Staff at Washington Houses, instead, which is facing Second Avenue and
is partially affected by the 2015 FEMA floodplain, connected Sandy and
sensitivity to the high level of emergency (un)preparedness they
experienced, as they initially did not know where to go in the aftermath
of Sandy, since there continues to be no evacuation shelter in East
Harlem (the only one is PS 92 on 222 W 134 Street, in Central Harlem).
The East Harlem Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) instructed
Washington Houses Tenants, to go to the Dream Charter School, formerly
Harlem RBI, which was rebuilt in 2008 on NYCHA property, just next to
Washington Houses. Washington Houses was largely spared by Sandy, but
narrowly. Yet there are 22,000 people living in this development, some
of which have lived all their lives in these units, many with mobility
problems and unable to use smart phones. Poor emergency preparedness is
tied to a culture of neglect that unfortunately NYCHA is famous for. The
interviewee referred to a “lack of sense of belonging ” and to
NYCHA inhabitants as having a “culture of disenfranchisement ”
which is both influenced by the physical degradation of the properties
– some of the basements at Washington Houses have been closed off
because of the amounts of rats in them – the severe unreliability of
services like heating in winter, the unavailability of NYCHA staff –
which deal with complaints through a phone app that many elderly are not
trained to use. Faced with issues of such magnitude coastal flooding
just fades in the background. Yet mistrust in institutions,
stigmatization may all play a detrimental role in the event of a
flooding as people prefer to hanker down rather than leaving the
premises.
The stigmatizing of NYCHA renters versus homeowners by some
NYC authorities is well documented in the study by Graham (2018). Graham
attended local community board meetings and other Sandy recovery
planning meetings interviewing 50 local residents. Graham talks of there
being ‘an invisible divide’ between the homeowners and the public
housing tenants, the latter being stigmatized as black people of color,
an ‘inferior status’ which rationalized their unequal treatment. One of
the reasons for the alienation felt by tenants is clearly of an
institutional nature and it here that we observe how issues of
recognition are tied with institutional practices: the U.S. Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) has its own resident councils, which lead
tenants to focus their efforts on HUD only rather than on community-wide
efforts that interest NYCHA tenants. Moreover NYCHA’s
“para-governmental” status, allows it to operate with very little
managerial and budgetary oversight at the state and local level.
Both coastal and inland flooding exposure are seen as important issues
by Community Development Corporations (CDCs), where CDC managers and
some of their young staff play a key role in raising the need for
evidence of exposure and damages but also for actions to be better
prepared for the next big storm and rainfall. CDCs like Hope Inc. and
Ascendant, perceived their properties to be vulnerable to ‘blue sky
flooding’. This is the type of flooding occurring without stormy weather
and influenced by high tides at seas, high ground water table and
surface elevation. There is anecdotal evidence that this type of
flooding affects basements of properties owned by Hope Inc, which are
recurrently flooded, but for which Hope has very little funding for left
over after what goes towards regular building maintenance. Moreover,
coastal flooding will increasingly become and issues, as a recent study
showed that 84% of Hope properties and 35% of Ascendants’ may be
affected by coastal flooding by 2050 (Olivotto and Almonte, 2019).
Hope has been receiving a number
of violations
from ConEd – NYC’s energy company - because as flooding affects
basements, officers cannot access gas and water readings stored there.
Because of these violations, Hope has been unable to close housing
retrofitting deals with for-profit-banks they partner with. Yet there is
no way to prove that a violation was issued as the result of flooding in
the basement. For both Hope and Ascendant collecting and systematizing
evidence – even if anecdotal – of flooding in basements, is an
important step towards trying to address even greater issues facing
affordable housing in the context of flooding. Hope, for instance,
voiced concerns at the new developments built since Sandy in the
Hurricane Flood Zone. Although these are going up with new mitigation
measures, would their foundations affect the flow of underground water
aquifers, causing worse flooding elsewhere, perhaps in CDC homes?
In summary, although the pilot relies on a handful of interviews,
perceptions of exposure and sensitivity to coastal and inland flooding
in East Harlem vary due to some of the factors I explained above.
Coastal flooding exposure was understood in terms of extent of water
reach in the aftermath of Sandy, as a legacy of the natural biophysical
properties of the land, while inland flooding exposure was connected to
rainfall and high-water tables, leading to ‘blue sky flooding’, or as
the consequence of newly built developments which may shift aquifer
waters elsewhere and worsen flooding when it happens. Some interviewees
did not seem to be aware of the jargon ‘inland flooding’ but called
flooding anything that had to do with high levels of water affecting
people’s ability to carry out their daily lives.
Vulnerability was understood as poor emergency preparedness, aggravated
by the existing living conditions of the poor and poorest public housing
dwellers. This condition is systemic because it largely results from the
under funding of and lack of oversight over NYCHA but is also the result
of past planning decisions that in 1957 built these properties in the
only place where cheap land was still available, the floodplain, at a
time when flooding issues were not on the table. CDCs, instead,
understood vulnerability as basement flooding in CDC apartments.
