#in our university we have a professor whose job is to assess whether old structures are stable or whether they need to be demolished

[feluka]

i'm so fucking devastated about the City of the Dead

[deniscollins]

The Trouble With Empathy

Does your organization assess job candidates empathy skills? If not, why not? If yes, does your organization conduct empathy training? How? Why?

When my daughter started remote kindergarten last month, the schedule sent to parents included more than reading, math, art and other traditional subjects. She’ll also have sessions devoted to “social and emotional learning.” Themes range from listening skills and reading nonverbal cues to how to spot and defuse bullying.

As millions of students start the school year at home, staring at glowing tablets, families worry that they will miss out on the intangible lessons in mutual understanding that come with spending hours a day with kids and adults outside their own household. We want children to grasp perspectives of people different from themselves. Yet in recent years, empathy — whether we can achieve it; whether it does the good we think — has become a vexed topic.

While teachers attempt to teach empathy through screens, the national context has become complicated in the months since the police killing of George Floyd. “Because our white leaders lack compassion and empathy, Black people continue to die,” wrote a columnist in The Chicago Sun-Times. When Joe Biden posted a video declaring that “the pain is too intense for one community to bear alone,” journalists called the message an effort to “project empathy” — while activists said empathy was not enough.

At the Republican National Convention, Ja’Ron Smith, a deputy assistant to President Trump, assured the audience that the president is empathizer in chief. “I just wish everyone would see the deep empathy he shows the families whose loved ones were killed due to senseless violence,” Mr. Smith said.

Few would quarrel with a kindergarten teacher’s noble efforts to teach listening skills to 5-year-olds. But as my daughter and her classmates get older, they will run into thornier dilemmas, our era’s version of old questions: Are some divides too great for common humanity to bridge? When we attempt to step into the shoes of those very different from us, do we do more harm than good? At the same time, trends in American education have worked at cross-purposes, nurturing social and emotional learning in some ways, hampering it in others.

Our capacity to see one another as fellow humans, to connect across differences, is the foundation of a liberal pluralist society. Yet skeptics say that what seems like empathy often may be another form of presumption, condescension or domination. In his 2016 book “Against Empathy,” the psychologist Paul Bloom argued that empathy can cloud rational judgment and skews toward people “who are close to us, those who are similar to us and those we see as more attractive or vulnerable and less scary.” The scholar and activist bell hooks put the matter more starkly. White desire to feel Black experience is predatory, exploitative, “eating the Other,” she wrote.

It’s impossible to perfectly inhabit another person’s experience. The important question is the value of the effort, and whether it leaves us separated by an asymptote or a chasm. Can a straight TV writer create an authentic gay sitcom character? If an author of European descent writes a novel from the perspective of Indigenous people, is it an empathic journey, or an imperialist incursion? “I don’t want to throw out what empathy is trying to do,” Alisha Gaines, a professor of African-American literature at Florida State University, told me. “I’m very critical of it though. Empathy has to be considered in the context of institutions and power.”

Ms. Gaines has devoted much of her scholarship to interrogating well-meaning white attempts at empathy for the Black experience, from the white journalist John Howard Griffin’s 1961 book “Black Like Me,” an account of his project to pass as a Black man on a trip through the Deep South, to a modern re-enactment of the Underground Railroad — whose organizers promised “empathy to the extreme,.” Ms. Gaines said: “If for 90 minutes I run around and look for the lantern in the window, what do I take from this into my everyday life? This is playing a slave, not an enslaved person. The humanity gets evacuated out of it.”

Yet, as a literature professor, she wants students to see books as passageways to experiences unlike their own. “I love books because I’m learning something about people I didn’t understand. I’m connecting,” Ms. Gaines told me. “I wasn’t reflected in books I read as a kid. I understood myself through ‘Anne of Green Gables’ and ‘Little Women’ — little Black kids often have to understand themselves through white protagonists. 

At the same time, for me as a little girl reading ‘Anne of Green Gables,’ as much as I saw myself in her precociousness and her deep feeling, I also knew there wasn’t something speaking exactly to me. It was not a perfect mirror. We want to connect to the material on an emotional register and make space for the fact that each story tells a particular story.”

The impulse to participate in the feelings of another may be biological, rooted in our neurology. In the 19th-century German philosophers wrote of Einfühlung, or “in-feeling” — first translated in 1909 as the new English word “empathy.” They did not mean simulating someone else’s feelings, but projecting your own sentiments and memories in the course of an aesthetic or emotional experience, mingling your consciousness with the thing you are contemplating — whether it is a crying child, Picasso’s “Guernica” or a howling mountain landscape.

