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\u2018We are forgotten here\u2019: As NYC builds seawalls, this Queens community feels left behind.<\/p>\n
This article was produced in partnership between Floodlight<\/a> and New York Focus<\/a>. It was co-published by The Guardian.<\/p>\n Baba Ndanani has lived in one of New York City’s most flood-prone neighborhoods for more than 20 years, and he knows the risks all too well. His two-story home in the coastal community of Edgemere sits directly beside Jamaica Bay. During high tides, he often watches with concern as the bay creeps into his backyard and climbs the steps to his back porch.<\/p>\n In 2012, during Superstorm Sandy, over 5 feet of water rushed into Ndanani\u2019s house. He had to swim across the street to higher ground, riding out the rest of the storm in a disabled car surrounded by water.<\/p>\n \u201cI was praying,\u201d Ndanani told Floodlight. \u201cI just wanted to get out, and that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n After the storm, he returned to his decimated home and spent two weeks sleeping atop an overturned refrigerator.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was nothing else for me to sleep on. I had nowhere else to go.\u201d Ndanani said. \u201cIt was horrible.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite his harrowing experience and a city-run voluntary buyout program designed to relocate residents of Edgemere, he says he has no intention of leaving his coastal home.<\/p>\n \u201cEven with everything that happened, I love the scenery, I love the environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Instead, Ndanani is among the many Edgemere residents still holding out hope the city will deliver on its decade-old promise to protect the neighborhood from flooding.<\/p>\n \u2018We are forgotten here\u2019: As NYC builds seawalls, this Queens community feels left behind.<\/p>\n \u2018We are forgotten here\u2019: As NYC builds seawalls, this Queens community feels left behind.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the other neighborhood(s) they’ve done that, so why is Edgemere different?\u201d Ndanani asked, referring to the city\u2019s efforts to raise shorelines around Lower Manhattan. \u201cBecause we don’t have Wall Street here?\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of flood protections in Edgemere, combined with a largely ineffective attempt to relocate residents in the working class minority neighborhood, reflects a wider trend among coastal resiliency efforts currently underway across America\u2019s cities. In Charleston<\/a> and Miami<\/a> and Norfolk<\/a>, city officials are planning billion-dollar seawalls to protect their wealthy core, but not the vulnerable communities beyond it.<\/p>\n \u201cNeighborhoods like Edgemere will become more and more frequent,\u201d Veronica Olivotto told Floodlight. Olivotto is a New School researcher who spent months studying flood risk mitigation efforts in the community.<\/p>\n She says Edgemere illustrates how managed retreat from an increasingly uninhabitable coastal America \u201cwill have to confront the fact that some people cannot move either because they don\u2019t have the financial means or because they feel that this is the place they have always lived.\u201d<\/p>\n Olivotto stressed: \u201cWe need to think way more about the land that\u2019s left behind, and the people that are left behind after retreat than we are right now.\u201d<\/p>\n 0:00<\/p>\n \/0:16<\/p>\n 1\u00d7<\/p>\n \u2018We are forgotten here\u2019<\/p>\n With more than 500 miles of waterfront, few American cities are more vulnerable to sea level rise than New York City. About 1.3 million New Yorkers live within or directly adjacent to a floodplain, and a recent report estimates more than 80,000 homes could be lost to flooding in the next 15 years. By 2050, city officials estimate that at least 800,000 residents will be living in a high risk floodplain. By 2080, nearly a third of the city\u2019s landmass could face significant flooding.<\/p>\n New Yorkers got a terrifying glimpse of what\u2019s to come in 2012, when Superstorm Sandy flooded 17% of the city\u2019s landmass, killing 43 people and causing more than $19 billion in damage.<\/p>\n Officials have been scrambling to make New York more resilient to rising waters ever since. The city has begun raising shorelines and installing massive floodgates around Lower Manhattan as part of the so-called Big U<\/a>, a 10-mile-long U-shaped system that also includes mitigation features aimed to protect the island\u2019s southern tip from future floods.<\/p>\n The estimated $2.7 billion project is among the most ambitious coastal protection efforts in the nation. But for many of New York\u2019s working class coastal residents, is just another city service they aren\u2019t seeing in their neighborhood.<\/p>\n \u201cEverybody deserves the same amount of protection,\u201d Edgemere resident Jackie Rogers told Floodlight. \u201cIf they can invest in other communities, raising up the shorelines, putting berms in the communities that\u2019s along the Lower East Side, as well as the Hudson River, why can’t they do the same thing to Edgemere?\u201d<\/p>\n Unlike Lower Manhattan, Edgemere was among the hardest hit communities during Superstorm Sandy. A low-lying neighborhood located along a narrow stretch of the Rockaway peninsula, Edgemere is flanked by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and Jamaica Bay on the other. When Sandy struck, water rushed in from both sides, filling the streets with nearly 6 feet of water.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were actually in the ocean at the height of Hurricane Sandy,\u201d Edgemere resident Sonja Webber-Bey told Floodlight. \u201cThe ocean and the bay were one in the same. So whatever was in your house was the ocean and the bay.\u201d<\/p>\n Longtime resident Sonja Webber-Bay shows how high the water reached on the streets of Edgemere during Superstorm Sandy in 2012. \u201cThe ocean and the bay were one in the same,\u201d she says. \u201cSo whatever was in your house was the ocean and the bay.\u201d (Evan Simon \/ Floodlight)<\/p>\n Yet more than a decade after city officials pledged to fortify Edgemere, critics say little has been done to protect the community from flooding.