Climate Migration: Coming to Your Area Soon
Wildfires, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes –all are becoming more frequent and displacing more and more people worldwide. Some of these climate refugees are trying to come to the United States. Yet people in the U.S. aren’t exempt from becoming climate migrants themselves. Tens of millions of U.S. residents could be forced to evacuate their homes because of climate-related natural disasters, according to Why Cities Need to Prepare for Climate Migration, a report from Housing Matters, which is an initiative of The Urban Institute.
The report says all U.S. communities need to be ready to take in evacuees from other parts of the country. Yet it notes few communities are prepared to do so. Managing an influx of evacuees requires coordination of multiple public and private agencies. This coordination is hard to achieve in the midst of a crisis.
To illustrate, the report examines the Orlando region’s response to a 2017 migration influx from Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Shortly after the hurricane, more than 65 leaders from government, businesses and nonprofits began working together to provide evacuees with a wide range of services. At first, according to a United Way project manager, “no one knew what we were doing at all.” But within two weeks, disaster relief centers were set up at airports so evacuees could get information on a wide range of services including FEMA financial assistance, job referrals, and school registrations. Florida allowed evacuees to obtain in-state college tuition and expedited licensure transfers for evacuees who were medical professionals and engineers.
Housing was the biggest challenge. Even before the hurricane, Orlando had a severe shortage of affordable housing. There weren’t lots of options for evacuees who needed shelter immediately. Many families ended up in hotels. Heart of Florida United Way coordinated the effort to find housing, negotiating reduced rates at hotels throughout the region. The Orange County government and many private sector corporations covered the costs.
Orlando leaders interviewed in the report recommend communities have comprehensive plans in place before disasters occur. They also suggest allowing higher-density housing to increase affordable housing options. In addition, leaders note the importance of understanding evacuees’ cultures. An evacuee profiled in the report echoes the need for cultural understanding and highlights the help she received from the city of Orlando’s Hispanic Office for Local Assistance.
Why Cities Need to Prepare for Climate Migration was released in February 2022, before Hurricane Fiona made landfall in Puerto Rico on Hurricane Maria’s fifth anniversary and before Hurricane Ian devastated large parts of Florida, including the Orlando area. Today, eight months after the report’s publication, its warnings have an eerie timeliness. Lack of affordable housing remains a prime concern as Central Florida begins to dig out from Hurricane Ian’s destruction. And after a summer of unprecedented heat waves and major hurricanes, it seems wise for people everywhere to heed the words of Fernando Rivera, a professor at Orlando’s University of Central Florida, whom the report quotes as saying, “This is not a matter of if it’s going to happen in your community, it’s when it’s going to.”