In the hands of the social scientists who rule our own time, empathy has become one piece of “emotional intelligence,” a term coined in the 1960s and developed by the psychologists Peter Salovey and John Mayer in 1990. The journalist Daniel Goleman popularized that phrase in his 1995 best seller “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ,” which argued that focusing on emotional skills would reduce school violence and equip students for greater success in life. Research has shown that these capacities are at least as important for long-term happiness and economic security as “hard” skills like reading and math.

In 2004, Illinois became the first state to adopt standards from preschool through high school for social and emotional learning, or SEL. Since then, anti-bullying workshops, classroom rules stressing compassion and wall charts of “feeling words” and “emoji meters” have become more common in schools nationally. “The overwhelming majority of educators and parents acknowledge that teaching children SEL skills is critical,” Marc Brackett, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, told me. “At the other end, in corporate America, employers are looking for people who have these skills.”

But the colorful classroom posters and the drive for data through “social-emotional competencies” student assessments — not necessarily bad things in themselves — risk reducing our idea of empathy to yet another job skill. The mania for standardized testing that followed the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act has further hampered teachers’ best and oldest tool for developing emotional understanding: the study of literature.

“I really do believe literature is an empathy tool, and reading literature widely can actually make you an empathetic person,” Sarah Levine, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, told me. In many classrooms, the structure of standardized tests, especially multiple-choice questions and narrow essay rubrics, pushes teachers to drill students on finding arguments and literary devices rather than encouraging them to reflect on their own emotional response. “The standardized testing movement reduces literary reading to fact-finding,” Ms. Levine said.

She recently completed a study of a century of New York Regents exams and found that from the 2000s onward, “the reader disappeared from the questions that these tests are asking students. The reader is being asked to figure out what the central idea of the text is, as opposed to being asked to talk about how a text made them see something differently, or sympathize with someone,” she told me.

“We have to ask: Is this the kind of reading we want kids to do? It makes kids really dislike reading. That doesn’t mean we don’t read critically, but we should be using some of that critical and interpretive firepower on political speeches, political tweets, things that demand attention to the way people are using language because they have immediate impact on us as citizens of the world. We should use fiction for empathy, aesthetic pleasure, examining ethical dilemmas and just the experience of escaping.”

Ms. Levine taught high school English on the South Side of Chicago before Stanford. She said that despite the life of privilege she sees around her now, “the danger we’re exposing students to in English classrooms is just as bad for kids in Palo Alto as for kids in Chicago with many fewer resources. We’re teaching them that literature is not for them, because they aren’t a part of what they read. I don’t mean because they feel, ‘I don’t see Black and brown faces in my literature,’ but ‘I’m supposed to write an argument about a motif,’ and not do what kids do outside of the classroom: read and enjoy the experience.”

Emerson Holloway, an English major at Oberlin College in Ohio, read a lot on her own to make up for the fact that in high school, she didn’t always have “the opportunity to connect and empathize with characters,” she told me.

At Oberlin, she helps facilitate a student group called Barefoot Dialogues, which invites students to discuss a text or work of art over a home-cooked meal in order to “engage in trust and vulnerability to make connections across differences,” she said.

She acknowledged that in academia, empathy across identity lines has become controversial, and it’s crucial to “know your own boundaries,” she said. “You can ask, ‘What’s the point if we’re all so different? I’ll never be able to truly understand,’ and that’s true to an extent.”

Yet the effort to understand feels more important now than ever, she said. When Covid-19 hit in March, Barefoot Dialogues switched to Zoom meetings; its leaders are hoping for a hybrid of in-person and remote conversation this fall.

The college students I interviewed for this story stressed the role of empathy in firing up their curiosity, critical thinking and self-interrogation. “People often dismiss emotion as a weakness,” Andie Horowitz, a political science major at the University of Michigan, told me. “But a certain level of emotion makes you interested in something, wanting to find the truth.”

She explained how her professor in a course on gender and the law led students in a deep dive into the lives of the individuals in cases they studied. “When you understand the people behind the movement, it becomes so much more personal,” she said. “That’s where empathy comes into critical thinking and being motivated to learn more.”

