ORLANDO, Fla. — The news hit Treasure Island, Florida, almost like a third storm: The mayor was planning to leave the barrier island a month after Hurricane Helene flooded tens of thousands of homes along the Gulf Coast and two weeks after Hurricane Milton. It also devastated the state.

Mayor Tyler Payne’s home was flooded and damaged beyond repair, he explained in a message to Treasure Island residents, and he and his husband can’t afford to rebuild it. He was also going to step down as mayor.

“While it pains my heart to make this decision in the midst of our recovery from Hurricanes Helene and Milton, this is the best decision for me and my family,” said Payne, who had held the position for more than three years and was the Fourth-generation Treasure Island resident said Monday.

Up and down Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast, residents are making the same calculations about whether they should stay or go. Can they afford to rebuild? What will the insurance cover? People considering moving to Florida wonder if it’s worth the risk of coming to a hurricane-prone state.

These existential questions about Florida’s appeal regularly arise after the state experiences an intense hurricane season, such as in 2004, when four hurricanes crossed the Sunshine State.

If moves into the state offer any answer, then the hurricanes have done little as a deterrent. Florida’s population has grown by a third to 23 million residents in the two decades since Charley, Frances, Jeanne and Ivan devastated the state. Last year, Florida added more than 365,000 residents, second only to Texas among states.

On the other hand, there are signs that Florida’s red-hot housing market has cooled. Single-family home sales fell 12% in September compared to the same period a year earlier. But interest rates, rising home prices and rising insurance costs probably played a bigger role than the recent hurricanes.

“Florida is recovering much faster than you think,” said Brad O’Connor, chief economist at Florida Realtors.

What happens after a storm?

Hurricane studies along the Gulf Coast have shown that any outbound migration tends to be short-lived, and if people leave, it is usually a short-distance movement, such as from a barrier island to the mainland. Older people with more financial resources are more likely to return to devastated communities.

When it comes to the housing market, there can be an initial supply shock as homeowners wait for reimbursement from insurance companies to fix up their homes or sell them.

But in the three years after a hurricane, home prices in areas of Florida that were affected by one are 5% higher on average than in other parts of the state due to lower supply, according to a study on the impact of hurricanes in the Florida real estate market from 2000 to 2016. New homeowners tend to be wealthier than previous ones, as wealthier buyers can absorb price increases.

Other factors that determine how quickly communities recover include whether homes were insured, the speed of insurance reimbursements and whether there are enough construction workers. Because of stricter building codes implemented in the years after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in 1992, newer homes withstand hurricanes better than older ones, O’Connor said.

“If a property is damaged and not insured, and the owner says, ‘I don’t want to deal with this,’ there are always people willing to take that property because it’s valuable land,” he said. “People are building new homes to new codes and the impact of hurricanes is less.”

Short and long term

Recent storms offer examples of what is happening to communities, both in the short and long term.

In Lee County, home to Fort Myers, Hurricane Ian made landfall two years ago in what had been one of the fastest-growing parts of the United States. Population growth subsequently slowed to 1.5% from 4.4% before the storm. The number of households fell from about 340,000 to about 326,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

In 2019, three-quarters of all United Van Lines truck movements were to Lee County and a quarter were outbound, but that figure dropped to two-thirds inbound and one-third outbound in 2023 and 2024, he said. the company to The Associated Press.

The proportion of people in their 20s, 30s and early 40s increased, as did the proportion of men without a spouse or partner, reflecting an influx of construction and recovery workers. The proportion of the white population decreased while it increased for the Hispanic community. The percentage of utility and transportation workers in the county increased, according to the Census Bureau.

Bay County in the Florida Panhandle, where Michael made landfall in 2018 as the first Category 5 hurricane in the continental United States in a quarter century, offers a portrait of longer-term trends. Four years later, Bay County had regained its pre-hurricane population, which fell nearly 6% in the year after the storm.

Since Michael, the county has become more diverse, wealthier and older, with the median age rising from 39.6 to 41.4 and more people identifying as multiracial or Hispanic. The share of households earning $200,000 or more rose from 4.3% before the hurricane to 8.3% in 2022, a sign that some of the least wealthy residents could not afford to rebuild or return.

Mayor of Treasure Island

In his message to constituents, Payne said he would remain connected to the Treasure Island community because his parents plan to rebuild on the barrier island, one of a series of coastal towns along the Gulf of Mexico, west of St. Petersburg, known for its motels. restaurants and bars lining the street. Payne, a lawyer who is also an executive in his family’s eyeglass lens manufacturing business, said in his message that his decision to move was “difficult.”

“I completely empathize with the difficult decisions many of our residents face,” Payne said.

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Associated Press writer Curt Anderson in Belleair Beach, Florida, contributed to this report.