How Homeownership, Race, and Social Connections Influence Flood Preparedness Measures: Evidence from 2 Small U.S. Cities

ABSTRACT

Climate change and changing built environments are changing flooding regimes. Since flood management policies often rely on household preparedness, understanding what factors shape household flood preparedness measures is imperative. We focus on three dimensions: race, participation in local organizations, and homeownership as moderated by flood experience. With survey data from two small riverside cities in the northeastern United States, we examine how these factors affect the adoption of low-cost and high-cost flood protection measures. We find that effects of flood experience vary across renters, mortgage-holding homeowners, and homeowners without mortgages, and patterns differ for low-cost and high-cost measures. In regression models that control for other factors, white residents take more low-cost measures than nonwhite residents. Among households in locations with greater flood risk, nonwhite households take more high-cost flood protection measures. Community group participation has a positive effect on low-cost protective measures, and the effect is more pronounced among floodplain residents. Processes related to both race and homeownership shape people’s access to flood preparedness measures. Understanding patterns of household flood protection may help in identifying leverage points for ameliorating disparities in flood vulnerability across communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Flood protection measures
• United States
• inequality
• housing
• community organizations

Acknowledgements

This research was undertaken with support from the New York State Water Resources Institute. Some work was funded by a United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Hatch Smith-Lever grant, 2020-21-131: Flood Risk in Context: Insurance and Risk Response in Flood-Prone Communities. We conducted research activities in accord with protocol number IRB0146183, approved by the Cornell University Institutional Review Board. We are thankful to the Cornell Statistical Consulting Unit for assistance with methodological questions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. There are studies that highlight smaller places (e.g. Milnes and Haney 2017; Reininger et al. 2013; Shepard et al. 2018); other studies take regional or national samples (Brody, Lee, and Highfield 2017; Thistlethwaite et al. 2018).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the New York State Water Resources Institute [162-8902]; National Institute of Food and Agriculture, United States Department of Agriculture [2020-21-131].

Notes on contributors

John Aloysius Zinda

John Aloysius Zinda is assistant professor in the Department of Global Development at Cornell University. An environmental sociologist, he studies how people create, struggle over, and sometimes resolve environmental concerns. In work on disaster management, he examines how residents and local governments confront changing flood risk. Much of his work has examined how people and landscapes in rural China respond to developmental and environmental interventions around new national parks, afforestation, and agricultural livelihoods.

Ziyu Zhao

Ziyu Zhao is a junior researcher at Elaborated Urban Governance at Tongji University, Shanghai. She graduated from Cornell University with a major in City and Regional Planning. Her current work focuses on urban policies and governance to create a more inclusive city in the Chinese context.

James Zhang

James Zhang graduated from Cornell University with a major in Environment and Sustainability. He is interested in urban response to climate change in the housing and transportation sectors.

Sarah Alexander

Sarah M. Alexander is a lecturer in Environment and Urban Sustainability at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her work explores various aspects of the social worlds of water. This includes work on the social landscape of flood risk and the impact of trust on in-home drinking water behavior and perceptions.

David Kay

David L. Kay is a faculty member and Senior Extension Associate with Cornell University’s Department of Global Development. Trained as an economist, David’s career has focused on socioeconomic perspectives and local policy in the areas of energy, land use, community development and regional economics. David’s current research and extension agenda is broadly concerned with the community and economic development implications of energy transitions and climate change. As a practicing mediator and educator, he is particularly interested in building informed decision making capacity in the context of community controversy. He has served on numerous advisory and governing boards of municipal and New York State not-for-profit and government organizations concerned with sustainability, conflict transformation, and municipal land use planning.

Lindy Williams

Lindy B. Williams is a professor emerita in the department of Global Development at Cornell University. The majority of her research has focused on family sociology and demographic patterns and trends in Southeast Asia, including causes and consequences of, and barriers to labor migration in Thailand and the Philippines. Her more recent work addresses issues of flood risk, perception, and adaptation in the Philippines and upstate New York.

Lyndsey Cooper

Lyndsey Cooper is the Climate Outreach Specialist at the NYS DEC Hudson River Estuary Program. She supports communities in the Hudson Valley to adapt to climate change and build resiliency through community planning, ecological solutions, and collaborative design. She coordinates partnerships between state agencies, non-profits, community members, and other stakeholders. Previously, she served as a community organizer at Mothers Out Front, working with parents to take climate action. Lyndsey holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the State University of New York at New Paltz.

Libby Zemaitis

Libby Zemaitis is the Climate Resilience Program Coordinator at the NYS DEC Hudson River Estuary Program, in partnership with the Water Resources Institute at Cornell University. Her work supports local governments in the Hudson Valley to adapt to climate change and build resiliency through community planning, collaborative design and state policy leadership. Libby leads her team to build diverse partnerships and fund innovation in ecological and equitable solutions. Her previous work includes management consulting and leading startups in the cleantech space. She earned her dual MBA and MS in Climate Science and Policy from Bard College, and her BA in Geology from Vassar College.