The block in Hollis, Queens, where Anita Hack and her family moved in 1992 is on the frontline of New York City\u2019s losing battle against disastrous floods.<\/p>\n
Five years ago, two tenants drowned in a basement apartment across the street from Hack\u2019s home when Hurricane Ida deluged the neighborhood. In May, Mayor Zohran Mamdani visited Hack and her neighbors along 183rd Street after filthy stormwater lapped against the front porch windows and reached her adult son\u2019s chest as he waded toward the house.<\/p>\n
Now the Hacks are on the verge of losing their two-story home after the latest storm on Aug. 20 destroyed a foundation wall in their basement. The city\u2019s Department of Buildings vacated the property and, days later, issued an order to demolish the century-old structure. Now, the family\u2019s lone asset \u2014 the home is valued at $800,000 on Zillow \u2014 may be worthless. They\u2019re on the verge of homelessness.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aWe keep getting these floods and nobody’s coming out here to help us,\u201d said Hack, 62. \u201cWhere are we going to go? We don’t have the money for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The devastating impact of Hurricane Ida prompted successive mayoral administrations to propose plans for purchasing properties like Hack\u2019s<\/a> in order to compensate the owners, demolish flood-prone buildings and prevent future disasters. But five years later, the city has yet to buy a single home. The apparent lack of urgency comes as the region just went through a particularly rainy summer, with Central Park recording 3.5 inches more rainfall than average.<\/a><\/p>\n Mamdani and his office of Climate & Environmental Justice finally began fielding \u201cexpressions of interest\u201d for a buyout program known as Resilient Acquisitions<\/a> earlier this summer.<\/p>\n Hack said she filled out the city\u2019s new buyout form when the portal opened, but has not heard back. Now she fears it may be too late.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aThey wanted to buy out the community\u2026 and they are still not doing anything,\u201d Hack said of the city\u2019s response. \u201cNow \u200awe have to evacuate. We have to move.\u201d<\/p>\n The Hacks\u2019 home, like much of the neighborhood, was built atop what was once a small body of water known as Rock Hollow Pond.<\/p>\n Water continues to pool in the shallow valley along 183rd Street every time it rains, as Gothamist detailed in 2021<\/a>. Neighbors have perfected a grim routine whenever rain begins to fall, checking in on one another, moving their cars to nearby hilltops and scraping trash off catch basins.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWhen it rains, we don’t sleep at night,\u201d Hack said.<\/p>\n Hack and her husband purchased the two-story home 34 years ago, a few months after their son was born. The gray clapboard home has housed generations of family members, including Hack\u2019s two young grandsons. A basketball hoop still stands in the corner of the large concrete back patio, near a deflated football and debris swept into the lot by the late August storm surge.<\/p>\n She said the persistent floods have destroyed heirlooms and artifacts, including her son\u2019s wedding album and nearly all her own parents\u2019 photographs from their native Guyana.<\/p>\n Hack\u2019s videos from the May and August floods show torrents of water pouring into the empty basement, which the family long ago cleared of valuables. Sneakers, books and an unopened delivery package float through the living room.<\/p>\n Building inspectors deemed the home structurally unsound and at risk of collapse in August. The most recent flood destroyed the foundation wall and cracked joists supporting the first floor, according to an inspection report. The property is now surrounded by green plywood construction fencing.<\/p>\n Homeowners like Hack began calling<\/a> for a buyout program in September 2021, just days after Ida. Former Mayors Bill de Blasio and Eric Adams both endorsed buyout strategies in the ensuing years, before Mamdani opened an online portal.<\/p>\n But Hack said she has no idea if a buyout is still an option, and worried that the city may only offer the price of a soggy lot, if they purchase the property at all.<\/p>\n “The city is working closely with impacted communities in Hollis to understand their needs and explore solutions that can help residents build long-term resilience,\u201d said Oluwatona Campbell, a spokesperson and chief of staff for the Mayor\u2019s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice. \u201cWe are listening to homeowners and community members about their interest in voluntary buyouts and evaluating potential pathways forward.”<\/p>\n Department of Buildings spokesperson David Maggiotto said agency officials are working with the family \u201cto determine the plans to properly secure the structurally compromised building,\u201d and said officials would review any plans the family submits to avoid demolition.<\/p>\n Hack\u2019s son Jonathan said an engineer who the family hired to see if the house was salvageable walked away from the project last week.<\/p>\n Environmental experts say flood problems are only intensifying. The climate crisis has fueled more frequent storm surges that overwhelm outdated sewer infrastructure that wasn\u2019t built to handle increasingly routine flooding.<\/p>\n City officials are also proposing buyouts to residents of a swampy section of Flushing<\/a> devastated by Hurricane Ida and the low-lying neighborhood along the Queens-Brooklyn border known as the Hole<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery neighborhood in New York City could flood,\u201d said Amy Chester, director of the environmental policy organization Rebuild by Design, said in a presentation last month. \u201cStorms that feel extreme now have only become more frequent and more intense, with devastating consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n Rebuild By Design\u2019s new Rainproof Map project<\/a> details flood complaints and city responses across the five boroughs. The analysis found 609 flood reports to 311 in the blocks surrounding Hack\u2019s home. The highest floodwater recorded in the city during May’s storm was at Hack\u2019s corner: more than 46 inches.<\/p>\n Chester said buyouts are a necessary part of the response to persistent flooding because \u201cthe government has a responsibility for health and safety.\u201d But it\u2019s an expensive endeavor.<\/p>\n The state funds its buyout program with $250 million<\/a> \u2014 realistically enough to buy about 250 homes at roughly $1 million each, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a drop in the bucket,\u201d Chester said.<\/p>\n Still, there is local precedent. New York state previously used federal funds to purchase 500 homes<\/a> in Staten Island\u2019s Ocean Breeze neighborhood following Hurricane Sandy for a total of roughly $200 million. Homeowners received the pre-storm value of their properties, plus an additional 15% to help with relocating.<\/p>\n But the city\u2019s housing shortage complicates government intervention. Buyers and renters are still moving into dangerous homes in flood-prone areas.<\/p>\n A 2023 analysis<\/a> by Rebuild By Design found more than 7,300 one- to three-family homes located in city floodplains were sold that year. One home in a small flood-prone section of Flushing where three people died during Ida sold for $1.1 million in 2024, days before the city began notifying owners of potential buyout opportunities, Gothamist found<\/a>.<\/p>\n Outside her home in Hollis, Hack said she would sell to the city for the \u201cright price.\u201d She wants to stay in the neighborhood but fears that might be impossible.<\/p>\n \u201cI love Queens. I love New York City,\u201d she said. \u201cIf push comes to shove, we’re going to have to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n Thunder struck as Hack spoke. Rain began pelting the sidewalk.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is what we have to deal with,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s raining. You listen to it. You’re wondering, what’s going to happen? It’s very, very stressful.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The block in Hollis, Queens, where Anita Hack and her family moved in 1992 is on the frontline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-334741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}