New York
In 15 Years, 80,000 Homes in the New York Area May Be Lost to Flooding
More than 80,000 homes on Staten Island and in southeast Queens and the suburbs east of New York City could be lost to floods over the next 15 years, according to a new report that serves as a warning of how climate change could make the housing crisis even worse.
The report, released Monday by the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit civic organization, said that swaths of land in every borough were likely to become impossible to develop, helping push the area’s housing shortage to a staggering 1.2 million homes.
“You’re going to need to build more housing to just replace what is lost in your own municipality,” said Moses Gates, the association’s vice president for housing and neighborhood planning and an author of the report.
The report is the latest to underscore how the dual threats of climate change and a lack of housing are looming over coastal cities around the world.
New York City and its suburbs have not built enough homes to meet demand over the past few decades, helping to drive up rents and home prices. At the same time, the metropolitan area is struggling to adapt to increased flooding and other extreme weather caused by global warming.
“The sooner we decide as a city to invest in resilience measures to help neighborhoods adapt — whether it’s to fortify or to move — the faster we avert leaving an even bigger crisis for the next generation,” said Amy Chester, the managing director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that works to make infrastructure better able to withstand storms and climate change.
The report did not single out specific neighborhoods as at risk for flooding. But of the 82,000 homes that could be lost by 2040, more than half were projected to be on Long Island, with some Atlantic Ocean-facing towns like Babylon and Islip bearing the brunt.
Cities along the Long Island Sound on both the island and in Westchester County would also be vulnerable. In New York City, waterfront neighborhoods in southern Queens and Brooklyn, like the Rockaways and Canarsie, would see the most losses.
Some new developments on the Rockaway Peninsula in Queens, where about 125,000 people live, are focused on trying to protect against flooding while also providing dense, affordable housing.
Also in the Rockaways, a new system of engineered berms, which look like sand dunes but have stone and steel walls at their cores, will help protect the ocean side of the peninsula. But little progress has been made on the bay side, which floods regularly.
Throughout the city, other mitigation measures are underway or already complete, including flood walls and floodgates on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and nature-based solutions, like bluebelts, which connect storm sewers to lakes and ponds.
After Superstorm Sandy inundated much of Staten Island’s eastern shore in 2012, the state bought more than 500 damaged homes, clearing most of them to return the land to a natural state in a practice known as managed retreat. But a costly, ambitious plan to protect the entire city from coastal storms has yet to be approved by the federal government and is at least 20 years away from completion.
The threats of global warming mean that local officials need to “rethink what a conventional home looks like,” said Max Besbris, a sociology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who specializes in housing and climate change.
“That means denser housing, more energy-efficient housing, and that probably means giving up on that suburban ideal of a stand-alone home with a white picket fence,” he said.
The report from the Regional Plan Association analyzed the amount of housing the area needed today and in the future to make sure there were enough homes available for people to easily move into. The report said the region needed 362,000 additional homes today, in part to relieve overcrowding and permanently house the shelter population, among other factors.
In 15 years, that number will more than triple to 1.2 million, when accounting for population growth, flood loss and general housing deterioration. Cities and towns should cluster growth in the parts of the region that have a relatively lower risk of flooding and are near public transit and commercial hubs, the report said.
Warren Schreiber, the president of the Queens Civic Congress, a group of civic associations from across the borough, said he agreed that people needed to be made safe from flood risks. But he said that any new development should focus on affordable housing, which raised the question of how much that development would cost.
“Who’s going to pay for this?” he said. “Is it going to be on the backs of middle-income working-class families?”
The report also used a tool called the National Zoning Atlas, which maps local restrictions on development to see where the zoning codes might allow for more homes to be built. The report found that 580,000 homes — less than half of what is needed — could be added under today’s zoning codes (though other factors, like funding or building codes, might also prevent homes from being built).
That housing gap showed the need for nearly every city, town and village to change their zoning codes to allow for more homes to be built, said Mr. Gates, one of the report’s authors.
New York officials have tried to adapt zoning codes for easier building in recent years, with mixed success.
Gov. Kathy Hochul tried to push every city and town in the state to make way for more housing two years ago. But local leaders in the city’s suburbs, especially on Long Island and in Westchester County, resisted her efforts.
The administration of Mayor Eric Adams successfully pushed a plan known as “City of Yes” that could allow for some 80,000 additional homes to be built over the next decade. That plan, which the City Council approved in December, would reduce the city’s housing needs by only 11 percent, the report found.
new video loaded: Historic Brooklyn Church Destroyed in Fire
By Meg Felling
June 22, 2026
How can people possibly afford to live in one of the most expensive cities on the planet? It’s a question New Yorkers hear a lot, often delivered with a mix of awe, pity and confusion.
We surveyed hundreds of New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save. We found that many people — rich, poor or somewhere in between — live life as a series of small calculations that add up to one big question: What makes living in New York worth it?
Maruf Abubakari Sadick left Ghana for New York in April 2023, confident he was prepared for chilly weather.
When he arrived that morning, the temperatures were in the 50s. He might as well have arrived during a snowstorm.
“‘It’s really cold,’” he told his brother, who laughed and reminded him it wasn’t even winter. His brother brought him a warm jacket, sparking a love affair with outerwear, as well as clothes and colognes.
Three years later, these are the little luxuries on which Mr. Sadick splurges when he is not working two jobs as a security officer in the city.
“I really like to look good, and I like to smell good,” Mr. Sadick, 37, said. “I just tell myself ‘I work too hard. It’s self care.’”
Together, his security jobs bring in close to $46,000 a year, which pays for rent, remittances to his family in Ghana, Wi-Fi, his phone bill and groceries. At the end of the month, he squirrels away what he can so he can one day pay for nursing school.
