Climate Relocation, Buyouts & Displacement

Image: Oakwood Beach, Staten Island 2024 | Cameron Blaylock

CLIMATE RELOCATION, BUYOUTS, AND DISPLACEMENT

As storms become more severe, rainfall intensifies, and sea level rise creeps into our neighborhoods, communities will dramatically rethink where they choose to live, work, and play. While some communities may be able to adapt to more water, others may have to relocate.

Increasingly, communities are demanding their governments provide voluntary housing relocation programs as one of the tools to adapt to climate change. The design and implementation of these programs will have rippling effects in the communities that will be left and those where they will move. On a community scale, the social implications of breaking up tightly-knit communities, the land-use decisions of where to accommodate this population, and the budgetary decisions as to how to price property to adequately incentivize homeowners and renters, and ensure the constitutionality of property rights, will need to be addressed.

Through collaborative research and design, Rebuild by Design is developing tools to help identify the potential risk of displacement to households, build capacity of communities to plan for long term impacts, and identify best practices for climate buyout programs.

JUST RELEASED: Best PRactices for voluntary home buyouts

In partnership with national experts in climate migration, housing buyouts, and climate adaptation, Rebuild by Design published a white paper on Best Practices for Voluntary Home Buyouts: Recommendations to NYS Office of Resilient Homes and Communities.

Explore the recommendations on:

These recommendations were developed in response to the passage of the 2022 $4.2B New York State Environmental Bond Act, which stipulates the creation of a dedicated state buyout program. They are intended to serve as both a compilation of best practices and reference points for buyout and climate relocation programs in general, and to identify opportunities for a NYS-funded buyout program to improve upon existing post-disaster buyout programs.

OUR RESEARCH AND ENGAGEMENT ON CLIMATE RELOCATION

FLOOD RISK = FINANCIAL RISK: NEW JERSEY

As sea levels rise and storms intensify, New Jersey faces mounting risks to its people, homes, communities, and economy. Nearly 1.3 million New Jerseyans live in high flood risk areas; half of those people are lower income residents who may lack the resources to relocate out of harm’s way. By 2050, nearly 1 in 6 land parcels statewide will be exposed to high flood risk, threatening $435.9 billion in (today’s) property value and $5.9 billion in annual property tax revenue, according to a new anal…

NYC Faith Sector Climate Adaptation Working Group

Faith communities are often among the first to respond in times of crisis. They play a crucial role in holding communities together and shaping their future, yet, many lack the resources and capacity to prepare for long-term challenges like climate change. Rebuild by Design and New York Disaster Interfaith Services (NYDIS) have launched the Faith Sector Climate Adaptation Working Group, which brings together faith leaders and climate experts to explore how interfaith networks can build climat…

Climate Displacement in NYC

As severe coastal flooding impacts low-lying communities, those who have financial means may move to higher ground, further gentrifying inland communities, and displacing long-term, lower-income residents. Rebuild by Design collaborated with Milliman to study the areas across New York City that could be impacted by coastal flooding in 2050 to better understand the economic and demographic makeup of these communities, revealing that 40% of New Yorkers could be at risk of direct or indirect displa…

Making Room for the Water

Adapting to climate change on multiple time scales – with residents, property owners, and businesses – needs to be informed by the people who are most affected. Making Room for the Water, a program led by Rebuild by Design, University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design, and One Architecture & Urbanism, is a process which will put communities at the center of the conversation about climate adaptation with a focus on long-term planning and buyouts as an anti-displacement strategy.…

Selling Flood Risk: NY‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

Rebuild by Design analyzed the City’s 2023 property sales and learned that over 7,300 1-3 family homes sold last year, valued at $3.6 billion, were situated within or directly adjacent to the projected 100-year flood zones by 2050 for storm surges and stormwater. This finding indicates that many new homeowners may face the risk of flooding before the end of their 30-year mortgage.…

Rainproof NYC: Equitable Housing Mobility Principles

Rainproof NYC brings together New Yorkers to co-create solutions to the city's challenges due to increasingly heavy rainfall. Over the course of six months, Rebuild, One Architecture, NYC Department of Environmental Protection, and the NYC Mayor's Office convened three working groups with diverse experiences and expertise to hone in on specific challenges. The group tasked with “Housing Mobility” determined the parameters and best practices to inform the design of a voluntary equitable buyout pr…

Conversations about climate migration

Rebuild by Design hosts a conversation between Jake Bittle, author of The Great Displacement: Climate Change and the Next American Migration, and Christopher Flavelle, climate reporter for The New York Times.

