Advancing Managed Retreat in California: Planning Considerations and Buyout-Leaseback Financing Evaluation

California’s coast is increasingly vulnerable to sea level rise, erosion, flooding, and storm damage, placing homes, infrastructure, public access, beaches, wetlands, and other valued coastal resources at growing risk. While shoreline armoring has long been used to protect development in place, it can also degrade coastal habitat and limit the shoreline’s ability to adapt over time. This group project examines managed retreat as an alternative long-term adaptation strategy for California. The project combines thematic analysis and case-study modeling to evaluate both the broader values and challenges of managed retreat and the feasibility of a buyout-leaseback approach (BOLB), in which a public agency purchases vulnerable coastal property and leases it back temporarily before retreat occurs. Through literature and policy review, the project identifies key challenges related to equity, community acceptance, coordination, communication, and financing. It then applies a property-level economic model to five California case-study communities to test how BOLB may perform across different hazard types and housing markets. The modeling results suggest that BOLB could substantially reduce public acquisition costs relative to traditional buyouts by recouping a portion of those costs through interim lease revenue. By allowing homeowners to sell an increasingly risky property while staying in it for a limited time, BOLB may make voluntary participation more appealing. Together, these findings indicate that BOLB may make proactive,  voluntary retreat more financially realistic and publicly feasible in some communities and merits further evaluation, policy development, and pilot testing in California.

Acknowledgements

UC Santa Barbara Ocean and Coastal Policy Center: Dr. Charles Lester, Director

California Coastal Commission: Kelsey Ducklow and Carey Batha

UC Santa Barbara Bren School: Dr. Andrew Plantinga, Professor (faculty advisor)

UC Santa Barbara Department of Economics: Jonah Danziger, PhD Candidate

UC Santa Barbara Environmental Studies Department: Dr. Summer Gray (external advisor)

Kim Kimbell, John Campanella, and the James S. Bower Foundation for their generous project funding and support