Why are so many people willing to move to disaster areas?

A firefighter walks through the remains of a house as the Edgehill Fire destroyed several homes and vehicles during a hot day with temperatures reaching 107 degrees Fahrenheit in San Bernardino, California, on August 5, 2024. (David Swanson, AFP via Getty Images/TNS)

Four years ago, the rise of remote work created a new version of the American dream: No longer forced to live close to the office, millions of people realized they could move from New Jersey or elsewhere to sunnier, cheaper locales.

Unfortunately, many of those who made the journey found a nightmare waiting for them when they arrived: climate change and the accompanying threat of natural disasters destroying homes.

The good news is that destruction and rising insurance costs may finally be forcing Americans to consider the climate when deciding where to live. The bad news is that, by and large, they’re still making risky choices, often turning from figurative frying pans to literal fires.

After years of population booms in regions most at risk of natural disasters, the stampede has begun to slow, a new report from real estate firm Redfin suggests. Last year, 16,144 people moved to U.S. counties at high risk for flooding, as defined by the climate research firm First Street Foundation. That’s a striking slowdown from the 383,656 people who moved there in 2021 and 2022. And in 2023, 63,365 people moved to counties at high risk for wildfires, compared with 446,343 in the previous two years.

People are completely abandoning specific places that have become synonymous with catastrophe, such as California wildfire country, disaster-prone Houston, coastal Louisiana, and increasingly semi-aquatic Miami. Of course, many of those places also have high costs of living, so it’s hard to separate the climate signal from the noise of more traditional reasons why people move. Around Houston, for example, there are bubbles of migration to places that are just as likely to flood as the city itself, suggesting there’s more to the story than climate avoidance.

And people who dump their Florida homes as a result of high insurance costs and natural disasters are still managing to find buyers. Last year, 68,564 people moved to high-risk flood counties in the Sunshine State, accounting for more than half of the country’s total migration to flood zones, according to Redfin.

“Homebuyers tell us they are concerned about the weather, but then when they are deciding where to live and buy a home, they seem to prioritize other things,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said in an interview, “namely affordability, but also warm winters, being close to family, amenities and things like that.”

Florida’s Lee County, where Fort Myers is located, was once again one of the country’s most popular destinations in 2023, as it has been for years, with a net influx of 8,374 people. Even after Fort Myers was devastated by Hurricane Ian in 2022, bargain hunters snapped up properties there before floodwaters receded.

Many of them were again submerged after Debby passed through and inundated Florida’s west coast with heavy rain and storm surge. Remarkably, Debby wasn’t even a hurricane at the time, just a tropical storm — a reminder that it doesn’t take a movie-worthy catastrophe to wreak havoc when the air and water are superheated. Simple thunderstorms can cause billions of dollars in damage.

Meanwhile, 30,156 people moved to Texas counties with high wildfire risk, according to Redfin, accounting for nearly a third of the entire country’s net migration to fire-prone counties last year. Many were fleeing wildfires and high prices in California only to end up in a state that had only slightly fewer wildfires last year.

Texas even has its own baby version of California’s insurance crisis: Homeowners’ premiums rose 23% last year, the largest increase in the country, according to S&P Global. Unlike California, where premiums are limited by regulation, Texas, a “business-friendly” state, invites insurance companies to unleash their potential. As a result, Texas has the sixth-highest average annual premium in the country, according to Bankrate.com.

But these numbers are apparently not high enough to change the minds of home-seekers. Something needs to change. One reason the number of billion-dollar disasters in this country continues to break records is our insistence on subsidizing the relocation of homes, stores, offices and people to disaster areas. Policymakers need to find ways to allow costs in those locations to reflect risk while also helping homeowners who can’t afford to move or pay those higher costs. Consumers need more information about weather risks and potential insurance rates on the homes they want to buy.

It won’t be easy, but by various estimates, there are between 17 and 39 million homes in this country that are not adequately insured against flood and fire risks, representing a potential loss of more than $1 trillion in property value. Being realistic about these risks may be financially painful, but ignoring them until nature forces us to do so would be a nightmare.

Mark Gongloff is Bloomberg’s opinion editor and a columnist covering climate change.