<\/p>\n \u201cEdgemere, especially the portion towards the bay, is still highly vulnerable,\u201d Olivotto said. \u201cIf a superstorm were to happen next month, the same exact issues would occur in Edgemere as they occurred in Superstorm Sandy.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2015, the city began working on the Resilient Edgemere Community Planning Initiativ<\/a>e. The goal was to reduce flood risks in Edgemere while also bringing in affordable housing. But a decade later, the plan\u2019s major resiliency project has yet to break ground.<\/p>\n While the city upgraded drainage systems, elevated more than 100 homes and rebuilt the boardwalk to help fortify Edgemere\u2019s oceanside, a crucial protection feature to raise the shoreline along the bayside was dropped.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s 13 years since Superstorm Sandy, and yet still no flood mitigation on the bayside,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cWe are forgotten here.\u201d The city\u2019s original plan<\/a> earmarked $14 million for raising the bayside shoreline.<\/p>\n \u201cThat money was taken away from Edgemere without Edgemere community members knowing about it and reallocated to another community. We want that money back. We want it reinvested back in our community. We want our shoreline to be raised,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n Official: Residents \u2018are right to be concerned\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cI understand the frustration of Edgemere residents and I think that what we’re talking about with this plan is really challenging compromises,\u201d Michael Sandler, associate commissioner at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, told Floodlight.<\/p>\n \u201cThe plan will be a success,\u201d said Sandler, whose agency is responsible for the effort. \u201cI don’t consider the plan to be complete. And I think the plan has taken much longer to implement than we would have preferred.\u201d<\/p>\n Key setbacks, he said, such as \u201ccontinuity of staffing at the agency\u201d as well as the loss of funding during the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the delays. Still, Sandler recognizes that Edgemere remains far too vulnerable.<\/p>\n \u201cWe’re coming up on the peak of hurricane season right now, and there isn’t a coastal protection feature, and I think that residents in the neighborhood are right to be concerned about what the future looks like,\u201d Sandler said in a September interview. He added, \u201cI think that we have invested a lot in the community. We have a lot in the works right now that is coming in terms of community improvements.\u201d<\/p>\n The city now relies on a federal Army Corps of Engineers project to protect Edgemere\u2019s bayside. However, the project has remained in the design phase for years, and with the Trump administration\u2019s posture towards climate change, few in Edgemere expect the project to move forward anytime soon.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s not happening,\u201d Edgemere resident Rogers said of the Army Corps project. \u201cNobody is looking to do anything along this bay to address the constant flooding of Jamaica Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n Sandler says there is federal funding for the project, and it is moving forward, but he acknowledges residents\u2019 frustration.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are really big, complicated projects, and the city does not have the full resources for all of the coastal protection projects that are necessary to protect the city from climate change,\u201d Sandler said. \u201cAnd we have a partner in the federal government who is overall pulling back from this work and from their financial commitment to resiliency. And so it is a really big challenge for New York City.\u201d<\/p>\n Caught between the housing and climate crises<\/p>\n Despite the lack of flood protections in Edgemere, the city has approved construction of new affordable housing towers in the area. One building is completed, and several other towers are slated for construction. All are in or adjacent to floodplains; sea level rise projections show they could be partially underwater by 2100.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that Edgemere may be considered as the last bastion of affordable housing in New York City, considering all the flood-prone issues that it has, I think is ridiculous,\u201d Olivotto said.<\/p>\n Officials stress the city\u2019s need for affordable housing and that apartment towers in Edgemere will be less flood-prone than one- and two- story homes. But Olivotto notes Edgemere has only one main road and one subway line for evacuation in the event of a flood.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the subway is down and your car is submerged in water, people will not be able to evacuate,\u201d she said. \u201c So your property may be safe because you are in a tower, but you might not be able to have access to services that you need, food, health care, etc. So I think the idea of bringing new homes to Edgemere needs to be rethought.\u201d<\/p>\n Edgemere Commons is among several new affordable housing towers being built in the flood-prone neighborhood, Sea level rise predictions show its location to be partially submerged in water by the year 2100. (Evan Simon \/ Floodlight)<\/p>\n Bringing more affordable housing to Edgemere continues a nearly century-old tradition of trying to concentrate low-income residents in public housing along the city\u2019s perimeter.<\/p>\n It began in the 1930s under the infamous city planner, Robert Moses, and has resulted in thousands of working class New Yorkers living in vulnerable floodplains across the city. Under Moses, New York City bought swaths of land in Edgemere and bulldozed homes to make way for public housing towers. Some got built, but many of the city lots remain empty, despite multiple urban renewal projects in the ensuing years.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of the services that were promised as part of the urban renewal were also not delivered,\u201d Olivotto said. \u201cSo many people moved in the area and were able to access some of this housing, but none of the schools or health care services that a community needs.