New NYC storm surge map shows how climate change threatens affordable housing, upscale waterfront

Hurricane Sandy slammed 35 public housing developments managed by NYCHA, leaving tens of thousands of low-income New Yorkers without power for days or even weeks on end in autumn of 2012. Other types of affordable housing were hit hard, too; 24,000 government-subsidized apartments and 40,000 rent-stabilized apartments were in the path of the storm surge, according to data from NYU’s Furman Center, which studies housing policy.

Claudia Perez, residents’ association president at the Washington Houses in East Harlem, recalled watching the floodwaters surge around nearby NYC Health + Hospitals Metropolitan.

“Sandy was really scary,” she said. ”When you see a hospital going underwater, you're like, ‘oh my God, what's going on here?’”

Future storms, coupled with rising sea levels from climate change, will flood even more low-income New Yorkers’ apartments, exacerbating an ongoing affordable housing crisis. A WNYC-NPR analysis of data from the National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that a Sandy-like storm could flood more than 50 NYCHA developments by 2080.

“People in affordable housing are more exposed to flooding, and they have the least resources to deal with it,” said Bernice Rosenzweig, a professor of environmental studies at Sarah Lawrence College.

Disasters often leave a legacy that breaks down between “the haves” and “the have-nots” — and with climate change, it will be a struggle to adapt with limited resources as the sea steadily creeps closer. In East Harlem, for example, Sandy’s floodwaters damaged parts of Metro North Plaza and the East River Houses, two NYCHA developments. Both have received funding from FEMA for repairs and upgrades, which are still in progress.

But the nearby Washington Houses were outside Sandy’s main inundation zone, so the complex wasn’t eligible for the same FEMA-funded resiliency upgrades. But the NHC data predicts that, as early as 2050, a comparable storm could bring floodwaters to the development’s door, putting residents and infrastructure at risk.

Across the river, upscale neighborhoods are facing this struggle, too. The lapis-colored door for the El Pinguino oyster bar sits on Greenpoint Avenue, a few steps from the luxury tower-studded skyline of the East River. Restaurant owner Nicholas Padilla has been running a dining establishment on this patch of the Brooklyn waterfront for more than a decade, and he has come to dread the rain.

At any given time in his dirt basement, Padilla can dig about 6 inches deep and hit water. As a result, he can’t count on his basement for storage. Owners at four neighboring businesses told Gothamist the same thing.

Padilla’s first restaurant in the area, Alameda, was flooded with 6 feet of rain and raw sewage by Sandy, costing tens of thousands of dollars in damage just shortly after he had signed the lease. But he said he won’t leave until the floodwaters chase him permanently from his business and his home, located less than a block away. He doesn’t know where else to live.

“It just seems crazy we dug 6 inches under the underground, in the basement and there was standing water,” Padilla said. “It’s New York City. It’s so hard to find somewhere to go. It just feels like people will just live here until it’s in the river.”

Aside from the addition of new building codes to address flooding and private partnerships to build more greenspace on the waterfront, there have been no major coastal resiliency projects since Sandy flooded the neighborhood a decade ago, that’s according to municipal agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection, the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice, and local City Councilmember Lincoln Restler.

“Our area has grown in population and had more new housing built than any other part of New York City over the last 15 years,” said Restler, who released a district-level climate plan for the area earlier this year. “But we have not seen enough investment in strengthening our shorelines and realizing a more resilient waterfront.”

Greenpoint and neighboring Williamsburg are among the several waterfront areas in New York City that are booming with high-priced developments — but also facing severe threats from storm surge and sea level rise. Other areas include Long Island City in Queens and Hudson Yards in Manhattan.

The local community board estimates that 40,000 new residents were added to the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront area in the past decade. Counting only the projects currently planned for the waterfront, at least another 20,000 residents will be added over the next decade, according to Stephen Chesler, chair of the environment protection committee for Community Board 1, where the Greenpoint and Williamsburg waterfront is located.

Many live in the development of new high-rise towers right along the East River with unobstructed views of Manhattan. This property also ranks among the most valuable in the city. Last year, the neighborhood experienced the city’s second-largest rise in median home prices — a 28% increase that featured a median sale of $1.2 million. That’s 60% higher than citywide prices.

The area also lacks substantial measures to protect the homes and businesses in this vulnerable flood zone that is predicted to be inundated by the end of this century to the middle of the next. Over the next 30 years, tide and storm surges will increase further inland, and at greater heights, bringing damaging flooding at a frequency that will be more than 10 times as often as it does today, according to an earlier analysis by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And these projections don’t account for other effects of climate change, such as inland flooding that’s expected from intensifying rainfall.

But all of these data sets are still predictions, and there’s still time to allay some outcomes. The damage will depend on the extent to which governments curb greenhouse gas emissions in the coming decades.

That’s why advocates and experts alike are urging the municipal, state, and federal governments to prepare New York City's housing stock for coming storms. Some are calling for building upgrades, so New Yorkers aren’t trapped in powerless, hazardous apartments and houses the next time the storms arrive. Others say the time to depart is now.

“We can’t control the ocean, not even with sea walls,” said Klaus Jacob, a geophysicist and climate expert at Columbia University’s Climate School. “We need to start moving people to higher ground now, and using the coastal areas as a barrier.”

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