Thinking of moving to Florida or other Sun Belt states prone to flooding, wildfires or extreme heat? You’re not alone. According to a study published on Monday by the tech-based real estate brokerage, Redfin, Americans are flocking to the counties hardest hit by climate change. For many of these migrants, pocketbook issues like affordable housing and lower income taxes are prime motivations. But the high cost to homeowners of extreme weather may cancel out such savings. 

Moving to Florida, Arizona or Texas? 

Redfin found that almost 400,000 more people moved into than out of counties with high flood risk in 2021 and 2022, representing a 103% increase over the previous two years. 

The same trend held true for other disaster-prone areas. Counties with the highest risk from extreme heat saw a net 17% growth in people moving in over the past two years compared to the prior two years, and counties with the highest wildfire risk saw 51% more people move in than out. 

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Redfin relied on data from the U.S. Census Bureau and from First Street Foundation, which publishes climate-risk scores by location.  

(Image credit: Redfin analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and First Street Foundation data.)

Part of the draw of these states is the low tax rate; both Florida and Texas have no personal income taxes. And Arizona’s tax rate is also on the low side compared to other states. Add in the growth of remote work and the draw of sunshine and beaches, and it’s understandable why so many Americans have moved to these areas, despite the risks from extreme weather. 

“It’s human nature to focus on current benefits, like waterfront views or a low cost of living, over costs that could rack up in the long run, like property damage or a decrease in property value,” said Redfin Chief Economist Daryl Fairweather when commenting on the study. “It’s also human nature to discount risks that are tough to measure, like climate change.” 

Many of these areas also provide more new and affordable housing than the places that lost population, like San Francisco or New York City. In fact, a separate Redfin study found that areas of high risk — especially from fires — tend to build more housing than safer areas do. The analysis found that more than half of homes built since 2020 face risk from fires, up from only 14% of homes built from 1900 to 1995. 

(Image credit: Redfin analysis of data from ClimateCheck and county records)

The Florida real estate draw

Coastal Florida, much of which is ground zero for risks like strong winds and flooding, attracts enormous levels of in-migration in the Redfin analysis. 

Florida’s Lee County received more net people than any of the other 306 high-flood risk counties Redfin studied, and a 65% increase over the prior two years. This trend continues in hot markets within Lee County, like Cape Coral and Fort Myers, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to the area from the 2022 landfall of Hurricane Ian.

“Builders in Cape Coral have not stopped — they’re just building like nothing happened,” said local Redfin real estate agent Isabel Arias-Squires. “That’s largely because there’s plenty of demand for new homes.”

Climate risk in Florida is multi-faceted. In Miami-Dade, for example, porous limestone bedrock complicates efforts to guard against sea level rise when salt water can seep underneath sea walls. And on the same day that Redfin released its report, the temperature off the south coast of Florida hit what may be a world record for the hottest recorded seawater temperature, of 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot oceans are bad for corals and sea life, but may also intensify hurricanes, which are known to increase in severity as ocean surface temperatures rise.

All of these climate risks translate into higher home insurance premiums, the need for flood insurance in much of Florida, and comprehensive auto insurance. Years of insurance fraud and litigation, and insurance companies leaving the Florida market have also increased rates. The average Florida home insurance premium is estimated to be $6,000 annually, compared to a national average of $1,700.  

Arizona faces extreme heat and drought

On Wednesday, Phoenix, Arizona broke its record for extreme heat, with 26 straight days of temperatures of at least 110 degrees. The city has also experienced its fourth-longest period without rainfall, extending 125 consecutive days with no precipitation. 

Despite sizzling temperatures, Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, saw a net influx of 76,000 people during the past two years. That’s the largest growth among the 1,019 counties at high risk for heat that Redfin analyzed. And according to the U.S. Census, Maricopa County had the highest influx of new residents compared to any other U.S. county in 2022, not just those facing heat risk.  

In addition to heat risk, Arizona struggles with diminishing groundwater supply, and depends heavily on the stressed Colorado River for residential water. To its credit, the state has worked hard to increase water efficiency and conservation despite a growing population, but it also recognizes limits to growth. In June, the Arizona Department of Water Resources announced that it would limit new home construction in some areas of Phoenix where it could not guarantee adequate water.

Texas counties also grow

The next-biggest net inflow to counties with high heat risk was in Collin County, TX, with 61,000 residents coming to the county. Like Florida, Texas also faces hurricanes that pose flooding and wind risk.  

