Coastal Hazards and Northeast Housing Values: Comparative Implications for Climate Change Adaptation and Community Resilience

Chief among the information needed to enhance coastal hazard adaptation are assessments of economic outcomes and policy implications. This project will combine coastal hazards, property value and other data with economic models to answer three questions central to Northeast coastal adaptation: (1) How do property values and tax bases in Northeast communities respond to coastal hazards, and do these responses create incentives to build/rebuild in risk-prone areas or undertake private adaptations? (2) How do property values and tax bases respond to adaptation actions undertaken by states, municipalities or homeowners/developers? (3) What do results imply for future scenarios of property values and tax bases in Northeast communities, under alternative SLR and hazard projections? The project will develop and apply rigorous social science methods that, when integrated with natural science data and projections on coastal vulnerability, will enable stakeholders and policymakers to evaluate property value and tax base impacts of climate change adaptation across Northeast states and communities. The result will be heretofore unavailable information quantifying the economic consequences of coastal vulnerability and adaptation. The project will be implemented in coordination with partners and communities involved in Northeast coastal adaptation including the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR), Great Bay NERR, Waquoit Bay NERR, and Nature Conservancy in Connecticut. Beneficiaries of the project include coastal adaptation work groups and government organizations; target communities; project partners seeking to better inform coastal adaptation; and policymakers/stakeholders. Project results will enhance the ability of communities to choose adaptations with intended and desirable economic consequences. First, results will enable policymakers and the public to understand the effects of current hazard vulnerability on property values and the tax base, replacing unsupported claims with reliable empirical evidence. Second, the project will provide information that policymakers can use to forecast property value and tax base implications of alternative adaptation measures. Third, future scenarios mapping will provide information to support community dialogue and visioning. The project builds upon extensive prior work of the investigators coordinating natural/social science data to forecast economic outcomes and using results in partnership with stakeholders and policymakers to inform management.