Opinion | The New Evidence Climate Change Will Upend American Homeownership 

This article is co-published with ProPublica, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.Houses in the Altadena and Pacific Palisades neighborhoods were still ablaze when talk turned to the cost of the Los Angeles firestorms and who would pay for it. Now it appears that the total damage and economic loss could be more than $250 billion. This, after a year in which Hurricanes Milton and Helene and other extreme weather events had already exacted tens of billions of dollars in American disaster losses.As the compounding impacts of climate-driven disasters take effect, we are seeing home insurance prices spike around the country, pushing up the costs of owning a home. In some cases, insurance companies are pulling out of towns altogether. And in others, people are beginning to move away.One little-discussed result is that soaring home prices in the United States may have peaked in the places most at risk, leaving the nation on the precipice of a generational decline. That’s the finding of a new analysis by the First Street Foundation, a research firm that studies climate threats to housing and provides some of the best climate adaptation data available, both freely and commercially. The analysis predicts an extraordinary reversal in housing fortunes for Americans — nearly $1.5 trillion in asset losses over the next 30 years.The implications are staggering: Many Americans could face a paradigm shift in the way they save and how they define their economic security. Climate change is upending the basic assumption that Americans can continue to build wealth and financial security by owning their own home. In a sense, it is upending the American dream.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.