I wonder what that change could be
Rethinking the governance of property can help communities adapt to climate change
Climate change is bringing threats such as flooding, wildfires, extreme heat, and drought to communities across the United States and the world, endangering people, infrastructure, ecosystems, and properties. Unfortunately, our current systems of property and land governance—including land use, taxes, insurance, and zoning—often limit how well we can respond to those threats. These systems tend to treat land as a fixed set of parcels mainly meant to build wealth, which can lead to inequality and an inability to collectively adapt at scale.
While property and land governance systems in the U.S. have historically supported democracy and opportunity for some, they have also contributed to divisions and disadvantages for others. This way of managing land is fueling growing inequality, housing crises, and racial wealth gaps. And in the process, it’s also leaving many groups more vulnerable to climate risks. A 2021 Environmental Protection Agency report found that socially vulnerable populations—including racial minorities, low-income individuals, and people with less education—are far more vulnerable to climate change hazards such as flooding and extreme temperatures. And as research by Brookings and others has shown, rental housing, public housing, and manufactured housing—which are forms of housing and land tenure disproportionately used by low-income households—all face elevated vulnerability to climate impacts.
Planning for climate adaptation often ignores the fact that property is a social institution that can change; people assume current systems are fixed and unchangeable. But they’re not, and we can do better. Addressing climate challenges is not just about engineering or funding (though both are important topics). It also requires that we rethink and improve our property institutions and practices so they serve everyone better.
This is a very long piece. I wonder where they are going with it?
The combined effect is that it is difficult for communities to adapt to climate change in ways that advance affordable, resilient housing and ecological restoration at a meaningful scale. In the absence of collective adaptation, reliance on individual property-by-property adaptation can widen inequalities, both in “sending communities” from which people flee and in communities that receive displaced people. These practices may also contribute to climate gentrification, in which resilience investments reduce housing affordability and contribute to the displacement of current residents. Research suggests that climate gentrification is already underway in some cities, including Miami, Tampa, and other South Florida communities.
Really, what they are saying is that government should be in charge of all property, essentially being a national HOA, telling you what you can and cannot do. “Collective adaptation.” Modern Socialism. Property will really be in the hands of government. Surprise?
What a galloping shock that yet another required cure for a leftist/globalist created “crisis”, offered by the left/globalists, is an item from the leftist/globalist wish list that no sane person would ever agree to otherwise.
Wow, I think I’d better sit down.
The MAGAt Movement, having killed efforts to address the causes of global warming, are now attacking potential ADAPTATIONS!! Smart. RREEDUMB!!
Of course, Mr William points out the article was lonnnnng, too lonnnng to read, but AI to the rescue!! No doubt, Elonnng Musk’s Grok.
Wealthy Americans, e.g., Clintons, Obamas, trumps, Zucks, Adelsons, and millions more can always just move to higher and safer grounds. The mass of Americans are not so lucky.
When St Louis County used billions in federal funds to build massive levees to protect potentially commercial flood plains, the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers still flooded, just downstream in Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas farmlands. The commercial ex-flood plain is now chock-a-block with strip malls, gas stations, an airport, a golf course, a prison, car dealerships and soccer fields.
The article used the term “collective adaptation”!! Code words for “communism”!!!!
Who gets to build (and importantly, pay for) sea walls and river levees? Who determines the impacts of downstream effects? Should we permit mansion building in flood plains?
FIGHT!!
Neither Elaine nor I were born wealthy, and our families were on the poorer side of “median income.” While my father had a decent job, his decision to take up with another woman resulted in divorce when I was in the second grade, and my sisters were younger; our mother was our sole support, in the 1960s, when women had far fewer opportunities.
My wife’s family also had a divorce, and they were not well off, either.
But now? Elaine and I are not poor, we are above the local median income, and our expenses are low, entirely due to the right to own property. We bought our first house in 1991, when I was 38, and things were tight, but one thing we were not doing was throwing away our money on rent. We sold that house in 2000, when we moved for a career opportunity for me — my wife is an RN, and can find a job anywhere, while my career had far fewer opportunities — and, buying a house in 2002, we again stopped giving our housing money to a landlord.
We weren’t going to stay in Pennsylvania when we retired, so in 2014, we bought our retirement home back in the Bluegrass State, with cash, the savings I had accrued in my 401(k). We sold our house in Jim Thorpe when I retired in 2017, moved to Kentucky, and are now decently off if by no means wealthy, entirely due to our rights to own property. We have no mortgage at all on our house, and aren’t paying rent to anyone. We have no car payments, and our property taxes are low.
Socialists really piss me off. They think that they know how to run other people’s lives, where if they were in charge, we’d all be equal: equally poor.
“government should be in charge of all property” because they’ve proven themselves to be such capable managers of…? In the end, commies gonna commie.