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Picture this: You’re looking to buy a place to live, and you have two options.
Option A is a beautiful home in California near good schools and job opportunities. But it goes for nearly a million dollars — the median California home sells for $906,500 — and you’d be paying a mortgage that’s risen 82% since January 2020.
Option B is a similar home in Texas, where the median home costs less than half as much: just $353,700. The catch? Option B sits in an area with significant hurricane and flood risk.
This isn’t just a hypothetical scenario. It’s the impossible choice millions of Americans face every day as the U.S. housing crisis collides with climate change. And we’re not handling it well.
The migration patterns are stark. Take California, which lost 239,575 residents in 2024 — the largest out-migration of any state. High housing costs are a primary driver: The median home price in California is more than double the national median.
Where are these displaced residents going? Many are heading to Southern and Western states, including Florida and Texas. Texas, which is the top destination for former California residents, saw a net gain of 85,267 people in 2024, much of it from domestic migration.
This is a housing affordability crisis in motion. The annual household income needed to qualify for a mortgage on a mid-tier California home was about $237,000 in June 2025, a recent analysis found — more than twice the state’s median household income.
More than 21 million renter households nationwide spent more than 30% of their income on housing costs in 2023, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. For them and others struggling to get by, the financial math is simple, even if the risk calculation isn’t.
In essence, the U.S. is creating a system in which your income determines your exposure to climate disasters. When housing becomes unaffordable in safer areas, the only available and affordable property is often in riskier locations — low-lying areas at flood risk in Houston and coastal Texas, or higher-wildfire-risk areas as California cities expand into fire-prone foothills and canyons.
The destinations drawing newcomers aren’t exactly havens. Research shows that America’s high-fire-risk counties saw 63,365 more people move in than out in 2023, much of that flowing to Texas. Meanwhile, my own research and other studies of post-disaster recovery have shown how the most vulnerable communities — low-income residents, people of color, renters — face the greatest barriers to rebuilding after disasters strike.
Consider the insurance crisis brewing in these destination states. Dozens of insurers in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and beyond have collapsed in recent years, unable to sustain the mounting claims from increasingly frequent and severe disasters such as wildfires and hurricanes. Economists Benjamin Keys and Philip Mulder, who study climate change impacts on real estate, describe the insurance markets in some high-risk areas as “broken.” Between 2018 and 2023, insurers canceled nearly 2 million homeowner policies nationwide — four times the historically typical rate.
Yet people keep moving into risky areas. For example, recent research shows that people have been moving toward areas most at risk of wildfires, even holding wealth and other factors constant. The wild beauty of fire-prone areas may be part of the attraction, but so is housing availability and cost.
In my view, this isn’t really about individual choice — it’s about policy failure. The state of California aims to build 2.5 million new homes by 2030, which would require adding more than 350,000 units annually. Yet in 2024, the state added only about 100,000 — far short of what’s needed. When local governments restrict housing development through exclusionary zoning, they’re effectively pricing out working families and pushing them toward risk.
My research on disaster recovery has consistently shown how housing policies intersect with climate vulnerability. Communities with limited housing options before disasters become even more constrained afterward. People can’t “choose” resilience if resilient places won’t let them build affordable housing.
The federal government started recognizing this connection — to an extent. For example, in 2023, the Federal Emergency Management Agency encouraged communities to consider “social vulnerability” in disaster planning, in addition to things such as geographic risk. Social vulnerability refers to socioeconomic factors such as poverty, lack of transportation or language barriers that make it harder for communities to deal with disasters.
However, the agency more recently stepped back from that move — just as the 2025 hurricane season began.
When a society forces people to choose between paying for housing and staying safe, that society has failed. Housing should be a right, not a risk calculation.
But until decision-makers address the underlying policies that create housing scarcity in safe areas and fail to protect people in vulnerable ones, climate change will continue to reshape who gets to live where — and who gets left behind when the next disaster strikes.
Ivis García is an associate professor of landscape architecture and urban planning at Texas A&M. This article was produced in collaboration with the Conversation.
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Ideas expressed in the piece
California’s housing crisis is driving mass out-migration, with the state losing 239,575 residents in 2024 as median home prices soar to $906,500, nearly double Texas prices of $353,700[1]. This economic disparity forces working families into an impossible choice between housing affordability and climate safety.
The U.S. has created a system where income directly determines exposure to climate disasters, as restrictive zoning policies in safer, wealthier areas push lower-income residents toward high-risk locations such as flood-prone Houston, coastal Texas, and wildfire-adjacent areas[1][3]. People cannot choose resilience when resilient places refuse to build affordable housing.
Policy failures in housing development—particularly California’s inability to meet its 2.5 million home goal, adding only 100,000 units in 2024 instead of the required 350,000—are fundamentally responsible for this crisis[1]. Local governments use exclusionary zoning to effectively price out working families and redirect them toward climate vulnerability.
An insurance crisis compounded by mounting disaster claims has collapsed dozens of insurers in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas, with nearly 2 million homeowner policies canceled between 2018 and 2023—four times the historical rate[1]. This makes high-risk destinations increasingly unaffordable even after the initial home purchase.
Vulnerable communities—low-income residents, people of color, and renters—face the steepest barriers to rebuilding after disasters strike, creating a cycle where those least able to absorb losses are most exposed to climate risks[1][5].
Different views on the topic
Climate risk is not the primary migration driver for all groups; among Texas migrants, “want more space” and “upgrade to a better home or neighborhood” rank as the top reasons for moving, with concern for natural disasters being only the seventh most common response[1]. This suggests housing affordability and lifestyle preferences, rather than climate vulnerability, motivate many relocations.
Texas’s lower housing costs come with significant trade-offs that reduce its affordability advantage, including a minimum wage of $7.25 compared to California’s $16.50, higher property tax rates described as the nation’s highest, and elevated homeowners insurance premiums that have increased substantially since the pandemic[1][2]. For service industry workers and long-term residents, these costs can offset initial housing savings.
Texas is itself experiencing affordability pressures as home prices have risen significantly since the pandemic, with some homeowners unable to sustain monthly payments and entering foreclosure despite purchasing relatively recently[1]. Property taxes and insurance costs have increased so substantially that some residents are forced to sell, suggesting Texas’s affordability advantage may be temporary or illusory for cost-conscious buyers.
California’s higher construction costs partially reflect legitimate policy choices including prevailing wage requirements for workers, safety standards, and architectural protections that go beyond minimum requirements[4][6]. These regulations represent intentional public policy decisions rather than pure market failures, and reducing them would involve trade-offs in worker compensation and construction standards.
Immigration continues to fill housing demand in high-risk areas, with many flood-prone counties experiencing population growth despite domestic out-migration, suggesting demographic replacement rather than complete abandonment of these regions[1]. This challenges the narrative that climate risk alone determines settlement patterns.
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