Growing Coastal Disaster Hazards
As populations rise across the coastal United States, affordable housing is shrinking, aging, and deteriorating, whereas seasonal vacation housing is increasing and improving. Faced with a growing frequency of coastal hazards, affordable housing is disproportionately damaged while the tourism industry, the largest employer in the marine economy, loses revenue. These perilous dynamics are widening disparities in availability and vulnerability of housing types that serve two different groups: low-moderate income permanent residents and seasonal residents and tourists.
What are the two types of housing?
This project addresses the pressing problems of increasing magnitude and coastal housing vulnerability inequalities, in particular between affordable primary housing (APH) and second homes-vacation rental (SHVR). This is done by systematically studying overlooked roles of local tourism economies, development policies, and disaster funds.
We are interested in:
1) Disparities in disaster vulnerability between affordable and vacation housing
2) Connections between affordable or vacation housing recovery and the tourism industry
3) How local development policies shape disparities between affordable and vacation housing recovery
4) How disaster funds shape disparities between affordable and vacation housing recovery
5) How tourism economies shape disparities between affordable and vacation housing recovery
Case Study Areas:
Fire Island, NY
Long Beach Island, NJ
Galveston Island, TX
Collier and Lee Counties, southwest FL
Each of these study areas have a history of hazards and impacts from recent coastal disasters, economic inequalities, and seasonal housing development. The tourism industry is affected by these threats. We also considered dynamics of income, race, and ethnicity that are tied to the labor force composition within tourism economies.