Work

The Revolving Door of Risk: Climate Hazards, Risk Containment, and the Hidden Social Dynamics of Managed Retreat

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Nationwide, flood risks are encouraging local authorities to implement a federal policy known as managed retreat. The program offers homeowners a fair market price to voluntarily relinquish their properties for demolition and move elsewhere, thereby subsidizing residential relocation as a means of climate adaptation. Despite widespread implementation, we know little about how people move or how many move from places where the program intervenes. To illuminate these dynamics, we review sociological theories of residential mobility. We then analyze novel address-level data on residential relocation and home flood risk in majority-White areas where managed retreat has predominated. Results indicate that most moves in these zones of retreat occur through the market, not through the program; they are also disproportionately undertaken by households able to relocate to safer housing in more affluent neighborhoods nearby. The result is a revolving door of risk that has major implications for local resilience.

Source: RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences

DOI: 10.7758/rsf.2026.12.4.02

Authors: James R. Elliott, Kevin Loughran, A. Alexander Priest, Phylicia Lee Brown

Institutions: Rice University, Temple University, University of Alberta

Language: English

Topic: Disaster Management and Resilience

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Sustainable cities and communities, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: diamond

Funders: National Science Foundation, Rice University