There Are No Climate Havens, As Residents Of Asheville, Duluth, Central Wisconsin, Vermont And Portland Have Discovered
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A few months later, in June 2022, Asheville made a list of 10 cities reported by CNBC as “possible climate havens”. In the 13-minute TV segment, the Tulane University real estate professor Jesse Keenan listed 10 cities with “strengths” to “onboard climate migrants”. In 2023, USA Today reported on a different list of 12 cities Keenan and his team have developed “that could be best bets”, on which Asheville again appeared. Those communities were selected, the outlet paraphrased Keenan, “because of some combination of their geographies, economies and what they’ve done to get ready for the changes that lie ahead”.
At the end of September 2024, the cottages of Biltmore Village once more drowned, but that was the least of it. At least 9,000 homes were damaged in Buncombe county alone. Three million cubic yards of debris littered the city, of which only 10% has so far been cleared. In Helene’s wake, the Washington Post reported that Asheville had previously been called a climate haven, citing those earlier reports but without naming Keenan as their original source. The Post did, however, go on to quote Keenan directly. “There’s no such thing as a climate haven,” he told the paper. “There are ‘sending zones’ and there are ‘receiving zones.’ And Asheville is no doubt becoming – and has already been – a receiving zone.” As Keenan sees it, the confusion has largely been a problem of “clickbait journalism”. “I’ve never used the words or the phraseology associated with climate havens,” he tells the Guardian. “And neither have my colleagues.” He says the media have conflated places where climate-related immigration has already been observed with “places where some scholars think there’s a lower comparative risk that in the future may represent a potential”.
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In his 2019 presentation, Keenan noted that there had been a net increase of just 56 residents in Duluth from 2010 to 2016. In 2023, the New York Times ran another feature on the city with the headline “Out-of-Towners Head to Climate-Proof Duluth”. Over the previous five years, the report cited the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Duluth had received nearly 2,500 new residents. Unfortunately for them, Duluth has not lived up to its slogan. In December 2022, the “Blue Blizzard”, called a “generational storm” by the Minnesota department of natural resources, dumped up to two and half feet of exceptionally wet and heavy snow, formed in warm temperatures. The weight of the snowfall destroyed 100,000 acres of forest surrounding the city. Tens of thousands of Duluth-area residents lost power for up to a week. Keenan is well aware of the local climate risks. He enumerates Duluth’s multiple unique vulnerabilities when we speak, and laments that migration to the city has spurred climate gentrification. He comes back to his original presentation, in which the slogan is also presented in a more tempered form: “Duluth: the most climate proof city in America (sort of)”.
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One such firm is AlphaGeo, which promises on its website homepage to “Future Proof Your Geography”, and touts its work with Zurich Insurance Group. Adviser to AlphaGeo Greg Lindsay summed up the strategy at a summer 2023 conference at Columbia University. “Entities like Blackstone are now commissioning homebuilders to build entire communities of single-family rentals from scratch to address the shortage of affordable housing,” he said, referencing what’s recognized as the globe’s largest private equity and alternative investment firm. “Now, should we be building these communities in Phoenix? And should we be building them in Florida, where the demand is? Or should we be trying to convince Blackstone of the long-term wealth to be created in this building of resilient communities in, say, I don’t know, Vermont, if you can get the housing permits to build there?” Just weeks later, in July 2023, Vermont floods unfolded to an extent virtually unseen since the advent of modern flood control, closing 100 roadways across the small state. More than 3,100 homes were damaged enough to receive assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), and a year later at least 200 households were interested in relocating.
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https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/26/there-are-no-climate-havens