My thoughts on whether World Cup Finals match in New York will be disrupted by wildfire smoke. www.forbes.com/sites/marsha...

Smells like wildfire and looks like Blade Runner in Cambridge, MA today. AQI was above 140 earlier 🔥😷

What better way to spend your Sunday than to read 2,500 words on the Reforming Disaster Recovery Act? The next period will hugely shape how the U.S. government supports communities after disasters. My breakdown of the law and key questions moving forward: andrewrumbach.substack.com/p/the-21st-c...

The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act is Law: What Comes Next For Disaster Recovery?

On June 23rd, the U.S.

andrewrumbach.substack.com

President Trump refused to sign a major bipartisan housing bill to protest Republican inaction on voting restrictions. The housing measure will become law without his signature at midnight unless he vetoes it, which he did not say he would do. Follow live updates.

Live Updates: Trump Refuses to Sign Housing Bill, Which Becomes Law at Midnight Unless He Vetoes It

nyti.ms

I’m frustrated. 29 deaths in #NJ from extreme heat last week. More flooding that destroys people’s lives, hurts local businesses, and disrupts our communities. Tens of thousands of homes without power. Again. We need a stable source of state funding for #ClimateResilience.

🚨 I’m pleased to share a new open-access article published today in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy: “Managing Unpriced Climate Risks in US Housing Markets” 🚨

Tragic loss of life. Roughly 75% of French households don’t have air conditioning. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Europe heatwave: Air conditioning creates political divide as France records hottest day

France is being forced to re-think its longstanding reservations about air-conditioning as temperatures soar.

bbc.com

Reuters@reuters.com · last mo.

France records 1,000 excess deaths during record-breaking heatwave reut.rs/4xS9l13

Excited to share a new paper, with co-authors Adam Gold and Helena Garcia, published today in Nature Water: “The economic value of wetlands in reducing riverine flood losses in the USA” 🎉 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

The economic value of wetlands in reducing riverine flood losses in the USA - Nature Water

Wetland conservation is an undervalued strategy for managing flood risk exacerbated by climate change. This study quantifies the impact of wetland loss on flood insurance claims across the USA, reveal...

nature.com

its a mistake to think the affordability crisis/discussion/political pitch is going to stay about energy prices

John Morales@johnmoralestv.bsky.social · 2mo ago

"When she shopped around for coverage, she was quoted as high as $12,000 a year to insure her 2-bed, 1-bath house built in 1956. Her accountant suggested that she pull from her 401k to pay off her mortgage so she could drop her coverage" @senwhitehouse.bsky.social www.miamiherald.com/news/local/e...

The best time to prepare for a hurricane is long before one is forecast. If you live in a hurricane-risk area, start your preparations today: yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/07/how-...

How to prepare for a hurricane » Yale Climate Connections

Here's what to do to protect yourself, your property, and your family.

yaleclimateconnections.org

NPR is shrinking its newsroom through layoffs and buyouts and is reducing staff dedicated to covering both climate and science. "The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk," writes Neela Banerjee, who headed the climate desk but was just laid off.

Our Center seeks applications for a 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗔𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘁 to research topics related to home improvement and repair markets, housing preservation and adaptation, disaster recovery and climate resilience, demographics and finances, housing policy, and more. www.jchs.harvard.edu/research-ass...

My home Census tract in Corvallis is now at 94.7% with AC (my parents eventually got it too) More about the data: census.gov/data/experim... Map it at the tract level yourselves: gist.github.com/walkerke/71e...

Local Air Conditioning Estimates

census.gov

California FAIR Plan's total exposures, number of policies, and earned premiums continue to break records. There were more than 640k policies in effect in March 2026. Roughly half of FAIR Plan policyholders will see a 30-50% increase in premiums starting in October, primarily due to wildfire risks.

San Francisco Chronicle@sfchronicle.com · 3mo ago

Starting in October, customers on the California FAIR Plan will get hit with the insurer’s largest rate hike in years. Premiums will rise overall by just under 30% for the FAIR Plan’s nearly 663,000 residential policyholders.

I have two new papers up in this week's NBER working papers (www.nber.org/papers/w35204 and www.nber.org/papers/w35219). Here's a couple of things I learned in pulling these papers together.

Flood Risk, Insurance, and Housing in the United States

Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

nber.org

2025 was a historic year for wildfire and urban conflagration, with the LA fires becoming the costliest wildfires on record in the US. Rising atmospheric GHG concentrations and an El Niño year set the stage for a challenging wildfire season in 2026. www.insurancejournal.com/news/interna...

