--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is a Sunday story from Up First, where we go beyond the headlines to bring you one big story.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: First came the Santa Ana winds, then the massive wildfires. Next, the rain arrived to parts of Southern California, causing mudslides in some of the burned areas. It's hard to comprehend the aftermath. More than two dozen people died, and thousands of people have lost their homes, including Jennifer Bar-Ghiarena of Altadena, California.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Recently, she spoke to my colleague Elsa Chang. Us, like tens of thousands of Angelenos at this moment, are scrambling to find temporary housing. But are we looking for short-term temporary, long-term temporary? How do we settle our family in a way that stops making this an emergency for weeks and months moving ahead?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Bargy Arena needs answers fast, but her questions also go to the heart of even bigger questions. Are there places that are simply too dangerous, too risk-prone for people to live? And who decides where those places are?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Today, we bring you a story we first aired last year. In it, my colleagues Lauren Sommer and Rebecca Hersher of NPR's Climate Desk travel to communities at risk of natural disasters and consider the hard choices they must make.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Climate change is driving more extreme weather on all ends of the spectrum. It just seems like, you know, every other day there's some sort of weather record being broken and you're just hearing about it more and more.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And, you know, there are millions of homes at risk from climate change. But then there's the question of where to build new homes.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So on that sort of new home building front in city council meetings and planning board meetings and other, you know, frankly, kind of boring public forums where these decisions actually get made about where to build homes. We are hearing people on opposite sides of the country expressing really similar concerns and fears and hopes.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, it's happening in California with wildfires. I don't care what you build. It'll burn. It's happening with droughts and lack of water in Arizona. We need to get the water. And it's happening with flooding.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So please, you have to think ahead. What is the increase in rainfall that we can anticipate will happen? And in some places, you know, these debates are just beginning. In others, residents have started to figure out some solutions and policies that can guide these building decisions.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I mean, so this is one of those things where you can see where people are coming from on all sides of it. Like, there is a massive housing shortage in this country, and it is very difficult for many people to buy a home. But then, on the other hand, you have all of these homes that have been lost and people that have died in these disasters.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Right, yeah. And because building decisions are mostly local decision, it really means that local governments are making some of the most important climate change decisions out there.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But you went to three communities that are in the middle of this. So where are we going to go first in this conversation? What community are we going to hear from?
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Yeah, it's a place with some of the most expensive housing in the country. You can see how close these homes are sited together.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So this is Van Collinsworth. He lives here in Santee, California, which is kind of east of San Diego. And it's, you know, the suburbs. It's kind of at the edge of the whole metropolitan region.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: And we were walking through rows of homes on the outskirts of town. There's not enough space between them. So if one home ignites, it's likely to ignite the next home and the next one ignite the next. And pretty soon you have a cluster burn like you've seen in some of the other larger fires around the state.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah. So Collinsworth, he's the kind of guy who sees fire danger everywhere. His day job is doing wildfire inspections at homes around San Diego. He actually makes sure they've cleared flammable brush.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: Yeah, I see things.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: He also runs a local environmental group called Preserve Wild Santee. And for years now, he's been focused on this huge piece of land on the edge of town.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Right now, it's open space. It's rolling hills and they're kind of covered in dry grass. And it's where a new development for about 3,000 homes is being proposed.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: When you say a whole bunch of dry grass, I would think that he may see some fire danger in this area.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, exactly. And this area has burned before. About 20 years ago, the Cedar Fire came right through here and destroyed more than 2,000 homes around the area.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: That really hit me because we know that a disaster in the past is a good indication that another one could happen in the same place in the future, right? So that's true for wildfires. It's also true for floods.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So that's pretty scary.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, exactly. And this new development, which would be called Fenita Ranch, it concerns Collinsworth because it would be difficult to evacuate. So if a wildfire hits, people wouldn't be able to get out in time.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: Yeah, yeah. And that's how people have died in other wildfires. And there would only be two roads into this development. Essentially, they're betting the farm, so to speak, that those homes are not going to burn.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: He pointed out, you know, wildfires are getting more extreme, and he thinks that should change the way people think about where to live.
--:-- Van Collinsworth: I don't think developers and decision makers are willing to acknowledge that we are living in a new era of extreme weather and really grapple with what that means for the desire to just build and build and build.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So he actually joined with some other environmental groups and they sued to stop the development in 2020. And a judge actually agreed, saying the developer needed to analyze how long a wildfire evacuation would take.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: What does the developer have to say about that and the fire risk?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, yeah. That's a question I put to them.
--:-- Kent Aiden: We're not building, you know, wood shingled homes. We're basically doing the opposite. We're developing what's known as a defensible community.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: So this is Kent Aiden. He's a senior vice president at Home Fed Corporation, and that's the developer of Fenita Ranch.
