Climate Adaptation at Waterfront Affordable Housing: How NYCHA Invested $3B to Protect 60,000 New Yorkers

In the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy, the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)–the largest landlord in North America–invested more than $3 billion to repair damage from the storm and look ahead to protect 200 multi-family buildings from future climate hazards. NYCHA incorporated passive and deployable systems to protect structures and critical infrastructure from flooding and installed generators to provide full back up power. In this session, we'll show how to retrofit 50–80-year-old brick buildings to withstand storm surge, sea level rise, extreme rain, and power outages. We'll also talk to some of the universal operationalization challenges of these resilience strategies that every property owner should keep in mind.