Mendocino County predicted to be “haven” for climate refugees

MENDOCINO CO., 9/26/24 — “The southern half of the US will become increasingly at risk for natural hazards, hurricanes, flooding, heat, and sea-level rise,” said Tim Robustelli, a senior policy analyst with the nonprofit think tank New America, based in Washington, D.C. “Millions of people will relocate due to climate impacts.”

Robustelli was talking to around 70 people on a Sept. 19 Zoom call hosted by the GrassRoots Institute (GRI) in one of its bimonthly meetings. Robustelli is a housing policy specialist, so his talk focused on where these millions might go, where they could live, and how “receiving” communities could absorb large numbers of climate refugees. That question is of particular interest in Mendocino County, which is widely regarded as a climate haven. It’s expected that the coast in particular will continue to have fairly cool temperatures in the face of spiraling heat across much of the US.

The virtual meeting attracted a roll call of county and area leaders: supervisors Dan Djerde and Ted Williams, county planning and building director Julia Krog, Caryl Hart from the California Coastal Commission, among others, including the GRI’s Peter McNamee, who served as moderator. The meeting began with a presentation by Robustelli, who recently published a report, “Climate Migration’s Impact on Housing Security in the United States: Recommendations for Receiving Communities.”

Robustelli pointed out that Californians pay more for housing than anywhere else in the U.S. “At the same time,” he said, “California is experiencing some of the worst impacts of climate change,” such as wildfire risk, sea level rise, erosion and more. He noted that half the state’s housing built between 1990 and 2010 is in wildland-urban interface zones. “Recent trends show migration from crowded coastal areas to inland zones,” he said. “However, more than 600,000 Californians were displaced by fires just in 2021.”

Mendocino County has a relatively moderate climate risk, Robustelli said. Coastal areas around Fort Bragg are lower risk and less vulnerable than all adjacent Northern California metro areas. He felt that there might be out-migration from the coast due to sea level rise and wildfire, but that the high climate risk in surrounding areas more likely points to an influx of climate migrants. He noted that when people are migrating, they tend to not go far—which would mean Mendocino County could attract populations from the Bay Area and Sacramento.

Robustelli shared a few observations. First, that sudden displacement in surrounding areas can overwhelm the receiving community’s resources. Second, that “climate havens” such as Mendocino should expect long-term population growth. And third, that a new form of gentrification is arising: climate migrants are pushing out lower-income residents.

His recommendations include preserving existing housing affordability, using land use and zoning powers to encourage more housing, increasing new development in low-risk areas, creating dense, walkable communities, and investing in sustainable infrastructure upgrades. He emphasized that local funding must be complemented with state and federal technical and financial support.

There was a pause after the report as people absorbed what seemed an impossible ask. Supervisor Ted Williams, whose 5^th District stretches from the town of Mendocino to the Sonoma County boundary and east to cover nearly a quarter of the land mass of Mendocino County, said that he thinks the report underestimates the number of climate migrants who might move to Mendocino County. “We are not in a position to house a million people over a couple decades,” he said. “How do we get in a place to steer it so that it preserves the character and nature of our coast? We’re looking for solutions from last century. We need to be looking ahead.”

District 4 Supervisor Dan Djerde, whose district stretches along the coast from Caspar to Piercy in the top of the county, chimed in: “A number of locations along the county coast are eroding at a pace double what the state anticipated.” He listed State Route 1 south of Westport as an example.

The Coastal Commission’s Caryl Hart acknowledged that the county has seen a loss of affordable housing, Native American historic sites, and wild areas. “Our goal going forward is to bring more affordable housing to the coast,” she said. “It requires a jurisdiction to develop a plan for where they want to see housing. Now that plan has to incorporate sea-level rise. How that works is going to be difficult.” For example, mobile homes might seem affordable, but as Hart noted, you can’t put mobile homes where they’re going to fall into the ocean. In fact, the coast’s existing mobile home parks are already vulnerable to sea-level rise.

Robustelli added, “Equity for mobile home parks is super important. In buyout programs, owners are offered the value of their home, but mobile homes depreciate, so when [mobile home sellers] enter the real estate market they are priced out.”

The GRI’s McNamee brought up another obstacle. “One of the big problems with a rural community, [is that] we can’t get the kind of expertise we need for planning because there is no affordable housing for people to move into. Local agencies have trouble finding high quality contractors or retaining staff.”

The county planning department’s Julia Krog talked about the studies that the county is now engaged in, on groundwater, traffic, archaeological sites, sea-level rise, and more. These studies, which will provide data to inform planners, are well underway.

During the Q&A portion, real estate agent Patti Opatz brought up short-term vacation rentals that could be functioning as regular rental housing. Robustelli agreed that this “really is a problem everywhere, from Maine to Arizona. Even if it’s a couple dozen or a hundred Airbnbs, they have a significant effect on the housing market. Could they be bought back by folks in the community and stewarded as affordable housing?”

Point Arena’s Marie Jones pointed out that “more houses have been turned into vacation rentals in the last ten years than houses built on the coast in twenty years.”

Caryl Hart said that the Coastal Commission is zeroing in on this problem. “We’re not talking about people living in a house and renting out a room. Most communities now are restricting short-term rentals.”

Michelle Blackwell said that there were a lot of people on the coast who are already climate migrants. “Their property burned out, or they moved because of heat. Is the county tracking why people are moving here?”

Supervisor Williams said there is no mechanism for tracking why people are moving to the county. “We need hundreds of houses in the county,” he said. “You have to think about infrastructure—wells, fire departments, where would you put them in the county and how would we build up that infrastructure? We can’t just focus on this house here or that house there.”

One woman asked if when the county conducts studies on traffic or development that influence decision-making, does the county figure on current population or does it assume the population will increase? “We need to start planning now or at least raising these issues in a substantive way,” she said.

Which is part of the problem. Planners must make land use decisions based on available data. Krog explained, “We haven’t seen data that our county could anticipate. In fact, some data says that our county population will go down.” She described some of the complications of land use planning, which could involve annexations, amending the general plan and rezoning.

Hart agreed. “My two cents is when it comes to…planning, the more flexibility you have for developing in urban areas, that it’s got to be evidence-based. Because it takes a lot of effort.”

McNamee asked how you plan for something if you don’t know that it’s going to happen.

Tim Robustelli said that he is trying to take a stab at it. “It is difficult to plan for something when you don’t know what will happen,” he admitted, “but we need to look ahead. We need 400 additional units on the headlands. And Ukiah could house 800,000 people on that aquifer. That would significantly change Mendocino County.”

Marcy Snyder of Fort Bragg asked about food production: “It might be that the San Joaquin and Central valleys will not be able to produce food in the way that they have. People need to eat.”

Robustelli had an answer to that: “In contrast to the lack of data on migration, there is data on agricultural impacts. Very generally, our food might come from the Dakotas if temperatures continue to rise.”

Challenges abound: bureaucratic, emotional, physical. One of the most critical, barely mentioned in this meeting, is the lack of water on the coast. How do you prepare for the unimaginable? Counties and planners can’t gaze into crystal balls. Instead committed people such as those on the Zoom call try to be creative using the very inflexible tools of government. The meeting closed with a sense of collective foreboding.

The meeting in its entirety can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/1011200820?share=copy.