Last Resort and Next Frontier: Community-Driven Climate Relocation

 

Key Takeaways:

• Community-driven relocation typically involves individuals or communities moving away from an area endangered by pollution, contamination, or extreme weather in a coordinated manner, with residents receiving compensation for their former properties or, in rare cases, retaining property ownership without maintaining residency on the site.
• Currently, federal programs most often fund relocation of individual households on a case-by-case reactive basis after a disaster strikes, rather than providing proactive access to a relocation plan for a whole community in anticipation of weather events, contamination, or erosion. 
• While several states provide funding for community-driven relocation in response to repeated weather disasters, stronger federal programs would improve the future relocation landscape. Potential improvements to federal relocation programs include more overall funding, a more streamlined administrative process, increased local capacity, and greater access to longitudinal data.

 

When climate-related disasters damage or destroy homes and businesses in a community, residents often want to rebuild quickly in the same locations to minimize disruption to their lives while still maintaining the heart and soul of their community. But as climate change causes extreme weather events to become more frequent and severe, many communities (especially those on coastlines, in floodplains, or in wildfire-prone areas) will be left with no safe harbor. As a result, some neighborhoods and towns have pursued community-driven relocation or “managed retreat.” The former term has recently become more popular, as “managed” may imply a lack of decision-making power on the part of the community, and “retreat” can suggest a sense of defeat.

Community-driven relocation typically involves whole communities moving in a coordinated manner away from an area endangered by pollution, contamination, or extreme weather, with residents receiving compensation for their former properties or, in rare cases, retaining property ownership with the stipulation that they cannot maintain residency on the site. These relocation projects are coordinated and funded by a variety of government agencies at the federal, state, and local levels. The relocation of Valmeyer, Illinois, after a massive flood in 1993 required coordination between the town and more than 25 agencies. As of 2017, at least 17 communities across the United States had begun the process of relocation. (Exact and up-to-date statistics regarding community-driven relocation are not easily available because programs that provide funding for relocation are dispersed across so many agencies and levels of government.)

A relocated neighborhood in Valmeyer, Illinois, where residents used state and federal funding to move the entire town one mile uphill after a devastating flood in 1993. Credit: Paul Sableman via Flickr.

Community-driven relocation may, in rare cases, include the provision of new or refurbished homes grouped together in a different location, to maintain the community. However, most home buyout programs do not result in whole-community relocation. 

Kelly Main, executive director of the non-profit relocation consulting firm Buy-In Community Planning, has found that “only for tribes is it essential that programs [allow whole-community relocation]. For most people, it's going to be individual buyouts and acquisitions … I don't think that we should be developing programs specifically oriented around helping large numbers of people relocate all at once, except for tribes. What I'm working on with my partners is thinking more about rolling acquisitions, [where] small numbers of people move at a time—and if people want to use their buyout money to try to find homes together somewhere else, that's great.” 

In 2022, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) created the Voluntary Community-Driven Relocation Program for tribal communities seeking to relocate together, as the logistics involved in those cases are unique and complicated. When tribal communities move together to maintain the cohesion of the tribe, the process may also require the relocation or rebuilding of many other types of infrastructure and community services, including roads, schools, local businesses, docks, electrical service, healthcare facilities, and cemeteries.

Due to the dispossession and forced migration experienced by Indigenous peoples in North America, tribal communities have lost 99% of their territory within the United States and have been pushed onto more marginal, less desirable lands that are especially vulnerable to climate hazards such as rising sea levels or drought. As a result, many of the first communities to seek relocation are from tribal nations. For more on federal funding for tribal adaptation and resilience, see this EESI article on the Tribal Climate Resilience program.

For instance, in late 2024, the village of Niugtaq (Newtok) in Alaska was decommissioned after its population of roughly 400 people relocated to the nearby village of Mertarvik due to rising sea levels and coastline erosion. Niugtaq is the first Alaskan village to have implemented a community-wide relocation in response to climate change. Niugtaq High School student Fallyn Connelly described the process in an essay for local station KYUK: “The Mertarvik site on Nelson Island doesn’t have all the infrastructure or resources we need to thrive. While the U.S. government has provided some funding for the relocation effort, it is still a difficult and costly process. Many of my relatives in Newtok have lived on this land for generations, and leaving it behind is a cultural and emotionally drastic change.” Many residents of the new development in Mertarvik still live in temporary “tiny homes,” but federal funding for new construction that was planned for Mertarvik this summer has been frozen as of May 2025 by the Trump Administration, leaving the future uncertain.