This fall, the sight of students of all ages squirming in front of iPads — struggling to learn about themselves and each other through apps and spotty Wi-Fi — drives home the urgency of social and emotional learning. But empathetic education was under attack long before Covid-19 hit. The desiccation of great books in the hands of testing bureaucrats and the politicization of literature in university classrooms is not a neatly left-wing or right-wing assault. It is a collective failure of confidence in our teachers and students. “When we think our students can’t do something, we’re done. Pack it up,” Ms. Gaines, the professor at Florida State, told me. “Given the opportunity, and the space to be vulnerable and space to say they don’t understand and don’t know, lots of growth can happen.”

This is the gift of liberal education: the invitation to read a book and think about both the variety and the common threads of human experience across time, space and culture. “Empathy extends beyond trying to put yourself in other people’s shoes,” said Ms. Holloway, the student at Oberlin. “Success is not part of that definition, really. The act of listening is a form of that empathy. You’re willing to attempt to understand.” Only by constantly making that attempt — however imperfect — can we learn empathy’s hazards, and its power.

Molly Worthen is the author, most recently, of “Charismatic Leaders Who Remade America,” an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a contributing opinion writer.

[mrsteveecook]

my interviewer called the other applicants “pricks,” I brought my baby to a grad school talk, and more

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go…

1. My interviewer called all the other applicants “pricks”

I’m currently finishing my PhD and looking to move outside of academia. Recently, I saw an ad for a paid internship for a small nonprofit, and I applied on the last day they were accepting applications. I thought it would be good to have some recent, relevant experience on my resume before I started searching for a full-time job in a few months. The head of the charity got back to me and said that they had already finished interviewing all their applicants, but that he liked my resume and asked if I could come in the next day for an interview. I agreed.

During the interview, he told me all of their other applicants for the position were “pricks” (we are in the UK), he called everyone involved with our town’s university “pricks,” and at one point drew a diagram of the employee structure in the charity, wrote in the name of their previous intern, and labeled her as “prick,” which he circled twice. I was speechless, and just tried to answer questions calmly and politely until I could get out of there.

At the end of the interview, I asked one question to be polite. He asked me why I could only come up with one question, and I stated that I was sure I could always find more questions if I had a minute. He then told me I had 60 seconds, looked at his watch, and refused to speak or make eye contact with me until the minute was up. I asked another question and then ended the interview.

When I got home, he emailed me with a written assessment that he wanted me to do. I already knew I didn’t want to work with him, so I replied that I was sorry, but I had reconsidered and thought it was best I focus on my doctorate and not start an internship right now.

Professional circles are small in our town. I’m worried that this may affect my chances for future full-time positions, if he tells people that I wasted his time and let him delay their hiring process, only to then change my mind. Obviously, that’s not what happened, but how do I explain that without badmouthing him and seeming unprofessional myself? I’m also worried if he spreads this that I will miss out on chances for interviews. Is there anything I could have done to handle this situation differently?

You gave a perfectly reasonable explanation for withdrawing. It’s fairly unlikely that he’s going to go out of his way to badmouth you over it, but then again, this is someone who inexplicably called a bunch of near-strangers “pricks” to another near-stranger and refused to make eye contact with you while he timed your response to a question … so we can’t really apply reasonable standards of behavior to him.

But I promise you that in a small professional circle, someone who behaves this oddly has already been outed as, uh, not a reliable judge of others. He’s calling everyone he comes into contact with a prick! He’s ridiculous, and people know about him.

2. I brought my baby to a grad school talk

I have a 16-month-old child. I’m also a grad student who’s expected to attend my department functions as often as possible. Due to tight finances, we haven’t got daycare until next semester and so I’ve brought my baby twice to talks on campus. The first time went great because she slept. The second time less well, which is why I’m writing. Obviously I don’t want to disturb other audience members, and so I took the baby to the back of the room and did everything within my power to keep her quiet. She made cooing noises and giggles and eventually I got her settled with her bottle, after taking her out once. She must have disturbed my advisor, however, because she asked me to take the baby out again, which I immediately did, leaving her stroller and my purse behind. I hoped to stay and meet the professor giving the talk, but when the baby got fussier and I felt frustrated that I was missing the talk (relevant to my research), I asked one of my friends to grab the stroller and I left.

I honestly don’t know if there’s anything I could have done differently and I don’t know if it’s worth bringing up with my advisor. She’s normally supportive, has kids of her own, and I understand that babies are disruptive. Despite feeling hurt, I do get that academic talks aren’t ideal for babies. My question is just what I should have done. Not taking her wasn’t an option today, and normally she is really quiet.

