Dear friend,

Welcome to Frontier, the monthly newsletter from the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America.

This month, we’re focusing on the critical nexus of housing security and climate change. From power outages in Houston caused by Hurricane Beryl, to the lack of air conditioning amidst record-breaking heat in D.C. and evacuations due to wildfires in Southern California, the impact of climate hazards on our homes is starkly apparent this summer. We're halfway through 2024, and the U.S. has already experienced 15 disasters each costing over $1 billion.

Climate-driven housing challenges require bold ideas, careful planning, and ambitious action. The policy choices that decision-makers at all levels of government make today will determine how successfully the U.S. can secure housing for millions of impacted Americans in the coming decades.

In this newsletter, we share some of our recent work on housing and climate. Keep a lookout as we continue to explore issues at this key intersection, including extreme heat and mobile homes, mandatory property buyouts, and shrinking coastal communities.

What We're Doing

Bloomberg CityLab OpEd—Nobody's Moving to US 'Climate Havens.' The Federal Government Could Help

📑 Read the OpEd here.

At least 3 million Americans have already relocated due to the impacts of climate change. But relatively few have migrated to future climate havens like Duluth and Rochester. Instead, most of these households are just moving to equally at-risk towns nearby. And worse, many millions of Americans are actively migrating into the most climate-vulnerable parts of the country, largely in the Sun Belt.

Fast forward a few decades, and economists predict a climate-driven property meltdown worth hundreds of billions, as insurance and mortgage brokers flee risky locales and homeowner equity disappears. Ultimately, this crisis could usher in a chaotic and costly mass exodus.

To avoid this bleak eventuality, the U.S. needs a plan to coax climate transplants to parts of the country that are safe and well-suited to accommodate population growth in the long run. FLH's Yuliya Panfil and Tim Robustelli wrote for Bloomberg CityLab, offering recommendations for the federal government to incentivize Americans to relocate to regions that are more climate resilient.

FLH Blog—They Left Puerto Rico After Hurricane Maria and Collided with the Housing Crisis in Connecticut

📑 Read the blog post here.

Around 13,000 people moved from Puerto Rico to Connecticut in the six months following Hurricane Maria. Many fled homelessness, food insecurity, and other unsafe conditions to stay with relatives and friends. But cities like New Haven were unprepared to receive thousands of displaced Puerto Ricans, which meant the experience of disaster followed them far beyond their island home.

New Haven isn't unique in this regard: climate change is expected to increase migration and displacement worldwide, and many receiving cities aren’t ready. Recent history shows that communities that are already overburdened and under-resourced can’t accommodate new arrivals. Displaced persons, traumatized by disaster, then struggle to access basic services such as food, affordable housing, and health care.

The FLH Blog recently featured a guest post from Katie Lund and Bruni Pizarro that captures the growing challenges of climate migration in the United States. Their piece tells the story of Puerto Rican families navigating the trauma of Hurricane Maria while also trying to find a home in unfamiliar New Haven.

What We're Reading

FLH staff share what has stood out to them lately on housing security and climate change in the United States.

Sabiha Zainulbhai

No return to Paradise: Inside a California town burned by tragedy: The 2018 Camp Fire in Northern California destroyed nearly 19,000 structures and killed 85 people. Five and a half years post-blaze, this SFGate article details the challenges of long-time local residents hoping to rebuild their homes and their lives amidst an influx of people moving in from California’s surrounding (and more expensive) cities. From cobbling together disaster grants and finding permissible lots for their mobile homes to homeowner insurance rates that have skyrocketed to unaffordable levels, long-time residents are left with few housing options. Despite median home prices that are nearly half that of nearby areas, homes costing $450,000 are still too high for pre-fire residents who lost their housing, while the cost of rebuilding is also out of reach. This article sheds light on a question that we continue to face in places where disasters strike: what happens when the level of aid is not sufficient to adapt to changing housing market dynamics, leaving pre-disaster residents with no viable options? 

Tim Robustelli

The US is failing renters during extreme heat waves: 2023 was the hottest year on record, and extreme heat will only intensify amid climate change. Soaring temperatures mean that already-vulnerable groups like low-income and elderly renters are at increased risk of heat stroke, and even hospitalization and death. Yet there’s little regulation to shield U.S. tenants from the heat, especially in contrast to safeguards around cold weather. No federal protections exist, and habitability laws at state and local levels rarely require landlords to provide air conditioning. In large part, political inertia, opposition from powerful landlord groups, and questions around who ultimately pays summer energy bills have contributed to this policy gap. Nonetheless, the need for tenant protections from extreme heat is clearly growing as heat waves become stronger, longer, and more frequent. It’s past time for policymakers to treat A/C as a necessity, and provide more resources to renters and landlords to both cover utility costs and install more efficient cooling options like heat pumps.

Helen Bonnyman

'This Storm Has Broken People': After Beryl, Some Consider Leaving: Recovering from the second destructive storm this year, and with hurricane season’s peak still months away, some Houston residents are beginning to consider leaving the city. Hurricane Beryl compounded existing damage from a May storm, and thousands of households have now lost power for days on two separate occasions in recent months. Last year, a survey suggested that a quarter of Houston residents had considered leaving the city due to severe weather. We may see this proportion grow as Houstonians recover from Beryl and endure the remainder of hurricane season, since research shows that in the years following a severe disaster, outmigration tends to increase. In particular, residents who are more highly educated, more wealthy, or new to the region are expected to account for the most departures—a reminder that climate migration is less attainable for households with fewer resources at their disposal.

Thoughts on our work or where we're headed? Reach out to us at FLH@NewAmerica.org or tag us at @FLHatNewAmerica.

Until next month, the FLH Team.

About New America

New America is dedicated to renewing the promise of America, bringing us closer to our nation’s highest ideals. We’re a different kind of think tank: one dedicated to public problem solving. Our team of visionary researchers, changemakers, technologists, and storytellers study and seize the opportunities presented by dramatic social and technological change. We search for powerful ideas, wherever they are, and collaborate with civic innovators around the world to develop evidence-based solutions.

The Future of Land and Housing Program at New America aims to help solve today’s land and housing rights challenges, both in the United States and internationally. Through our research and writing, convening, and collaboration with civic innovators worldwide, we strive to connect new constituencies, shed light on underreported issues, and implement creative approaches in the property rights space.

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