A 2014 United Nations report on planned relocation identifies many reasons why people may decide that relocation is necessary—a community may be in imminent danger (e.g., a Superfund site or a village on a sinking island), suffering repeated loss of homes, confronting a lack of clean water, or dealing with constant disruption to their transportation infrastructure (e.g., perpetually washed-out bridges). In many cases, community members have simply run out of options for adaptation. Even with rolling acquisitions, the journey between exploring relocation as a possibility and finally razing damaged properties to the ground and moving is often time-consuming, distressing, and divisive. In addition to discussions with neighbors, local leaders will frequently seek input from scientists, engineers, and other-subject matter experts. In the rare cases of whole-community relocation, there needs to be a governance framework to make decisions and commission a relocation site study (see an example from Shishmaref, Alaska, here).

Funding for buyouts and other relocation costs can come from state or federal agencies, and sometimes requires a mix of both. Main asserts that New York’s Blue Buffers program and New Jersey’s Blue Acres program appear to be the only state buyout programs that were officially established for the purpose of dealing with climate-related hazards. However, a number of other states have funding available for property acquisitions in response to floods. Main notes that these state funding sources are only effective when they are sustained over time—year-over-year allocations are much more reliable than one-time programs. Blue Acres, in particular, has been recognized as a potential national model because of its “consistent funding from federal and state sources, enabling continuous property buyouts and comprehensive homeowner support.” The program buys New Jersey homes that are at risk of flooding (or have already been subjected to flooding) and razes them, turning the land beneath into community parks or buffer space between coastline neighborhoods and the ocean.

Damage to homes along the New Jersey coast after Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012. Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Federal programs tend to be more reactive than proactive regarding climate migration and community-driven relocation. A 2020 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report summarized the federal landscape: “Federal programs generally are not designed to address the scale and complexity of community relocation and generally fund acquisition of properties at high risk of damage from disasters in response to a specific event such as a hurricane.” In other words, current federal programs most often fund the relocation of individual households on a case-by-case basis after a disaster strikes, rather than supporting buyouts for a whole community in anticipation of repeated damage or in response to gradual contamination or erosion. The GAO report continues: “Unclear federal leadership is the key challenge to climate migration as a resilience strategy. Because no federal agency has the authority to lead federal assistance for climate migration, support for climate migration efforts has been provided on an ad hoc basis.”

There is no single federal agency or administrator tasked with helping communities or states seeking relocation funds, and this often leads to confusion or redundant paperwork. Funding community-driven relocation is typically a scattered, piecemeal process for states and communities. The Georgetown Climate Center lists many disparate federal, state, and local funding sources here (note that federal funding may require states to match the contribution). 

The Newtok, Alaska, project shows the potential consequences of disorganized community relocation. An investigation by KYUK, ProPublica, and The Washington Post found that inconsistent oversight of the project—responsibility for which shifted from a state-level planning group to the independent federal Denali Commission and then to the BIA—contributed to construction errors and a lack of running water in the community’s new site. The BIA spent more than $6 million in federal money to build roads across the relocation site for Newtok, but did not coordinate with other agencies to install water pipes underneath. The investigation notes that “federal auditors have warned for years that climate relocation projects need a lead agency to coordinate assistance and reduce the burden on local communities.”

Federal agencies that administer grants for community-driven relocation. Graphic: Hannah Wilson-Black.

This scattered funding system reduces the accessibility of federal relocation grants for small or low-income communities that do not have full-time, local officials with grant-writing expertise. Journalist Elizabeth Rush describes this issue in the context of flooding: “Relocation as a climate change adaptation tool is often only available in wealthier communities with public employees who can devote time to navigating the bureaucratic challenges that come with such an undertaking. So, people living in these well-to-do communities will have their homes purchased at pre-storm prices and start over elsewhere, while those living in poorer communities will watch the value seep out of their homes with each flood-event until they are forced into foreclosure.” 

To improve administrative capacity, federal and state agencies should consider long-term investment in buyout experts, rather than short-term management grants only designed to hire experts on a one-year contract. University of Delaware professor A.R. Siders, who spoke at EESI’s 2022 briefing on sea level rise, included the following in her briefing notes: “Short-term management funds as part of grant applications do not enable state and local offices to build the relationships, trust, and expertise that are critical for buyouts.”

A diagram of federal entities involved in disaster recovery. Credit: GAO, “Disaster Recovery: Actions Needed to Improve the Federal Approach.”

As a solution, the GAO report recommends that Congress establish a community-driven relocation pilot program that would designate a specific federal agency to provide technical and financial assistance to participating communities and coordinate between different federal and state agencies to lessen confusion over different jurisdictions and responsibilities. A White House report from December 2024 underscores the need for “one point of entry to access federal funding and technical assistance.” As of this writing, no such program has been established, which could exacerbate financial risk for the federal government due to the climate crisis. 

Once individuals or communities apply for funding to relocate to a new planned community or take a buyout, there are several potential pitfalls that could make the process less effective. First and foremost is the sheer length of the typical buyout or relocation process, especially at the federal level. One 2019 report found that the median time between a disaster and the conclusion of a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) buyout process is more than five years. Siders notes that this is partly due to inadequate federal funding for buyouts and relocations, and partly to understaffing at federal agencies like FEMA. If FEMA employed dedicated buyout experts and National Flood Insurance Program premium payments were paused while residents waited on their buyout or relocation, Siders argues, it would help reduce delays and financial stress. 

