agency subcommittee. There was FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency], the Department of the Interior, and the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Their goal was to develop a whole-of-government solution to help communities in risky areas. And as you know a lot about this topic, Tim, you know there is no single source of federal funding for relocation. This report highlighted several potential solutions to the issue, including establishing a single entry point for communities to access federal funding and technical assistance.

In his first 100 days, unfortunately, Trump eliminated the BRIC program and the White House report on community relocation was removed, like other documents mentioning climate change, from its website.

Robustelli: You mentioned that the administration has shut down BRIC. Can you explain just a little bit more about what that program did and what communities might be missing out on now that it’s been shut down?

Sedlar: So BRIC is a successor to the pre-disaster mitigation grant program. I don’t know off the top of my head when that was started, but it basically expanded that program. And the way that it works is communities go through a non-federal sponsor, like state government, local government, tribal government, and they get funding to do things like install generators in senior centers. Or basically a lot of mitigation stuff. So raising or elevating infrastructure—one example I think I found was raising a road to a pump station so that crews could access it during floods. So it allowed communities to work on these projects outside of the Stafford Act, which limits it to post-disaster mitigation.

Robustelli: Got it, thank you for that. I mean, it’s so important, that pre-disaster preparation to really help with how communities can be resilient and to make sure that they have the resources in place when a hurricane or a wildfire hits.

So I want to turn to something that’s maybe on a lot of folks’ minds in Washington these days, and that’s Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which was recently working its way through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Are there concerns that the administration could similarly shut down HUD grant programs focused on climate adaptation and resilience, what we recently saw at FEMA?

Sedlar: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s a very real concern. And the Trump administration has repeatedly stated that disaster recovery is a state issue and federal assistance should be minimized. In his budget proposal that he released at the beginning of May, just a couple of weeks ago, Trump suggested eliminating the Community Developed Block Grant (CDBG) program entirely.

For listeners who don’t know, Community Development Block Grants have been used to fund managed retreat or relocation efforts, the most prominent example being the Isle de Jean Charles resettlement in southern Louisiana. In 2016, Louisiana was awarded $48.3 million through HUD’s CDBG National Disaster Resilience Program to help Isle de Jean Charles residents develop and implement a structured and voluntary retreat. These projects are costly. And as you know, Tim, states alone cannot foot the bill. Now there’s certainly confusion over what part of the federal government should be responsible for helping states out. But the administration could make these programs more efficient rather than eliminating them.

“These projects are costly. And states alone cannot foot the bill.”

Robustelli: Absolutely. I’ve heard the expression that we should maybe be using a scalpel instead of a hammer to deal with some of these issues and inefficiencies across the federal government as a way to improve things.

You mentioned that Trump feels that disaster response, [and] climate adaptation, is maybe a state-level issue, and one can certainly agree or disagree with that, but regardless, we’re seeing a large-scale decline in federal funding—which has resulted in a lot more focus on what state and local governments can do around climate adaptation and resilience. Are there any state-level programs around housing and climate that come to mind for you as ones worth highlighting or even emulating?

Sedlar: Oh, absolutely. And I believe this is an area where Florida is a leader in creating state-level mitigation grant programs. My Safe Florida Home is a great example of a state program helping homeowners with mitigation costs. The program provides homeowners with a hurricane mitigation inspection, and then they give them either a matching or low-income grant of up to $10,000 to cover the cost of work. The program is so popular that applications disappear within minutes after they’re made available. So the state government this year recently increased the budget, and I believe they’re trying to put a lot more money into that program, because you have millions of homeowners in Florida. I think the initial budget was only $200 million, which is clearly not enough for the millions of people in Florida. And that comes entirely out of the state’s budget.

Now there’s another program, Strengthen Alabama Homes. It offers $10,000 grants to homes in the state’s coastal counties, although I believe they’ve expanded it outside of the coastal counties this year. And the program is operated by the Alabama Department of Insurance, so the funding doesn’t come from the state budget. It’s funded by taxes paid by insurers in the state, so it’s not reliant on the state budget. And they do something similar where they give out grants for hardening roofs for hurricane protection.

California has a program for wildfire mitigation, but it’s partially funded by federal grants. There’s a recent bill introduced that aims to set up a state-run program, but I don’t know the current status of that bill. I think it was just introduced. So I think there are states that are coming forward and identifying ways in which they can create these state-level mitigation programs in the absence of federal funding, and there are some really great examples out there.

Robustelli: It’s interesting to hear that, you know, it’s across what folks might think of when it comes to Democratic states or Republican states. You have Florida and Alabama, they’re both pretty solidly red states doing climate mitigation work at the state level, and then California, that is very blue, doing that kind of work, as well. So, perhaps a bit heartening to see that work being done sort of across the country.

