Dear friend,

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

🔊 Catch FLH's Tim Robustelli speaking at FEMA’s first-ever Risk Communication, Crisis Communications, and Community Engagement Summit, held in D.C. on June 10th in partnership with New America. Registration is open now! 

Here's what we've been up to:

What We're Doing

On the Move: A Conversation with Abrahm Lustgarten on How Climate Migration Changes Everything

📖 Check out Abrahm’s book here, and read FLH’s recent report on receiving communities here. 

Climate change will push millions of Americans to relocate in the coming decades. By one estimate, impacts such as hurricanes, wildfires, sea-level rise, and extreme heat could push 50 million people to move by 2100. This great demographic shift will reshape the United States economically, socially, and politically. For receiving communities, climate migration could bring overcrowding, gentrification, and displacement, or, with proper planning, a chance for equitable economic growth and revitalization.

Earlier this month, FLH and New America California hosted a conservation with journalist Abrahm Lustgarten, author of the new book On the Move, and Tim Robustelli, author of FLH's recent report on climate migration, alongside researchers and practitioners, about the challenges and opportunities surrounding climate migration across the United States.

New Resource — Understanding Evictions: A Guide to Using Local Court Data

📑 Explore the eviction data guide here.

This week, FLH released a how-to guide for local policymakers, legal aid providers, housing policy advocates, and any other community stakeholder seeking to deepen their knowledge on evictions in their area. The data guide walks readers through leveraging local court data to better understand the scope, scale, and outcomes of eviction lawsuits. It offers a set of research questions that can be answered using court eviction data, identifying needed court data, key challenges that researchers might face related to data access and analysis, and helpful examples of practical applications from jurisdictions across the country.

A Week of Presentations on Global Land Rights

Last week, after a four year hiatus, the World Bank resumed its annual Land Conference. FLH Director Yuliya Panfil presented the results of the Tanzania Demand for Documentation Study, funded through the USAID Integrated Natural Resource Management activity. Yuliya's presentation focused on the ability and willingness of women in rural Tanzania to pay for land documents (pictured above). 

Concurrently, Panfil presented at the Conference on Housing, Land and Property (HLP) Rights in Crisis Contexts, held at Howard University. Panfil and HLP expert Alexandre Corriveau-Bourque led a hands-on workshop in which participants mined their smartphones for "digital trails" that could be used to prove home ownership and occupancy after conflicts and natural disasters (pictured below).

At the close of the week, as part of the Integrated Land and Resource Governance II activity, FLH facilitated a closed door unconference-style workshop for USAID and its partners, to discuss wicked problems in the land sector and innovative solutions (pictured below). 

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.

Tim Robustelli

How ‘kitty cats’ are wrecking the home insurance industry: Hurricanes in Florida and wildfires in California aren’t the only disasters keeping American insurance agents up at night. Across the Midwest, severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail are damaging more and more homes on a regular basis. Known in the insurance industry as “kitty cats” (as opposed to large natural catastrophes or “nat cats”), these small but powerful disasters are causing insurance providers to raise premiums and drop customers in places like Iowa and Oklahoma. That’s because losses from these storms have jumped an average of 9 percent year after year from 1989 to 2022. Combined damages in 2023 totaled $50 billion. And as more people move to vulnerable regions; as a hotter and wetter climate makes such storms more frequent; and as repairs become more expensive, coverage will become cost-prohibitive for many American homeowners while some insurers will simply exit risky markets. The Midwest is often cited as a future climate haven, but what do “kitty cat” storms mean for climate migration, adaptation, and resilience?

Helen Bonnyman

The Wealth Gap between Homeowners and Renters Has Reached a Historic High: In 2022, both the average and median wealth gaps between renters and homeowners reached a historic high, according to data from the Survey of Consumer Finances. Since collection of this data began in 1989, the median wealth gap between these groups has increased by 70 percent. The average wealth gap has increased by a whopping 250 percent, indicating that a large share of wealth is concentrated among a small share of households. The authors advocate for an increase in housing supply, whether owner-occupied or rental, as the key solution for mitigating this growing wealth gap. Loosening zoning restrictions, expanding housing choice vouchers, and targeting down payment assistance to first-time buyers without generational wealth are additional policy changes that could improve affordability and access to homeownership for renters. 

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.

You are receiving this email because you signed up to receive newsletters from New America. Click to update your subscription preferences or unsubscribe from all New America newsletters.