American redline homes face increased risk of flooding due to climate change, reveals new study

American redline homes face increased risk of flooding due to climate change, reveals new study

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During the early 20th century, US consumer banks routinely became involved in a systemic lending practice known as redlining, which denied loans to people of color who sought to buy houses outside areas of cities considered “undesirable”, in part because were built in areas with a higher risk of flooding.

Today, as a result, homes with a combined value of $ 107 billion are 25% more likely to be flooded than homes without a red line, according to researchers at the real estate broker Redfin. The company released the results of its analysis of communities with and without brands that face flood risk related to climate change on Monday morning.

The report, which examined floodplain data from 38 major U.S. metropolitan areas, noted that modern U.S. flood risk maps look a lot like red-line maps from the 1930s.

In recent years, rising sea levels caused by climate change have increased the number of flood risk areas across the country.
Some of these locations already face floods annually. Black homeowners in Chicago, for example, complained about the increased rainfall fueled by climate change that overwhelmed the city’s sewage system and caused damage to homes that hadn’t experienced the same flooding problems in a decade, according to the Chicago Tribune .

“The discrimination that happened in the past may seem like it happened a long time ago, but it gets worse,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told CNN Business. “It is not as if historical practices that were discriminatory have diminished in effect. It appears that they have indeed increased in effect.”

Redfin researchers determined that areas in the cities they examined that were not marked were at risk of having $ 85 billion in houses damaged or destroyed by climate change-related floods – $ 22 billion less than the neighborhoods that were marked.

In their report, the company’s researchers said that more than 58% “of households in neighborhoods that have already been designated as undesirable for mortgage loans are not white” and “history shows that when storms arrive, communities of color in these areas previously marked with red tend to suffer the most. “

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

S Telemachus Street in New Orleans is flooded after floods hit the area in early July 10, 2019.

Fairweather noted the disproportionate impact that Hurricane Katrina had on people of color in New Orleans in 2005 and Hurricane Harvey on Houston’s black and brown residents in 2017 to illustrate their point of view.

Four of the seven postal codes that suffered the worst damage from the Katrina floods had black populations of at least 75%, according to government records cited by Scientific American.
An analysis of the 2017 Think Progress revealed that Houston’s black and brown low-income neighborhoods were more damaged by Harvey than the wealthier, white communities.

Without public and private intervention, Fairweather said the damage that future floods can cause to red-marked areas across the country could further expand the already huge racial wealth gap that exists between most white Americans and their black and Latino neighbors. .

“That would definitely slow us down,” said Fairweather. “It really depends on what the political response is.”

To help solve the problem, the study authors recommend that the federal government provide funds for some homeowners with red lines to make their homes weatherproof and offer relocation assistance in areas where weather protection may not be sufficient. .

“When we offer assistance for people to move, we must encourage them or insist that they move to places that will not be as affected by climate change,” said Fairweather.

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