Future Flooding from Climate Change May Surpass Sandy's Toll

Hurricane Sandy was just a dry run.

New York City could lose up to 19,300 homes in the next 15 years due to flooding from high tides and storms — more than the toll of 2012’s Hurricane Sandy — estimates a forthcoming report by the Regional Plan Association (RPA), The City reports. Another 24,300 units within the five boroughs could be substantially damaged by a major storm in that time frame. The region encompassing Westchester County and Long Island could lose tens of thousands more units of housing by then.

The grim projections convey how climate change could exacerbate New York’s already dire housing crisis, with reverberations well beyond urban areas — even as Chris Wright, President Trump's choice to run the U.S. Energy Department, has declared that "there is no climate crisis."

Eric Sanderson, vice president for urban conservation at the New York Botanical Garden’s Center for Conservation and Restoration Ecology, disagrees. “It’s our version of what’s happening now in L.A.,” Sanderson says. “They have the fire, we have flooding.”

The New York region has already gotten a taste of destruction from coastal flooding and its impact beyond municipal borders. Sandy destroyed or damaged about 100,000 homes on Long Island, and damaged nearly 70,000 units of housing in New York City, with about 20% made uninhabitable. Future destruction from storms and flooding is projected to be worse.

“We’re going to experience both a gradual ramping up and a couple of shocks,” says Moses Gates, vice president for housing and neighborhood planning at RPA. “We’re going to have Sandy-type events that are going to leave a lot of homes uninhabitable all at once, and we’re going to see a lot of people without other options trying to find housing.”

The Queens neighborhoods of the Rockaways and Broad Channel contain the most housing at risk in the five boroughs, according to RPA’s research, followed by waterfront neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn — including Howard Beach, Hamilton Beach, South Ozone Park, Bergen Beach, Canarsie and Flatlands.

After Hurricane Sandy, many homes were rebuilt — some as they were, others made more flood-resistant or elevated — while others were abandoned or demolished. Meanwhile, multiple flood-protection projects along the city’s coastline are completed or in the works, from flood walls and berms to raised streets and improved drainage. The RPA’s housing loss projections did not factor in such measures. Nor did they factor in the risk-defying love many New Yorkers have for living close to the ocean.

Nykole Slay, 47, lives on a block in Edgemere, on the Rockaway Peninsula, that's peppered with vacant lots and abandoned houses, legacies of Hurricane Sandy. She's unfazed by that — or by the periodic floods that visit the neighborhood. The only thing that would force her to leave is the destruction of her home.

“That’s what it’d have to be," she says, "because I love my house.”