The Sunday Story: Time To Leave
29:13 Share

I'm a character in this is a sunday story. There's a big fight happening across the country. It's a fight about one of the most basic ideas in our society who is to decide where we live. And city council meetings are getting tense.

We're going to we're going to be real about this and .

be real about IT. There's a lot to be frustrated about. On one hand.

there's not .

affordable housing in the U. S.

Hot in housing. On the other hand, growing risk that homes could get hit with a disaster as the climate keeps changing.

people are going to die. People are going to die.

As floods and drought and wood fires get worse. Cities and towns are facing a tough question. Are there places where new homes shouldn't be built rebeca harsher? And lawns in summer from empire climate does have been digging into what this means for where we live. Rebecca laun, welcome to this in the story.

Hey, it's great to be here.

Yeah, thanks.

Climate change is driving more extreme weather on all ends of the spectrum. IT seems like, you know, every other day there are some sort of weather record being broken and and you're just hearing about IT more and more yeah 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.

right? So on that sort of new home building front, in city council meetings and planning board meetings and other, you're Frankly kind of boring public forms 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.

Yeah, it's happening in california with wildfires.

I don't care what you build, it'll burn.

It's happening with drought and lack of water.

In arizona, we need to get .

the water and it's happening .

with footing. 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.

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, it's very difficult for many people to buy a home. But then on the other hand, you have all of these homes there have been lost and people that have died in these disasters, right? yeah. And because .

building decisions are mostly local decision IT really means that local governments are making some of the most, most important climate change decisions out there.

But you went to three communities that are in the middle of this. So where where we gonna first um in this conversation, what community are we're going to hear from?

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.

So this is van Collins. Worse, he lives here in santy, california, which is kind of east of santiago. And it's, you know, the suburbs. It's kind of at the edge of the whole metropolitan region. And we were walking through rose of homes on the .

outskirts of town. So if one home ignite, it's likely to ignite the next home in the next one the night the next person. You have a cluster burn like you ve seen in some of the other larger fires around the state yeah.

So columns worth. He's the kind of guy who sees fire danger everywhere. His day job is doing wildfire spectra homes around 年底 ago。 He make sure they've cleared flamb brush.

Yeah, I see things.

He also runs a local environmental group called preserve wild sand. And for years now, he has been focused on this huge piece of land on the edge of town. Right now it's open space, it's rolling hills and the kind of covered in dry grass. And it's where a new development for about three thousand homes is being proposed.

When you say a whole of drag grass, I would think that t they see some fire danger in this area. Yeah.

exactly. And this area has burned before about twenty years ago, the seder fire came right through here and destroyed more than two thousand homes around the area.

That really hit me because we know that a disaster in the past is a good indication that another thing could happen in the same place in the future, right? So that's true for wildfires is also true for floods. So pretty scary. Yeah, exactly.

And this new development, which would be called fanie ranch IT, concerns converse because IT would be difficult to evacuate.

So if a wildfire hits, people wouldn't be able to get out in time.

yeah. Yeah, and not 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 gonna burn.

He points, you know, wildfires are getting more extreme. And he thinks that should change the way people think about where to live.

I don't think developers and decision makers are willing to acknowledge that we are living in a new air of extreme weather and really grapple with what that means for the desire to just build and build. And so he actually .

joined with some other environmental groups and they sued to stop the development and and the judge actually agreed, saying the developer needs to analyze how long a wildfire evacuation would take.

What does the developer have to say about that in the in the fire with?

Yeah, yeah, that's a question I put to them.

We're not building you would shingled homes. We're basically doing the opposite. We're developing what's known as a defensible community.

So this is canaan. He is a senior vice president at homeless ed corporation, and that's the developer of fanez ranch. He says this community would be built with wild d fire 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. And then there's a bunch of other stuff adam 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 flamel veg is cleared out. The veg would also be cleared, you know, on the outskirts of the developments that kind of protects IT makes a buffer. None of this, to be clear, would be a guarantee that the community wouldn't burn. But eight and size, you know, theyve work with fire experts to reduce .

the rise we've worn 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's housing shortage.

But that is an address evacuation, right? Like, wasn't that one of the biggest concerns?

Yeah, right. That's what the judge said. Uh, eden says they've developed a phased approach, so everyone just doesn't leave all at once and clog up the streets.

Fc, so they will identify certain streets and then use the reverse nine one one and other tools to evacuate those streets in one of time on an early basis. yeah.

And if you haven't heard a reverse nine one one, which I hadn't before, I started reporting about this, it's using a lot of disasters as how authorities can send an alert to your phone based on where you are saying, like there's a welfare are, you need to get out .

and that's what eight in in his company worked on after the lawsuit. They change the project a little. They did more analysis and then they brought IT back the community and the city council to .

vote on IT again. So whether they go build or not build, that's we'll find out next.

