Affordable housing and community resilience

Affordable housing is one of the most important – and often the most contentious – issues facing our communities, especially our urban areas.  The issue is usually framed as providing housing for those without sufficient income to pay market rates for it.  Unfortunately this disguises one of its major complications – there are actually two distinct populations involved, the “working poor” and those who have no jobs and are homeless. For the latter,  “affordability” is essentially meaningless since they have no income.  I’ll not consider them further here, but will take this issue up in a subsequent post.

After Winter Storm Riley: Preparing Boston for future floods

Between March 2 and March 3, Winter Storm Riley underwent bombogenesis and transformed into a nor’easter. Riley, which initially began by showering the Midwest with snow, slammed into the East Coast and caused severe wind damage and flooding from New England to North Carolina. The storm resulted in at least seven deaths, the loss of power to over 2.1 million homes and businesses, the cancellation of over 4,000 domestic flights and the suspension of Amtrak in the Northeast Corridor. The governors of Maryland and Virginia declared states of emergency, while Massachusetts and Pennsylvania activated the National Guard.

Aging natural gas lines show pressing danger of aging infrastructure | Leveraging Opportunity Zones for Resilience

Throughout this series have been stories of failing infrastructure that causes serious, long lasting consequences, often with no local systems already in place to help communities recover. However, it is important to remember that when infrastructure fails, it does not just cause economic and structural problems but poses a series life safety risk. Often, it is already vulnerable communities who lack the resources to both fix problems before a disaster and cope with the fallout. This is the problem Opportunity Zones are well placed to address; incentivizing investment to fix the problems which may be otherwise overlooked.

Alaskan and Pacific Northwest coasts spared from tsunami, following 7.9 magnitude earthquake

Early Tuesday morning local time, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake occurred near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. Officials across the Alaskan coast, as well as on the western coast of British Columbia, Canada were placed on tsunami alert, while the remainder of the Pacific Northwest states were on watch. In San Francisco, the Department of Emergency Management asked residents located within three blocks of the coast and five blocks of the bay to “prepare to evacuate." At half past midnight, cellphones in Alaska buzzed with an emergency alert from the National Weather Service warning of an impending tsunami: "Emergency Alert. Tsunami danger on the coast. Go to high ground or move inland." The Kodiak Police Department insisted that locals find an area located at least 100 feet above sea level. An officer discouraged travelling up to Pillar Mountain, situated approximately 1,240 feet above sea level, as it was reportedly backed up. This urged residents to move away from coastal areas and seek higher ground at their local high schools, town pools, and hospitals.

Alberto brings torrential rain and landslides to the Southeast U.S.

The first named storm of the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season made landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Monday. Subtropical storm Alberto, which by midweek was downgraded to a tropical depression, has caused torrential rain, landslides, flash flood advisories, and winds up to 65 mph in the southeastern region of the United States. The region experienced intense rains the week prior, saturating the ground and making it more prone to flooding and landslides. Thus far, thousands of people have been left without power in the affected areas, and states of emergency have been declared in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina. Alberto is expected to stay classified as a tropical depression until it hits the Great Lakes, before incorporating into surrounding weather systems.