Challenges and opportunities in scaling climate-resilient housing solutions in the United States

In this article, the authors assess the challenges and opportunities for reducing climate impacts on housing within U.S. coastal communities, based on 64 interviews with experts across housing-relevant public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Intensifying climate-related damages across the United States underscore the importance of climate-resilient housing, which requires coordination across diverse actors in the housing sector. They provide an overview of risk reduction actions being implemented as well as barriers and enablers to scaling up these responses.

The authors find that current risk reduction actions focus on small-scale property-level adjustments or early-stage advocacy, though experts desire solutions that enable systems-wide reductions of climate–housing risks. Path dependencies, financing, and other entrenched multi-sectoral challenges currently limit resilient housing development. Experts perceive government interventions as essential in enabling resilient housing, and the authors find that government-led, multi-stakeholder collaborations have already catalyzed action. Understanding these cross-sectoral dynamics can inform actions and pathways to increase climate–housing resilience nationwide.