Hides Terry growth from fresh air. I just interviewed Billy ellish and fenix about many things, including how billion's signature baggy cloth came from watching hip hop videos.

Instead of being just as the women who get be around the hot men, I would be jealous of the hot man, and I would want you to dress like them, and I wanted to be able .

to act like them. Find this fresh air interview or every you listen to podcast .

have you ever been on a date with someone and suddenly found yourself disgusted by something they did well you might have gotten the hit on its been a minute we are asking the big questions about dating like what's actually happening when we get the ig and is IT about them or about you to find out? Listen now to its been a minute podcast from N P R.

Hey, it's Peter eagle, the host of wait weight. Don't tell me now if you like weight, weight and you're looking for another podcast where the hosts take self deprecating jabs at themselves and invite important guests on you have no business being there, then you should check out N P S. How to do everything. It's hosted by two of the minds behind way. Weight, who literally sometimes is put words in my mouth, find of the how to do everything podcast wherever you are currently listening to me go on about IT.

we're back with the sundays story, talking about home building in the age of climate change with the imp s for begger harsher and lawn summer. So a city near Sandy ago is waiting a big choice. They need more housing for residence, but the area is at risk of being hit with a wood fire.

So laun, what did they decide? yes. So I am .

never need is .

a .

public hearing for the development of .

the so the C, N, C, D. Council members. They heard a lot from both sides, and they had to speak to kind say how they're gonna vote. Like council member Laura o. Vall.

tired of santis greatest export being our Young talent and our families. Rent santiago is the fifth most expensive in the country.

And when IT came .

to the vote, Carries with IT passed. So the need for housing one out, in this case, yeah and most of the city .

council members said they were satisfied with all the fire prep that was proposed.

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.

That makes sense. Like if you're an elected official um you may not win an election saying that you want to stop building, especially when people like we need houses and you also those taxes.

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 by risk of burning. And you that a lot of land and that question, you know, how do we build in california?

Cities are really making that choice on their own. State legislation have tried to step in. They're been a number of bills to create restrictions about building in high risk areas.

But you know, those bills have failed in the last few years because of push back from the building industry. Next year, they are actually going to consider another bill that would require developers to create these wildfire and evacuation plans before they break ground. But I mean, california really an example of where these conversations are just getting started. I mean, they're 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.

okay. So where are we going to head next?

Okay, next to the desert outside of phenix, arizona. And that's where there is. One topic that always comes up in government meetings is there, I was there over the summer. I was during this record breaking period of heat. I mean, the temperatures were like around one hundred and twelve.

yeah. I remember this because every single day heat records were falling in the southwest. Fenix had thirty one days row with the temperature was over one hundred ten degrees.

That's a lot of heat. Even if it's a dry heat, it's one hundred. I don't matter what is drought or human and and the heat made a lot of headlines, so did drought. So what is the water situation like now?

Yeah, there's a long running draw. It's still going more than twenty years now and it's really affecting arizona water supply. It's been tested like never before, and that's why it's on the mind of one person I met there crag mic foreland. He's the mare of cash.

Ground is hard.

water is hard. So casta ground or a lot of people say cash grand, it's kind of like one of the other there. Um it's about forty five minutes the phoenix and you drive through some serious desert to get there with these big zoo cactus everywhere the town is in penal county, which is the fastest growing county in arizona. And mcfarland, when you talk to him, he's really quick to list all the companies that have moved in.

We have to lay. We have abbott. We have hex al. We also have losted, which is the the newest electric AR manufacturing.

and that means there's a lot of jobs opening up as .

the industry is really rushing in to the community. We have a huge need for housing.

but where to put the housing, that's the issue. So he enroll 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. And those blue that means there is a water.

So these are all areas that single family homes can be built in.

So, so how does some land have water? And in some land does that?

The blue square are really about a promise of water. So to build a subdivision here, builders have to show the project has a water supply for a hundred years. 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 a hundred years for the water.

So then does that mean that the White squares are at a look and you can build there because is .

no water right now? yes. Um and that's because four years ago, state water regulars had to look at how that water supply is doing in the area. The water mostly comes from these really big owner fers under the ground.

And what regulators do is they have to add up all the demands over the next hundred years, and they're to see if the supply can keep up with that. And they found the demand and grown so much water is going to run short over the next century. So they stopped issuing those water guarantees for new subdivisions. It's those that make you go from a White square to a blue square is which is what you need to build something. Uh, but my farland, he actually isn't very discouraged about .

that because I will continue to grow. It's just we have to manage IT if to be frugal with the water we have.

And because building hasn't actually stopped in town. So I went by a new development going up in town. Construction workers, they were putting on the sighting for these single story homes before I got too hot.

Later that day, it'll be more than three hundred units. And even with the water situation, this project didn't have to worry about a water supply one. yeah. So I ask the developer, great hancock, who is the president of hancock builders.

