Rising Tides and Raising Houses

This series was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center and the Science Journalism course at Duke Marine Lab.

Keith Rittmaster, the owner and landlord of 711 Broad Street in Beaufort, leans back in his porch chair and surveys the neighboring homes. From here, he has a view of the whole street, its row of pastel cottages neatly tucked in line. His house stands head and shoulders above the rest, a lone silo ready for rising waters. 

In 2022, Rittmaster raised his bungalow 10 feet in response to frequent flooding, adding a new foundation and creating storage space underneath. Now, water can flow under the house without causing structural damage. 

“In the next one to five years, our neighbors are going to get flooded,” he said. 

Sea level rise and associated flooding threaten homes in low-lying coastal communities like Beaufort. Under current predictions, the sea level in Beaufort is expected to be 4.3 feet higher by 2100 than it was in 1992. At least 262 homes in Beaufort sit at or below 4 feet above sea level, putting vulnerable residents at risk. As flooding creeps in, the associated damage, health issues, and stress are forcing people to raise their houses or, in some cases, move out.

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Beaufort has weathered many major hurricanes in recent years, including Hurricane Floyd in 1999, Matthew in 2016, and Florence in 2018. The town also experiences sunny day flooding during especially high tides, submerging downtown’s popular Front Street. Climate Central attributed 308 flood days in Beaufort to sea level rise between 2005 and 2014, compared with just 11 days between 1955 and 1964. 

Rittmaster, the natural science curator at the North Carolina Maritime Museum, first moved to the area in 1978, when the waterfront was just marsh. On a bike ride to work at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lab in 1982, he saw a for sale sign in front of 711 Broad Street that read $8,000. After tracking down a landline, he called the realtor, and the conversation went something like this:

“Hi, you’re listed on the sign in front of 711 Broad Street. I think a zero fell off.”

“He said, ‘What do you mean?’” 

“I said, ‘Well, it says $8,000, and I’m sure it’s not that.’” 

“‘Yes, it is. There’s no plumbing. There’s no electricity. A woman lives there, [and] she has no outhouse. She literally carries buckets of water and poops in the backyard.’” 

Rittmaster purchased the house and promptly added amenities like water and electricity before renting it out to local tenants. “And for the first 15 years of owning this house, the idea of flooding wasn’t even on my radar,” he said.

Over the years, floodwaters reached his front porch but never made it inside. Then came Florence. At the time, Heather Foley, then a research analyst at the Duke University Marine Lab, was renting the house. 

Foley had visited the house while the previous tenant was living there and was aware that anytime there was a flood tide or significant rainfall, the water would come up to the bottom of the house. “I was expecting that,” she said, but instead, due to high winds “the roof came off, and the water came in and damaged the vast majority of the drywall and a lot of the attic.” 

The hurricane hit in September, and she wasn’t able to live there again until after Thanksgiving. 

The hurricane produced a storm surge of 5.51 feet, flooding under the house and soaking the insulation, which started to rot. Six years later, 45 families in Carteret County were still waiting on repairs. 

“Something had to be done,” Rittmaster said. “We could wait for a federal grant, which may never show up, we could hope that all the predictions are wrong, but we’re scientists, so that didn’t make sense.” 

The idea of doing nothing or selling the house didn’t sit well with him and his wife, either. “This is our retirement–we’re state employees,” he said. “We don’t make much.”

Adapt, or Move On

Rittmaster decided to raise the house in 2020, which cost $80,000–or about 10 times what he paid for the house in 1982. While the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides funding to raise houses through the Flood Mitigation Assistance Grant Program, Rittmaster preferred to take out a loan after a previous negative experience with FEMA to avoid taking a handout or navigating governmental red tape. 

He wanted to do it right the first time, which meant moving the house farther back from the street to allow for the steps and creating a new foundation. Rittmaster recommends that people in similar situations raise their houses if they have the funds. In the long term, he thinks folks will lose their houses if they don’t do something about it. Worrying was the worst part for Rittmaster, and he now knows his tenants are safe from flooding events. 

