Climate gentrification (CG) is a relatively new and emerging phenomenon and has rarely been explored in coastal cities of the Global South. CG refers to the ways that climate risks and adaptation efforts may contribute to the displacement of vulnerable populations through social, economic, and physical investments in a community. While it has long been acknowledged that gentrification processes produce winners and losers, there is little research engaging with the role that power and politics play in driving and exacerbating peoples’ vulnerabilities and inequities. This paper goes beyond existing literature that explores what CG means and how to measure it to progress a critical examination of its multiple drivers and their impacts on local communities. It seeks to foreground people’s lived experiences of exclusion and injustice and how these are perpetuated and reproduced within the processes of CG. Using a post-Typhoon Haiyan resettlement site in Tacloban City, Philippines as a case study, the paper seeks to answer the following questions: (1) what are the political-economic drivers of CG? (2) who gains protection vis-à-vis who is exposed to climate hazards, and how? Drawing on a survey of 300 households in the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Dreamville resettlement site and key informant interviews with national, provincial, city and local government agencies and households, this paper finds CG to be driven by complex political interests across governments, the unaffordability of climate resilient housing for the most vulnerable (the poor, fisherfolk and those with a disability) and speculation on its future value by those with power and relatively higher levels of wealth. We find that climate gentrification is generating new inequalities and heightening exposure by driving the most vulnerable back to the storm surge zone.