His rent is $700 a month, which affords him a room in a four-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the East Bronx that he shares with two other men and one woman.
“Funny enough, we don’t have a schedule for the bathroom,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s not easy.”
He buys a 30-pound bag of rice for $30 from the nearby bodega that lasts him about three months and a 40-pack of Poland Spring water for $20 so he can bring a bottle to work.
The housemates often share food, usually fish stews and okra soups that Mr. Sadick pours into a thermos, along with the rice, which he then takes to work. It helps him avoid paying for takeout which can cost more than $20.
Mr. Sadick said he learned quickly that to survive in New York, you need to share.
Two Jobs, Little Sleep
Mr. Sadick makes $17 an hour at both jobs, earning the current minimum wage in the city. By next year, he could be making at least $22.20 an hour, with two weeks of paid vacation and paid holidays.
The bump in pay is part of the Aland Etienne Safety and Security Act, a city law that Mayor Zohran Mamdani signed shortly after he took office that set a minimum wage for security guards. The law, which also requires employers to contribute to paid time off and health benefits, was named after the security officer who was fatally shot in July 2025 at 345 Park Avenue by a gunman who killed three others before killing himself.
Mr. Sadick did not know Mr. Etienne, but he said his death terrified him and other security officers, who realized how vulnerable they were at work.
The job “seems easy,” he said. “It seems quiet. Then, one moment, it’s all chaos.”
From Tuesday to Friday he works a four to eight-hour shift when he guards a sprawling office complex in Long Island City, Queens.
On weekends, he guards a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center in East Harlem from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. When his shift ends, he takes the subway for a 40-minute commute back to the office complex in Queens, where he works 12-hour overnight shifts on Saturday and Sunday.
Three days a week he takes GED classes in the morning, which are free to state residents. Mondays are his one day off, which he uses “to make up for the two days that I don’t sleep,” Mr. Sadick said.
During the summers, when school is not in session, he tries to make some money selling bus tours to tourists around Times Square. On a good day, he will make $250 to $500 in commissions. On bad days, he will spend five hours in the heat with nothing to show for it.
He said he was exhausted, but driven to pursue a career in medicine.
“I like to take care of people,” he said.
Sending Help Home
A big part of Mr. Sadick’s salary goes to his family in Ghana. On average, he will send $500 a month to help pay for his parents’ food, his grandmother’s health aide and his sister’s schooling.
Last month, he sent a $1,200 so that his parents could buy two sheep. He sent the money through Taptap Send, an app that lets people send money to countries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America.
The sheep should provide enough meat to last them a couple of months, he said. His brother sent over $2,000 around the same time so that their extended family could buy a bull.
Sending money home is “expected,” Mr. Sadick said, adding that he feels “very good” about being able to help.
“We are brought up in a system where it’s all about family,” he said. “You are brought up to provide.”
Self-Care Is Worth the Splurge
When Mr. Sadick has extra money in his pocket, he will pop into Zara or Macy’s, where he shops for shoes, jackets and button-down shirts.
He has six bottles of cologne. His favorites are Al Rehab Lord Eau De Parfum and Mountain Woody Forest from Zara. The Al Rehab cologne, which sells for $10.95 an ounce on Amazon, is for daytime. He saves the Mountain Woody Forest — $74.99 on Amazon — for special occasions.
He owns 18 pairs of shoes, including red and white Air Jordans that he bought for $200 and a pair of brown, suede boots from Zara that cost $100.
“These are my favorites,” he said, stroking the soft Zara boots. “I look a bit professional in them.”
He is still trying to figure out what he will do when his salary goes up.
Most likely, he said he would keep working both jobs so that he could save more money. But he daydreams about quitting one of them.
It would be nice, Mr. Sadick said, to get more sleep, have time to play soccer and visit art museums.
What he would really like is more time to take long walks.
One of his favorite places to walk is Dumbo, where he worked briefly guarding a construction site and fell in love with the sweeping views of Manhattan and the cool breeze that comes off the water.
A place in Dumbo, he said, would be the ultimate indulgence.
“That would be a dream come true,” Mr. Sadick said. “It’s so nice there.”
We are talking to New Yorkers about how they spend, splurge and save.
new video loaded: Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
transcript
transcript
Fans Show Up to the Parade in Their Best Knicks-Themed Attire
New York Knicks fans showed up in droves to a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan in their best orange and blue outfits to honor the N.B.A champions.
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“Patrick Ewing. He didn’t get a ring. But I wear your sneakers, bro. When I was in high school, back in the ’90s, Patrick Ewing, John Starks, they were the team that I rooted for in the ’90s. They didn’t make it. So as a tribute to him because this is where I started at being a fan, Patrick Ewing. Knicks hat in denim — I’m a denim fanatic. So I love denim — Knicks hat. And yeah, that’s it.” “This is my style. I usually dress like this every day. But I did a special Knicks edition. It’s all really fun. I start with my makeup. I did really cute flames on my eyes because the Knicks are fire. I don’t really know what I’m going to do before I put it on. I just figure it out along the way. Like, this is a piece of fabric and I just layer in stuff.” “This is from my online boutique and the hat I just bought on the way to the parade because I wanted to match the jumpsuit, and that’s how I came up with the outfit.” “She was ready to go, man.” “Can you show your fingernail?” “She’s been sleeping in her Jalen Brunson jersey for the last 10 weeks. We’ve been watching all the games. You want to tell them who’s your favorite player?” “Jalen Brunson.” “I’m pretty sure this jersey was actually made for a human baby. But they’re selling them around the block. And we threw it on Chester and everyone started clapping. So — he wears it well.” “Blue and orange.” “So I did blue and orange.” “It had to be orange and blue. “Orange and blue. Orange and blue.”
By Meg Felling, Jeremy Raff, Ang Li and David Cheung
June 18, 2026
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