As California community slowly slides toward ocean, not all homeowners want to leave

Sheri Hastings’ property sits on a slow-moving disaster; a complex of landslides in the Portuguese Bend area of Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

For nearly 70 years, this area has shifted roughly a few inches a year, but recently that pace has surged to as fast as four inches a week. 

The culprit for the spike in movement is heavy rains – and runoff from nearby canyons — brought on by a series of recent atmospheric rivers that have soaked deep into the soil, destabilizing the area.

The landslide complex on the Palos Verdes Peninsula is more than a square mile in size and reaches hundreds of feet deep in some places. It’s slipping towards the Pacific Ocean.

Mike Phipps, a geologist who has been studying the shifting landscape for nearly four decades, was contracted by the city to monitor the movement. A major part of the city’s approach to slow the landslide is around a dozen deep water wells that pull water from the ground and channel it into the ocean.

“It’s a catastrophe, and yet some people are still able to live in their homes up here. They’re kind of riding a big raft down the hill,” Phipps said.

In October, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services announced a $42 million voluntary buyout program for residents most impacted by the slide. The properties approved for buyouts will be acquired by the city and converted to open space. Of the 85 residents who applied, only an estimated 20 homes are expected to be covered by the initial funding round, according to the city. 

But Hastings isn’t interested.

“It’s not a good deal. You get what the value of your home was two years ago. You get 75% of that. And then on top of that, you have to pay to demolish everything and have it hauled away,” Hastings said.

The FEMA-funded buyout program only provides 75% of the funding for the city to buy affected properties at fair market value, while the remaining 25% is effectively absorbed by sellers, according to the program’s guidelines. 

Hastings said that insurance doesn’t cover any of the damage to her property, either. Her life savings are now slipping away.

“Everybody thinks we’re all millionaires up here. We’re actually not. Our homes were our money, right? We can’t just go out and buy another home,” Hastings said.

Jonathan Vigliotti

Jonathan Vigliotti is a CBS News correspondent based in Los Angeles. Vigliotti’s reporting has taken him to more than three dozen countries and territories across six continents.