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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAmerica's great climate exodus is starting in the Florida Keys
Mass migration begins as coastal homes are bulldozed in the state facing the biggest threat from climate-driven inundation.
Lori Rittel is stuck in her Florida Keys home, living in the wreckage left by Hurricane Irma two years ago, unable to rebuild or repair. Now her best hope for escape is to sell the little white bungalow to the government to knock down.
Her bedroom is still a no-go zone so she sleeps in the living room with her cat and three dogs. She just installed a sink in the bathroom, which is missing a wall, so she can wash her dishes inside the house now. Weather reports make her nervous. I just want to sell this piece of junk and get the hell out, she said. I dont want to start over. But this will happen again.
The Great Climate Retreat is beginning with tiny steps, like taxpayer buyouts for homeowners in flood-prone areas from Staten Island, New York, to Houston and New Orleans and now Rittels Marathon Key. Florida, the state with the most people and real estate at risk, is just starting to buy homes, wrecked or not, and bulldoze them to clear a path for swelling seas before whole neighborhoods get wiped off the map.
By the end of the century, 13 million Americans will need to move just because of rising sea levels, at a cost of $1 million each, according to Florida State University demographer Mathew Haeur, who studies climate migration. Even in a managed retreat, coordinated and funded at the federal level, the economic disruption could resemble the housing crash of 2008.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/realestate/americas-great-climate-exodus-is-starting-in-the-florida-keys/ar-AAHA6Iw?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout
PoindexterOglethorpe
(25,849 posts)Seems like that really is a viable, if not wonderful, option for her.
I strongly recommend The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World by Jeff Goodell. Excellent.
One point it makes is that there are developers and land owners in Florida who are already doing the calculus about when they need to sell to make the best profit. According to Goodell, some of them are already disinvesting from Florida.
Personally, I'm glad I live well inland, in New Mexico.
CDerekGo
(507 posts)There wasn't a Homeowners Insurance Police, or Flood Insurance Policy to begin with. Used to work with someone who lives out on one of the manmade 'keys' here in Pinellas County, Florida. He mentioned at one point that between Homeowners, Flood Insurance and Wind Mitigation Insurance, they were now paying well over $12,000.00 a year (that was almost 10 years ago) No idea what they are paying now, as he retired from my work, but they are doing very well with a business.
Most of those old Keys homes are of wood frame construction, which at this point are impossible to insure as close as she is in Marathon, FL. Hell, I live 6 miles inland, and I'm looking to leave as soon as I can.