Assistant Professor of City and Regional Planning Kelsea Best has published “Rent affordability after hurricanes: Longitudinal evidence from US coastal states” in Risk Analysis.

The article researches the challenges that renters are likely to face following a hurricane and emphasizes that disaster recovery in both the short and medium term should focus on providing safe, stable, and affordable rental housing assistance.

Hurricanes cause significant and widespread disruptions to communities, including through effects on housing (Brennan et al., 2022). This effect can be particularly devastating when communities, and especially low-income households, face a lack of affordable housing (Brennan et al., 2022; Petach, 2022). According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 46% of US renters were cost-burdened; that is, they spent 30% or more of their income on housing, and 23% spent 50% or more (Schaeffer, 2022). Renters’ cost burden is increasing over time, with rent prices between 2017 and 2022 increasing at a rate faster than inflation (Schaeffer, 2022). As the frequency and intensity of a range of natural hazards are expected to increase with climate change, coupled with increasing housing insecurity, it is critically important to understand how hazards interact with housing affordability, especially for renters.

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