1 day ago
5
You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.
Guest Essay
Feb. 3, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
By Abrahm Lustgarten
Mr. Lustgarten is an environmental reporter for ProPublica and the author of “On The Move: The Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America.”
This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
Houses in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods were still ablaze when talk turned to the cost of the Los Angeles firestorms and who would pay for it. Now it appears that the total damage and economic loss could be more than $250 billion. This, after a year in which Hurricanes Milton and Helene and other extreme weather events had already exacted tens of billions of dollars in American disaster losses.
As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.
One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street Foundation, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing and provides some of the best climate adaptation data available, both freely and commercially. The analysis predicts an extraordinary reversal in housing fortunes for Americans — nearly $1.5 trillion in asset losses over the next 30 years.
Where home values may decline because of climate change
Source: First Street Foundation
Note: The change in home values is modeled for changes in insurance premiums only, and doesn’t project future market forces.
The implications are staggering: Many Americans could face a paradigm shift in the way they save and how they define their economic security. Climate change is upending the basic assumption that Americans can continue to build wealth and financial security by owning their own home. In a sense, it is upending the American dream.
How climate change may cause rising insurance rates over the next 30 years
Source: First Street Foundation
Note: These predictions assume that there are no restrictions on the price insurers are allowed to charge.