If she’s normally really quiet and it went well the other time you did it and you had no other options, I can see why you tried it again this time. But it’s possible that your threshold for baby noise is higher than other people’s — or at least higher than your advisor’s. Some people aren’t going to be bothered by a baby cooing and giggling, and others are going to find it really distracting in a context where babies aren’t normally expected. So to the question of what you should have done, the answer might be “be a little faster to take her outside.” Or it might be “you really can’t bring your baby to some/all of these functions” — but that’s something I don’t know from here.

It might be worth talking with your advisor, explaining your situation, and asking if she thinks you’d be better off skipping functions when you don’t have child care. If you do that, though, you’ve got to be okay with hearing “yes,” so you’d want to go into the conversation prepared for that possibility. If you’d rather not risk that, you could also try talking to a couple of people in your program whose judgment you trust and seeing what their take is.

3. Our intern wants to leave her internship early

Our intern’s internship is ending in the next few weeks, and she just asked my boss if she could leave a few weeks early. What’s worse is that she told different excuses to different people (it’s clear it’s not an emergency). My boss is furious to say the least and has told senior management privately that we will not be giving this intern a recommendation letter regardless of whether or not she stays for the full internship.

Is this too harsh? Do I warn the intern that she cannot expect a recommendation letter? I had privately told her before that taking a vacation during a short internship would probably be seen as unprofessional. For background, there were a lot of issues beforehand, and senior management had already decided we would not be extending a full-time offer.

Assuming that the issue is that the intern committed for a specific, relatively short period of time, it’s not too harsh. If the internship was, say, four months, and she wants to leave a few weeks early, that’s a quarter of the internship. Then add in that there were already other issues, and it makes sense that your boss isn’t planning to recommend this intern to others. “Furious” may be a bit much, but certainly it makes sense not to recommend her. That’s a pretty normal consequence to something like this (assuming it’s not due to sickness or family emergency). It’s not punitive; it’s that you really can’t vouch for her to other employers.

As for whether you should warn the intern, it depends on what your role is. Are you her manager or otherwise in a mentor-type role? If so, you could definitely talk to her about why not meeting her full commitment is coming across poorly. But if you’re not, I wouldn’t do that without your boss’s okay, since your boss may have said things to you that she doesn’t expect to be shared with the intern. Your boss should definitely be having that conversation with her, though.

4. Job candidates who use inbox safeguards

I’m relatively new to the world of hiring, and I’ve recently come across a quirky email etiquette situation that I don’t know how to handle. When candidates apply for a job with us, they receive an automated message informing them their application has been received. Several times now I’ve then received an automated reply from a service they are using to keep the junk out of their inbox. The email informs me that my email was waitlisted and requests that I click a link in order to have my email delivered to the person’s inbox.

I understand why a person would want to do this for most situations, since we all receive tons of email and some companies make unsubscribing difficult, but in this case it is a potential employer attempting to reach them. Every time this has happened, I have clicked the link, but do I need to keep doing that? It’s not like I’m trying to reach them for an interview, it’s just an auto-response acknowledging we’ve received their application. I feel similarly about candidates whose voicemail boxes are full — how far does my responsibility go when getting in touch with candidates?

You do not need to keep clicking links — or in some cases, filling out forms — to get whitelisted, particularly when it’s just something like an auto-acknowledgement that their application was received. If you were actually trying to reach a strong candidate to schedule an interview or otherwise speak to them, then I’d take the few seconds to do it — because it doesn’t make sense to pass up a strong candidate over a few seconds of work — but not for an automated form message. (Similarly, I don’t think you’re obligated to do it for rejections either, although it’s kind to.)

And yeah, job searchers should be aware that it’s annoying to ask employers to jump through these hoops. Or anyone who you want something from, really — I’ve had strangers email me to request a favor and then when I try to respond, I’m told to fill out an entire form (contact info, reason for message etc.) in order for the email to get past their spam gateway, and it doesn’t make the greatest impression.

5. Are employment contracts a thing?

I know this might seem like a ridiculous question but it’s something I’d never pondered until recently. In terms of your traditional, professional jobs, I’ve never heard of anyone having a contract unless they were a contractor who wasn’t planning to be there long-term and wouldn’t get benefits and paid leave. In my personal job experience, you get hired and you negotiate the terms but there’s nothing contractual but it turns out people at my husband’s job — who do the same job as he does — have contracts spelling out their raises, bonuses, and other perks for three or four years at a time. We were shocked and had no idea this was a “thing.” Our other professional friends seemed really baffled as well. I know these things might vary wildly from field to field, but my husband’s job is essentially sales. Additionally, he’s considering pursuing a different position in the company which is not sales. Is sales the only time these mystical contracts are the norm? We are really confused!

