California’s housing crisis could fuel natural area development, researchers fear

A residential neighborhood along a canal near the Mokelumne River, seen on May 22, 2023, near Stockton, California. (Photo by George Rose/Getty Images)

The lack of affordable housing in California’s urban centers could lead to increased development in adjacent wilderness areas, which researchers fear will worsen the effects of climate change.

In recent decades, the Golden State has made the biggest mark on the so-called “wildland-urban interface,” according to a new perspective paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The authors noted that this footprint is so large that more than one in three California households is now located in or very close to a natural environment.

The proximity of natural areas puts residents at greater risk of climate-related natural disasters, such as fires, floods and landslides, they explained.

The researchers noted that the rapid development also leads to longer travel times and a related increase in greenhouse gas emissions, while also harming the flora and fauna in the area.

“Our research aims to show that you can’t separate these environmental and ecological dynamics from the urban and housing dynamics. They’re all interconnected,” lead researcher Miriam Greenberg, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a statement.

Greenberg and her colleagues are currently conducting a unique study into exactly how California’s housing crisis is contributing to the expansion of the urban-rugged boundary.

To understand these dynamics, the team is relying on a mix of sources, including surveys and ethnographic interviews, as well as census, mapping, and ecological data along California’s central coast. They will also examine native land management, habitat restoration, and the impact of prescribed burning on the wilderness-urban boundary.

As the researchers delve further into this $1.6 million grant-funded project, they make a number of predictions in their new perspective paper.

They hypothesized that the motivations that drive people to areas of wilderness-urban interfaces have undergone a major shift: Instead of feeling intimately connected to nature, they are making such moves because of housing affordability. A growing number of Californians, the authors explained, are simply priced out of cities and suburbs.

The researchers predicted that interface development occurring outside of urban areas will be largely driven by middle-income commuters.

According to the newspaper, the development in remote wilderness areas will feature “an eclectic mix of homes” ranging from “large gated mountaintop estates for the wealthy” to “off-the-grid” trailers and vehicles.

The authors also said they expected that the increase in affordability-driven migration has led to an overall increase in inequality within the wilderness-urban interface. That growth, they explained, may have exacerbated the effects of climate-induced environmental disasters.

“We really need to push the boundaries of how we think about urban sustainability, because it doesn’t stop at city limits,” co-author Hillary Angelo, an associate professor of sociology, said in a statement.

“Without sufficient affordable urban housing, people are pushed to riskier areas outside of cities, making cities unjust and having dire social and environmental consequences elsewhere,” Angelo added.