--:-- Kent Aiden: He says this community would be built with wildfire in mind. So the homes would be built out of fire-resistant materials. And the more buildings that are built like that, the safer a community is.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And then there's a bunch of other stuff Aiden says they're planning to do. There would be a dedicated fire station built. residents would get inspections twice per year to make sure their flammable vegetation is cleared out.
--:-- Kent Aiden: The vegetation would also be cleared, you know, on the outskirts of the development. So that kind of protects it. It makes a buffer.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: None of this to be clear would be a guarantee that the community wouldn burn.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But Aiden says you know they worked with fire experts to reduce the risk.
--:-- Kent Aiden: We learned through those tough lessons from the other fires the things we need to do and believe that we can create a great community and help solve the California housing shortage.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: But that doesn't address evacuation, right? Like, wasn't that one of the biggest concerns?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, right. That's what the judge said.
--:-- Kent Aiden: And Aiden says they've developed a phased approach. So everyone just doesn't leave all at once and clog up the streets with traffic.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So they will identify certain streets and then use the reverse 911 and other tools to evacuate those streets, you know, one at a time on an orderly basis.
--:-- Rebecca Hersher: Yeah.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This message comes from BetterHelp. It's only human to ask others for advice, like turning to your barista, hairdresser, or a taxi driver for life advice. But when you're looking for help about relationships, anxiety, depression, or other clinical issues, they may not have all the right answers.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We're back with the Sunday story talking about home building in the age of climate change with NPR's Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So a city near San Diego is weighing a big choice. They need more housing for residents, but the area is at risk of being hit with a wildfire. So, Lauren, what did they decide?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, so. Item number eight is a public hearing for the development of the ranch. So the Santee City Council members, they heard a lot from both sides. And then they had a chance to speak to kind of say how they were going to vote, like Councilmember Laura Koval.
--:-- Laura Koval: Frankly, I'm tired of Santee's greatest export being our young talent and our families. Rent in San Diego is the fifth most expensive in the country. And when it came to the vote?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Motion carries with four eyes. Councilmember McNellis. It passed.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So the need for housing won out in this case.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah. And most of the city council members said they were satisfied with all the fire prep that was proposed.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: You know, this is something we've seen across the country, like the need for housing winning out. It's really, really hard for city councils to even consider limiting growth under these conditions.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That makes sense. Like if you're an elected official, you may not win an election saying that you want to stop building, especially when people are like, we need houses and you also need those taxes.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And, you know, when you look around, there really aren't easy choices about where to build, because like in California, for example, about a quarter of the land is at high risk of burning. And, you know, that's a lot of land.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And that question, you know, how do we build? I mean, California is really an example of where these conversations are just getting started.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I mean, there's still not a lot of guidance and support about how to do this for each city. But there are other states that are more involved in that planning process about where people can live.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: OK, so where are we going to head next? OK, next to the desert outside of Phoenix, Arizona. And that's where there's one topic that always comes up in government meetings. Is there water for it?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: There's a long running drought. It's still going more than 20 years now. And it's really affecting Arizona's water supply. It's being tested like never before.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And that's why it's on the mind of one person I met there, Craig McFarland. He's the mayor of Casa Grande.
--:-- Craig McFarland: It's hard. Yeah. Water is hard.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So Casa Grande, or a lot of people say Casa Grande. It's kind of like one or the other there. It's about 45 minutes south of Phoenix.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And you drive through some serious desert to get there with these big saguaro cactuses everywhere.
--:-- Craig McFarland: The town is in Pinal County, which is the fastest growing county in Arizona.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And McFarland, when you talk to him, he's really quick to list all the companies that have moved in. We have Frito-Lay, we have Abbott, we have Hexel. We also have Lucid, which is the newest electric car manufacturing plant here.
--:-- Craig McFarland: That means there's a lot of jobs opening up. As the industry is really rushing into the community, we have a huge need for housing. But where to put the housing? That's the issue.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So he unrolls this big map of the city, and it actually kind of looks like a patchwork quilt. Some of the land is white, and some of the land is blue.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And those blue parcels, that means there's water.
--:-- Craig McFarland: So these are all areas that single-family homes can be built in. So how does some land have water and some land doesn't?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The blue squares are really about a promise of water. So to build a subdivision here, builders have to show the project has a water supply for 100 years.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So on that map, all the blue squares have that. It's part of a consumer protection law that says that in Arizona, if you're a consumer, we're going to guarantee you have 100 years worth of water.
--:-- Craig McFarland: The water mostly comes from these really big aquifers under the ground.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And what regulators do is they have to add up all the demands over the next 100 years, and they have to see if the supply can keep up with that.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And they found the demand had grown so much, water is going to run short over the next century.
