Climate change has seen increased disasters and difficulties for residential areas. That includes flash floods in St. Louis and Kentucky; expected increased flooding problems in Miami, New York City, and Washington, D.C.; growing water shortages; and wildfires that can take out entire towns.

And yet, getting people to pay attention and even change their preferences of where to live—to choose locations that don't present the same degrees of imminent threat—is difficult. According to an article in The Conversation from emergency management and public administration experts and researchers out of Arizona State University and the University of Central Florida, many real estate sites for buyers and renters offer risk ratings for such dangers as floods, hurricanes, and wildfires. 

But it doesn't seem to do much good. For example, coastal home buyers don't pay attention to flood risks, even with warnings and the rise of insurance premiums, as some Georgia State University researchers have noted. There's a quirk in human cognition that top researchers in psychology point to. Memory of information or experiences that one might expect to push people in other directions can get waylaid by the attraction of something that they want.