Are Buyouts a Viable Tool for Climate Adaptation?

risk and the costs associated with rebuilding.

This reliance on cost-benefit analyses to determine buyout recipients raises important equity and environmental justice concerns. Low-income communities and communities of color are more often impacted by extreme weather events because they suffer from a historic lack of infrastructure investment. In many cases, the reason why these communities — particularly Indigenous tribes — are located on the front lines of climate change is because of forced displacement driven by centuries of racial injustice. Now, faced with increasing climate risks and limited means to adapt in place, homeowners may have few other options than to opt for a buyout.

The extent to which buyout practitioners account for equity varies from program to program. Throughout her research, Siders has found that some practitioners choose to prioritize buyouts in low-income areas in an effort to break the disaster-rebuild cycle. Others explicitly choose not to prioritize buyouts in low-income areas out of concern that residents will feel coerced out of their homes or struggle with finding replacement housing in the same community.

“Personal values are shaping how buyout programs are structured and implemented in ways that really matter for the people who are participating,” she said.

What Is Left Behind
The same holds true for the people who aren’t participating in buyout programs. Because the majority of buyouts are voluntary and relocation is rarely, if ever, offered for whole communities, streets once lined with houses can start looking like rows of jagged teeth.

“What we want when we talk about buyouts — after all the sacrifice — is to leave these restored, beautiful and pristine environments,” said Shi. “But what we often see, if we get buyouts at all, is a fragmented landscape.”

The responsibility of maintaining parcels of land post-buyout falls to the local government. For communities with sufficient resources, this presents an opportunity to create protected natural areas or intentional green spaces like parks. But for communities without those resources, the maintenance alone can be a financial burden, particularly when paired with the loss of property tax revenue. In one study, researchers found that of the roughly 10,000 parcels of land involved in FEMA buyouts between 1990 and 2000, about 35 percent were left as vacant lots, 20 percent were turned into parks or recreational trails, and less than 8 percent were preserved.

Where to Go from Here
From start to finish, the implementation of buyout programs as a tool for managed retreat is, much like managed retreat itself, highly controversial. Conference participants agreed that the sustained viability of the policy will depend in large part on the improved design of buyout programs and, relatedly, the improved outcomes for those who participate in them.

“In the long term, there are intergenerational gains from moving that are possible for some people under a certain set of circumstances,” said Miyuki Hino, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. “I think the challenge is understanding who those people are and what support structures they should be provided with.”

One of the recommendations put forward by the Flood-Prepared Communities Initiative at Pew is to establish an interagency task force within the federal government that would guide state and local applicants through the buyout process and consult them on the full range of options available. At the community level, Tate underscored the need for more proactive engagement with residents about the concept of resettlement and the value of resident-driven decision-making through exercises like community visioning sessions.

There is also a widespread need for better housing alternatives. “Deciding not to put more housing in harm’s way can only happen if we create places where people really want to live,”  said Micahel Wara, director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at Stanford University. “And those places need to be affordable.”

While the complexity of scaling an equitable system for managed retreat looms large, Hino is optimistic that more and more people are beginning to recognize the possibility for positive resettlement experiences. “We can lose things even when we don’t physically move,” she said, “and we can move things without losing them.”

Elise Gout is a research associate for the Energy and Environment team at the Center for American Progress.This storyis published courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University.