--:-- Craig McFarland: So they stopped issuing those water guarantees for new subdivisions. It's those promises that make you go from a white square to a blue square, which is what you need to build something.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But McFarland, he actually isn't very discouraged about that.
--:-- Craig McFarland: Kazakran will continue to grow. It's just we have to manage it. We have to be frugal with the water we have.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And because building hasn't actually stopped in town.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So I went by a new development going up in town. Construction workers there were putting on the siding for these single homes before it got too hot later that day.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: It be more than 300 units.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And even with the water situation, this project didn't have to worry about a water supply. Why not?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, so I asked the developer, Greg Hancock, who is the president of Hancock Builders.
--:-- Greg Hancock: This is a great product to rent. So the requirement to have 100 years of water kicks in when a developer takes a big piece of land, subdivides it into smaller lots, you know, to build homes, and then sells those homes.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But Hancock didn't do that here because these will be rented, not sold.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: We don't need a shared water supply because it's one lot. Although it is 331 units, it's one lot.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So it sounds like then if you build rental units instead of selling the homes, you get out of the requirement for the water.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So it's like a loophole.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, exactly. And these are called build to rent projects. They've been booming in Arizona lately.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: We have finished 3,000. We have 3,000 more in the construction and 5,000 more in pre-development.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I mean, the drought and the water challenges, they really don't phase Hancock.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: People will not stop moving here. There's 12,000 employees at the chip plant in North Phoenix. It is one-sixth built. People are going to keep coming here. They want to live here.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So the question is, if there's still a lot of building going on, does that defeat the purpose of the rules that are supposed to limit the building, you know, with respect to the water supply issues?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, exactly. That's the question that, you know, this is growth that's unaccounted for and that could strain the water supply even more.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So really, Arizona seems like an example of somewhere where there's a law that requires cities to think long term about the risk of climate change when they're thinking about building.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But then there are these loopholes and these ways to get around the rules that they have in place.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, exactly. It's just that cities have to think about that long-term future and how it affects their growth.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I mean, that's kind of the power behind Arizona's law. And as a result, a lot of cities are planning ahead. They're looking seriously at water conservation, at water recycling projects, things that will help boost their supply.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, you know, it's incomplete, but it really is forcing that conversation.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: We'll be right back.
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--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We're back with the Sunday story and an episode that first aired last year talking about home building in the age of climate change with NPR's Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So um it is what I'm hearing from all of this is that it sounds like it is really hard for local and state governments to keep people from living in places that aren't going to be safe or that may not have the supplies that they need because of the changing climate.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But is there anywhere that is just knocking it out the park they got it you know they got that climate change under control.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I don't know about having climate change under control. I wish I could just be like, yeah, mm-hmm. But sort of, sort of.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: There's a place that experts kept telling us is an outlier in a good way.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So that is the third place that we visited, and it's New Jersey. People are going to die. People are going to die. They will be me and my neighbors, and I don't want that to happen, okay?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So that's Katherine Riss, and I know that doesn't sound like success, but bear with me. She is testifying at a public hearing about a state regulation that would make it a lot harder to build homes in places that are prone to flooding.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: New Jersey is one of the most flood-prone states in the country. And Riss said her apartment building is at risk. She's scared about what will happen as extreme rainstorms get more common in her state.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And you can hear the emotion in her voice. So please, you have to think ahead. What is the increase in rainfall that we can anticipate will happen. We need to plan for that now.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So the proposal that the state came up with in the face of these feelings coming from their residents was to basically make it really hard to build new homes in places that are prone to flooding.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: You know, coastal areas, also inland areas near rivers, and also to require that homes that are renovated in those areas be protected.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: That was the proposal. So based on what happened in Arizona and California, I guess my guess would be that this proposal to limit building, that it either failed or there was this big loophole that people were able to drive a truck through and do whatever they wanted.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, that would fit the pattern. Yep. Yeah, you're right, actually, that it faced a ton of opposition, especially from developers.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But in the end, there was no loophole and it was enacted.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I mean, how did how did they do that? Was it money on the side or like because usually some money involved?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I mean, this is what I wanted to know, right, because it's what sets New Jersey apart from other parts of the country.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And New Jersey is arguably the national leader in reducing flood risk as the climate warms, which is a big deal because a lot of states in the country have a lot of flood risk.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So it says something that this state is way out front.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So what is working in New Jersey?
