“If You Don’t Adapt, You Die”: Rural LISC’s Caitlin Cain on the (Surprisingly Hopeful) Path Forward to Climate Resiliency
Underinvested communities in rural America are bearing the brunt of the many ways climate change is transforming environments, economies and daily life. In the wake of Hurricane Ida, and in advance of the 2021 Rural LISC Annual Seminar, Caitlin Cain, vice president and director of Rural LISC, explains how, as CDFIs, funders and community developers, we must radically shift our approach to investing for preparation and resiliency.
Caitlin Cain, vice president and director of Rural LISC, is no stranger to natural disasters. As a 20-year resident of New Orleans, she’s lived through devastating storms alongside her neighbors and friends. As a community and economic development professional, she’s also thought hard about how to protect lives and communities from the most destructive impacts of flood, wind, and fire
Cain is here to share an unsettling message: “climate change is going to win.” We can expect to see weather-related disasters intensify and become more frequent. But that doesn’t mean we’re down for the count. There’s a great deal we can do to prepare communities to both withstand climate disasters in the first place and bounce back more readily in their aftermath. Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) have a central role to play, especially in helping to prepare historically under-resourced communities that invariably suffer most when disaster strikes.
We spoke with Cain to get her thoughts on creating a smart resiliency agenda—and it involves what she calls “a mind shift.”
Caitlin Cain
Tell us a little bit about what happened to you and your family during Hurricane Ida.
I've lived through quite a few of these hurricanes and natural disasters. Katrina [2005] was a water event. The levees breached and a substantial percentage of the city was just inundated with floodwaters. And it sat for weeks and weeks. That led to a lot of destruction across the city.
This time, the levees held—a testament to the level of infrastructure investment that’s been put into the city since Katrina. So it was never a breach event, which was phenomenal. But it was a wind event. It tested a whole other type of infrastructure—the power grid. The power grid completely went down in the city and the adjacent areas. We were left without power for quite some time.
My daughter and I stayed for the storm. We made the wise decision to actually go down the street to a friend that had a generator. And we weathered the storm with some other friends, all hunkered down in the same house. The winds were intense, whipping at about 145 miles an hour.
We lost our roof and the ceilings collapsed in our house. There's just so much water that inundates a house when the roof is ripped off. Everything was completely saturated. So our house remains unlivable.
What happens now? What are the challenges?
I was very lucky, unlike many other people, to get a crew in there pretty quickly to pull everything out that was wet. The house is about 70 percent gutted, and we’re slowly rebuilding.
But the big challenge after disaster is labor shortages, compounded now because of COVID. Everybody's vying to get a roofer and a contractor and drywall folks into their homes. That is a significant challenge, just getting a team to show up when they say they're going to show up and start doing the work.
During times of disaster, timelines gets extended, and people are out of their homes, resulting in more pressure on the rental market. Trying to find rental units has been a challenge for a lot of people.
The parishes immediately adjacent to Orleans, those closest to the Gulf, were heavily impacted as were key sectors such as the fisheries, and the agricultural sector including docks and boats.
Have you ever experienced anything like this before?
This is my second time. I was nine months pregnant when Hurricane Katrina actually came through the city, so we evacuated. Like everybody else, we packed a backpack for the weekend, thinking we would be back in a few days. That's usually the experience. The storms come, they go, and then you're back in the house. Not a big problem.
But with Katrina we were out for a while. I gave birth and then came back into the city with a brand-new baby, and did disaster recovery work. At that point I was in charge of economic development for the region and there was a lot of work to be done.
A lot of the same issues were at play. No labor. Childcare was nonexistent. The schools were closed and didn't even reopen until about a year later. Small businesses were absolutely crucial, because those were the community anchors, where you'd get all your information about anything that was going on.
How do you reinvest in sectors that are just repeatedly slammed and compromised?
What we've learned, from Katrina to now, is that resilience and adaptation are paramount. For example, there are a lot of folks that now operate their homes on a generator. There are a lot of folks with solar power. So now they have backup energy means.
That’s a huge investment of time, labor, costs. So as we move forward, we need to start figuring out how to integrate adaptation more seamlessly into our build-outs. That's what's going to create a much more resilient economy, not just affordable for one or two demographic groups, but really across the board.
And there are ways of doing that. There are ways of building docks and infrastructure so that they surpass building code and withstand future climatic events. The same thing with the boats. It means encouraging retrofits with new technologies, and being proactive on the front end to bring those boats to safe harbors so that we can start protecting more of that infrastructure.
You’ve talked about creating micro-grids as part of resiliency planning. Can you explain how that could be important?
There's a lot of growth that needs to happen in this space. Take the solar panel as an example. If you have enough of these panels, whether on a restaurant, small business, or even on a causeway. They can be connected to battery backup supplies. That supply can be removable and used to support the electrification of air conditioning units, refrigeration, cell-charging and Wi-Fi areas, all of which are absolutely needed immediately after a disaster and are often very difficult to find.
If you can start using that power to support refrigeration, for instance, then you've saved inventory for cold-storage facilities, from large warehousing all the way down to smaller operations. Which means millions of dollars saved in supply and inventory.