Increased funding for federal buyout and relocation programs would not only speed along the process, but could bolster homeowners’ compensation for replacement costs (the amount it would actually cost to purchase a similar home in a safer location outside of the hazard area) rather than fair market value (the pre-disaster value of their damaged or vulnerable home). In his book The Great Displacement, journalist Jake Bittle tells the story of Kinston, North Carolina, where residents accepted FEMA buyouts to move out of a floodplain and into higher-income neighborhoods away from the water. Many residents eventually fell behind on mortgage payments and went into foreclosure because the real replacement cost of moving was not taken into account. More funding would also allow disabled residents to pay for vital accessibility improvements (e.g. ramps) to their new homes. 

How New Jersey Limited Floodplain Development: New Jersey has seen some success with its efforts to limit development in known floodplains. One study found that 85% of New Jersey municipalities limited housing development in floodplains “more than would be expected based on the extent of the floodplain within the municipality and rates of new housing construction.” The study attributes positive floodplain avoidance results to the implementation of a few consistent, highly effective, and relatively simple regulations instead of inconsistent applications of many different regulations. Effective regulations include rebuilding restrictions, a mandatory elevation for new buildings, and property buyouts.

Siders also notes that a lack of federal incentives for states to build outside of disaster-prone areas can lead to residents relocating to other risky areas after a disaster: “The first rule of solving a problem is to stop making the problem worse.” Siders suggests that FEMA require municipalities that apply for post-disaster aid to submit a plan for rebuilding that does not involve floodplain development.

In fact, because many federal disaster aid funds are only disbursed after a major federally-declared disaster, there exists a “perverse incentive” where localities may rebuild or avoid buyouts in disaster-prone areas so that subsequent disasters will exceed the “damage threshold” for federal funds, allowing them to receive more aid money. Untying aid distribution from declared disasters could help lessen these unintended incentives. Siders adds that the Department of Housing and Urban Development could provide extra incentives for affordable housing proposals on sites that are less exposed to extreme weather. A 2020 Climate Central report found that by 2050, “virtually every coastal state is expected to have at least some affordable housing exposed to more than one ‘coastal flood risk event’ per year, on average.”

Lastly, Siders notes that there is a lack of robust data on how often buyouts successfully lead to improved physical, economic, and mental outcomes for participants years or decades after a disaster. If federal agencies collected longitudinal data or required states or localities to do so, policymakers and researchers would be able to draw more accurate conclusions about which approaches to relocation are most effective and best enable residents to settle in their new communities without economic or social precarity.

A presentation on home buyout options in Cranford, New Jersey, from Cranford Mayor Terrence Curran (right) and Blue Acres Program Manager Courtney Wald-Wittkop (left). Credit: New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Blue Acres Program.

While there is currently a dearth of climate relocation legislation in Congress, Main points to examples of state-level pieces of legislation that are attempting to address these issues. In 2022, New Yorkers approved a ballot proposition, the Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022 (Article 58). The Bond Act’s provisions include up to $250 million for voluntary private property buyouts and another $650 million for the relocation of roads and other infrastructure. State legislation supporting pre-disaster adaptation will become increasingly crucial if the Trump Administration continues with its plans to assign a “large part” of disaster recovery responsibility to states, walking back the role of the federal government in rebuilding public infrastructure and homes. 

Main’s nonprofit, Buy-In, aims to solve many of the issues hindering current relocation programs by providing technical and administrative support to local governments and community organizations. “A lot of government programs are reported as being complicated, time-intensive, and under-resourced,” Main explained. “Local governments generally don't have staff to apply for and operate buyout programs. We wanted to fill that role. Now that those [federal] grants are probably not going to be as available, we're trying to help build alternative funding streams.” 

Buy-In is supported by a mix of grants from organizations like the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and fee-for-service work. It is currently working on the Relocation to Restoration Project (R2R) in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where property owners in the Cherokee Forest have expressed interest in selling their homes so their land can be transformed into a “blue-green buffer.” This buffer would include greenways and wetlands to protect nearby homes from industrial pollution and coastal flooding. The project’s progress will be documented on Buy-In’s blog.

Buy-In also surveys households in designated areas to assess their willingness to consider relocation. Main noted that these surveys have revealed a lot of interest in relocating and a need for more resources to do so. “The cultural mentality is that people don't want to move,” she said. “That people want to stay in place at all costs. The surveying we're doing is actually saying that, ‘Oh no, people know when it's not safe to live where they live—but there's not enough resources available to help them move.’”

Quotes were edited for clarity and length.

Author: Hannah Wilson-Black