A Buyout Displacement Index for Uncovering the Effects of Disinvestment in Greater Houston Watersheds
Abstract
Buyouts mitigate the impacts of flood hazards and climate change. Previous research finds buyouts are concentrated in socially vulnerable areas nationally, and in the Houston area, buyouts have contributed to white flight to the suburbs. The effect of buyouts on equity in urban development is understudied. Existing literature overlooks the fact that buyouts are used strategically and may only nominally be a response to risk. This paper examines buyout inequity in the Houston area by mapping the geographical distribution of buyouts against demographic data and by developing a buyout displacement index to reveal the impact of buyouts in high-risk watersheds.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Cites
The Practice of Social Research.
Williams, D. G., & Babbie, E. R. (1976) · Contemporary Sociology A Journal of Reviews · doi:10.2307/2062956 · Cited by 7,222 · see citing works
Social Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards *
Cutter, S. L., Boruff, B. J., & Shirley, W. L. (2003) · Social Science Quarterly · doi:10.1111/1540-6237.8402002 · Cited by 5,755 · see citing works
A Social Vulnerability Index for Disaster Management
Flanagan, B. E., Gregory, E. W., Hallisey, E. J., Heitgerd, J. L., & Lewis, B. (2011) · Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management · doi:10.2202/1547-7355.1792 · Cited by 1,860 · see citing works
Birkmann, J. (2007) · Environmental Hazards · doi:10.1016/j.envhaz.2007.04.002 · Cited by 756 · see citing works
Managed retreat as a response to natural hazard risk
Hino, M., Field, C., & Mach, K. (2017) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate3252 · Cited by 477 · see citing works
Social justice implications of US managed retreat buyout programs
Siders, A. R. (2018) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-018-2272-5 · Cited by 301 · see citing works
The Journal of Political Ecology
Batterbury, S. P. J. (2015) · Minerva Access (University of Melbourne) · Cited by 269 · see citing works
Managed retreat through voluntary buyouts of flood-prone properties
Mach, K. J., Kraan, C. M., Hino, M., Siders, A. R., Johnston, E. M., & Field, C. B. (2019) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aax8995 · Cited by 225 · see citing works
Burby, R. J., & Dalton, L. C. (1994) · Public Administration Review · doi:10.2307/976725 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
Measuring social equity in flood recovery funding
Emrich, C. T., Tate, E. C., Larson, S., & Zhou, Y. (2019) · Environmental Hazards · doi:10.1080/17477891.2019.1675578 · Cited by 168 · see citing works
Unequal Recovery? Federal Resource Distribution after a Midwest Flood Disaster
Muñoz, C., & Tate, E. C. (2016) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph13050507 · Cited by 161 · see citing works
Elliott, J. R., Brown, P. L., & Loughran, K. (2020) · Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · doi:10.1177/2378023120905439 · Cited by 120 · see citing works
Binder, S. B., & Greer, A. (2016) · Politics and Governance · doi:10.17645/pag.v4i4.738 · Cited by 116 · see citing works
A Historical Assessment of Home Buyout Policy: Are We Learning or Just Failing?
