Silver Lake is about a mile inland from Lake Michigan, and between the two lakes is just pure, rolling sand dunes more than 100 feet high. People come from all over to enjoy the dunes at Michigan’s Silver Lake State Park, and sometimes they end up on Dan Behm’s property. 

“We say, ‘You have to stay off the property,’” said Behm. “They'll walk on the edge of the dune and say, ‘Well, you can't own a dune,’ and I'll say, ‘Yeah, but I do.’”

Behm owns the house right where the dunes meet the neighborhood. The dune on the western edge of his property towers over the house. 

On a windy day the dune blows in toward his cottage, sometimes by a foot or more. He’s been pushing this mountain of sand back with a front-end loader for several years with the help of a friend, Frank Phaff. 

“You can see right now the old sand machine is working pretty good right now,” said Phaff, watching 30 miles-per-hour gusts whip sand off the dune and into the driveway of Behm’s house. Phaff checks on the house while Behm is away to make sure the sand doesn’t get too close to the foundation. “My first goal is to make sure the house is safe.” 

Behm said these really windy days do cause some stress. But it’s not just the wind he has to worry about, there’s also a recreational dune-buggy park here that prevents the sand from settling or vegetation from taking root and stabilizing the dune. Behm also has to renew permits with the state to remove the sand from his property.  

And the worry is well-founded; there’s at least a handful of houses that have already been consumed by the sheer volume of sand to the west of Behm’s property. And the sand is slowly filling in Silver Lake, making it smaller and shallower over the course of decades.  

Behm bought the house next to the dune from the long-time owners in 2020. When it was built more than 30 years ago the three-story observation tower caught a view of Lake Michigan, but now the dunes are so high that the view is just a wall of sand to the west.  

It was an important purchase for his family because they already owned the next two cottages on the lake shore. 

“If we didn't buy it, we didn't know if anybody else would,” said Behm, “and that meant that this would be covered by a dune, and that the two cottages that are next door, which are my mother's and mine, would be the next ones in line.”  

That’s where Phaff and the front-loader come in. Phaff fills a giant gravel-train dump truck with sand and hauls it out, sometimes daily. They sell locally to construction sites and fracking operations, for horse arenas and beach volleyball courts.  

Behm and Phaff can haul away more than 1,500 semi-truck sized loads of sand a year from the property. It isn’t a profitable business, in fact Behm’s hoping to break even for the first time this year. But for Behm it’s all worth it because he has reason to believe he can save the house. 

Jenny Schuetz, an expert in housing policy and economy with Arnold Ventures, said disaster-prone areas make the housing sector a vulnerable segment of the economy, particularly in the age of climate change.

“We know that people tend to underestimate the likelihood of bad things happening to them,” she said. “People move to wildfire-prone areas or hurricane-prone areas thinking, it's not going to hit my house.”

“There’s a tension between people wanting to live in high-amenity places — on beach fronts, near mountains with great views, in places that have warm winters and lots of sunshine — but those same amenities often are the risks that are going to harm people and housing.”

About 26% of homeowners say they’re unprepared financially for any unforeseen expenses due to extreme weather events, according to a survey from the personal finance website Bankrate. 

The thing with Dan Behm is he knows precisely the beast he’s taken on. He’s successfully moved the dune towering beside his house back about 40 feet away from the house.  

So why do this? Behm will tell you right away, it’s for his family. Four generations enjoy these homes during the summer; it’s their favorite place to gather.  

Behm’s mom, Dotty Meyers, pieced together a jigsaw puzzle in the sun-soaked front room of her cottage looking out over Silver Lake and the sand yard between the two. She said sand is part of the family. 

“You know, if you don’t like sand you shouldn’t be living here because it’s all part of our living experience,” she said.

“Our grandchildren absolutely love climbing the dunes. We do as well,” said Behm. “It is a love-hate relationship.” 

Behm said he hopes his kids and grandkids will be willing to keep up the maintenance of this relationship someday, even as the sand keeps rolling in.