Moving away from cars

As difficult, and complicated, as contemplating the move away from cars might be, it can be strangely contextualized by reckoning with the move away from Florida:

The Sunshine State rode a post-pandemic growth wave to surpass New York as the country’s third-most populous state, and has four of the country’s five fastest-growing metro areas‍—including Cape Coral–Fort Myers, which Hurricane Ian slammed in 2022, producing the third-most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. Will Florida’s lifestyle migrants decide they would rather live on higher ground? “The Great Florida Migration Is Coming Undone,” warns the Wall Street Journal.

Fat chance. To the extent that these storms will push anyone from Florida, it will not be people with the means to go, but people without the means to stay. This phenomenon—sometimes called “climate gentrification”—cuts against one popular idea of climate migration, in which wealthier households move to more secure locations and leave the poor to face extreme weather.

Locals are already conscious of this outcome. “The price of repairs may mean we lose our character,” Sam Henderson, the mayor of Gulfport, told the Tampa Bay Times after Helene. “There will be a different kind of people who can afford to live here, moving forward.”

So, a series of counterintuitive developments – much like many of these communities themselves – where, rather than becoming cheaper and less habitable, Florida becomes more expensive and more appealing.

If history is any guide, this devastating hurricane season will increase the state’s rents and home prices, rather than drive them down, and Florida’s growth will continue apace.

Then again, as hundred-year-storm chasers know, history may not be much help in the era of unprecedented weather events fueled by a changing climate. The hazards of long-term sea-level rise are distinct from those associated with disaster recovery, which comes with rebuilt, functioning infrastructure and a sense of returning to normal. Future climate change risks are not included in FEMA flood maps, insurance policies, or Florida land-use planning—and seem not to impact the way people consider the risks of coastal property.

Oh, yes. People prefer less complication.

Climate news floods Florida

Even though the U.S. Department of Agriculture knows that without studies showing its dangers, climate change is not really happening, news outlets in Florida are banding together to talk about the weather:

Now six Florida news organizations — The Miami Herald, South Florida Sun Sentinel, Tampa Bay Times, Palm Beach Post, Orlando Sentinel, and WLRN — are forming a partnership to cover climate change stories together. They’ll start out by sharing content across their newsrooms, but over time are hoping to collaborate on reporting as well. The partnership may also expand to include universities and nonprofit newsrooms.

“We aim to be the ProPublica of environmental reporting for our state,” Nicholas Moschella, editor of The Palm Beach Post, said in a statement.

Many of the participating news organizations have worked together in some capacity in the past. The Miami Herald and WLRN have had an editorial partnership for 15 years and share newsrooms, for instance, and the Herald, WLRN, Sun Sentinel, and Post are already partners on The Invading Sea, an investigation into sea-level rise. “This is an opportunity to maximize our ability to cover the biggest story of our lives,” said Julie Anderson, executive editor of the Sun Sentinel and Orlando Sentinel, both Tribune papers.

Just for scale, the  U.S. is also surrounded on two sides by water and supposedly split down the middle by… indecision.

Housing Stops

I’ve heard and read several variations on this theme today, that new residential construction is down.

New residential construction dropped in June, another indication that the U.S. housing market is struggling.

But that’s a new kind of sentence fragment – you know, where they leave off the important part. The rest of the sentence should read: to admit to itself that the last thing the housing market needs is a bunch of new houses.

“The housing industry remains stuck in a rut, with both sales and construction activity moribund,” said Michael D. Larson, an interest rate analyst with Weiss Research. “Builders simply lack the confidence — or in some cases, the financing — to ramp up construction, especially in the wake of the home buyer tax credit’s expiration.”

The poor report for housing starts follows news Monday that builder confidence in the new home market sank to its lowest level in more than a year, according to an industry index. Home sales plunged 33% in May, the latest sales figures released, and many economists expect a difficult year for builders now that the federal tax credit for buyers has expired.

This is news? That’s what’s holding them/us back, the expiration of the homebuyers tax credit? Sorry, guess again.

As a result, builders have cut back on home construction. “Builders remain very cautious in light of the sluggish pace of the economic recovery and the hesitancy they are seeing among potential home buyers,” National Association of Home Builders Chairman Bob Jones said in a statement.

What’s more, builders who can work up the confidence to take on new projects are finding it increasingly difficult to get financing. “If you think it is hard to get a mortgage to buy a house, put yourself in the shoes of a developer trying to throw up a subdivision,” Larson said in an interview. “It is really tough to get that kind of financing.

Does anyone ever think to ask why would they want to throw up a subdivision? Because that’s just what they do is no longer operative, developers. Wake up. We don’t need a lot of new houses and condos right now or for the next 12 1/3 years (random). This is again, one of the definitions of insanity – doing the same things over and over but expecting different results. Put on some different shoes, developers. Those have worn holes all the way through to the top. It’s tough to get the financing because we don’t need any more (single family) houses in (far flung) places where we don’t already have too many of these. You can look it up.

Developers: keep your careers if you must but change your MO. Walkable, to work and for provisions, proximity to transit, high density. That kind of building comes back, someday. The other kind, not so much.