Safe, healthy, and resilient homes: Building resilience together

Wednesday, February 11, 2026, 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. EST 
Online only: https://www.brookings.edu/events/safe-healthy-and-resilient-homes-building-resilience-together/ 

Join us on Wednesday, February 11, for a virtual conversation on efforts, strategies, and solutions to building resilience in our communities together. 

When extreme heat, floods, or wildfires hit, entire neighborhoods are affected. Small businesses—often the backbone of recovery—rise or fall alongside their communities. The impacts on businesses also affect the individuals that rely on these businesses for employment. Prior Brookings analysis finds that businesses negatively affected by extreme weather in 2022 employed close to 20 million people, or 28.3% of all individuals working in employer firms. Yet resilience is still often framed as a matter of individual action and personal responsibility; homeowners, businesses, and families are expected to bear the costs of preparation and recovery, rather than the systems and institutions that shape risk and affordability. 

Resilience, however, can be built collectively—when communities share risk, coordinate investments, and rely on systems designed to support recovery at scale.

Many of the real barriers to resilience are embedded in the systems that shape everyday decisions. Housing, insurance, construction, and financing systems determine what is affordable and feasible, but they rarely support coordination across neighbors or small businesses, even when acting together would reduce risk and strengthen long-term stability.

Co-hosted by the Brookings Institution and Economic Architecture, this discussion brings together innovators and leaders to explore how resilience can be built at a collective and community scale. Drawing on real-world experience—from community-led rebuilding efforts after wildfires to strategies that strengthen small businesses as anchors of recovery—the conversation highlights structural innovations that make collective action easier and more rewarding across communities and local economies.

Viewers can submit questions via email at events@brookings.edu.