Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
Rents stay 6.5% to 12.5% above expected four years after disasters in California and Florida
Georgia Tech-led research found rents in California and Florida ran 6.5% to 12.5% above expected levels four years after a natural disaster. The rise spread through the broader rental market, so tenants in undamaged homes faced it too.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Brian An's team drew on two decades of rental housing data and federal disaster records, publishing the work in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.
- Hurricanes and wildfires produced larger rent increases than earthquakes, flooding and tornadoes.
- Areas that received Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery funds saw smaller rent increases than comparable areas that did not.
Compiled by The ScientistSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- exposure Renters whose buildings came through intact still pay more, because lost units, displaced homeowners and costlier repairs all press on the same local rental stock.
- decision Officials spending disaster recovery money now have a reason to fund affordable rental supply alongside the rebuilding of damaged homes, even before the grant effect is shown to be causal.
- cost Places that are hit repeatedly by storms or fires carry a housing cost that grows with each event, on top of the physical damage bill.
"Higher than expected" is a statement about a counterfactual, so the result depends on the comparison group. Communities that the disasters missed did not see the same jump [3]. That comparison is what keeps an ordinary statewide trend in California or Florida rents from being counted as a disaster effect [2]. The phys.org account does not describe how the expected level was estimated, or what separates the 6.5% end of the range from the 12.5% end [1]. The top of the range is nearly twice the bottom [1].
"We often think of housing as a market that will sort itself out," An said. "But a natural disaster is not a normal market condition." [12] The account describes three pressures that follow [4]. Damaged buildings take units off the market. Homeowners waiting on repairs rent in the meantime. Construction, repair and insurance get more expensive. None of the three needs a particular tenant's building to have been touched.
"When rents go up after a disaster, we're not talking about a small segment of housing," An said. "We're talking about the broader rental market. That means the effects reach far beyond the homes that were damaged." [7] In communities hit more than once, each new storm or fire added more rent pressure [6]. A second event inside the four-year window lands on rents that are still elevated from the first [1].
The study, as reported, measured rents, not how many renters left [1]. The article's list of harms (families moving away from support networks, children changing schools, workers commuting further) is framed as what higher rents can do [10]. Whether a rise of this size pushes a given household out depends on what it earns and what else is for rent nearby.
The grant finding is the weaker evidence [8]. The grants can pay to build and preserve affordable rental housing [9], so there is a plausible route from money to slower rent growth. An said the study cannot prove the funding alone caused rents to rise more slowly [11]. Places that receive the grants can differ from those that do not in ways the money did not cause, and an observational comparison cannot pull those apart.
I think the rent finding is strong enough to put rental supply into recovery plans from the start. The grant pattern suggests one way to do it, pending a causal test. An called for more resilient housing, more affordable rental options and stronger protections for renters after disasters [14]. "Everyone needs a place to live," An said. "As disasters become more frequent, housing can't be an afterthought in recovery." [13]
What to watch
- The RSF paper's methods: how the expected rent path and the comparison communities were built, and what drives the gap between the 6.5% and 12.5% estimates.
- Follow-up work using tenant mobility or eviction records to test whether the post-disaster rent rise translated into renters leaving their communities.
- A comparison that can separate the effect of CDBG-DR money from other differences between the places that receive it and those that do not.