California to consider buying back private beachfront properties

boing
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When people say that the impacts of climate change will be felt unequally, this is what they mean. Bailouts for the rich and buckets for the poor.

And yeah, this is not really in any way climate justice. Local communities go into debt to purchase the properties, maybe paying the loan back, or maybe not? And when the properties rich people are renting from the state end up in the sea? They are still going to demand compensation for having to move.

I’m not sure how eminent domain plays into this - it’s not even mentioned in the linked article. Unless they are going to force the owners to sell? Then the court system is going to be tied up with arguments over just compensation.

The market is not an efficient solution to this problem. I’m okay with protecting people’s livelihoods, but protecting people’s lifestyles especially when they have a disproportionate impact is another matter.

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The towns around me and our county have begun doing this. Buying both beach houses and poorly maintained beach front commercial spaces.

They’re mostly turning them into public parks, concessions sites with contracts offered to locals, and resident preferred camp sites.

Though there was a change in one of the town councils that lead to one large site being turned into condos.

They’re making a hell of a lot more money on parking fees and public access concessions (especially beach bars) than they would renting those properties out as regular private real estate. And it’s let them begin buying more spots for wetland and dune restorations.

It also lets them slot public beach access into ritzy “private” areas, undermining attempts to own the beach.

Pretty sure federally it’s everything below the average high water point is public land.

It’s really unclear what the formal standards are, but it does not just mean high tide. Usually some point above the usual highest expected high tides an area sees in a year. The department of the interior (I think) determines it through some hard to parse, arguable math. But typically encompasses the whole beach as well as any existing sand dunes these days.

All the state differences come down to standards on what’s considered adequate access. Since you can’t block access to public lands.

Here on Eastern Long Island it used to be common to build bulkheads all the way down the beach, out into the water to keep people out.

These days the army corp of engineers will show and tear it out while you shout about lawyers.

It’s usually considered adequate if people can walk down from a public access point. But if you are too far from one (sort of difficult on an island) you might be forced to put one in. And I don’t think it’s even technically legal here to prevent people from crossing private land if there’s no better way to access things.

Meanwhile in Jersey it’s common for both private owners and municipalities to charge admission to the beach. Not parking. Straight turnstile on a board walk, $10-20 a head to get to the sand. And that’s considered sufficient access, even if you never open the ticket booth.

I don’t recall Mass having rules any different than we do here. Though they are really lax with enforcement in those mansiony beach towns from what I’m told.

None the less it is really common to claim to own the beach down to the low tide mark. Real estate agents seem to tell people that and advertise lots that way. And apparently older deeds may explicitly say that.

Nobody even seems to sue over it anymore out here. It’s such settled law both on the state and federal front that these disputes don’t tend to go anywhere.

Part of what’s allowed the public to start buying these properties here. Both the federal and state subsidized insurance that allowed people to keep re-building ever larger beach front houses ended. And building codes started blocking new construction that close to the water.

You have to pay exorbitant market costs for insurance, that probably has exceptions for flooding and storm damage. And if you rebuild you basically have to recreate the existing structure. If not shrink it to correct any past violations or expired variances.

Most of the really big beach houses here started out as tiny cabins on stilts. After they washed away a bigger house was built with those state insurance funds. Repeat. Now you have a 6 floor mansion on the “original footprint” (not counting a 3 floor heated and plumbed “deck” and “porch”).

Pull away all that bullshit. Suddenly it’s not worth it to maintain those properties, and public lands can expand.

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How is this any more of a “permanent” solution? The zone the cities have to buy/rent would just keep creeping backward with the shoreline, wouldn’t it?

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If managed correctly the funds can be used for beach and wetland restorations. That both directly impacts global warming, which is heavily fueled by ocean health and wetland destruction. As well as rebuilding natural barriers to sea level rise.

The idea is usually to pull residential and business density away from the most at risk areas. Replace some of it with better designed and more durable public facilities. And restore things and improve infrastructure to protect things further inland.

The whole just rent it out as is angle on this is a little weird.

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Maybe someone was paying attention to this video?

Aquaman, the state, whatever…

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So to push pull or twist the the San Andreas Fault, establish breakwaters, and seed seaweed forests isn’t all folly?

natural barriers to sea level rise

Insoluble rock? Infrastructure that juts up another 15’ ?