Greer, A., & Binder, S. B. (2016) · Housing Policy Debate · doi:10.1080/10511482.2016.1245209 · Cited by 97 · see citing works
First, Do No Harm: Evaluating the Vulnerability Reduction of Post-Disaster Home Buyout Programs
McGhee, D. J., Binder, S. B., & Albright, E. A. (2019) · Natural Hazards Review · doi:10.1061/(asce)nh.1527-6996.0000337 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
de Vries, D. H. (2017) · Human Ecology · doi:10.1007/s10745-017-9915-4 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Home buyouts and household recovery: neighborhood differences three years after Hurricane Sandy
Binder, S. B., Barile, J. P., Baker, C. K., & Kulp, B. (2018) · Environmental Hazards · doi:10.1080/17477891.2018.1511404 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
When rebuilding no longer means recovery: the stress of staying put after Hurricane Sandy
Koslov, L., Merdjanoff, A. A., Sulakshana, E., & Klinenberg, É. (2021) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-021-03069-1 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: Next Generation
Schwab, J. (2015) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 53 · see citing works
Floodplain Buyouts and Municipal Finance
BenDor, T. K., Salvesen, D. A., Kamrath, C., & Ganser, B. (2020) · Natural Hazards Review · doi:10.1061/(asce)nh.1527-6996.0000380 · Cited by 51 · see citing works
Atoba, K. O., Brody, S. D., Highfield, W. E., Shepard, C. C., & Verdone, L. N. (2020) · Environmental Hazards · doi:10.1080/17477891.2020.1771251 · Cited by 50 · see citing works
Homeowner acceptance of voluntary property acquisition offers
Robinson, C. S., Davidson, R. A., Trainor, J., Kruse, J. L., & Nozick, L. K. (2018) · International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction · doi:10.1016/j.ijdrr.2018.05.002 · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Urban Ecology in the Time of Climate Change: Houston, Flooding, and the Case of Federal Buyouts
Loughran, K., Elliott, J. R., & Kennedy, S. W. (2018) · Social Currents · doi:10.1177/2329496518797851 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Freedom Hill Is Not for Sale—and Neither Is the Lower Ninth Ward
Phillips, B. D., Stukes, P., & Jenkins, Ṕ. (2011) · Journal of Black Studies · doi:10.1177/0021934711425489 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Fractured landscapes: The racialization of home buyout programs and climate adaptation
Zavar, E., & Fischer, L. A. (2021) · Current Research in Environmental Sustainability · doi:10.1016/j.crsust.2021.100043 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Elliott, J. R., Loughran, K., & Brown, P. L. (2021) · Social Problems · doi:10.1093/socpro/spab059 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
James-Kavanaugh, K., Foster, C., Chandler, T., Anagnost, J., Salvesen, D. A., Lerner, M., Moraga-Lewy, N., Streitwieser, A., Shan-wen, L., & Kihslinger, R. L. (2017) · Cited by 10 · see citing works
A Question of Human Rights: Transnational Targeting of Environmental Justice Communities
Wright, B. H., Nance, E., King, D., & Semien, J. (2021) · Humanity & Society · doi:10.1177/01605976211013284 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Self-citationThe 2020 State of Housing in Harris County and Houston
Shelton, K., Park, J., Villegas, C., Guajardo, L., Servidio, C., & Zhang, Z. (2020) · Rice Research Repository (Rice University) · doi:10.25611/zm83-6070 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
1 of the 30 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Equitable buyouts? Learning from state, county, and local floodplain management programs
Shi, L., Fisher, A., Brenner, R. M., Greiner-Safi, A., Shepard, C., & Vanucchi, J. (2022) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-022-03453-5 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
NPCC4: Advancing climate justice in climate adaptation strategies for New York City
Foster, S. R., Baptista, A., Nguyen, K. H., Tchen, J., Tedesco, M., & Leichenko, R. (2024) · Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1111/nyas.15148 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
Governing Land on a Dynamic Earth: How Property Shapes Planning for Equitable Climate Adaptation
Shi, L. Z., Lamb, Z. B., & Olshansky, R. (2025) · Planning Theory & Practice · doi:10.1080/14649357.2025.2599660 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
- Authors
- Nance, E., Smith, S. L., Thapa, J. P., & Powers, L. T.
- Affiliations
- Texas Southern University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Nance, Earthea
- ORCID
- Nance, Earthea
- Venue
- Journal of Planning Education and Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2022-09-07
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 1805-1819
- ISSN
- 0739-456X (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6577
- OpenAlex
- W4295169635
- Cited by
- 3
- References
- 30
- Citations by year
- 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 1.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Update notices
- correction (2024-08-05)
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Planning Education and Research (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Institute for Sustainability Communities (Upper Texas Gulf Coast Regional Resilience Initiat)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Environmental Justice and Health Disparities
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Flood Risk Assessment and Management
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Housing Market and Economics
- Keywords
- buyouts, climate change adaptation, urban equity, social vulnerability, white flight, suburbanization, population distribution, flood hazard
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review