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In 15 Years, 80,000 Homes in the New York Area May Be Lost to Flooding

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Video: Shimmying American Woodcocks Cause a Birding Frenzy in N.Y.C.

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Video: Shimmying American Woodcocks Cause a Birding Frenzy in N.Y.C.

new video loaded: Shimmying American Woodcocks Cause a Birding Frenzy in N.Y.C.

People flocked to Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan, where the quirky American woodcocks had made a pit stop on their migration north. The birds are known for their bopping and shimmying.

By Jorge Mitssunaga

April 1, 2026

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How a Database Manager Lives on $118,000 in Inwood

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How a Database Manager Lives on 8,000 in Inwood

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?

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Matthew Kaal was always fascinated by tall buildings, so it did not surprise his family when he left Phoenix in 2006 to attend a small Christian college that held classes in the Empire State Building.

Twenty years later, Mr. Kaal, now 38, works in Midtown Manhattan in a high-rise building. As the director of enterprise systems and services for the American Association of Advertising Agencies, he earned $118,000 last year, including a $5,000 bonus. After taxes, his take-home pay was around $80,000.

His commute is around 40 minutes by subway from Inwood, in northern Manhattan, where he lives after being priced out of the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side and Harlem. After years of living with roommates, he can finally afford to live on his own. In March 2021, during the pandemic, he got a deal on a 485-square-foot, rent-stabilized apartment overlooking Inwood Hill Park. His current rent is $1,570 a month.

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Through careful budgeting, Mr. Kaal has been able to save money for his future without giving up splurges like $600 season tickets to New York City FC, the professional soccer club. Last year, he also saw 16 shows and concerts and vacationed in London and Brazil.

“It feels like I live a much bigger life than I think the budget actually comes out to sometimes because I’ve tried to be thoughtful about it,” he said.

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Keeping Track of Every Dollar

Mr. Kaal did not start out so comfortably. His first job after college was working in fund-raising and communications for a private school in Hoboken, N.J. He was paid $13 an hour. His commute was an hour and a half each way from a basement apartment in Midwood, Brooklyn, that he shared with a roommate. His share of the rent was $500.

“I used to joke with people that was the period of my life when I read all of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky because I just had time,” he said. “I had my book that I would take on the train with me everywhere.”

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As Mr. Kaal has made more money, he has adjusted his budget. Last year, he was able to put $4,000 into a health savings account, $8,000 into a 401(k) and another $7,000 into a Roth I.R.A.

But his budgeting does not stop there. Every month, he earmarks $250 for a general savings account to build up a nest egg for emergencies. Currently, it has nearly $18,000.

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He also puts $200 a month into an account for travel, which pays for a trip to a new country every year. Recent trips have taken him to the Dominican Republic, Portugal, France, Australia and South Africa.

Another $100 a month goes into a culture account so that he can see the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic and Broadway shows like “Gypsy.” He tries not to pay more than $150 for a ticket. “I’m siting in the nosebleeds in the $50 seat instead of the $300 seat closer to the stage,” he said.

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Mr. Kaal saves money each month for his seven nieces and nephews. Anna Watts for The New York Times

Budgeting for the Future

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He puts another $100 a month into a real estate account for a future down payment on an apartment (if he does not end up buying, the money will go toward his retirement). He has saved more than $13,000 so far.

“I’ve kind of compartmentalized everything off into different little funds,” he said, “so that I’m not accidentally raiding one to pay for another.”

Mr. Kaal, who is single, has even set up college savings accounts for each of his seven nieces and nephews. He sets aside $40 a month for each child, or a total of $280 a month. Currently, the seven accounts hold nearly $26,000. “The way that I think about it is if I lived closer, I would probably be spending that much taking them for ice cream or something,” he said.

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To pay for the things that matter to him, Mr. Kaal said that he tried to be “thoughtful and intentional” about his monthly expenses. He typically keeps his electricity bill to $100 a month, even in the summer, when he will open the windows and run the fan instead of using air-conditioning.

A Takeout Savings Tactic

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He usually sticks to his budget of $1,000 a month for groceries, household expenses, coffee breaks and meals out. He takes subways and buses instead of calling Ubers, allowing him to keep his transportation costs under $150 a month.

He spends $70 a month on a T-Mobile cellphone plan, and another $25 a month for a gym membership at Planet Fitness.

This year, he has saved more than $100 a month by canceling Netflix, Peacock and other streaming services that he did not use often enough to justify the cost.

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He has also cut back on food deliveries. To make himself pause before tapping the order button, he decided that he would donate the cost of whatever he ends up spending to a food pantry or a charity. So far, he has ordered five deliveries all year, compared to three or four a month last year.

Mr. Kaal said he would use some of his savings to increase his donations to local charities. He has set a goal to donate $7,000 this year, up from $2,500 last year.

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“I’ve been incredibly fortunate that my salary has grown and I’m able to live comfortably,” he said. “But even when I was barely scraping by as an hourly worker, it was a lot of fun.”

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

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Video: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

new video loaded: We Analyzed the Deadly Crash at LaGuardia

Our graphics reporter Lazaro Gamio breaks down the second-by-second analysis leading up to the deadly plane crash at LaGuardia Airport.

By Lazaro Gamio, Coleman Lowndes and James Surdam

March 27, 2026

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