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maybe they can sue the ocean for damages

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Thanks for the reminder, I always forget that they have a use outside of the bedroom as well.

I got nuthin’.

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Dunes, bluffs, barrier beaches, sand bars. Land in other words. Along with reefs, creeks, inlets, lagoons and marshes that are supposed be wet and floody. And were until we decided they were better flat with hotels built on them.

The shore and the coast aren’t a flat plain with the gentlest of gradients from water to some miles in point that’s tall enough to not be the shore. For example I live only a few hundred yards from a beach. But there’s an 80 foot dirt cliff between me and the water. There are sand dunes at nearby beaches that are 50 foot tall. Water tends to channel into those inlets, creeks and lagoons instead of overflowing everything. Following the path of least resistance.

All of this stuff is stable against erosion, sea level rise and storm surge when it’s properly populated with the appropriate plant and animal life. They shift and move over time, but tend to build up once the root systems holding them together are well established.

Or they can be deliberately constructed and actively, dynamically managed. For fairly cheap. And those wet lands are pound for pound, among the most important carbon sinks the globe has.

We hear a lot about trees and forests. But it’s marshes and swamps and peat bogs along with the open ocean that pull most of the carbon out of our atmosphere.

People argue about whether planting a billion trees is a practical idea. But there’s a group out there planting a billion oysters, something that’s likely to be far more effective.

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Basically they are like Mafia clans in Rome, If I understand correctly.

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Well, I have never had to maintain an 80√2-foot inflatable, climbable slide, that sounds tough. Even inflatable yoga-ball peanuts, I just can’t find the pinholes in…

Thanks, that’s a nice balm after I saw a repost of Dec. ProPublica where people try the 15’ wall (and whatever kept it there) right as the property turns to beach, and it helped rinse the beach side (for starters) clean out.

(Also too bad: Jodi S. Cohen’s dateline isn’t Oahu, it’s other reporters and like 0 Chicago kids in Isolation doing that from Oahu.)

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I find the whole “people who knew what they were getting into when they bought it get bailed out, because we know they will kick up a fuss later” angle a little, well, not so much weird as outrageous.

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To build on that, most of the Great Lakes states use a high water mark standard, but Ohio only considers the lakebed itself to be the public trust. You have to remain in the water. Under 15% of the Ohio Erie lakeshore is publicly accessible.

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Here the properties are getting sold at a loss typically, or at least vastly less than their former going rate.

Once all the subsidies, originally meant as disaster relief for those without means, were cut off the values of the properties tapered. Municipalities are typically purchasing them once they’re damaged or destroyed. Especially with the commercial properties a lot of the owners were leaving them vacant and allowing them to basically fall apart. Skimping on maintenance or waiting till a policy reversal let the value climb high enough to change the financials.

Straight up abandoned properties have been eminent domained. And run down or heavily damaged properties have been pressured into sale by being condemmed, environmental assessments fines etc.

Less valuable/immediately on the water properties abandoned after Sandy (almost exclusively by banks and developers) have been seized. They get renovated/fixed. Then the state “sells” them as part of a middle class housing program. They sell them to first time home owners well below market rates, and offer low/no interest shorter term mortgages.

When you sell the house you get what you paid in, plus any material improvements and adjustment for inflation and shit. And it goes back in the pool. The idea is that people will stay around 5 years and then walk with credit improvements and a SERIOUS down payment on a market rate house. Or you can buy out the state’s interest at the market rate if you want to stay.

So there’s a well established frame work for this sort thing that’s more consolation prize than bailout.

It’s definitely not paying market rates and renting at market rates.

I don’t see what that does besides give the rich the payout they were expecting. And shift the bad economics of these houses onto the public. I went with weird over corrupt cause it just seems like there’s a piece missing. If it was just a hand out they’d probably be subsidizing this shit to bolster the value. Like NY used to.

Yeah the federal high water thing only applies to coasts and marine waterways apparently. It’s also a variable standard, the state will roll on their own definition. The feds like “assess” a specific spot if it comes up. Part of why lawsuits are less common here. As they all rest on what the exact cut off is, the trend has been that it goes further inland when it comes down to the Feds recalculating it. Not always but often enough you don’t want things to make it that far.

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