I was talking recently to a colleague about finding a resiliency or home-hardening expert to
1) learn from and 2) come to Nest and help us learn more about what we could be sharing with our buyer and seller clients.
Their response – “with all the close-in neighborhoods, your house will be flooded by your neighbors, no matter how hard your house is.” And that made me think of this story –
The developers of the new Hunters Point community, Pearl Homes, billed the property as the first “net-zero” single-family home development in the US, meaning residents produce more energy from solar panels than they need, with the excess energy either being stored or sold back to the grid – in a state where most electricity is generated by burning natural gas, a planet-warming fossil fuel.
They also boast some of the most sustainable, energy-efficient and hurricane-proof homes in the country: The streets surrounding the homes are intentionally designed to flood so houses don’t. Power and internet lines are buried to avoid wind damage. The sturdy concrete walls, hurricane-proof windows and doors are fortified with a layer of foam insulation, providing extra safety against the most violent storms.
Climate resiliency and storm protection were built into the fabric of the homes. And while the newly developed homes have endured a few storms since people moved in around February 2023, Hurricanes Helene and Milton put those features to the true test over the last two weeks.
He’s right. Hardening houses is one thing. Hardening and building communities is what matters. Look to the communities in Western North Carolina for examples of how communities respond.
Like building sidewalks and other infrastructure, these things need to be done at scale, and not pieces here and there. My house might be fine, but if my neighbors’ aren’t, we have some work to do.
In 2012, Crozet, Virginia experienced a derecho. And we heard the word “derecho” for the first time.
A storm came, ripped off shingles, knocked out power for a week, it was freaking hot, trees were down everywhere. Crozet Fire Department was distributing water. It was so hot.
The people at Mudhouse – and everywhere else in Crozet – were manually grinding coffee, music was playing on a radio, and they were boiling water on their gas stove to make the community coffee.
Facebook was already awful, and Twitter was already better for rapid information dissemination.
