Dear friend,

Welcome to Frontier, the monthly newsletter from the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. This month, we discussed barriers to accessing small-dollar mortgages at a Pew Charitable Trusts webinar for national homeownership month. We've also continued to share the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT) at the state-level in the United States.

🔊 The FLH team is excited to welcome Ellis Obrien as a summer 2022 intern.

🔊 TODAY (12:00pm U.S. Eastern): Join FLH and Future Tense for our webinar, "What is Coastal America's Future?"

Here's what else we've been up to:

What We're Doing

Does Coastal America Have a Future?

The United States is at a climate crossroads. Rising sea levels, as well as more frequent and powerful storms, threaten over 100 million people who currently live on the U.S. coasts. These impacts, along with wildfires, extreme heat, and more, are increasingly and dramatically affecting where Americans live, as well as their relationships to their homes, businesses, and communities.

We're not powerless, however, in determining our climate future. As part of “The Future of the Coasts,” our ongoing partnership with Future Tense, we're continuing to reimagine life in the United States amid climate change:

• Researcher Molly Brind'Amour reviewed the frustrated history of "managed retreat" policies in response to Brenda Cooper's fictional short story, "Out of Ash."
• Three wildfire experts—Molly Mowery, Kelly Johnston, and Katie Oran—re-envisioned how Americans can build and live amid larger and stronger wildfires in the coming decades.

FLH director Yuliya Panfil also talked about "managed retreat" on the New Jersey Coastal Coalition Podcast.

What is the Role of Large Investors in a North Carolina Housing Market?

How are Wall Street hedge funds, private equity firms, and other large investors impacting the local housing market in Winston-Salem, North Carolina?

WFDD, the regional NPR-affiliate, reported on a recent analysis by FLH's Sabiha Zainulbhai and the Center for the Study of Economic Mobility (CSEM)'s Zach Blizard. Exploring 20 years of real estate investments in Winston-Salem, the study found that such activity is largely driven by smaller investors and wealthy individuals. But the profound advantages of large investors and their outsized impacts in a local housing market means that their activity should be continuously tracked and assessed.

Read the analysis here, and WFDD's reporting here.

Partnered Event with USAID: The Voluntary Guidelines on Tenure, Ten Years Later

Endorsed unanimously ten years ago, the UN's Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure (VGGT) provide an international framework for governments to responsibly and equitably manage land, fisheries, and forests.

Last week, New America and USAID hosted a number of land experts to reflect on a decade of the VGGT, including its achievements, its challenges, and how we can close persistent gaps between aspiration and implementation.

A recording of the event is available here.

What We're Reading

FLH staff share what has stood out to them lately on land, housing, and property rights in the U.S. and internationally.

Yuliya Panfil

She lost her house to the rising sea. Nowhere else feels like home.: This Washington Post article profiles the plight of Saint-Louis, Senegal, a UNESCO World Heritage city that is falling under the rising seas. In 2018 the Government of Senegal launched a $93 million program to relocate residents seven miles inland, but many in this city of 150,000 don't want to move. Relocating inland would mean leaving behind their fishing livelihoods, their ancestral homeland and their communities. It's a case study in "place attachment," an emotional connection that roots an individual to a specific area, stymying managed retreat and other efforts to move vulnerable residents away from the coasts.

Sabiha Zainulbhai

The Theft of the Commons: In this New Yorker article, Eula Biss explores the centuries-long process of “enclosure,” where land once used collectively for subsistence came to be exclusively owned. Once enclosure became enshrined through property rights, the once-common practice of collective land use (“the commons”) is redefined as theft, and the incentive to use land to serve collective needs becomes secondary to the goal of expansion and profit. Dispossessed of land, those who relied on the commons instead became bound to wage labor, setting in motion the foundation for our modern property rights regime, described as modern-day feudalism. This article raises the question, how do we protect and recreate the positive aspects of the commons in a world that is mostly enclosed? 

Tim Robustelli

Paradise Burned to the Ground. Now It's Another Hot Housing Market: The 2018 Camp Fire killed 85 people and destroyed 87 percent of homes in the mountain town of Paradise, California. Today, the once-devastated community is experiencing a building boom and rising housing prices. This Vice article explores why some families are choosing to rebuild in or even move to Paradise—despite the chance of another deadly blaze. For many, the risk of a wildfire is outweighed by a close-knit community and its outdoor lifestyle, well away from the crowded, expensive, and increasingly flooded coasts.

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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