\u201d<\/p>\n Rogers moved to Edgemere in 2007 through a city-run affordable housing initiative under the administration of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. \u201cThere were promises of supermarkets, promises of retail stores, shops. Nothing. Nothing came,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Rogers also says she wasn\u2019t fully informed about the flood risks in the area before moving there. \u201cNobody ever said that in a couple of years this community would be underwater,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cSeeing these lots vacant is very depressing to me,\u201d Rogers added. She has watched as people from outside the community dump garbage on the lots, which she says are poorly maintained by the city, with overgrown grasses forcing pedestrians off the sidewalk and into the street.<\/p>\n Decades of failed urban renewal projects combined with recent efforts by the city to relocate some residents has left New York City\u2019s Edgemere neighborhood dotted with vacant lots. (Evan Simon \/ Floodlight)<\/p>\n \u201cJust to have a sidewalk, just to have the basic things that most communities should have is a fight,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cWhy does everything have to be a fight in this community? All we want is to live a decent quality of life.\u201d<\/p>\n The lack of services, coupled with the city\u2019s attempt to relocate some residents along the bayside through a voluntary buyout program, has sparked concerns that officials are trying to push out Edgemere\u2019s long-time residents.<\/p>\n \u201cThey’re developing the whole neighborhood, but I don’t think they’re building for the people that already live here,\u201d said Webber-Bey, who has lived in Edgemere for nearly 50 years. \u201cI think people feel they just want our land and then they’re going to build something that’s three or four times as expensive and build a whole new community on the coast.\u201d<\/p>\n NYC\u2019s first try at coastal retreat struggles to take root<\/p>\n Another goal of the 2015 Resilient Edgemere Community Planning Initiative was to relocate some of the community\u2019s most vulnerable residents through a voluntary buyout program.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were really pulling back and trying for the first time in New York City some form of managed retreat from the shoreline,\u201d Sandler said.<\/p>\n The city established a Hazard Mitigation Zone in Edgemere along Jamaica Bay where it limited development and offered to buy people\u2019s homes in exchange for moving elsewhere. Ultimately, only seven of the approximately 50 eligible homeowners participated in the buyout program.<\/p>\n \u201cWe saw a mixed uptake. We had homeowners who were not interested in leaving. And I think you see (that) in most buyout communities around the country,\u201d Sandler said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve been neglected in the past and they see retreat as a new sign that the city just doesn’t want to invest in this neighborhood,\u201d Olivotto said. She added it’s important the city takes steps \u201cto try to regain trust of the citizens of Edgemere.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Edgemere\u2019s vulnerability to flooding and the lack of coastal protections, few of the residents interviewed for this report expressed any interest in leaving.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is still one of the hidden gems in New York City, even with all the vacant lots, with all the mosquitoes. It’s quiet. You can hear yourself think at night,\u201d Rogers said.<\/p>\n Research shows she is far from alone. Less than 10% of Americans who experience a natural disaster decide to relocate, according to one study. For most, it’s simply too difficult to leave the economic, social and cultural networks they\u2019ve built their lives around.<\/p>\n Jackie Rogers runs a community garden in her New York City neighborhood of Edgemere. She says the garden is a place of healing in a place that has suffered from decades of neglect and repeated coastal flooding. \u201cI’m hoping good people with good minds and good hearts look at this community and recognize the potential of what this community can really be,\u201d she says. (Evan Simon \/ Floodlight)<\/p>\n Those who move generally do so only after the economic outlook has deteriorated so much \u2014 due to rising insurance costs or the loss of jobs \u2014 that they feel they have no other choice.<\/p>\n Residents fleeing climate-fueled disasters tend to be younger, higher income households who can afford to rebuild elsewhere. When these wealthier residents leave, research shows their departure can lower the community\u2019s tax base, leaving the older, lower income households behind with fewer resources to recover and guard against future flooding.<\/p>\n \u201cWe live from day to day not knowing what a high tide or hurricane\u2019s going to do to this community. It is very scary,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cBut by the grace of God, I ain\u2019t going no place.\u201d<\/p>\n Rogers is president of a community garden, which regularly hosts community events and encourages residents to literally lay down roots.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople have suffered a lot of trauma here,\u201d Rogers said, citing years of storm damage and neglect from city officials. \u201cSo being in a space that is nature centered, we get centered.\u201d<\/p>\n Rogers has fortified the garden by installing raised metal beds, but she dreams of a day when her community finally gets the protection it\u2019s been promised.<\/p>\n \u201cI don’t believe it’s going to be underwater, even though the scientists say it is,\u201d Rogers said. \u201cAnd I’m hoping good people with good minds and good hearts look at this community and recognize the potential of what this community can really be.\u201d<\/p>\n Floodlight<\/a> is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action. Sign up for their newsletter here<\/a>. New York Focus<\/a> is an independent nonprofit newsroom investigating power in the Empire State. Sign up for their newsletter here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018We are forgotten here\u2019: As NYC builds seawalls, this Queens community feels left behind. 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