According to a new study, redefined American households face higher flood risks due to climate change

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In the early twentieth century, American consumer banks were habitually engaged in a systemic lending practice known as redlining, which denied loans to people of color who wanted to buy homes outside areas of cities considered “undesirable.” , because they were built in areas with a higher risk of flooding.

Today, as a result, homes with a combined value of $ 107 billion are now 25% more likely to be flooded than unreduced homes, according to researchers at real estate brokerage firm Redfin. The firm released the results of the analysis of redlined and non-redline communities facing climate change-related flood risks Monday morning.

The report, which examined data from the flood map of 38 major U.S. metropolitan areas, noted that modern U.S. flood risk maps are very similar to the redlinable maps of the 1930s.

In recent years, rising sea levels caused by climate change have increased the number of areas at risk of flooding across the country.
Some of these places already have to deal with floods annually. Chicago black homeowners, for example, have complained about the increase in rainfall driven by climate change that is overwhelming the city’s sewer system and causing flood damage to homes that did not have the same problems. flood a decade ago, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“The discrimination that happened in the past may seem like it happened a long time ago, but it gets complicated,” Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather told CNN Business. “It’s not like discriminatory historical practices actually decreased. They seem to actually increase effectively.”

Redfin researchers determined that areas of cities they examined that were not redlined were at risk of suffering or destroying $ 85 billion worth of homes due to climate change-related floods, $ 22 billion less than neighborhoods redefined.

In their report, the firm’s researchers said more than 58% “of homes in neighborhoods that were previously designated undesirable for mortgage lending are not white” and “history has shown that when storms come, communities of color in these formerly reduced areas usually suffer the most. “

“[More than] 600,000 properties faced a 100-year flood risk, which is the risk that one of these truly catastrophic floods will affect them, ”Fairweather said.

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

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

Four of the seven zip codes that suffered the worst flood damage from Katrina had black populations of at least 75 percent, according to government records cited by Scientific American.
A 2017 Think Progress analysis found that Houston’s low-income black and brown neighborhoods were more damaged by Harvey than the richer, whiter communities.

Without public and private intervention, Fairweather said the damage future flooding could cause to redefined areas across the nation could further widen the already huge racial wealth gap that exists between most white Americans and their black neighbors. and Latins.

“We would be back safely,” Fairweather said. “It really depends on what the policy response is.”

To help solve the problem, the study’s authors recommend that the federal government provide funding so that some small property owners can test the weather resistance of their homes and offer relocation assistance to area owners in their homes. which the weather test may not be sufficient.

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

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