Bittle and Flavelle explore how climate change has already transformed the fabric of communities in the U.S. and the difficult decisions households are forced into as disasters become a part of the everyday reality for many Americans.

Watch the video here>>

Hosted in partnership with: The Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Climigration Network, the Climate Museum and The Nature Conservancy.

Resources from national experts

Book: The Great Displacement

Even as climate change dominates the headlines, many of us still think about it in the future tense—we imagine that as global warming gets worse over the coming decades, millions of people will scatter around the world fleeing famine and rising seas. What we often don’t realize is that the consequences of climate change are already visible, right here in the United States. In communities across the country, climate disasters are pushing thousands of people away from their homes.

by Jake Bittle

Going Under: Long Wait Times for Post-Flood Buyouts Leave Homeowners Underwater

NRDC reviewed nearly 30 years of FEMA data on buyout funding and found that a typical buyout takes more than 5 years between a flood and the completion of a FEMA-funded buyout project. While every buyout project is different, one thing is clear: long wait times make buyouts less accessible, less equitable, and less effective for disaster mitigation and climate adaptation. This report describes approaches for improving the current system, as well as new buyout models being explored by FEMA, other federal agencies, and state and local governments.

Natural Resources Defense Council

Lead with Listening: A Guidebook for Community Conversations on Climate Migration

This guidebook, developed by a creative team led by Scott Shigeoka and Mychal Estrada, offers insights on how to begin conversations about relocation – questions to ask yourself before you approach a community, phrases to use other than “managed retreat,” and actions and activities you can take to open up a conversation with curiosity and care. It is based on interviews with 40+ people with direct experience with climate risk and displacement.

The Climigration Network

Green Buffer Zones

Video: Strong, frequent heatwaves, storms, and droughts are here to stay, and more are on their way. Climate change demands we do things differently. Around the country, communities are relocating homes and businesses to safe, dry ground and creating green buffer zones that provide community amenities and slow down and store floodwaters when needed. By proactively working together, we can save lives, protect homes and businesses, and build a safer world for all of us – now and long into the future.

The Nature Conservancy

The Great American Climate Migration

The product of a series of roundtable discussions among grassroots leaders from ten low-income, Black, Latinx, and Native American communities. They were convened by Anthropocene Alliance (A2) and The Climigration Network (CN) between February 23rd and August 1st, 2021 to address The Great American Climate Migration, the resettlement of some 30 million Americans over the next half-century due to climate change.

Grassroots leaders in the Anthropocene Alliance

Community Visioning: Creating a Safer Future Together

Strong, frequent heat waves, storms, and droughts are here to stay, and more are on their way. Climate change demands we do things differently. New York residents are teaming up to improve community safety and quality of life. In response to local disasters, two New York communities explore how they can use flood-damaged, vacant lots to create a safer future for themselves. Listen to residents and leaders from Edgemere in New York City and Sidney in Upstate New York talk about their vision for their community.

The Nature Conservancy

Flood Adaptation Hierarchy: A Better Way to Adapt to a World of Floods, Rising Seas, and Social Inequality

A team of scientists at The Nature Conservancy examined decades of research and practice from around the United States and developed a way to make decisions about flood risk solutions. They prioritized these solutions in tiers that would provide the greatest benefits to people and nature. See also the peer-reviewed publication: A new framework for flood adaptation: introducing the Flood Adaptation Hierarchy

The Nature Conservancy

Floodplain Buyouts: Challenges, Practices and Lessons Learned

The need for voluntary buyouts of storm-damaged properties is rising rapidly, but programs can be slow and inequitable. How can buyout programs be improved for residents and program staff? There is unlikely to be one ‘best’ way to administer buyouts across these contexts. This report therefore presents a range of variations so officials and communities can think about what is appropriate in their context.

The Nature Conservancy and the University of Delaware Disaster Research Center