Just think of how you could scale that, and the amount of savings that would allow a city/rural community to experience. It could be transformational.
If we could identify hubs and a series of these solar-powered investments, to start servicing the smaller needs of the community, then we can integrate that into a longer-term, comprehensive strategy for climate change adaptation. I think what we really need to start contemplating is how to deploy small scale adaptation through mass integration of new tech, such as solar-powered hubs.
That’s a big idea.
Yes, and I think that's a great role for LISC to be playing, really thinking through what sort of mind shift is needed. Why is it important? And how can we more readily deploy resources to make that happen?
LISC is well-situated to start demanding this mind shift. We need to be very intentional about how we relate our investment strategy to climate change adaptation, especially for rural communities. Because they are going to face the brunt of all of this.
Can you elaborate on how the investment strategy can take climate change by the horns?
Providing capacity support on the front end is incredibly important. That means deploying more capacity assistance dollars so that these organizations—whether it's a CDC doing housing and workforce development, an economic development organization, or a public-private venture—to more seamlessly integrate adaptation strategies as part of their internal planning efforts. .
On top of that, we need to think about how we can more readily deploy resources into these underserved communities. After a storm hits, small businesses in particular need immediate capital. They're just trying to open their doors. Their inventory's been destroyed because the power went out, and they lack electricity, AC and refrigeration. Residents are often reluctant to return until they know services are restored, so getting small business grants out quickly, to help businesses restock and open their doors, is essential.
After the small business grants, there's this period of time, approximately three months to a year, when recovery fatigue sets in. The next drama has hit. People have moved on. But it takes a long time to repair. So what’s also needed is funding to support infrastructure investment, particularly in rural areas. Infrastructure often falls through the cracks with so much attention on housing in the immediate aftermath of a disaster.
We also need to deploy longer-term, very specific technical assistance to help organizations and businesses understand, for example, how to integrate green technologies such like solar panels, how to leverage additional federal dollars, and how to generally think through adaptation. It's not general TA [technical assistance]. If we're going to help the CDFI community really embrace climate change adaptation, then we need to start investing in very specific disaster coaches who understand sector-oriented needs and opportunities.
How do these issues differ when we're talking about fire?
I'm so focused on hurricanes because I live in this. But there are so many different types of disasters.
A wildfire will come in, and everything is completely decimated. Often, unlike in a hurricane, there's really nothing to build on. And so very different strategies need to be employed.
Where you're rebuilding from scratch, you have regional organization—looking to reassess everything from building codes to comprehensive planning,. And that requires more regional coordination.
I think that is why disaster coaches, in particular, are incredibly important. As CDFIs, we need to focus very carefully on the level of expertise that we send out and try to develop in these communities. You're going to need hurricane experts, you're going to need wildfire experts, you're going to need drought experts, flood mitigation folks. It runs the gamut.
What are your thoughts on housing resiliency? It gets a lot of attention, but it’s critical and you obviously had to think about that immediately in your own case.
I'm going through that right now. Even in just selecting my shingles and making sure that they can withstand 145-mph winds. Then, what else can be placed on top of that roof to anchor it?
Locally, there is a lot of talent, from architects to the trades to construction managers who really understand how to rebuild, and with better materials. The challenge, after the disaster, is making those decisions on the spot,
We talk a lot about trying to build back better. Well, it's easier to do when it's the month of January, there's no hurricane anywhere in the Gulf, and you have time to really think about these sorts of things. It is a very different paradigm when you no longer have a house, you're vying for shelter, your kids aren't at school, and you just need to do something really quickly. But that quick decision is what sets precedent.
So how do we proactively address that? Adaptation strategies need to be built into home ownership purchases, counseling and rebuilding efforts early, so we can be better prepared for when a disaster strikes.
How do CDFIs attract the resources to really tackle this problem more proactively?
There’s a lot of exhaustion out there and we’re seeing this with our funders, too. We had five hurricanes that hit LA last year alone. It’s easy to understand funder exhaustion when there are other pressing priorities.
But in order for us to get where we need to be, we need to recognize it takes time and we need to adopt a longer-term mindset. We need to start working with funders to develop long-term strategies. We need long-term funding solutions that allow us to do our job for many, many years.
This is a personal question. What is your sense of hope for this mind shift happening? Are you optimistic that it can happen before it’s too late?
I think it's a great question. And it's one where I'm kind of biased as I live this, day in and day out, being in the Deep South. You have to adapt. If you don't adapt, you die.
And so, I believe people are willing to calibrate to keep culture and community intact.
Under the current administration, probably more so than in a long time, there's a heightened sensitivity to respond to climate change. But one of my concerns is federal agencies’ willingness to change at the same rate that the community has to adapt.
But CDFIs can be more nimble. I think the role that CDFIs can play is to quickly redeploy funding and adaptive strategies that better serve at risk communities. We have to do that. The stakes are really high. We need our investments to go the distance, to make the changes that will keep a community intact the next time disaster strikes.
