Report: 82,000 Homes in New York Likely Lost to Flooding in 15 Years

NEW YORK—With the dual threats of climate change and a lack of housing looming over coastal cities worldwide, a new report last week forecasts that New York could see more than 82,000 homes on Staten Island, in southeast Queens and in the suburbs east of New York City lost to floods over the next 15 years.

The report produced last week by the Regional Plan Association, a nonprofit civic organization, illustrates the communities and swaths of land in every borough that are likely to become impossible to develop, and it also warns how climate change could make the housing crisis even worse by helping to push the area’s housing shortage to a staggering 1.2 million homes.

The Rockaway Peninsula in Queens in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Photo Credit/REBUILD BY DESIGN

Amy Chester, the managing director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that works to make infrastructure better able to withstand storms and climate change, said, “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.”

Moses Gates, the RPA’s vice president for housing and neighborhood planning and an author of the report, told The New York Times, “You’re going to need to build more housing to just replace what is lost in your own municipality.”

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.

Rebuild by Design also noted that cities along the Long Island Sound on both the island and in Westchester County would also be vulnerable. Each could lose over 6,000 units by 2040. Among the communities illustrated in Westchester were the Sound Shore communities of Port Chester, Rye, Mamaroneck, Larchmont, New Rochelle and The Pelhams, sections of Central Westchester and Yonkers.

To read the full report, go to www.rpa.org/work/reports/averting-crisis#overview

 At a Glance

  • In New York City, waterfront neighborhoods in southern Queens and Brooklyn, such as the Rockaways and Canarsie, would see the most losses.
  • Flooding and other extreme weather events will likely push thousands of people from their homes in the New York region over the next 15 years.
  • Some 100,000 New Yorkers currently live in low-lying coastal areas affected by routine flooding. About half of them reside in the neighborhoods surrounding Jamaica Bay.
  • 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.

Published: April 16, 2025

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