Matt, do any local-level examples come to mind? We talk about states. States maybe have a bit more resourcing from a financial standpoint or from a staffing standpoint to implement these programs, but often cities and towns might struggle to have those resources. Are there any good examples that folks can look at for maybe a town or city doing adaptation or mitigation work?

Sedlar: Yeah, it’s a lot tougher on the local level because there is that absence of the amount of funding that states or the federal government can provide. I recently finished writing a report—I’m going to actually be presenting it pretty soon—and it’s about south Lafourche Parish in Louisiana.

In 2005, they have a ring levee that surrounds multiple communities, multiple cities. What happened was, after Hurricane Katrina, the Army Corps changed its guidelines on how levees can be constructed. The local levee district kind of split ways with [the Army Corps] because they disagreed on the amount of time and the cost that it was going to take to upgrade the levees. So what they did is that they implemented something like a 10-cent tax that the voters approved. It was like 88 percent in favor of this local tax that would help upgrade the levees and raise the levees. That’s been operating like that since 2006, I believe. [Editor’s note: It was a one-percent tax that passed with a reported 82 percent of the vote.]

U.S. Army Corps decertified their levees, and that has had a problem with insurance in the area, because the National Flood Insurance Program, if a levee is decertified, you don’t get those rate adjustments that you might get from a U.S. Army Corp-certified levee. So there are issues there. But I think it’s a great example—though they have received funding from the state, they’re not entirely alone on this—I think it’s a great example of a locality stepping up when the federal government has no longer provided support and coming up with a local solution.

Robustelli: Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for sharing that. That’s a great example.

So I think maybe our last question—obviously states and municipalities have traditionally received a lot of funding from the federal government. Even those programs that you might’ve mentioned across the federal, state, and local level, they might be squeezed a little bit budget-wise, resource-wise. So I’m curious, in your mind, what else can states and cities consider doing around housing and climate over the next few years as sort of that resource stream from Washington, DC, turns into a trickle or is shut off completely?

Sedlar: It’s going to be tough, but I think there are options. I think states and cities need to explore alternative funding mechanisms for these projects. They’re going to have to get creative, because it can’t all be local taxes and bonds. We might see more public-private partnerships because insurers also have an interest in reducing risk across the United States. We’ll also likely see more land use planning and zoning reforms, especially increasing density in resilient locations and decreasing development in high-risk areas. Of course, there are areas we didn’t think were at risk before that have become risky, so we also need more investment in data collection and analysis to understand these vulnerabilities. And I think that might be easier for wealthier counties or larger cities. Unfortunately, I think smaller, rural, impoverished counties or cities are going to have a tougher time making these adjustments.

But the last thing I’ll say is that we do need increased community engagement and education. Homeowners have to be more proactive in adopting protective measures. So in the case of the state programs I mentioned previously, their effectiveness relies on homeowner participation. Homeowners have to be educated about something like My Safe Florida Home. They have to know the application process, et cetera. And then the programs themselves have to do a lot of outreach from the local, state level so that the homeowners do know about them and what they can or cannot do. For example, My Safe Florida Home has a matching grant and a low-income grant, and so low-income families have to know how to apply for that low-income grant.

“We need increased community engagement and education. Homeowners have to be more proactive in adopting protective measures.”

I think basically, it comes down to these alternative funding mechanisms, like these state-level mitigation programs, and land-use planning and zoning reforms, and community education and engagement. Those are the things that all have to happen at the state and local level.

Robustelli: Thanks, Matt. I think you’ve hit on a lot of things that our program and a lot of our partners think about when it comes to adaptation and housing. I mean, equity considerations, that bottom-up emphasis, outreach and communication, upzoning and thinking about where we do and don’t build, all incredibly important considerations. Perhaps [we’re] ending on a bit of a positive note as well—a good call to action on what can be done at the local level, regardless of the turbulence here in DC. Matt, is there anything else that you’d like to share before we wrap?

Sedlar: No, I always love ending on a positive note. I think it’s just going to take a lot of that community engagement to get us to a point where a lot of this can be done at the local level. A lot more can be done at the local level, I should say. Because federal funding has always been, no matter who’s in office, it’s always been a little less reliable than what’s happening at the state or local level. So I do have hope for what’s going on at the local and state level.

Robustelli: Me too, that’s a good place to end things. Well, Matt, thank you so much for taking the time to share your insights with us today. And thanks to everyone for listening. If you’re a listener with a housing innovation idea that you want to talk or write about, please reach out to us at FLH@newamerica.org. Matt, thanks so much and thanks to everyone.

Editor’s note: The views expressed in the articles on The Rooftop are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policy positions of New America.