Louisiana shrinks

Unlike Texas or Florida, Louisiana counties facing flood risk are losing population, according to the Redfin study. Out-migration ticked up particularly in counties pounded by hurricane Ida in 2021.  Over twenty home insurers in the state have either gone bankrupt or decided to leave Louisiana after five large storms hit the state in 2020. That has raised insurance premium prices and left some homeowners in the state to wonder whether they will be able to afford their homes in the future. 

What is a homebuyer to do?

A house is so much more than an investment, cementing bonds to community, culture and sometimes family ties and traditions. So, the thought of having to leave a community, as so many residents did in parts of New Orleans and southern Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina, can be devastating. But getting stuck in a house that becomes uninsurable, or that loses significant value due to damage or risk, is also painful. 

There are a few ways you can protect yourself when moving to these areas of the country. 

• Know your risk. Research a specific home for fire, flood, wind and extreme heat risk by entering the address at Risk Factor. Search as well on the city or county where the home is located to get a sense of overall community risk. If your house is one of the few on dry land but the rest of the area is flooded, you may lose access to roads, utilities and key businesses. For flood risk, check if you are in a FEMA-designated flood zone where flood insurance is mandatory.
• Plan your exit strategy. Unless you plan to never sell your home, or to bequeath it to your family, think about how many years you will live in the home. Then research how environmental conditions may change in that time. For example, if you plan to stay for 15 years, you can use the Risk Factor tool to see projections for how risk may increase 15 years out. Making an exit strategy can help you avoid getting stuck with an uninsurable home, or one that is depreciating in value.
• Reduce your home’s risk. “Harden” your home by following guidance on how to improve chances of weathering a disaster. For example, by reducing vegetation near the home that could fuel fire, installing a roof certified to withstand high winds or insulating your home against extreme heat. Some states or counties have grants, loans or tax breaks for residents to complete these kinds of projects.
• Know the insurance market in your area. Before you purchase a home, understand your options for insuring your home with general insurance and, if need be, with flood insurance. Talk to neighbors and follow local news to understand if insurance may be a problem in the community.
• Renters need insurance too. If you’re planning to rent in a high-risk area, consider renters insurance and flood insurance to protect the contents of your home.

The post Transferring to Florida? Arizona? Be part of the Crowd appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco celebrated its 53rd annual Pride Parade with nearly a million people on Sunday.

The theme of this year’s parade was “Looking Back and Looking Forward”. The San Francisco Pride Parade marched down Market Street from the Embarcadero to the celebration at the Civic Center.

In addition to San Francisco, events in New York and Chicago are among the events being hosted by around 400 Pride organizations across the US this year, with many focusing specifically on transgender people’s rights.

One of the largest and most well-known LGBTQ+ celebrations in the United States, San Francisco’s Pride Parade drew tens of thousands of spectators to the city on Sunday.

The event, created by group Dykes on Bikes, featured dozens of colorful floats, some carrying powerful messages against the wave of anti-transgender laws in state houses across the country.

Organizers told the San Francisco Chronicle that this year’s theme places an emphasis on activism. The parade was also attended by the country’s first drag award winner, D’Arcy Drollinger.

“When we go through the world in a more authentic and fabulous way, we inspire everyone,” said Drollinger at a breakfast before the parade.

Along Market Street, Speaker Emeritus of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank were spotted driving together. San Francisco Mayor London Breed and California Attorney General Rob Bonta also attended the parade on Sunday.

A couple made the extra trip from Orlando, Fla., to attend Sunday’s parade.

“They said it felt safe and joyful to celebrate pride in San Francisco at a time when gay and trans rights are under attack in Florida and other states,” said John Seigel of Orlando. “Why would you hate someone who loves someone?” he said.

Other parade participants said this year’s Pride march is meaningful because there are fewer safe places to be outside and proud these days.

“The way things are right now, people who attack drag queens and transgender people are supposed to be drag queens drag queens,” said Alexandra Hampton of Los Angeles. “Quite literally, it’s just nice to see them at the parade as authentically as they are without having to worry about someone beating them up. We’re all one community here.”

The Associated Press contributed to the report.

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After an afternoon lazing in San Francisco’s Dolores Park last year, as two friends and I walked through the bustling Latin district known as the Mission, I noticed a man on the opposite pavement growing agitated.

He was shouting, growling, waving his arms. Shortly after, I heard the bang. My friends and I dropped to the ground, crouching behind a large white truck for cover. Brandishing a small handgun, the man fired straight up into the air. Then he disappeared into the night.

More unsettling than my brush with a live shooter was the fact that the incident barely registered — within minutes, everyone was back on their feet, and normality resumed.