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, I also was intrigued, actually, and kind of surprised. But yeah, I drove up and I spent some time there and I visited this one town. Woodbridge New Jersey
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: One of the first things that happened when I arrived in Woodbridge is that the town mayor John McCormick started bragging to me about how great the highway access is which not to stereotype but that is pretty Jersey
--:-- Lauren Sommer: We're right where the two major highways in the state crossed, the parkway and the turnpike. 1-9, 27-35, 287, 440, all in Woodbridge.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, it's very Jersey. It's very Jersey. But all joking aside, Woodbridge is definitely a crossroads kind of place.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: It's right outside New York City. It's got train lines and highways. There's a lot of water. The ocean is on one side of the town.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And then on the other side, there are rivers and creeks. It's very marshy.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And in recent years, they've had a huge flooding problem. It's not just, you know, rain events. It could be a minimal rain event with the high tide and you're in trouble.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So a decade ago, Hurricane Sandy devastated this town. Hundreds of homes were underwater.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And this is why I visited, because after Sandy, McCormick did something that was kind of controversial.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: He actually advocated for hundreds of flooded homes to be permanently removed.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: That's something we wanted to do, but we had to do it.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So how did that work?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, so basically the government bought the houses and knocked them down.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: But, you know, it's controversial for all the reasons you can imagine. You're actually purposefully eliminating tax base, and elected officials do not love that.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But, you know, McCormick is an elected official, been elected many times over, and he said when he really sat down and thought about it, he realized that it was actually more expensive and dangerous to keep the houses because these houses were going to flood again.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And the town would have to pay for emergency workers to rescue people. They'd have to pay for extra trash removal to get rid of all destroyed belongings and construction debris.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And that's all before you consider the mental and physical toll that it would take on the people who are actually living in these homes.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So to him, it made more sense to try to move people out of harm's way. But a home buyout, it is voluntary.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And people were not immediately sold on the idea.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: McCormick told me he still remembers this excruciating town meeting that he presided over in the high school auditorium right after Sandy.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I mean, standing up there on the auditorium stage, looking out at 400 people whose lives were just upended is not easy.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: People were angry. People think we can do something about everything.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So people expect the mayor to be able to solve their problems. And in this case, we did, but it wasn't an easy process.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So how did the government convince people to leave?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: You know, there were a few things that I found in my reporting that seemed to have helped this difficult conversation.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So the first is that McCormick thinks it really helped that the city government vocally supported these home buyouts in flood zones.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I think that psychologically meant something to them. Say, wait a minute, there must be something to this. If the mayor's telling me it's okay to go.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: The other thing that probably helped is that New Jersey assigns case managers to families that are considering selling their homes to the government.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: So you have somebody to call, right, or somebody who follows up with you throughout the process. Because the process can take years.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And in other states, there's been research that shows that a lot of people who might be interested in this kind of thing don't end up actually taking it all the way to the finish line and selling their house because the process is so convoluted.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: There's so much paperwork, it gets confusing, and so you give up.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: So, I mean, what ended up happening in Woodbridge? Like, how many houses did they remove?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: They ended up removing about 180, which is not a small number for a single town.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And statewide New Jersey has removed about a thousand homes in the last decade.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And they're trying to make sure that the ones that remain are safer.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Obviously, safer is better. But it's still kind of sad when people have to leave their homes that they've lived in all their lives.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Absolutely.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And I think, like, one lesson that I saw in New Jersey is that doing this well means making room for it to be a personal decision and not sort of pushing people to do things that they don't want to do.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: I talked to the chief resilience officer for New Jersey about this. His name is Nick Angeron.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And he said this work, it's really, really hard. Right, you're talking about, you know, some of the basic principles of the country is kind of, you know, where and what you can do with your property.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: And he said New Jersey still has a really long way to go, even if they're a national leader, because flooding is only getting more severe as the planet keeps getting hotter.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, and I think that's the thing that really struck us in all three places is that the intensity, the urgency of these decisions is just getting worse, right?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: The population is growing, housing prices are going up, but the disasters are getting worse too.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And it's really hard to have these conversations in a community. It's hard to plan thoughtfully and to respect everyone's decisions when the choices are so hard.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: But, you know, that's what climate change does. It forces us to really think long term.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: And locally, this is where it's really playing out in a big way.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Well, it seems like you either think long term or then the long term comes and smacks you in the face.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: You either deal with it or it's going to deal with you, right?
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Yeah, totally.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Well, thank you both so much for bringing your reporting to us and going all over the country with us. I really appreciate it.
--:-- Lauren Sommer: Thanks so much.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Yeah, thanks for having us.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: This episode of The Sunday Story was produced by Andrew Mambo and edited by Neela Banerjee and Jenny Schmidt.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Special thanks to Ryan Kelman. The mix engineer for this episode was James Willits.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: Our team includes Liana Simstrom, Justine Yan, and our executive producer, Irene Noguchi.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: We always love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at thesundaystory at npr.org.
--:-- Aisha Roscoe: I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back in your feed tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.
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