Image this: You’re seeking to purchase a spot to dwell, and you’ve got two choices.
Choice A is a stupendous dwelling in California close to good colleges and job alternatives. But it surely goes for almost 1,000,000 {dollars} — the median California home sells for $906,500 — and also you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020.
Choice B is an identical dwelling in Texas, the place the median dwelling prices lower than half as a lot: just $353,700. The catch? Choice B sits in an space with vital hurricane and flood threat.
This isn’t only a hypothetical state of affairs. It’s the unattainable selection thousands and thousands of Individuals face daily because the U.S. housing disaster collides with local weather change. And we’re not dealing with it nicely.
The migration patterns are stark. Take California, which lost 239,575 residents in 2024 — the most important out-migration of any state. Excessive housing prices are a primary driver: The median dwelling value in California is more than double the national median.
The place are these displaced residents going? Many are heading to Southern and Western states, together with Florida and Texas. Texas, which is the highest destination for former California residents, noticed a internet achieve of 85,267 people in 2024, a lot of it from home migration.
This can be a housing affordability disaster in movement. The annual family earnings wanted to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California dwelling was about $237,000 in June 2025, a latest evaluation discovered — more than twice the state’s median household income.
Greater than 21 million renter households nationwide spent greater than 30% of their earnings on housing prices in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For them and others struggling to get by, the monetary math is easy, even when the chance calculation isn’t.
In essence, the U.S. is making a system through which your earnings determines your publicity to local weather disasters. When housing turns into unaffordable in safer areas, the one out there and inexpensive property is usually in riskier places — low-lying areas at flood threat in Houston and coastal Texas, or higher-wildfire-risk areas as California cities broaden into fire-prone foothills and canyons.
The locations drawing newcomers aren’t precisely havens. Analysis reveals that America’s high-fire-risk counties noticed 63,365 more people move in than out in 2023, a lot of that flowing to Texas. In the meantime, my own research and different research of post-disaster restoration have proven how probably the most weak communities — low-income residents, folks of colour, renters — face the best limitations to rebuilding after disasters strike.
Take into account the insurance coverage disaster brewing in these vacation spot states. Dozens of insurers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and past have collapsed in recent years, unable to maintain the mounting claims from more and more frequent and extreme disasters corresponding to wildfires and hurricanes. Economists Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder, who research local weather change impacts on actual property, describe the insurance markets in some high-risk areas as “broken.” Between 2018 and 2023, insurers canceled almost 2 million home-owner insurance policies nationwide — 4 instances the traditionally typical charge.
But folks preserve transferring into dangerous areas. For instance, latest analysis reveals that folks have been transferring toward areas most at risk of wildfires, even holding wealth and different elements fixed. The wild fantastic thing about fire-prone areas could also be a part of the attraction, however so is housing availability and value.
In my opinion, this isn’t actually about particular person selection — it’s about coverage failure. The state of California goals to construct 2.5 million new houses by 2030, which might require adding more than 350,000 units annually. But in 2024, the state added solely about 100,000 — far short of what’s needed. When native governments limit housing improvement by means of exclusionary zoning, they’re successfully pricing out working households and pushing them towards threat.
My analysis on catastrophe restoration has persistently proven how housing insurance policies intersect with climate vulnerability. Communities with restricted housing choices earlier than disasters develop into much more constrained afterward. Folks can’t “select” resilience if resilient locations won’t let them build affordable housing.
The federal authorities began recognizing this connection — to an extent. For instance, in 2023, the Federal Emergency Administration Company inspired communities to think about “social vulnerability” in disaster planning, along with issues corresponding to geographic threat. Social vulnerability refers to socioeconomic elements corresponding to poverty, lack of transportation or language limitations that make it tougher for communities to cope with disasters.
Nevertheless, the company extra not too long ago stepped again from that transfer — just as the 2025 hurricane season began.
When a society forces folks to decide on between paying for housing and staying secure, that society has failed. Housing ought to be a proper, not a threat calculation.
However till decision-makers deal with the underlying insurance policies that create housing shortage in secure areas and fail to guard folks in weak ones, local weather change will proceed to reshape who will get to dwell the place — and who will get left behind when the subsequent catastrophe strikes.
Ivis García is an affiliate professor of panorama structure and concrete planning at Texas A&M. This text was produced in collaboration with the Conversation.
