Extreme weather events and a changing climate are reshaping long-term housing affordability across America. The result is a migration pattern that would have shocked demographers a decade ago: people are leaving the Sun Belt and heading to the Rust Belt.
As the climate crisis exposes broader swaths of the U.S. to severe weather, responsible future-proofing strategies must account not only for fortified development but also for comprehensive cleanup. Real resilience can't exist without effective remediation first.
Over the last 15 years, Rhode Island has seen cataclysmic inland flooding, tornadoes, and rapidly rising sea levels wearing away at its coast. But the state plans to be a safer, more stable place to live in 50 years.
Extreme weather events and a changing climate are reshaping long-term housing affordability across America. The result is a migration pattern that would have shocked demographers a decade ago: people are leaving the Sun Belt and heading to the Rust Belt.
Extreme weather events and a changing climate are reshaping long-term housing affordability across America. Two essential components of affordability—insurance premiums and utility costs, in particular—continue to climb in markets vulnerable to natural disasters and extreme heat. The result is a migration pattern that would have shocked demographers a decade ago: people are leaving the Sun Belt, the warm southern and southwestern states, and heading to the Rust Belt, the once-declining industrial regions of the Midwest and Great Lakes.
The Epicenter interviewed Hunter Maats, co-founder of Resilience Investments, about this reversal and its implications for decision-makers on both sides of the migration. "The historical migration that has happened for the last 70 years from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt has now broken down," Maats says. "For key demographics, it's trending in reverse."
Opportunities for Decision-Makers in the Midwest and Great Lakes Regions
It might be time for the Rust Belt to get a new name. Sarah O’Keefe, director of sustainability and climate justice for the City of Cleveland, has suggested “the Resilience Belt.”
The rebrand reflects a fundamental shift in regional advantages. In the Great Lakes region, milder winters and cooler summers translate directly into lower utility costs, while geographic insulation from large-scale climate events provides both safety and insurance stability.
For Resilience Investments, this isn’t just a migration story: it’s an investment opportunity created by mispriced risk. Maats argues that insurance pricing is becoming a forward-looking indicator of housing value, and points to the Summer 2025 WSJ/Realtor.com Housing Market Ranking as a mainstream signal that this is already showing up today: the top 20 performing markets in the country are all in the Midwest and Northeast, regions with stronger climate and affordability fundamentals.
For cities like Detroit and Cleveland, which saw their populations plummet by two-thirds during deindustrialization, this represents a valuable opportunity. Repopulation means a larger tax base and the reactivation of communities that have sat dormant for decades. But Maats says that this moment demands more than passive acceptance of growth, as reinvestment collides with communities that have been shut out from economic opportunity for decades.
"Gentrification is a risk for this region,” says Maats. “The question is, when new investment, housing opportunities, and business flows in, will people be lifted up or will they be pushed out?” That’s a big part of why Resilience Investments was created, he says. “We know what's coming. Let's get ahead of it. We can start to design financial mechanisms and systems to support creating the right kind of outcomes that benefit the people who are there, while still allowing for the capital to move ahead to create enough housing and jobs.”
Strategic reinvestment in workforce development could ensure existing residents benefit from the coming boom. “There's a shortage of 2.1 million people in the skilled trades by 2030,” says Maats. Equipping current residents with skills in electrical work, HVAC, solar installation, and plumbing creates pathways to economic opportunity amidst climate migration and accelerating climate hazards. Meanwhile, cities like Detroit and Cleveland control land bank assets—empty plots accumulated through decades of decline—that could be managed by urban wealth funds or community asset trusts to generate revenue that isn’t tied to taxes.
Recommendations for Decision-Makers in the Sun Belt
Florida illustrates what's at stake when climate pressures meet fiscal fragility. With no state income tax, Florida depends heavily on sales tax revenue from 140 million annual tourists, but that gets dicey when hurricanes keep closing Disney World. And at the municipal level, a heavy reliance on property tax becomes precarious when 80% of Florida's $4 trillion in real estate value sits in coastal counties increasingly threatened by storms and sea-level rise.
“Much of the most valuable real estate in the U.S. is the most climate vulnerable, and it’s taxes from valuable real estate that pay for services, right?” says Maats. “So the Sun Belt is massively disadvantaged. The key block has been pulled out from the Jenga tower.”
For Sun Belt decision-makers, Maats identifies several priorities:
The resilience ecosystem has to work together
The Rust Belt and Sun Belt are in for dramatic transformations, but the models for navigating both opportunities exist.
The question now is less about whether specific mechanisms like urban wealth funds or community asset trusts are effective; it’s about whether different parts of the resilience ecosystem can work together. As Maats puts it: “We have to collaborate and learn that our different perspectives are not a source of opposition but are, in fact, the raw material for innovating better solutions for all stakeholders."
Read more about insurance on The Epicenter here.
Read more about resilient public infrastructure and government solutions on The Epicenter here.
Read more about resilient real estate on The Epicenter here.
8.7°F
In Detroit, the lowest minimum temperature of the year is about 8.7° warmer than it was in 1970.
Source: Climate Central.
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The Epicenter helps decision makers understand climate risks and discover viable resilience solutions. The Epicenter is an affiliated publication of The Resiliency Company, a 501(c)3 nonprofit dedicated to inspiring and empowering humanity to adapt to the accelerating challenges of the next 100+ years.
As the climate crisis exposes broader swaths of the U.S. to severe weather, responsible future-proofing strategies must account not only for fortified development but also for comprehensive cleanup. Real resilience can't exist without effective remediation first.
Over the last 15 years, Rhode Island has seen cataclysmic inland flooding, tornadoes, and rapidly rising sea levels wearing away at its coast. But the state plans to be a safer, more stable place to live in 50 years.
Extreme weather, rising insurance premiums, new carbon regulations, and shifting market expectations are pushing commercial real estate (CRE) into uncharted territory.
A coalition including The Resiliency Company, JLL, Ryan Companies, and the Urban Land Institute created the Risk Mitigation Playbook: a practical guide based on real-world experience for those involved in commercial real estate (CRE) development, from lenders to engineers to owners.