Houses that have been flooded carry lingering risks after the waters recede. Recent research shows that residents of coastal homes with flooding history are more prone to health risks associated with mold exposure. Dana Grieco, a doctoral candidate at the Duke Marine Lab, moved with her partner, Charlie Deaton, to 711 Broad Street in 2022 and gradually began to worry that some of her new health issues were connected to water damage-related molds. Grieco and Deaton tested the house, along with a few other rental options in Beaufort, and found evidence of mold in all of them. 

Now, when Grieco hears people in Beaufort talking about asthma, chronic health issues, or autoimmune conditions, she gets nervous on their behalf. For renters or new homeowners who might not be aware of the flood history of their house, it might take a long time to link their health to mold in their house. 

Dr. Sonia Rapaport, an expert at treating patients with mold-related illness, sees flooded homes as a growing cause of such health issues. 

“When building materials have become saturated, when there’s been a flood, [mold species] start to grow. … [If] it gets flooded again, or it’s damp, it grows more, so the worst thing that can happen is repeated floods,” Rapaport said. “When you’re living in a home that is moldy, you are breathing in the volatile organic compounds. You’re breathing in the secondary metabolites. You’re breathing in fragments. You’re breathing in spores, and the immune system doesn’t like those. They don’t belong in our bodies.”

People may develop autoimmune diseases, get sick more frequently, or experience chronic fatigue. “If you put five people in the same molding home, some of those people may not have any symptoms. Some will be deathly ill, but everyone will present differently,” Rapaport said.

Treatment for mold-related illness can include home remediation, removing toxins produced by mold from the body by introducing materials to bind to the toxins, and stabilizing the immune and autonomic nervous systems. People sometimes move to new homes, but there’s no guarantee that other places don’t have mold, too. Rapaport recommends that people conduct mold tests before buying a home or signing a lease. 

Grieco and Deaton eventually moved to a new place that doesn’t have a history of flooding and found themselves worrying less about mold-related health issues. The move to a more expensive place, farther from downtown, felt necessary, though they loved the so-called treehouse. 

Deaton struggled with the move after living on Broad Street for six years. “I knew all the neighbors and had the rhythm of launching the kayaks and paddleboards by just walking down Pollock Street,” he said. “We had lots of good, sentimental memories because this is where we moved in together and started to make a little house together.

“And we invested a lot in the house, and it was hard to walk away from that,” he continued. “I’m glad we did it for Dana’s health, but it was hard to walk away from–I won’t minimize that.”

The Future of Beaufort

Rittmaster worries that Beaufort will change as young people can’t afford skyrocketing housing prices. Homeowners converting their houses to short-term rentals are also pushing long-term renters out. 

Deaton’s seen it, too. When he first moved to Broad Street, there were 27 people living on his block year-round; now, there are only seven. 

Coastal property values continue to soar despite risks of sea level rise. A recent paper in the journal Nature modeled how different scenarios affect property values. Federal tax incentives and subsidies keep prices from adjusting to the risks of sea level rise, and property values are buoyed because wealthy owners are willing to pay for coastal amenities. On the other hand, removing subsidies only speeds up coastal gentrification, as the wealthy can still afford to pay for more expensive houses whose prices reflect the risks of sea level rise.

Moving forward, Rittmaster said, “The rich people in their summer homes aren’t really going to care much about the environment. They’re going to want to rinse their boat and paint their boat and have services that make their life fun and comfortable. I just don’t see them being part of the community in a helpful way. I hope I’m wrong.”

All current and former Beaufort residents interviewed said they struggle with the difficulty of loving a place in the face of environmental challenges that feel out of their control. 

Foley, who now lives in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, wonders about how to proceed in the future. 

“Should we keep rebuilding in areas that seem to be somewhat doomed for sea level rise?” she asked. “I don’t know, but I do love the house.” 

Madeleine Paris is a Ph.D. student in Marine Science and Conservation at the Duke University Marine Lab. Her research focuses on the range expansion of harbor seals along the East Coast of the United States.