Dear friend,

Welcome to Frontier, the monthly newsletter from the Future of Land and Housing Program at New America. This month, we continued to explore the intersections between climate change and housing in the United States. We're also closely tracking housing, land, and property rights issues amid the war in Ukraine. 

🔊 The application for the 2024 Class of New America Fellows is now live! If you're a storyteller looking for funding and a community to support your work, apply here by February 1, 2023.

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

What We're Doing

Event Recap—The Scarlet E: Balancing Eviction Record Sealing and Data Access

Earlier this week, we hosted a panel discussion on the wave of eviction record sealing legislation that is sweeping the United States. These laws limit the ability of tenant screening companies to access eviction filing data, which is usually repackaged and sold to landlords, locking tenants out of future housing opportunities. 

At the same time, court records are the primary data source for tracking evictions and informing policies to prevent displacement. If sealing laws are not carefully designed, implemented, and enforced, access to this data can be obscured.

Hear from local and national experts threading the needle between ensuring tenant protections through record sealing and preserving data access for the public good. A full recording of the event can be found here.

Kicking Off Our Work with Schmidt Futures' Social Safety Net Production Studio

Last month, New America and DataKind were honored to join the Social Safety Net Product Studio, a group of thirteen organizations awarded grants by Schmidt Futures, the Ballmer Group, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies o to accelerate innovation and open access to safety net benefits for low-income people across the United States.

Our Product Studio project will focus on enhancing the Foreclosure and Eviction Analysis Tool (FEAT), and scaling its use. Last week we attended the Product Studio kick-off, and were inspired to be in the company of so many others working on innovative solutions to benefits access, and share more about ideas for improving the analytic capabilities and usability of FEAT.

Join Our Improving Eviction Data Working Groups

High-quality and accessible eviction data is critical to better understand and improve eviction prevention across the United States. Building on the Eviction Data Recommendations released in spring 2021, we've established two working groups to advance progress on two critical issues:

1. Developing uniform data standards for eviction court records.
2. Securing funding and technical assistance to build local eviction data infrastructure.

If you're interested in joining these working groups or learning more, please reach out to FLH Senior Policy Analyst Sabiha Zainulbhai at zainulbhai@newamerica.org.

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

Here's Where the U.S. Is Testing a New Response to Rising Seas: The Biden administration has created what appears to be the first program in American history specifically designed to help relocate communities threatened by climate change, the New York Times reports. Congress provided the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) with $130 million to spend over 5 years on helping flood-prone tribal communities relocate. Thus far at least 11 tribes have applied for relocation grants. As we’ve pointed out in the past, a major gap in U.S. managed retreat policy is that federal funding for relocation typically becomes available only after a disaster, meaning communities wanting to preemptively relocate don't have funds to do it. This program could be the first attempt at a more proactive approach. However, the question remains: where will the money come from to relocate communities at scale?

Dona Stewart

Here Are the US Cities With the Biggest Share of Mortgage-Free Homes: Though rising mortgage interest rates and skyrocketing home prices have decreased housing affordability for many, a surprising number of homeowners in America have no mortgage debt. A new report by Bloomberg’s Wealth + City Lab finds that over 30 million homes in the U.S. are mortgage-free, accounting for over a third (34 percent) of all single-family homes and condominiums. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Florida, with its large retired population, has the highest percentage of mortgage-free houses. Debt-free ownership in South Florida’s Palm Beach (41.5 percent) and Broward (35.8 percent) counties rank highest in the U.S. among counties with more than 500,000 homes. This has important implications for Florida, where hurricanes have created an insurance crisis; with no loan, these homeowners are not required to purchase property or flood insurance. While Manhattan homes also ranked high, partly because of international buyers, counties in the Washington, D.C. area had the lowest levels of mortgage-less homes, below 15 percent.

Tim Robustelli

Why Indonesia is abandoning its capital city to save it: Jakarta, a city of 10 million people and capital of the world’s fourth most populous country, is sinking. Scientists predict that a combination of sea-level rise, torrential rainfall, and unsustainable groundwater depletion will result in a quarter of the Javanese megacity being underwater by 2050. In response, the Indonesian government is moving its capital to the jungles of Borneo. Official plans for this future capital, dubbed Nusantara, show an eco-friendly city brimming with flashy high-rises, bike lanes, and plenty of green space. Yet critics worry about the billions of dollars needed to build Nusantara, as well as its location within a tropical forest that is critical for carbon sink. Many are also skeptical that enough Indonesians will want to make a home in the new city. And then there’s Jakarta, which is still growing and will need its own policies and investments to improve urban sprawl, safeguard groundwater, and adopt adaptation measures. As climate impacts grow worse, Indonesia’s problems point to a global challenge: how can societies, states, and the international community adequately address climate change while ensuring that no one gets left behind?

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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