It seems everyone living in San Francisco has a similar story to tell right now. During the pandemic, pre-existing wealth disparities have been exacerbated. In 2020, drug overdoses outnumbered Covid deaths by more than double. Homeless encampments line up alongside rows of the city’s famous colorful town houses.

Both organized and opportunistic crime is rampant, particularly property and auto theft. A colleague who came to film in the city said her team had to hire security guards after a spate of robberies targeted camera crews at gunpoint. Last month, footage emerged of residents leaving car doors open so burglars would not smash their windows. “The real epidemic is poverty,” a friend offers, in one of many conversations about the state of the city.

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For some privileged inhabitants, unable to cope with the desperation and lawlessness, the answer may have been to flee. This month, Silicon Valley executives began sharing statistics showing that the proportion of staff they hire in the city and the surrounding Bay Area has shrunk dramatically in recent years. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong notes that in the first quarter of 2019, 30 percent of the company’s hiring was outside the Bay Area; in the last quarter of 2021, it was 89 percent.

The change was attributed to the tech world becoming more “global” and decentralized — drawing from a wider pool of applicants. But I wonder if it can also be explained by an exodus of the Silicon Valley crowd to other city hubs (with lower taxes).

Start-up founders, computer engineers and venture capitalists have been abandoning the city of peace, love and progressive politics — many leaving behind a diatribe on why they felt inclined to get out.

“In 2000 or 2010, it made sense to build in San Francisco. That’s where all the talent was, but not any more,” Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist and Palantir co-founder wrote on leaving the city in November 2020.

LinkedIn data suggests many have landed in Austin, while Manhattan’s Silicon Alley is ballooning. The tech-friendly mayor of Miami is trying to woo displaced talent. Last week, Airbnb boss Brian Chesky tweeted he was ditching San Francisco to start Airbnb-hopping: “in a different town or city every couple [of] weeks”.

In its 1990s and early 2000s heyday, tech workers with their meetups, uniform (the Patagonia jacket) and money seemed to own San Francisco. But steeply-rising housing costs since 2012, a lackluster nightlife and yearly bouts of polluting wildfire smoke are harder to overlook when safety also becomes a luxury.

Some blame the ultra-permissive policies of district attorney Chesa Boudin, who came to power in 2020 on pledges to reduce prison sentences and decriminalize poverty. His perceived failure to guarantee public safety is now being seized upon by Republicans, and he faces a recall in June. The Democratic mayor, London Breed, has switched from preaching “compassion” to “tough love”; from defunding to refunding the police.

What is missing is a thoughtful attempt to tackle the root issues of the “poverty epidemic”. Margot Kushel, who leads the University of California San Francisco’s Center for Vulnerable Populations, argues that the first step is to tackle a crippling need for affordable housing. “Low-income housing has just disappeared from our landscape. Every day, we see people spilling into homelessness,” she says. “It is a huge policy crisis at every level of government.”

Resilience in times of crisis is vital. But if the city wants its tech crown back, unlike the evening crowds in the mission, it cannot afford to just continue as normal.

hannah.murphy@ft.com

​Letter in response to this article:

Look to other cities to cure San Francisco’s lawlessness / From Paula Aspin, San Francisco, CA, US

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DJ Short KutThe legendary Bay Area scratch master DJ Shortkut got the crowd moving early on with his hip-hop and funk classics (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 1LA-based neo-fusion band Cassowary – led by multi-instrumentalist Miles Shannon – delivered funky grooves and high-profile solos during their opening set (Photo: Curtis Stankalis).

Cassowary 7LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 2LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 3LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 6LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 4LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 9LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 5LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Cassowary 8LA neo-fusion band Cassowary plays Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat1The six-string bass virtuoso Thundercat delivered a flood of tones and soulful sounds at the head of his trio in the Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat2Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat3Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Lady dancingA fan dances to Thundercat at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat4Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat5Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Girls dancingA young fan dances to Thundercat at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat6Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat7Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Shot of the crowdCrowd fills the Thundercat show at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat8Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

Thundercat9Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

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Thundercat10Thundercat performs at Stern Grove in San Francisco (Photo: Curtis Stankalis)

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SAN JOSE (KPIX) – Under the watchful eye of a large crowd of onlookers, work teams carefully lifted a 111-year-old apartment building onto a massive wheeled trailer on Sunday as the historic building prepared to move to a new address.

The Pallesen four-part house currently located at 14 E. Reed St. has been relocated to 4th and Reed Streets. The move will make way for a mixed-use commercial and 336 residential high-rise.

