Nobody’s Moving to US ‘Climate Havens.’ The Federal Government Could Help

FLH’s Yuliya Panfil and Tim Robustelli wrote an OpEd for Bloomberg CityLab offering recommendations for the federal government to incentivize households to move to parts of the country that are better-equipped to weather climate change. A growing number of Americans are moving to climate-vulnerable regions in the Sun Belt, increasing the likelihood that more families, and more cities, will suffer due to climate change’s impacts.

Researchers at Rice University recently crunched the numbers on 10,000 government buyouts of flood-prone homes over the last 30 years and found that on average, homeowners moved only 7 miles (11 kilometers) away. The impact, the Rice researchers wrote, is that “most retreating homeowners are not moving long distances to safer towns, states and regions; they are churning in and between nearby neighborhoods.”

To make matters worse, US Census Bureau data shows that 11 of the 15 fastest-growing large cities in the country are located in Texas, Florida and Arizona, states variously at risk of sea-level rise, extreme heat and drought, flooding and hurricanes. These two demographic trends — a preference for short-distance moves and the Sun Belt’s population boom — mean that millions of US climate migrants will be living in communities that are only marginally less climate-vulnerable than the ones they flee.

Fast forward 40 years, and economists predict a climate-driven property meltdown worth hundreds of billions of dollars as home insurance and mortgage industries flee risky locales and homeowners’ equity disappears. In fact, this process is already starting: From California to Iowa, the increased frequency and intensity of disasters is exponentially increasing home insurance rates and prompting insurers to exit markets. Climate migrants will have no choice but to make a messy and expensive retreat, likely at a severe financial loss.

To avoid this bleak eventuality, the US needs a whole-of-government plan to incentivize climate transplants to the Great Lakes, the northern Great Plains and the Northeast. That entails working with local partners in future climate havens to entice both businesses and individuals northward.

Read the full article here.