By Melissa Tier

 

New Jersey’s Climate Change Resilience Strategy calls on the state and local governments to “support and incentivize movement to safer areas” for “populations in areas subject to repetitive flooding or inundation,” and “especially for vulnerable populations.” Housing programs such as these – in which homeowners voluntarily agree to the government purchasing their homes at an appraised fair-market value in order to relocate away from high flood risk areas – are commonly called buyouts and are a tool in a toolbox varyingly referred to as housing mobility, planned relocation, or managed retreat. In fact, New Jersey has hosted a state-run buyout program since 1995 called Blue Acres, which has been funded through a combination of federal disaster grants as well as state appropriations through both bonds and franchise taxes.

The Blue Acres program’s heterogeneous funding sources stem in large part from the fact that there is no one federal program or grant structure that oversees implementation at the state or local level. In fact, the Congressional Research Service recently identified that there is currently “no database that identifies all federal funding for floodplain buyouts” let alone meaningful programmatic oversight.

Consequently, each pot that provides money to Blue Acres – such as (but definitely not limited to!) the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) or the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Community Development Block Grant – Disaster Recovery program (CDBG-DR) – has its own stipulations for: appraising the fair-market value of a property, determining which properties are prioritized as high flood risk, which homeowners are considered vulnerable or disadvantaged, what is done with the land after a purchase, and so on. A local governing agency might also throw in program incentives that help preserve their tax base (e.g., encouraging residents to move away from high flood risk areas but not so far as to leave the jurisdiction), all in all creating a dizzying range of possibilities even within a singular state-run program such as Blue Acres.

Nevertheless, interest in these programs seems to be growing as climate change-induced flooding worsens. New Jersey has centered Blue Acres as a major part of its post-2021 Hurricane Ida recovery, which includes receiving $50 million from FEMA’s HMGP specifically for buyouts. New York City, New York State, and Philadelphia all have also recently announced that plans for new flood housing mobility programs in their respective jurisdictions are underway. Both New York City and New York State also previously developed temporary buyout programs, funded through multiple federal sources, in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

To support these policy developments, and to document the successes and challenges in designing a complex government program that meets high equity and environmental justice standards, we are conducting an archival research study on the history of buyout programs in New Jersey, New York City/New York State, and Philadelphia. We are collecting data on the funding streams, eligibility requirements, and other organizational features for each buyout program over the course of its existence. We will then qualitatively assess whether and how these differing features respond to contemporary community advocacy and federal mandates for environmental justice and equity-based initiatives.

This project is being led by Melissa Tier, Ph.D. candidate in the Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy program at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs as a part of her dissertation research. She is supervised by Dr. Elke Weber, Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton, and Dr. Michael Oppenheimer, Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs at Princeton. The project is funded in part by the New Jersey State Policy Lab.

 

References:

  1. The State of New Jersey. (2021). Climate Change Resilience Strategy. NJ Interagency Council on Climate Resilience.
  2. Congressional Research Service. (2024). Floodplain Buyouts: Federal Funding for Property Acquisition.
  3. Federal Emergency Management Agency. (2023). Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP).
  4. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (2024). CDBG Disaster Recovery Funds.
  5. New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. (2024). Blue Acres Receives FEMA Approval to Begin Using $50M HMGP Funding for Post-Ida Buyouts.
  6. New York City Mayor’s Office of Climate & Environmental Justice. (2024). Adams Administration Launches “Rainproof NYC,” Public-Private Partnership to Develop Innovative Solutions for Increased Heavy Rainfall.
  7. New York State. (2024). Governor Hochul Announces Comprehensive Resiliency Plan to Protect New Yorkers From Extreme Weather.
  8. City of Philadelphia. (2024). Eastwick Community Flood Resilience Strategies: Voluntary Buyout.