This is a great product.

So the requirement to have one hundred years of water kicks in when a developer takes a big piece of land, self divides, IT into smaller lots, you know, to build homes and then sells those homes. But hancock didn't do that here because these were be rented, not salt.

We don't need share water survive because it's one lot, although IT is three hundred .

thirty one units. So IT sounds like then if you build rental units instead of Selina homes, you get out the requirement for the the water. So was like a looper .

yeah exactly. And these are called built to rent project. They've been bombing and ears on a lately.

We have finished three thousand. We have three thousand more in the construction and five thousand more and pre development.

I mean, the drought and the world changes. They really don't face hancock.

People will not stop moving here. There's twelve thousand employees at the chip plan in north fenix. IT is one sixth built. People going to keep coming here. They want to live here.

So the question is, if they're still a lot of building going on, um does that defeat the purpose of the rules that are supposed to limit the building? You know with respect to the water supply issues?

Yeah exactly. That's the question that this is growth that's an account for and that could string the war supply even more. So earlier this year, state legislators tried to pass several bills that would have closed that loops know, and I would have required those build to rent projects actually have a water supply. But I spoke to cathleen fairs of le center for water policy at arizona state university, and he said legislators just couldn't get enough buying to get the bills passed.

Different interest groups, the real turns, the home builders, the department of water resources, they all had different ways. They wanted to struck the bills and just never came together. 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. But then there are these loops in these ways to get around the rules that they have in place.

Yeah exactly. It's just that cities have to think about that long term future and how would affect their growth. I mean, that's kind of the power behind arizona 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. So you know it's incomplete, but IT really is forcing that conversation.

So um is what i'm hearing from all of this is that IT sounds like IT is really hard for local and stay government 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. But is there anywhere that is just knocking IT out the park? They got IT, you know, they got that climate change in the control.

I don't know about a having climate control. I wish I could just be like, yeah, but sort of sort of there is a place that experts kept telling us as an out wire in a good way. So that is the third place that we visit in and 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 happen. okay.

So that's Katherine risk. 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.

New jersey is one of the most flood prone states in the country, and riis said her apartment building is at risk. She's scared about what will happen as extreme rainstorms get more common in her state. 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.

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, coastal areas, also inland areas near rivers, and also to require that homes that are renovated in those areas be protected. That was the proposal.

So based on what happened in arizona and california, A, I guess my guess would be the this proposal to limit building that he either failed or there was this big loops of people were able to, like, drive a truck through and do whatever they want. IT.

yeah, that would fit the matter.

Yeah yeah. Ah you're right, actually, that IT faced a ton of opposition, especially from developers. But in the end, there was no looper and IT was enacted.

I mean, how did how did they do that? That was the money on the side or like just some money of all.

I mean, this is but I wanted to know, right, because it's what sets new jersey apart from other parts of the country. And new jersey is arguably the national leader in reducing flood risk as the climate warmth, which is a big deal, because a lot of states in the country have a lot of flood risks. So IT says something .

that this state is way out front. Now a lot of people notice about me, but I actually that's where I got family of there. So i'm glad he they doing well. So so what is working in new jersey? Yeah I also was intrigued actually.

and kind of surprised. But yeah, I drove up and I I spent some time there and I visited, did this one town.

woodbridge, new jersey.

I been, I been, i've been woodridge. I know we bridge Sunny woodbridge.

beautiful woodbridge. I am god, we all agree on the woodbridge. Lawrence is like, i've never got the wood bridge west goes go. But a one of the first thing that happened when I arrived in woodbridge is that the town's mayor, john, started bragging to me about how great the highway excesses, which not to stereotype, but that is pretty jersey.

We're right where the two major highways in the state cross the park in the turnpike one, nine, twenty seven and thirty five, two, eighty seven, four, forty, all in woodbridge.

Yeah, it's very jersey.

It's jery. But all joking aside, wood bridge is definitely a crossroads s kind of place. It's right outside new york city.

It's got train lines and highways. There's a lot of water. The ocean is someone's of the town.

And then on the other side, there are rivers and creeks. It's very marshy. And in recent years, you've had a huge flooding problem.

It's not just, you know, rain events. IT could be a minimal rain event with the high time you in trouble.

So a decade ago, hurryin Sandy devastated this town, hundreds of homes around underwater. And this is why I visited because after Sandy, mr. Mick did something that was kind of controversial. He actually advocated for hundreds of flooded homes to be .

permanently removed. That's something we wanted to do.

but we had to do IT. So how did that work?

yeah. So basically the government bought the houses and knocked them down. But you know, it's controversial for all the reasons you can imagine you actually purposeful, fully eliminating tax space and elections. Als do not love that.

