A Tale of Two Hurricane Experiences

Two articles published after the one-two punch of hurricanes in the Southeast show the importance of high-performance new home practices and housing solutions for people who can’t afford to rebuild to more durable standards.

Resilient housing didn’t get much attention when we started writing about it more than a decade ago. The concept of building to withstand nature’s fury might have been interesting to people who lived in vulnerable coastal communities or wildfire-prone areas—but not so much for anyone outside those bulls-eyes. 

However, with Hurricane Helene’s recent strike zone pushing all the way to western North Carolina, people are starting to take notice: The weather is changing. Storms are getting worse. 

When Hurricane Milton followed Helene’s devastation, adding more misery and destruction to Florida locations that hadn’t even mucked out from the first storm, the nation got another clear message: Some Floridians, for the first time in their lives, said they are leaving their homes for good. 

Maybe the awareness about super storms and flood impacts outside at-risk areas started in 2016 when a 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event stunned residents of West Virginia and led to record-breaking crests on major rivers—with one river, rising more than 33 feet, and flash floods destroying houses that were nowhere near significantly sized water sources. 

That may have been when the now ubiquitous quote, “We never thought it could happen here!” pierced our nation’s collective consciousness, and people began consulting flood maps for the first time. 

Two recent articles show the disparity between building for resilience and building for lowest cost. They clearly illustrate why the best minds in this country need to find ways to replace housing that won’t survive severe storms and flooding. 

This article from Grist explains how manufactured and mobile homes offer little in the way of resilience in this age of monster storms. In fact, they stand in stark contrast to their code-built, elevated counterparts (as the shocking photo in the article illustrates). 

Contrast that article with one from CNN about the net-zero, storm-proof Hunters Point community built by Pearl Homes. The power stayed on for these homeowners throughout both storms. However, the homes cost in the low-millions, so they are a solution only for the well-off. 

As policymakers and building industry stakeholders look at the future of housing, they need to keep these stark realities top-of-mind and find solutions that address resilience, safety, and affordability—not as single issues, but as a crucial trifecta. 

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