Climbing temperatures are sharpening economic divides in American communities, a new report has found.

Rising insurance rates are increasingly making broad swaths of the country's biggest cities unaffordable, according to the new findings from First Street Foundation, which analyzes the impacts of climate change on real estate.

In many regions, “home insurance is becoming a luxury good,” said Jeremy Porter, head of climate implications at First Street.

Some of the most threatened regions along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts are on track for three- to fivefold increases in their insurance rates — which would drive a massive drop in value for homes, the main source of wealth for most Americans, the report from First Street found.

But not all homeowners are expected to suffer losses. The First Street findings suggest that over the next 30 years, property values across America as a whole will fall by nearly $1.5 trillion dollars — while certain properties will gain $244 billion.

These findings point toward a complex climate future for America — one not so much of fully collapsing cities but rather of inequality growing as fortified, wealthy enclaves rise in the middle of disaster-impacted cities.

From Los Angles and Houston to Atlantic City, N.J. and Tampa, Fla., Porter said, American cities are being divided into two broad buckets. “There will be communities in which only the rich can afford to stay — and those where only the rich can afford to leave,” Porter said.

The report comes amid a burgeoning crisis in home insurance markets. According to the First Street data, home insurance costs as a share of mortgage have tripled nationwide over the past 15 years.

This rise in prices has not staunched the bleeding for insurers as disasters — and the property damage that comes along with them — mount. In 2023, home insurers paid out 10 percent more in claims than they took in in premiums — the most recent........

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