2025 Theses Master's

Impacts of Climate Change on the Right to Housing: A Tampa Bay Analysis

Morales, Susan

Climate change acts as a threat to socioeconomic rights, like the right to housing. This thesis examines how climate change functions as a human rights threat multiplier in the Tampa Bay Area by exacerbating existing inequalities, contributing to housing insecurity, and accelerating climate-driven gentrification. Given Tampa Bay’s geographic vulnerability to flooding and severe storms, this research looks at how climate change intersects with historical patterns of inequality, rising housing costs, insurance instability, and reflects institutional failures.

This research critiques the limited protection afforded to housing in the United States and the resulting governance gaps while highlighting the unexplored gap between climate change and human rights. The thesis integrates scholarship on climate change and human rights, political marginalization, the Anthropocene, and climate gentrification to conceptualize housing insecurity as a structural issue and an environmental product.

Using a qualitative methodology, this study analyzes semi-structured interviews with three housing professionals working in the Tampa Bay Area. The findings identify five key components: the intersection of climate change and housing vulnerability; insurance and affordability as drivers of economic displacement; fragmented and inadequate governmental responses; political marginalization of affected communities; and emerging patterns of climate-driven gentrification.

The results demonstrate that climate change magnifies preexisting inequities, disproportionately burdening low-income and marginalized populations and revealing systemic failures to protect the right to housing. This thesis argues that addressing climate-induced housing insecurity requires meaningful policy reform, climate adaptation strategies that prioritize vulnerable communities, and stronger institutional accountability.