The only big step I would have liked to see was the Space Shuttle Orbiter Endeavor through LA. This move here in San Jose today is pretty cool too. @SJPD_PIO @SJSpotlight pic.twitter.com/UC3Eh5zspt

– Romeo Durscher (@romeoch) March 28, 2021

Away from the original lot! Time to make tons of tiny adjustments so this house can slide down to its new home at 4th & Reed. pic.twitter.com/ioYrGdHpD5

– San José Housing Dept. (@sjcityhousing) March 28, 2021

“It’s just such a cool old building,” says Daniel Garcia, who lives near the building. “It’s great that you keep this. It has nice old bones and that the community has come together to raise money for it is pretty great. “

The move may not have happened had it not been for a community-wide effort to maintain it. Ben Leech, the executive director of San Jose’s Preservation Action Council, said the original plan to move the building fell apart with the outbreak of the pandemic.

“Nobody gave up and set the stars,” said Leech. “To see how it ended up in the landfill, nobody really thought they could take it.”

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Leech said former owner and current developer KT Urban and Scape San Jose LLC donated the building to Habitat for Humanity East Bay / Silicon Valley, which will later rehabilitate the apartments and sell them to low-income families for less than half the market value sell.

The city guides have essentially donated the land on which the building will soon rest; Habitat for Humanity was billed at $ 1.

Eventually, parishioners donated around $ 265,000 to help fund the building’s move.

“We are really very happy that it will roll on the road on Sunday,” said Leech. “In fact, I’ve never seen a structure move like that.”

The Garcia family watched the trial last year.

“They’ll probably block this whole street, take it in the middle and go back inside,” Garcia said. “It will be fun.”

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SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – On the last afternoon of 2020, people gathered on Thursday afternoon to pay their respects to yet another victim of COVID when the landmark Cliff House, San Francisco’s beloved restaurant, was scrapped.

Earlier this month, the announcement of the final closure on December 31st was posted on the restaurant’s website by longtime owners of the Cliff House, Dan and Mary Hountalas. They said 180 employees would lose their jobs.

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The Cliff House, which opened 157 years ago, was a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic and delays the National Park Service in securing a long-term operating contract with the restaurant, according to the owners.

Overlooking Ocean Beach and its sweeping views, the Cliff House has a rich history. Once a bar and brothel in the late 19th century, it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire but burned down a year later. In 1973 Dan and Mary Hountalas took over the restaurant on a long-term lease from the National Park Service.

The Cliff House stopped eating in March due to the pandemic. Operators said they tried to work take away only in early June, but after 10 weeks the owners decided to close completely in mid-July. They said the restaurant lost too much money than just take away.

The last long-term contract between Cliff House and the National Park Service expired in June 2018, and the restaurant has since been operating under a series of short-term contracts, the current one ending on Thursday.

Mary Hountalas said last minute negotiations to renew the lease had failed.

“We got a call at 11 o’clock. “No, it’s a six-month extension and a three-year extension,” said one angry Hountalas. “It’s so tangled!”

She said the restaurant had lost employees, lost a lot of money and now lost the lease. They pack up all of their private property inside and outside the restaurant, including the iconic roof sign.

Diner diners have been visiting the restaurant since the announcement to pay their respects, but the removal of the Cliff House sign on the last day of a painful year apparently offered some closure to the dozen who came to say goodbye.

Several dozen people gathered along Point Lobos Avenue in front of the restaurant around noon on Thursday when workers dismantled the distinctive metal sign from the restaurant’s roof.

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The crowd gathered below with their phones raised, capturing the historic final moments when drills loosened the corroded bolts.

Several people yelled, “We love you, Cliff House!” or shouted “Thank you!” when the workers removed the screws that held the last letter of the sign in place. The crowd booed in unison as the large metal “E” was removed.

The Cliff House is not alone. Restaurants across San Francisco and the Bay Area are collapsed and will never reopen due to the mandatory COVID shutdown.

Chef Kevin Weber tried to keep his composure and said the staff were family.

“One of my dishwashers, Rafael, came by yesterday because it had been waiting nine months. He didn’t think it would happen, ”said Weber. “So he finally had to clear his locker. He worked for me for 27 years. “

Employees said goodbye all day.

“I worked until I was eight months pregnant,” said one waitress. Her son Lionel, who was now three years old, held on to her when he said goodbye.

Another receptionist held back tears.

“It’s … heartbreaking. Such a loss for all of us, ”she said with a big sigh.

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Owners said their debts could force them to auction the restaurant’s historic items, including the iconic sign.

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