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Who Gets Bought Out?
Flood Risk and Inequality Across the Managed Retreat Pipeline
Government-funded home buyouts offer a pathway out of flood-prone housing, but access to this form of adaptation may be uneven. This study examines how properties progress through the managed retreat pipeline in Harris County, Texas, asking whether flood exposure, building characteristics, property values, and neighborhood socioeconomic conditions shape opportunities for public acquisition. It distinguishes the geography of flood risk from the geography of policy participation to investigate which properties receive assistance and which remain exposed.
The project links available property-level buyout records with HCAD parcel and building data, flood hazard estimates, and neighborhood socioeconomic indicators. Where administrative records permit, the analysis will distinguish entry into the program, approval, and completed acquisition to identify stages at which disparities emerge. By examining selection throughout the process, this research aims to clarify whether managed retreat reaches the properties facing the greatest hazards and inform more equitable approaches to prioritizing and delivering flood adaptation assistance.
In Through the Out Door: Vacancy Chains and Demographic Churn in Flood-Prone Communities
Residential relocation is increasingly understood as a response to rising flood risk, yet a household’s departure can create an opening for another to enter the same hazardous home. When buyouts cannot accommodate everyone seeking to leave, private-market sales may transfer exposure to incoming residents (Elliott and Wang 2023; Elliott et al. 2026). Building on research showing that housing vacancy chains can facilitate access to more affluent neighborhoods (Asquith et al. 2023; Bratu et al. 2023; Mast 2023), this study asks whether such opportunities in flood-prone communities come at the cost of increased environmental risk.
We link longitudinal household address histories with FEMA buyout records, property-level flood hazard estimates, and neighborhood socioeconomic data in Houston and the New York metropolitan area. By connecting departing and arriving households through individual homes, we examine whether newcomers exchange lower flood exposure for upward neighborhood mobility and whether their increased exposure offsets departing residents’ risk reductions. Preliminary analyses indicate that private-market departures substantially outnumber government buyouts. Ongoing work assesses whether this turnover reduces risk overall or redistributes it, offering a broader basis for evaluating community resilience beyond the outcomes of buyout participants alone.
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