You’re right that most workers in the U.S. don’t have contracts, even salespeople (although salespeople might have written agreements spelling out a commission schedule). The vast majority of employees in the U.S. are at-will, meaning they can quit or be let go at any time without financial penalty, and neither side is locked into a certain period of employment. (That said, we certainly have conventions around how long you’re expected to commit to a job if you’re acting in good faith, and there can be a reputation price to pay for breaking that; see the intern in letter #3 above.)

The two times that you typically see contracts in the U.S. are for very senior-level positions or for unionized positions (where people are covered by the union contract). So people like your husband are the exception to the rule.

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I feel weird about turning down jobs and interviews, telling an interviewer I want to open my own business, and more

my interviewer called the other applicants “pricks,” I brought my baby to a grad school talk, and more was originally published by Alison Green on Ask a Manager.

from Ask a Manager https://ift.tt/2ApPjiu

[deniscollins]

Trump Administration Presses Cities to Evict Homeowners from Flood Zones

If you were the mayor of Nashville and the federal government (Army Corps of Engineers) told you to (1) use eminent domain to force people who refuse to move out of flood-prone homes who refuse to move (federal government will pay two-thirds the cost and the local government one-third) or (2) forfeit a shot at federal money they need to combat climate change, what would you choose? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

The federal government is giving local officials nationwide a painful choice: Agree to use eminent domain to force people out of flood-prone homes, or forfeit a shot at federal money they need to combat climate change.

That choice, part of an effort by the Army Corps of Engineers to protect people from disasters, is facing officials from the Florida Keys to the New Jersey coast, including Miami, Charleston, S.C., and Selma, Ala. Local governments seeking federal money to help people leave flood zones must first commit to push out people who refuse to move.

In one city in the heartland, the letters have already started going out.

Last year, Giovanni Rodriguez, whose white midcentury house backs onto a creek in the southern suburbs of Nashville, got a letter saying his home “is eligible for participation in a floodplain home buyout program.” The surprise came a few lines lower: If necessary, the city “would acquire properties through the use of eminent domain.”

Mr. Rodriguez, a 39-year-old freelance musician and composer of funk, R&B and Latin jazz, said he had no interest in selling — at least not for what the city is offering, which he said wasn’t much more than the $188,500 he paid for the home in 2013. “I would lose this house that I love,” he said.

Eminent domain — the government’s authority to take private property, with compensation, for public use — has long been viewed as too blunt a tool for getting people out of disaster-prone areas. It has a controversial history: Local governments have used it to tear down African-American neighborhoods, as well as to build freeways and other projects over residents’ objections. Even when the purpose of eminent domain is seen as legitimate, elected officials are generally loath to evict people.

Still, in a sign of how serious the threat of climate change has become, some local governments have told the Corps they will do so if necessary, according to documents obtained through public records requests and interviews with officials. Other cities have yet to decide, saying they feel torn between two bad options.

The willingness to use eminent domain shows how quickly the discussion around climate has shifted. Even as President Trump publicly dismisses the scientific consensus of climate change, his administration is wrestling with how to move people out of the way of rising seas and increasingly intense rainfall.

Still, threatening to push people out of their houses is an extreme step, experts said.

“It’s going to create a really big political backlash,” said A.R. Siders, a professor at the University of Delaware who studies buyouts. Still, she praised the Corps for “recognizing that the degree of action we’re taking needs to match the degree of the crisis.”

The Corps’ mission includes protecting Americans from flooding and coastal storms. It does that in different ways, including building sea walls, levees and other protections, and elevating homes. The Corps generally pays two-thirds of the cost, which can stretch into billions of dollars. The local government usually pays the rest.

As that risk grows because of climate change, the Corps has shifted toward paying local governments to buy and demolish homes at risk of flooding. The logic is that the only surefire way to guarantee the homes won’t flood again is if they no longer exist. But it also uproots people and can destroy communities.

As a result, federally funded buyouts have usually been voluntary; residents could decline. But at the end of 2015, the Corps said that voluntary programs were “not acceptable” and that all future buyout programs “must include the option to use eminent domain, where warranted.”

The consequences are now coming into view. In 2018, following a string of devastating hurricanes, Congress gave the Corps money to plan flood-control projects in more than three dozen cities and counties. Many of them now face a difficult decision — a dilemma the Corps saw coming.

“I know what we’re saying” when asking cities to evict people, Jeremy LaDart, an economist with the Corps, said in a 2016 webinar explaining the approach. “In order to do this project with us, you’re going to have to commit to buying out your constituencies and constituents, and doing something that may not be popular.”