Perceptions of vulnerability also varied according to location and
perceived area affluence. For instance, interviewee 1 referred to
“pockets” of vulnerability in El Barrio, Riverton and on the public
housing developments on the shore, but less so are in areas around
5th Avenue, Riverbend to the North, and other housing
cooperatives where “economically stable and politically active people”
especially in the latter, reside (Interviewee 1).
4.4 Perceptions of Climate Resilience Interventions and of City
Efforts
Climate resilience against flooding was perceived as: 1) an issue of
land use and building design; 2) an opportunity for ecological designs;
3) a need for better emergency preparedness and emergency funds; 4) an
issue of building materials; 5) an opportunity for tax credits and more
comprehensive assessment of housing retrofitting costs; 6) as ‘the
impossibility’ of relocating lower income households that are most at
risk’. All points are discussed in more detail below.
The issue of land use and building design was brought up by both the
Community Board and the CDCs. As part of its land use review duties, the
Community Board has had discussions with DCP during the review of the
Zoning Quality and Affordability Overview, where mitigation measures for
new buildings were being drafted, such as giving floor area back if the
building was built higher or designating only certain uses on the ground
floors (e.g. commercial, rather than residential). Since then, the CB
has added specific check marks on a list it keeps to remind CB members
what are the most recurrent questions they should be asking to all
developers seeking the Boards’ approval, illustrated by this quote
“there is a new project that we are considering issuing
recommendations for and because of its proximity to the river, on
120th St, it’s going to have to consider what do you
with the first couple of floors, what are you putting there, is it going
to be a parking space or commercial space or something else. So, this is
a dialogue we have at the land use committee”.
Both organizations felt that dealing largely with new building designs
wasn’t enough. Although there’s now a requirement for existing buildings
to remove boilers from basements and ground floors, the costs of this
and other mitigation measures are entirely, for instance, on CDCs
property owners, who perceive the necessity of a long-term commitment
with the government. For instance, one CDC expressed the need for
“underwriting a deal where low income housing are given tax credits to
be able to do the necessary mitigation measures”. Another CDC manager
mentioned the need for “district wide assessment of the costs of
retrofitting existing buildings, as it doesn’t make financial sense that
each development does its own”. Housing materials that are more
resistant to mold, like sheet rock, were also discussed, but so far
neither CDC began any rehabilitation process. Neither CDCs had given
significant thought about vacating the ground floor from residential
units, there seemed to be too many impossible logistics: “where would
people go? What to do with the vacant units? Why would HPD eliminate
affordable housing units, when there’s actually more need for them?”
The CB interviewee acknowledged the issue as well: “we had
informal conversations about new buildings on a NYCHA Estate as it
relates to infill development. If you’re going to have a new building on
a NYCHA Estate, the new people living there will be benefiting about
the new way of thinking about possible flooding, versus people that are
right next to it who won’t. Do you start thinking about well if I have
10 empty apartments in a building do I fix those apartments, move
everyone from the ground/first floor into these apartments and then just
stop using the first floor for residential, and make a community space
or a commercial space”. This is a crucial issue that a procedural
justice can daylight, which relates to the potential for unequal
distribution of resilience benefits between new and existing
developments. NYCHA should be replicating good practices in new
buildings also in old ones, but executing works in old buildings is
perceived as a problem: “we’ll make a formal recommendation (to
the land use committee) at some point but it’s a huge ask because it’s a
lot of developments, the executing may be a difficult part ”
(Interviewee 1).
Both the CDC and Washington Houses expressed the need for better
emergency preparedness, specifically in terms of needing a new
evacuation shelter that is outside the floodplain and closer to the
hearth of East Harlem. Discussions on this have happened within the
frame of the Rezoning Plan but no final decision had been made. Yet
shelters are not the only need when housing tenants have mobility
issues, something more is needed. The Washington Houses and Dream
Charter School teachers cooperated in 2018 to design and distribute an
emergency preparedness survey that was answered by 35 households to
understand how vulnerable their tenants were: “we discovered that 70%
of the respondents had one person with disabilities in their homes”
(Interviewee 3). Even though a booklet with the survey results was
distributed in different languages with information on what to do in
case of evacuation, there still remains a logistical issue to move
people with disabilities outside and have sufficient support on the way
to the shelter.
Finally, CIVITAS sees flooding as an opportunity to re-think the
waterfront, lawns, drainage systems and the whole emergency apparatus.
This view, on one hand, stands in contrast to the hard infrastructure,
like sea walls, proposed in the Rezoning Plan (Planning, 2016), but is
quite aligned with the ongoing Resilience Study by the Parks Dept. (NYC
Parks and NYC Planning, 2018) CIVITAS has been doing preliminary
background work, with the DEC at State level, to implement the idea of
living shorelines in a comprehensive fashion. Living shorelines are a
softer solution than bulkheads, preferring natural materials that slow
down wave motion or absorb water while providing ecological benefits.
The Resilience Study by the Parks Dept, quoted by CIVITAS, highlighted
many potential areas, including lawns in front of or within many public
housing, that represent “largely unused space and could be repurposed
for bios-wales to slow down and absorb storm water”. The interviewee’s
experience working as a planner in Miami, played an important role in
shaping ideas around what should be done in New York City, where for
instance, he maintains that all buildings containing first emergency
vehicles should be elevated about floodplain level, at least the
garages, so that as soon as flood waters recede, vehicles can reach
those in need.