But this is an elective official. Been elections many times over. And he said, when he really said down and thought about IT, he realized that he was actually more expensive and dangerous to keep the houses, because these houses were going to fly again, 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. And that's all before you consider the mental and physical told that he would take on the people who actually living in this home. So to him, IT made more sense to try to move people out of harm's way. But a home buyout, IT, is voluntary, and people were not immediately sold on the idea. Mccoy told me he still remembers this excitation town meeting that he presided over in the high school auditorium right after Sandy.

I mean, standing up there on the auditorium stage, looking at IT four hundred people whose lives were just appended, is not easy. People were angry. People think we can do something about everything, 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. Know somebody is talking to you about moving out their home that they have been in for sixty years and is the biggest investment in their life.

So how did the government convince people to leave?

You know, there were a few things that I found in my reporting that seem to have helped this difficult conversation to. The first is that mccormac things that really helped that the city government. Vocally supported these home bouts in flood zones.

I think that psychologically meant something to them. So they wait a minute, there must be something to this if the mayors tell me its okay to go.

The other thing that probably helped is that new jersey assigns case managers the families that are considering selling their homes to the government. So you have somebody to call right, or somebody who follows up with you throughout the process because the process can take years. And in other states, there's been research that shows that a lot of people who might be interested in this kind of thing um don't end up actually taking IT all the way to the finish line and selling your house because the process is so convoluted as so much paperwork is confusing and so you give up.

So I mean, what ended up happening in woodbridge, like how many houses did they remove?

They ended up removing about one hundred eighty, which is not a small number for uh, a single town. And statewide, new jersey has removed about a thousand homes in the last decade. And they're trying to make sure that the ones that remain are safer.

obviously safer is Better. But IT is still kinds sad when people have to leave their homes that they've lived in all their lives.

Yeah, IT is sad. You know, that's one of the lessons that I took away from this reporting in new jersey is that there is no perfect solution. You know i'd talk to a family in new jersey who took a buy out and those feelings can be so complicated um the couple that I talk to their names are Nicholas and Stephanie separator and they've been living with their two kids in a home that had a lot of history and steph .

anise family my family had been on the property for over one hundred years. So we were pretty comfortable in that sense, thinking that we were safe. But then there .

was a huge rainstorm a couple years ago, and IT caused a flash flood that destroyed their house. The family barely evacuated in time. That was really, really scary.

Our one year old daughters room took the brand of IT. You know, her light fixture was there, and that was that our sons bedspread was hanging from a tree.

So obviously that was really traumatic. And they told me that all they wanted to do after that flood was leave, just get out and make sure no one else to ever live there, because they knew I was dangerous. And so they were actually relieved when a local government official in their town suggested a buyout.

We were both like, yes, yes, we'll sign up for that. You know, you see our children's beds break up and never find their mattresses. And you're like, now we're never gonna do that again.

They live about fifteen minutes away now in a house that's on a hill, which is not surprising, that has no water nearby. And they said they really missed their old home, but they also told me they feel grateful to be living in .

a say for place that that makes total sense. But IT does feel like this is a very personal decision for each family and each person.

absolutely. And I think like one lesson that I saw a 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 anna do. I talked to the chief resilience officer for new jersey about this. His name is nicky iron, and he said, this work is really, really hard.

right? You're talking about, you know, some of the basic principles of of the country is kind of where and what you can do with with your property.

And he said, new jersey .

still has a really long way to go, even if they're national leader because flooding is only getting more severe as the planet keeps getting hotter.

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? The population is growing, housing Prices are going up, but the disasters are getting worse too. And it's it's really hard to have this conversation in a community. It's hard to plan thoughtfully and to respect everyone's decisions when the choices are so hard. But you that's what climate change does IT forces us to really think long term and and locally, this is where it's really playing .

out in a big way. Well, IT seems like you either think long term or then the long term comes in its max and face like you either you are to deal with IT or it's gonna al with you, right?

Yeah, totally.

Well, thank you both so much for bringing your reporting to us and go on all over the country with this. Uh, I really appreciated .

thanks so much. Yeah.

thanks for having us.

This episode of the sunday story was produced by Andrew mambo and edited by Miller energy and Jenny smith. Special things to right and calming. The mixing engineer for this episode was James willets. Our team includes ana m strong, just yan and our executive producer, iran, a gucci. We always love hearing from you, so feel free to reject to us at the sunday story at in pr, that, or am I sarasi o up first back in your feed tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, enjoy the rest of your weekend.

This message comes from Better help working to make therapy more convenient, flexible and affordable. Better help is committed to helping people manage their well being and mental health through therapy. Visit Better helped out come slash N P R for ten percent off your first month.

Support for this podcast on the following message come from the M P R wine club, which is generated over one point seven five million dollars to support N P R programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at N P R. Club at org. Slashed podcast must be twenty one or old to purchase.