Some officials within the Corps were surprised by how far the policy went.

Randall Behm was head of the committee within the Corps that studies buyouts. He said that voluntary programs are imperfect, often leaving vulnerable homes in place. Even so, Mr. Behm said the Corps should require eminent domain only for homes whose flood risk was so severe that their inhabitants were in physical danger.

“That’s where we really need to clear out the structures,” said Mr. Behm, who retired in 2018. By contrast, he said the Corps’ current approach “scares a lot of community officials.”

The Corps defended its policy. Without using eminent domain, officials said, the Corps can’t guarantee to Congress that the buyouts lawmakers have funded will actually happen.

And that would leave residents still at risk. Imagine the Corps identifies 10 homes for buyouts, but only three people say yes, said Susan Layton, chief of planning and policy for the Corps’ Norfolk District office, which is working on buyout plans in Florida. With a voluntary program, that leaves seven homes still exposed. “You’re probably not doing your best job,” she said.

The Corps applies a relatively simple formula to decide which houses should be condemned, officials said: It estimates how much damage a house is likely to suffer in the next 50 years, then compares that to what it would cost to buy and tear down the house, plus moving expenses for the owner. If the buyout costs less, the homeowner is asked to sell for the assessed value of the home. That price is not negotiable, and neither is the offer.

Many officials have balked, at least for now. Miami-Dade has yet to agree to evict residents, and New Jersey has refused. In the Florida Keys, Roman Gastesi, the county administrator, said he doubted the county commission would approve it.

“Eminent domain is not something that’s going to be palatable,” Mr. Gastesi said, adding that the Corps should fund the buyout program it’s currently looking at in the Keys, but make it voluntary. “We don’t want to kick people out of their houses.”

But local officials in other communities have been willing to accept the Corps’ terms.

Brookhaven, a town on Long Island in New York, agreed in 2018 to use eminent domain if necessary as part of a Corps plan to protect against flooding, according to James D’Ambrosio, a Corps spokesman. A spokesman for Brookhaven, Jack Krieger, referred questions to the Suffolk County government, which didn’t respond.

In Okaloosa County, Fla., the Corps asked officials to say in writing that they had the authority and the expertise needed to evict homeowners. The county said yes last June, but added that it might need the Corps’ help “justifying the necessity of the taking of private property,” according to documents obtained through a public records request.

Asked for comment, a spokesman for Okaloosa County, Christopher Saul, responded: “We are prepared to work with the Corps of Engineers to the best of our abilities in order to preserve the safety of Okaloosans.”

Other places appear to have had second thoughts. Last summer, Atlanta told the Corps that the city was able to use eminent domain, according to documents obtained through a public records request. The city informed the Corps in January that it was pulling out of the project.

Michael Smith, a spokesman for Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Another city looking at buyouts is Charleston. At a planning meeting in January, city staff told the Corps that they expected to acquire the land in phases, according to notes obtained through a records request.

Mark Wilbert, Charleston’s chief resilience officer, said the city had told the Corps it would acquire the property required for the project. Asked if Charleston would use eminent domain for those who refuse, Mr. Wilbert said that “yeah, we’d look at it real close.”

“It would not be the first place we would go,” he added.

One of the first locales to invoke the threat of eminent domain is Nashville, where the Corps identified 44 homes it wanted the city to buy. Some homeowners have nonetheless said no.

Down the road from Mr. Rodriguez, Homer Adams, who is 98, said the city had approached him about buying his house. But he said that he and his wife, Wilma, who is 97, want to stay, and were under the impression that the program left them free to do so. “It was completely voluntary,” Mr. Adams said.

The city, however, said every resident selected for the buyout got the same letter, saying eminent domain would be used if the city thought it was necessary.

Lonnie Smith, who lives in a house by another creek in the outskirts of Nashville, likewise said he didn’t want to sell. So did David Woods, who said he thought his house was at less risk than some of the homes around it.

It now falls to the city to decide whether, and how, to enforce its pledge to the Corps to get these people out of their homes.

“Our preference is always, ‘willing seller,’” said Tom Palko, assistant director of Nashville’s storm water division. He said the city’s approach was buying homes from people who want to participate, while giving those who don’t time to change their minds.

Craig Carrington, chief of project planning for the Corps’ Nashville district, said his office wasn’t giving the city a deadline for evicting people. “We knew that this would take several years,” Mr. Carrington said. “We’re trying to eat the elephant one bite at a time.”