The amazingly short-sighted ‘Build It Back’ program – New York City’s overly-ambitious rebuilding of Hurricane Sandy damaged homes – is going to overrun time and financial goals:
After Sandy, Overpromising and Underdelivering
The program is $500 million over budget and on track to blow its end-of-2016 completion deadline. Under the program, begun by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city was to repair or rebuild homes or to reimburse homeowners for repairs they completed themselves.
Of the 5,565 single-family homes in the city-managed construction pipeline, only 44 percent have been completed so far, and Mayor Bill de Blasio says that figure will reach 75 percent by the end of the year. Build It Back was originally budgeted to use $1.7 billion in federal housing funds, but now the de Blasio administration says it needs an additional $500 million in city funds to finish the job.
But the existential question isn’t hand wringing about the additional $500 million, although that does sting. The real issue is that in a world with rising oceans and increasingly violent weather, the buildings shouldn’t have been rebuilt at all.
In a rapidly changing climate, their windblown condos and bungalows are in harm’s way, and what government really should be rebuilding is storm-absorbing wetlands and parks.
Everybody wants to live on the beach. But when the storms blow and the waters rise, overmatched bureaucrats and frustrated homeowners will end up caught in the undertow, for years to come. In this sense, the very words “Build It Back” miss the point — unless by “back” you mean back, way back, from the water’s edge.
As I wrote in ‘13:
Stowe Boyd, The Shoreline Should Be Treated As A Commons, Not Private Property
“It’s up to the homeowner, and the vast bulk of homeowners are deciding to stay right where they are and rebuild,” Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said at a news conference in Albany.
Why is it up to the homeowner when it is the government spending billions of our money to stupidly rebuild private homes in neighborhoods that will undoubtedly be swept by hurricanes again in the near future? Will Cuomo say the same, then? Of course, he may be out of the Governor’s mansion then, and off doing other things.
We are in the postnormal, and this is the sort of result we can expect. We’re confronted with an existential threat – the increasing violence and frequency of ocean storms, rising sea levels – and we respond as if this is still 1950, or 1850. We are unwilling to adopt new responses to new problems, and the first barrier is our understanding: we don’t realize we aren’t in Kansas anymore, but on the other side of the rainbow.
Climate change is a synonym for human stupidity.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/152154738097
