CONSIDERING COASTAL AND inland flood projections, and with the Bay State still a relatively low fire risk compared to western states grappling with waves of destructive blazes, the future in Massachusetts looks more dangerously wet than dry. But housing experts warn that a heating planet and persistent drought conditions call for a long-view approach to planning where and how new housing gets built across the country.  

Faced with a housing crunch, they say, people will move where they can based on the information they have – even if that area might be more susceptible to climate risk in the future. 

Migration patterns show many Americans making short-term affordability decisions that ignore long-term climate risks, said Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. “People are moving into places with higher fire risk, and out of places with higher flood risk,” she said. When cost drives housing decisions, people can be “myopic,” prioritizing immediate affordability over future burdens. 

“It’s really difficult for people to take [climate risk] fully into account because we have this tendency to consider information that is known and ignore information that is unknown,” Fairweather said. Most people “don’t have a good way to translate fire risk into cost,” she said. The amount of risk can “be kind of random,” because “even climate risk scores aren’t going to tell you if your house will be flooded or burn down, or if the houses around you are going to burn down.” 

Massachusetts experienced that randomness last year, when an unusually dry and flammable fall saw 1,300 wildfires burn across the state. This August was the 20th driest since 1895, though paling in comparison to the record-breaking warm summer of 2024, when more acres burned in October and November wildfires across Massachusetts than in the past two years combined. 

Climate research shows that while Massachusetts is projected to receive more annual precipitation overall, summers will experience more variable and severe dry spells due to rising temperatures and less frequent rainfall. Against this backdrop, the state is juggling a goal of 220,000 new housing units to beat the crunch with the need to plan for a world with more extreme weather, be it floods or fire. 

More than two million Massachusetts residents live in areas of drought, according to the federal National Integrated Drought Information System. At the conclusion of a “notably dry” August, the state declared most of Massachusetts to be in “significant drought.”  

On October 10, the state declared dryness conditions in Nantucket County and the Deerfield and Millers Watersheds have worsened to a “critical drought;” the Western Connecticut River Valley, Central, and Cape Cod regions remain in a “significant drought;” the Northeast region improved and the Southeast region remains in a “mild drought.”

And where there is drought, which leaves root systems and surface fuels like leaves dry, fire tends to follow.   

“Massachusetts is preparing for a future where flooding, heat, and wildfires are more common,” said Maria Hardiman, spokesperson for the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. “We’ve seen a persistent drought for the past few years, increasing the likelihood of wildfires closer to densely populated areas.” 

About 45 percent of Massachusetts homes are in or near areas at wildfire risk, “meaning that any significant wildfire event may put people and property in danger,” the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife declared last November.  

Yet, the Bay State usually rates low on the National Wildfire Risk Index, which compares an area’s relative wildfire risk to that of the entire US. In the index, FEMA considers building value and population size at risk of experiencing a wildfire, estimated annual frequency of wildfires in a year, and the percentage of buildings or population expected to be lost in a wildfire.  

More dispersed areas like Berkshire and Franklin Counties and the more urban Suffolk County are considered very low fire risk while Worcester, Essex, Middlesex, and Plymouth counties are considered relatively low fire risk and a pale blue on the maps. This is a sharp contrast to states like California, where the FEMA maps turn scarlet around Los Angeles areas with the highest relative fire risk in the country.  

That doesn’t predict fluke years like 2024, when 200 wildfires burned across Massachusetts in October alone – a  significant spike from the typical 15 fires the state sees each October. Fire departments battled blazes across multiple communities simultaneously, from a 188-acre fire in Middleton to a 140-acre blaze straddling Salem and Lynn, while the Massachusetts Air National Guard deployed helicopters for water drops. 

Insurance companies are attentive, noting that fire seasons are also striking the Northeast. The region is more densely populated and includes more tightly packed buildings than, say, the Carolina coasts where wildfire risk has been crawling north over the past few years. 

Fires that leaps from wild brush and forests into the areas where houses and wildland meet “in the northeast have a much greater potential to cause rapid conflagration,” the financial services company Moody’s warned in December. Moody’s specifically noted the vicious fire season in Massachusetts and Connecticut – both states with among the lowest relative fire risks. 

Insurance agency Marsh McClennan, noting the rising natural disaster rate in northeastern states, also pointed to unusually long periods of drought as a rising risk. The agency recommends more spending on mitigation and more aggressive proactive measures from individuals, businesses, and state and local governments. 

“Homeowners are already having to put their own money into houses to make them more resilient to climate change,” Fairweather noted.

In Massachusetts, Barnstable, Essex, Plymouth, Hampshire, Norfolk, and Hampden counties are all vulnerable to wildfires, according to the state’s ResilientMass Plan, which rolled out in 2023 and outlines priority resilience actions. Areas with pitch pine and scrub oak trees are the most fire prone. 

As droughts become more frequent and severe, forest types that do not usually burn and are not fire adapted will be more likely to burn, according to the plan, which notes wildfires are projected to increase worldwide by 14 percent by 2030, 30 percent by 2050, and 50 percent by 2100. 

Gov. Maura Healey did not include drought management policy in her sprawling environmental bond bill this year, though the bill did add climate risk experts to the Board of Building Regulations and Standards, which establishes the state building code and determines how resilient new development should be. 

Separately, the ResilientMass Plan recommends the state take several steps to mitigate wildfire risk including improving firefighting infrastructure, creating a statewide wildfire training program, and better managing fire-prone ecosystems. As of October, work has begun only designing and building wildfire management operations facilities at Hopkinton State Forest and Douglas State Forest and creating a comprehensive facility climate resiliency needs assessment.  

These projects were not identified for funding in the bond bill, though communities have been receiving new federal and state wildfire prevention grants since the record-breaking fires of last year. The next round of the EEA-managed drought resiliency and water resiliency grant program is coming soon, according to the state. 

Massachusetts does not currently have plans to introduce restrictions on where homes could be built based on wildfire risks. The Office of Housing and Livable Communities has mostly focused on climate hazards like flooding or extreme weather.  

Housing advocates in Massachusetts say fire risk is a fairly distant concern, since the groups are usually focused on infilling development in urban areas rather than brush, farmland, or forests where wildfire risk runs highest. 

And when it comes to new construction, Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director at Abundant Housing Massachusetts, noted that “modern building construction, especially multi-family construction, is more fire resilient than old construction.” 

But, Heather Clark, former senior director for building sector climate policy in the Biden White House, warned at the recent pro-housing YIMBYTown conference that insurance market failures will reshape American housing – and not just in obvious high-risk zones. 

“In 10 to 15 years, we will not have mortgages in large parts of our country because we will not have insurance,” Clark said. “That is not in areas that are just coasts where hurricanes are, that is not just where wildfires are. When insurance markets fail, they fail across entire regions and entire states.” 

She cautioned against setting safety and climate resilience aside in favor of only boosting production. 

“When I was at the White House, we heard all the time we can’t spend $1 more on emissions reductions, energy savings, or resiliency, because that would mean one less unit of housing for people in need,” she said. “You’re not doing anyone a favor by putting people in harm’s way by building housing in harm’s way.”