In an earlier email exchange with CIVITAS, I also understand something
more fundamental about resilience or that there is a perception that the
city acknowledges the need for alternative designs/solutions on paper
but the reality is far from it. The Parks department is going to spend
over $100 million in East Harlem to connect 125th St
and 132nd St. along the Harlem River, where currently
there is a wall. CIVITAS has been advocating for a living shoreline
instead of bulkheads. This would entail authorities to ‘lose’ 5-10 feet
of land but Parks and the administration have refused the idea to lose
land, they will not ask for permits for a living shoreline“because it may slow down the project” . This decision is at
odds with state regulatory agencies, who instead believe that this can
be done. The frustration was clear: “We could be building
environmental resiliency and ecological benefits into this new project,
but the ”value” of an extra 5-10 feet of grass or benches is determined
by Parks to be more valuable than the environment, even though, if you
ask the Mayor, Parks, anyone if they support climate change, sea level
rise adaptation, the environment, improving water quality, or adding
more oysters that would filter more pollutants, they will all answer
yes, we are in favor of environmental justice, environmental
adaptation… The actions do not support the policies, laws, or public
views.”
WeAct, adds an important justice perspective to the considerations
above. DEP has spent over $40 million to-date on wetlands restoration
and other coastal protections but what remains to be seen if the extent
to which developments will encompass community-based plans or be
leveraged to gentrify waterfront areas (Santiago et al. , 2015).
In my brief conversation with a WeAct community organizer, I found out
that none of the ideas proposed in the Northern Manhattan Climate Action
Plan, which included, wetland restoration amongst a host of other
resiliency objectives, had been seriously taken in consideration by the
city.
4.5 Climate Knowledge Production, Access, Use and
Sharing
In this part of the study the focus was to collect information about how
community groups engage with information about the location and timing
of future flooding, what do they use it for, how it is accessed and
shared. In general findings suggest that organizations rely on the
weather forecast, online websites and tv or on the information given by
sister agencies, such as DEP and Parks. This after all makes sense, in
big cities the tendency may be to rely on lesser sources of information
already packaged for you by organizations that have the means to produce
knowledge on climate. This is accompanied by less formal or standardized
effort to gather knowledge, such as using weather apps on smart phones
but not as far as asking a neighbor on the street, or just knowing the
direction the wind is blowing or other natural clues. In some sense
knowledge is coming from multiple sites and may be produced quite far
away from people’s homes. Yet these knowledge sites come from largely
centralized sources, begging the question of whether areas in the
‘countryside’ upstate may rely on less modern forms, or whether cultural
differences among New Yorkers may lead to culturally different ways to
understand when a hurricane is about to strike.
The information is used to make practical emergency management decisions
about the days ahead, illustrated in this statement “I do the same as
in a big snow storm: are you going to come into the office, then maybe
you check what the Mayor is saying, stay off the streets, or schools ae
closed. Same thing applies to a hurricane”. (Interviewee 2) The CB
plays a more complex role, one that is more integrated with the web of
agencies that provided services to New Yorkers, while at the same time
being ‘closer’ to the citizen. When asked what they would do in the
event someone would call the CB alerting about a flood, they would seek
to understand whether other people are having the same problem, by
making phone calls, and if there’s a pattern and depending on its
gravity they would either call the police or fire fighters. If the
problem seems not life threatening they would convene a public hearing,
communicate what they learned about the issue and what other authorities
can do to help them: “do we have to talk to the property owner? or
multiple property owners? is it a matter of local, federal or state
policy?” (Interviewee 1). The atmosphere experienced at the few CB
meetings I attended speaks to these words. It’s a space of dialogue,
where nobody is turned down but also where board members have answers to
your questions, or even if they don’t, they will help you to find it out
on your own. At the same time the CB is not so informed as to where
should citizens go in case of a hurricane, they rely entirely on COAD’s
or CERT’s information and expressed the need for “information to be
available to constituents directly, so that they know without needing to
contact us. those properties that are in flood zones should have numbers
to call to help people deal with the situation presented” (Interviewee
1).
In terms of access to events where knowledge about flooding may be made
available three out of four organizations, including WeAct, host events
related to climate resilience. CIVITAS organizes hands-on events along
the East River Esplanade that engage citizens in waterfront wetland
restoration and clean ups. These events indirectly touch upon issues of
stormwater drainage and the benefits of living shorelines. WeAct hosts
monthly public meetings as well as going out in the community to do
advocacy on issues connected to both flooding, energy efficiency and
broad environmental and neighborhood justice. Although they largely
operate on the Upper West Side, they have engaged with East Harlem’s
Rezoning Plan process, for instance, by drafting a map of different land
uses and public services with overlaid hurricane zones and the incoming
subway line. This view puts the city rezoning map into a different
light, it makes one question whether all these vital public facilities
should be there since they are within Hurricane Zones 2 and 3. The city
rezoning map carefully omits the hurricane zone overlay (Figure 2)