Ask a Scientist: What Happens When Sea Level Rise Comes for Public Housing

Rising seas threaten the viability of thousands of coastal communities in the US. Encroaching water means higher high tides that seep into streets and first floors, sunny-day flooding, and more water to fuel dangerous and destructive storm surges. So many buildings-homes, schools, hospitals, parks, fire stations-are clustered on our coasts, at risk of being regularly inundated with seawater, and built for a climate that no longer exists.

In some communities, disruptive flooding is already affecting necessary infrastructure, especially housing. This crisis converges with the US housing crisis.

Millions of people in the US already struggle to find adequate and affordable housing, to pay bills and expenses while also paying exorbitant rents or mortgages. They are a personal calamity away from losing their homes. For those with low incomes who rely on public and affordable housing, there's far more demand than supply: according to the U.S. nonprofit National Low-Income Housing Coalition, there's a national shortage of more than seven million affordable homes for nearly eleven million extremely low-income families.

The UCS report Looming Deadlines for Coastal Resilience, which predicts risks across a range of infrastructure such as schools, power stations, and hospitals, finds that public and affordable housing represent the largest category of assets at risk of regular inundation.

Report co-author Rachel Cleetus, Policy Director, and Zoe Middleton, Associate Director of Just Climate Resilience-both for the UCS Climate and Energy Program-took the time to expand on the implications of their findings for public and affordable housing and sound the alarm for policymakers about the waning time to meaningfully address these concurrent crises.

AAS: In your opinion, what's the worst-case scenario for this intersection of increased coastal flooding and public housing in harm's way?

Zoe Middleton: We know what happens when public housing is lost, right? We've seen it in disasters already. It takes a very, very long time to rebuild. People are frequently displaced from their communities of origin and their support networks. There's this great family-level disruption, but there's also a large cultural disruption. And the issue of recovery gets incredibly politicized.

For example, in Galveston, Texas, where most public housing was destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008, the reconstruction of units was delayed by more than a decade. And our report found public housing on the island-which has a severe shortage of affordable housing-is at risk again due to high tides and extreme weather.

Rachel Cleetus: The context here is that as a nation, we've significantly under-invested in affordable housing. We are in an acute affordable housing crisis across the board, and it has a disproportionate impact on low-income families.

Not only has there been an under-investment in building enough housing, there's also been a backlog of maintenance that's been deferred, and a lot of these houses are not in great repair. And so, this is intersecting with the climate crisis and making everything worse because as our study is showing, a lot of this housing is now going to be vulnerable to high tide flooding-even without storms.

In the middle of what's already an affordable housing crisis, losing any units will be devastating. And just the regular flooding itself can impose further deterioration on this housing stock, along with issues like mold and power outages. All those kinds of things start to have ripple effects.

AAS: Why is it so difficult to build new affordable housing, and make existing public and affordable housing climate-resilient?

Zoe Middleton: It's very hard to build new public housing because of the 1998 Faircloth Amendment [which caps the number of units that any public housing authority can build]. Instead, there are set-asides for affordable units in developments, and tax credit programs-which are now the biggest vehicle for developing affordable housing. It will take massive investment by the federal government to build the amount of affordable housing we need, and further government action to strengthen housing rights in this country.

Rachel Cleetus: As Zoe is saying, we've shifted to this model where affordable housing units are often privately owned, and there's a contract with the local municipality or the state that they're providing some units at an affordable rate. There isn't a lot of ability to ensure that enough high-quality affordable housing is being provided. And there's a lot of land zoning that is contrary to providing more space for this-many communities that require single-family zoning and don't allow multifamily units. And that's one way of just creating and reinforcing enclaves of privilege. I live in Massachusetts, and even in a forward-looking, fairly liberal blue state, I'm seeing these dynamics of NIMBYism.

You can't think about housing on its own. We're talking about a continuum, and it's part of the system that's delivering very inequitable outcomes. Housing is connected to transit. It's connected to jobs. People need opportunities to get jobs easily, to be able to afford to live in the places where they work. And right now, as a nation, we're creating a society where the people who are doing some of the most critical work cannot live in the communities in which they're delivering those services, whether it's teaching our children in schools, or fighting fires, or day laborers who are doing outdoor construction work in our neighborhoods.

With climate risks accelerating, these issues are going to become more and more acute. And it's important when we think about resources and policies that can help, to not just focus them on people who have political power and relatively more resources. For example, in disaster recovery, often the focus is on single-family homes and homeowners. So, folks who are renters often get left out of critical programs to get back on their feet after disasters. They are subject to the whims of whoever the developers or the landlords are.

AAS: People living in public and affordable housing are often among millions in communities designated by the federal government as "disadvantaged," overburdened and underserved. Your report found that these communities contain nearly twice as many at-risk assets per capita as non-disadvantaged communities. It's difficult enough to fund climate resilience measures for privileged communities-what are the challenges for communities with fewer resources?

Rachel Cleetus: In our report, we find that there's a lot of co-location of affordable and public housing in places that are overburdened with pollution, including in places that were formerly redlined. And this is no accident. The fact that they're also exposed to flooding is just sadly unsurprising. It's basically a series of cumulative harms that communities are being exposed to. I think it's crucial for us to convey that this is not a new problem. There's now a new risk, and it's compounding and making worse a system that was already not delivering the needed outcomes.

One other fact in the report, which our colleagues at the National Low Income Housing Coalition flagged for us: that a number of households in public and affordable housing have a member of the household who is mobility impaired in some way. And that can make it even more challenging to prepare for flooding-related disasters. Some people seem to think it's easy to evacuate, or even move-that you just get up and go. It's important to recognize who is being served by this housing, and what their needs are.

So how can we now get back to root causes? Why have we as a nation not invested in affordable housing? And as we build climate resilience, we must be mindful of not reinforcing the current crisis of affordability. Climate resilience shouldn't be the latest frontier of gentrification.

AAS: What are some of the solutions you identify in your report that can help people living in affordable and public housing?

Zoe Middleton: One of the most immediate things we can do is protect and improve existing public and affordable housing. That could look like weatherizing properties for added climate resilience, and investing in clean energy upgrades. Given the dire shortage of affordable housing, governments have an obligation to make sure that resilience measures are accessible and affordable.

Rachel Cleetus: There is an acute affordable housing crisis right now that everyone in the nation recognizes, and it's time for Congress to put more investment into solving this problem. And as we do it, let's make sure that we're targeting resources specifically to the lowest-income households, and those on fixed incomes-the whole range of folks who often are left behind in these conversations. There's a lot of talk about revitalizing urban spaces, which has often translated into gentrification. Certain policies can sound good, but it's important to figure out who they're serving, and who's benefiting.

As you see in the report, there's a twin imperative: we also must cut heat-trapping emissions. Let's not continue to put more and more people in harm's way.

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