Sea Level Rise and Coastal Flooding Threaten Affordable Housing

Earlier this month, NHT and Climate Central released a first-of-its-kind analysis of the threat to affordable housing in coastal states from sea-level rise over the next 30 years. The analysis underscores the urgent need to improve resilience to climate impacts to preserve affordable housing. Some of the high-level findings of the research include the following:

• The research showed the number of affordable rental apartments at risk from coastal flooding, and sea-level rise is expected to more than triple during the next three decades.
• By 2050, virtually every coastal state is expected to have at least some affordable rentals exposed to more than one "coastal flood risk event" per year, on average—up from about half of coastal states in the year 2000.
• New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts have the largest share of affordable housing stock and number of units at risk. Projections for New York City, Atlantic City, and Boston show that each city could have thousands of units exposed to chronic coastal flooding by 2050

You can see a report summarizing the study’s findings here and the peer-reviewed paper published in Environment Research Letters here. Click here to find local impacts using Climate Central’s interactive maps (select Affordable Housing from the Choose Map menu).

For more information, contact Todd Nedwick at tnedwick@nhtinc.org