Florida is developing rapidly. Will climate change impede its growth?
For Florida residents, the sound of waves crashing on the shore may now be as common as the distant hums of machinery and home construction.
The state has swelled with a rapidly growing population, and the state’s Office of Economic and Demographic Research has recorded more than 350,000 new residents moving in each year.
Developers have embraced the expanding market, making Florida the second-highest permit-issuing state for both single-home and multifamily permits, according to the National Association of Home Builders.
However, the destruction from Hurricane Milton and Hurricane Helene has spotlighted residents’ ongoing vulnerability to the impacts of climate change.
In recent years, FEMA has expanded its flood risk map to include thousands of additional homes, home insurance prices have skyrocketed, and other insurance companies have pulled out of the state entirely.
Climate experts tell ABC News that the state’s massive wave of development should be a concern in a state so prone to hurricanes and flooding, while developers say they’re creating climate-resilient structures built to withstand the storms.
Climate experts: The more development, the less protection
Building homes, driveways and roads where there was once a forest, wetland or other natural landscape increases the risk of hurricane impacts, experts told ABC News.
“That landscape is no longer a buffer protecting other communities,” Jeffrey A. Carney, the director and associate professor at the Florida Institute for Built Environment Resilience, said in an interview. “It not only puts that new community at risk, but it also exacerbates the risk that the surrounding communities have. It may have relied on that wetland or that forest for protection.”
These natural barriers protect surrounding communities from flooding or severe winds, because they can soak up water and block or reduce wind.
Local reports from Central Florida Public Media and WUSF found that older communities have become victims to the runoff flooding from nearby new developments that have makeshift higher elevation.
The water that used to be spread out or had places to go is now concentrated in the lower-lying areas surrounding new developments, experts told ABC News.
Cinnamon P. Carlarne, an expert in environmental and climate change law policy, said our ecosystems protect human health and well-being -- and it's important for the public and policymakers to remain informed about how they do so.
"You're eliminating our natural flood control system. You're eliminating our natural systems for kind of water filtration, for chemical absorption and you're actually doing away with all the good that the ecosystem can provide us and creating a system that's more prone to harm," said Carlarne, who is also president and dean of Albany Law School in upstate New York.
About 5.4 million acres – roughly 15% of the state's land – are developed, according to the University of Florida's Center for Landscape Conservation Planning. And more land is expected to be developed in Florida; the center projected about a million more acres of land to be developed by 2040, almost 1 million acres lost to sea level rise and more than 200,000 residents needing to relocate.
In this projection, Florida would have 4.9 million more residents.
"The state traditionally has relied upon that growth in order to sustain itself," said Carney. "So I think that there's a fundamental challenge that the state has, which is that, if growth is part of what we do ... we have to really consider the ramifications of that."
Earlier this year, thousands of Florida residences and businesses were added to FEMA's map of high-risk flood zones -- forcing those with mortgages from federally regulated or insured lenders to buy flood insurance.
But it's not just Florida reckoning with the impacts of climate change on its development. Flooding is the most frequent severe weather threat and the costliest natural disaster facing the nation, according to FEMA, and is expected to increasingly impact coastal regions along both U.S. coasts.
Climate change impacts overall also continue to test our national infrastructure that is "not climate ready," much of which is toward the end of its service life, according to Carlarne.
"Everything from, you see, the collapse of bridges during Katrina and the ones in Florida most more recently as well -- we have this backdrop of aging infrastructure which is creating a lot of danger for us," Carlarne said.
Carney said Florida's task is to take a much more aggressive stance on building a strong climate-resilient and climate-mitigating infrastructure to bring down insurance rates, incentivize quality construction and create a stronger community.
"We're still really not seeing the full extent of what could happen," said Carney. "Even though we're building better now than we might have been doing 30 years ago -- I should totally believe we are -- the risks are growing faster. We're doing better, but in 20 years are we going to look back on what we're doing now and say, 'Wow, we didn't build high enough. We didn't build strong enough.'"
But developers say key building codes and a future-focused outlook has led to climate-resilient homes.
Developers and insurers plan for the road head
For Willy Nunn, the president of private developer Homes By WestBay in Tampa Bay, the population growth has sparked excitement for his business.
Nunn pointed to key decadesold building requirements that he believes have led to more sustainable developments: requiring homes to be built above FEMA's flood elevation levels, the development of stormwater management districts, and ongoing building code updates concerning concrete block framing, steel reinforcement, and impact-resistant window requirements in certain areas of the state.
"I'm in my newer house, and my storm shutters are up and I'm not going anywhere," said Nunn ahead of Hurricane Milton.
Nunn's concerns also lie with older homes that have less protections: "How do we rebuild some of the older homes that have been damaged or destroyed? And how does federal money get deployed to rebuild those structures at higher elevations?" asked Nunn.
Though newer homes may be better able to withstand climate impacts, the anticipation of climate impacts has taken a toll on residents' wallets.
The average home insurance price in the state jumped a staggering 43% from January 2018 to December 2023, according to S&P Global. Flood insurance in some Florida locations may rise by thousands, according to one analysis of new FEMA data.
Data from Redfin over the summer indicated that the state’s housing market may be responding to these concerns, as Florida’s west coast house market cools much faster than anywhere else in the U.S, potentially responding to both climate and cost factors.
However, the market has recently stabilized, with an average rate increase statewide of 1.6%, according to Insurance Information Institute in an interview with ABC News. It's an improvement from the last several years when several companies went insolvent, others stopped new business and some withdrew from the market.
