Adapt Buildings

Make public and private buildings more resilient

Many of New York City's nearly one million buildings are not as prepared as they need to be against evolving risks. To address this, we will adapt vulnerable building stock to withstand the risks of climate change and extreme weather events.

Upgrade public and private city buildings

The City will implement the Build it Back program to demonstrate how best to prepare homes and neighborhoods for the future. In addition to elevating houses, the program is exploring other protective strategies to improve single-family homes and upgrade multi-family buildings, including the relocation or hardening of building systems, and flood-proofing of lower levels. The City’s multi-family housing component of Build it Back provides comprehensive resiliency retrofit measures necessary to protect vulnerable residents from the loss of critical building services in the event of a storm, such as raising electrical equipment and other building systems, flood-proofing lower levels of buildings, and ensuring the redundancy of building systems.

The City will also invest in increasing the resiliency of public housing. NYCHA has secured over $3 billion from FEMA to execute a comprehensive resiliency program across 33 public housing developments, which will include the elevation and hardening of building systems, flood-proofing, and upgrading infrastructure.

The City will also continue to repair and upgrade City-owned buildings to mitigate the impacts of future climate changes. In all cases, the City is committed to maximizing the allocation of federal funding for building resiliency and will identify all required local match funding to secure those funds.

Adopt policies to support building upgrades

The City's efforts to upgrade buildings for climate resiliency must be supported by policies that enable the right investments in building resiliency. Overall, new zoning requirements, updated building codes, and reforms to flood insurance programs are already having an effect on the built environment, with the City coordinating these efforts across government stakeholders and with the community.

The City will continue to align zoning and building code updates with reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and expected changes to the Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs). A working group focused on resiliency is already active within City government, with representatives across capital and planning agencies, and will lead this program.

By 2018, the City will work to develop and adopt consistent resilient design guidelines for buildings in areas vulnerable to flooding, extreme wind, and heat. With our changing climate, these standards will need to be developed based on an evaluation of the inherent uncertainty of future climate projections, the lifespan of assets, and their criticality in order to develop cost-effective design guidelines. These guidelines will ensure what is built adheres to the highest performance standards.

As part of this effort, the City will explore funding for loans and grants to finance and encourage resiliency retrofits such as home elevations and other building upgrades for building owners who were unable to participate in current programs.

Another important aspect in this effort is land use. The City continues to evaluate land use as a tool to promote resiliency across the city. The Department of City Planning’s ongoing Resilient Neighborhoods studies are engaging communities in ten areas across the five boroughs that face flooding and other resiliency challenges. In this process, the City will evaluate and establish a framework for adaptive land use planning based on a range of coastal hazards and with consideration of climate change projections. This will include updates to local land use regulations and citywide zoning to promote resiliency investments in buildings and infrastructure, including commercial and industrial buildings, and will explore incentives to balance the costs of improvements.

Finally, the City will increase the capacity of owners and operators of buildings located in the floodplain to align investments around both sustainability and resiliency investments when capital improvements are made. This will coincide with investments being made in the City’s municipal and private building stock to promote energy efficiency and reduced greenhouse gas emissions