Politicians often talk of managed retreat as though it is a new strategy that will need to be used only in rare circumstances in the far-off future. In reality, it is a strategy we have a long history of using and are already actively doing. What they call “managed retreat” is what we in emergency management call “buy-outs” and the federal government has been funding them for decades. Since 1989 FEMA alone has funded forty thousand home buy-outs across the country.
