America’s Next Migration: How Midwest Housing Will Shape Our Climate Future

As the United States approaches its 250th birthday next year, it stands on the precipice of what New America Fellow Jake Brittle describes as “the largest migration in our country’s history.” Extreme heat, sea-level rise, and natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires will displace millions of Americans over the next 50 years. Climate-driven displacement threatens to be chaotic, inequitable, and financially ruinous, as Vann R. Newkirk II, a senior fellow with New America’s Arizona State University (ASU) Future Security program, warns in a recent article for The Atlantic. But will the mass migration caused by climate change really match this bleak forecast—or could it spark new economic growth and opportunity?

History demonstrates that the presence of abundant and affordable homes is key in helping millions of Americans relocate on their own terms and thrive where they land. And for the communities throughout the American heartland that may become “receiving cities,” absorbing new arrivals from climate migration, the availability of housing will shape whether they can attract and capitalize on population inflows without displacing existing residents.

Mobility Drives Economic Growth, and Mobility Depends on Housing 

In his 2025 book Stuck, Yoni Appelbaum argues that mobility is a defining feature of the American experience and a fundamental engine of economic, social, and civic success. High rates of residential relocation helped to expand labor markets, population centers, and myriad industries. The inflow of millions of immigrants into New York City tenements and Chicago bungalows at the turn of the twentieth century, for example, helped transform those cities into global powerhouses. More recently, Sun Belt population growth helped spur unprecedented economic expansion regionally. Critically, research from Harvard economists found that, since the 1970s, increases in housing supply were as important as economic productivity in driving Sun Belt growth. 

But something’s changed, and many Americans now find themselves stuck in place. 

Only one-twelfth of the country moved in 2021, down from one-third in the late nineteenth century. Stagnant housing supply and skyrocketing home prices are stifling mobility, and while many factors contribute to the housing crunch, Applebaum points first to the overburdensome rules and regulations that make homes prohibitively expensive to build. In other words, it’s become too costly to build where people want to live, so everyone stays put. The consequences for American society are stark: less entrepreneurship, weaker economic mobility, and rising social challenges like isolation and suspicion. 

Forced to Leave But Nowhere To Go

Impending climate displacement will no doubt “unstick” people across the country, as extreme heat, sea-level rise, and natural hazards like hurricanes and wildfires eventually force people to move. But that’s clearly not an answer to the challenges that Applebaum highlights. For many Americans, there will be nowhere safe to go. Take Detroit, which is often labeled a “climate haven” and is primed for economic revitalization after decades of depopulation and disinvestment. In 2020, the Motor City was actually short 24,000 habitable homes relative to its population needs, after accounting for blight. 

A lack of available and affordable housing in possible receiving cities means that climate-vulnerable Americans will remain in risky places longer than desired, buckling under skyrocketing insurance costs, plummeting home values, and costly post-disaster rebuilds. Fewer Americans will relocate at their own pace and of their own volition. More will move as the result of sudden displacement, which is emotionally, socially, and economically traumatic for families, as well as for the communities that receive sudden population inflows.

Meanwhile, if future receiving cities—places like Detroit as well as Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Buffalo—remain short on housing, they’ll struggle to effectively welcome climate migrants and likely lose out on the type of population-driven economic booms that Chicago and New York experienced early last century, and the Sun Belt more recently.  

Build It and They’ll Come

Whether some Americans will abandon Southern and coastal areas isn’t in dispute. But where climate migrants actually go is still up for grabs. So why aren’t more Midwest cities positioning themselves as landing spots by building or restoring the housing and infrastructure needed to attract newcomers? Largely because they fear they’ll build a bunch of homes and nobody will come. 

In an interview with New 5 Cleveland, Kent State urban planner Terry Schwartz captured a sentiment we’ve heard repeatedly from city planners: “If we think people are going to pull up stakes and move because of climate issues, I think we need to look at that more closely. I just don’t think we know.”  The prospect of investing millions, or even billions, into homes that will sit vacant, evoking China’s eerie ghost cities, is understandably uncomfortable. 

But that fear misunderstands the flywheel dynamics of U.S. population movement: Once a city builds enough housing to be affordable and accessible, that housing supply sets a self-reinforcing cycle in motion. Housing availability attracts employers—city and business leaders often cite it as a major factor in investment decisions. Cheap rents attract workers, who then need places to dine, drink, and shop, spurring service-sector growth that draws even more people. As Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood told a crowd of business leaders at the first-ever U.S. Chamber of Commerce Housing Summit, held in November: “The number one cost of recruiting businesses to my state is making housing available for their workforce.”

In the Sun Belt, the Harvard study found the very presence of housing drove migration, creating a virtuous cycle of housing abundance, job creation, and economic growth.

Some Midwest cities get the message. In Cincinnati, long plagued by depopulation, city and business leaders are leveraging the prospect of climate migration to push housing and transit reforms that will benefit the city regardless of who arrives. This fall, the Cincinnati Regional Chamber of Commerce released its first-ever climate migration report, warning: “Limited housing supply and declining affordability could limit Cincinnati’s ability to absorb growth without negative effects on current residents…To meet rising housing demand, the Cincinnati region, including the City of Cincinnati, must reform development and land use policies to make construction easier and encourage a variety of housing types, especially in walkable neighborhoods and near public transit.” 

(Un)sticking the Landing

In his sweeping analysis of America’s climate future, Newkirk doesn’t share too much optimism. But he does end with a nod to civic engagement around climate change in multiple frontline communities. Americans from post-fire Altadena on the West Coast to Miami’s high ground and New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward are engaged in all types of climate activism. We’ll need more of those same efforts in receiving cities across the Great Lakes region. 

Local advocates in places like Detroit, Cincinnati, and Buffalo can play a critical role in helping city hall decide what gets built, when, and where. Through proactive and persistent engagement, we can ensure that Americans will have greater opportunity to move to climate-desirable places on their own terms, within their means—and that receiving cities can better harness population inflows for equitable economic growth well into our climate future.

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