More than 80,000 homes on Staten Island, in southeast Queens and in 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.
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.
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.
https://archive.ph/lQCoB