Contoured American homes face higher flood risks from climate change, new study finds

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During the early 1900s, U.S. consumer banks routinely engaged in a systemic lending process known as redlining, denying loans to people of color who wanted to buy homes outside areas of cities considered “ undesirable, ” in part because they were built in areas of higher flood risk.

As a result, homes with a total value of $ 107 billion are now 25% more likely to be flooded than non-realigned homes, according to researchers from real estate agency Redfin. The company released the findings Monday morning of its analysis of redefined and undefined communities facing climate change-related flood risks.

The report, which examined flood zone data from 38 major metropolitan areas in the US, noted that modern US flood risk maps are very similar to 1930s redlining maps.

In recent years, sea level rise due to climate change has increased the number of flood risk areas across the country.
Some of these places are already flooded every year. For example, black homeowners in Chicago have complained about increased rainfall fueled by climate change overwhelming the city’s sewer system and causing flood damage to homes that didn’t have the same flooding problems a decade ago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“The discrimination that happened in the past may seem like a long time ago, but it’s getting worse,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told CNN Business. “It is not that the historical practices that were in fact discriminatory were diminishing in effect.

Redfin’s researchers found that areas in the cities they surveyed that were not redefined were at risk of damaging or destroying $ 85 billion worth of homes from climate change-related floods – $ 22 billion less than neighborhoods that were redefined.

In their report, the company’s researchers said that more than 58% of households in neighborhoods that were once classified as unwanted for mortgage loans are not white and history has shown that colored communities in these previously delineated areas often suffer from storms. . most.”

[More than] 600,000 properties faced a 100-year flood risk, which is the risk that one of these truly catastrophic floods will hit them, “Fairweather said.

S Telemachus Street in New Orleans is flooded after flash flooding hit the area on July 10, 2019.

Fairweather pointed to the disproportionate impact Hurricane Katrina had on people of color in New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey on residents of Black and Brown Houston in 2017 to illustrate her point.

Four of the seven zip codes that suffered the worst flood damage from Katrina had a black population of at least 75%, according to government documents quoted by Scientific American.
A 2017 Think Progress analysis found that a disproportionate number of low-income Houston black and brown neighborhoods were more damaged by Harvey than wealthier and whiter communities.

Without public and private intervention, Fairweather said the damage future floods could cause to outlined areas across the country could further widen the already huge racial wealth gap between most white Americans and their black and Latino neighbors.

“It would certainly bring us back,” Fairweather said. “It really depends on what the policy response is.”

To resolve the issue, the study authors recommend that the federal government provide funds to some homeowners with a new line to weatherproof their homes and provide assistance in relocating homeowners in areas where weather resistance may not be sufficient is.

“When we help people move, we need to encourage or insist that they move to places that are not as affected by climate change,” Fairweather said.

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