Worst Start to Wildfire Season Raises Alarm as El Niño Threatens

Record-breaking heat and drought have fueled the world's worst ever start to a wildfire year, as climate change and a developing El Niño threaten to push

insurancejournal.com

Happy #MapMonday! Where are mobile homes most vulnerable to flooding? Find out in this interactive map from Headwaters Economics: headwaterseconomics.org/natural-haza.... Mobile homes are key to housing affordability, making these climate risks especially urgent to understand and address.

Hurricane preparedness tip? If you don't have flood insurance and want it ahead of peak season -- buy it now! There's a standard 30-day waiting period before NFIP policies activate. FYI: NFIP take-up continues to decline, and this cannot be fully attributed to private market options coming online.

Come join my team! We're hiring an Analyst to join AV's housing team. This is a great opportunity for early-career folks interested in the pro-housing ecosystem to support philanthropic investments, advocacy, and policy engagement. Details below: www.arnoldventures.org/careers/infr...

Arnold Ventures | Infrastructure Analyst, Housing

Explore careers at Arnold Ventures and join teams working toward lasting, measurable change.

arnoldventures.org

Delighted to share our new sea level risk project led by Daniel Gonzalez-Duque: But that sea level risk is... UNDERGROUND?? Read on... 🧵 agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

From Hydraulic Heads to Dollars and Decision: It's Time to Integrate Groundwater in Coastal Risk Assessment

Damage to underground infrastructure from groundwater responses to sea level rise can and should be economically quantified Loss functions and life cycle costing are two ways of quantifying econo...

agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

County-level data from Insurify and FEMA’s National Risk Index. Article quotes a California homeowner whose homeowners insurance premium rose 9x in two years to more than $16k.

The Wall Street Journal@wsj.com · 3mo ago

See how natural disasters are rewriting the insurance map in your neighborhood.

25% of non-homeowners in the US expect to buy a home in the next five years. That's the lowest percentage since @gallup.com started asking that question in 2013. news.gallup.com/poll/708995/...

All 22 members of the board that advises and oversees the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a leading funder of basic science, were fired on 24 April without explanation. go.nature.com/42tkCGv

Entire NSF science advisory board fired by Trump administration

Members of the National Science Board, which the US Congress founded in 1950, were given no explanation for their termination.

go.nature.com

Not getting a ton of attention, but wildfires in GA/FL have now destroyed 120 structures in the midst of heavy drought conditions 🎁 Wildfires Destroy Dozens of Structures in Georgia, Governor Says www.nytimes.com/2026/04/24/u...

Wildfires Destroy Dozens of Structures in Georgia, Governor Says

nytimes.com

"Everything helps!" Massachusetts officials predicted the average household with a heat pump would save $540 on their electric bills this past winter, thanks to the new discounted heat pump rate. www.wbur.org/news/2026/04...

When NYC rezoned Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood to allow high-density residential uses along a cleaned-out canal, it hoped to attract thousands of new housing units. That's exactly what it got, new research comparing upzoned areas to similar, non-upzoned areas shows: www.urban.org/research/pub...

Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced on Thursday that New York City will invest in a new program to provide cheaper property and liability insurance to landlords of affordable housing and rent-stabilized buildings.

Mamdani Announces Plan to Lower Insurance Costs for Landlords

nytimes.com

Far-below-average snowpack in California (just 23% of historical average as of today) is creating conditions for elevated wildfire risks this season. Earlier-than-usual fuel clearing, home hardening, and creation of defensible space can mitigate some of these risks. calmatters.org/environment/...

What California’s awful snowpack means for fire season

With reservoirs brimming, but snowpack abysmal, experts warn of a potentially early fire season.

calmatters.org

This figure should make everyone in the state of CA furious. Market rate multifamily building costs in CA are 2.5x+ Texas. This is also, for the record, the kind of thing that drives insurance premiums through the roof. If builders pay this to build, insurers pay it to rebuild.

California YIMBY@cayimby.bsky.social · 4mo ago

A RAND study of 144 California, Colorado, and Texas projects found California's affordable housing costs $640/sqft versus $228 in Texas. Slow permitting (49 vs. 27 months), impact fees 20x higher, and prescriptive design standards are the main drivers cayimby.org/blog/why-hou...

So many good audience questions! The housing policy wonk crowd takes research design very seriously (as we should).

Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies@harvard-jchs.bsky.social · 4mo ago

WATCH: In case you missed it, @jennyschuetz.bsky.social of @arnoldventures.bsky.social joined us last week to discuss the challenge of evaluating state pro-housing policies and strategies for generating more reliable analyses. www.jchs.harvard.edu/calendar/mea...