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Deane Evans and Christine Liaukus are trying to build a better future for New Jersey homeowners, one where homes are protected from climate change, rising seas and stronger storms.
That isn’t easy in a state where floods are becoming more frequent, storms threaten ever greater numbers of homes, and even the occasional tornado tears a house apart.
Many of New Jersey’s homes “weren’t really built for this increased amount of flooding or hurricanes,” said Evans, the executive director of NJIT’s Center for Building Knowledge, an institute focused on building more climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable structures.
New Jersey, like its neighbors in the Northeast, has some of the oldest housing stock in the nation. The median age of an owner-occupied home in New Jersey is between 51 and 60 years old, according to a report by the National Association of Home Builders.
That’s problematic, because experts say newer homes are better equipped at withstanding high winds and stronger storms.
Even before superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, builders and construction code officials saw that older homes were more likely to be severely damaged by coastal storms.
“The homes that have been built in the last 10 to 15 years have way outperformed the older homes,” said John Barrows, a builder and expert in resilient building practices who serves as chairman of the green sustainability subcommittee in the National Association of Home Builders.
‘We indeed see a crisis’
Remodeling New Jersey’s aging structures will be part of protecting the Jersey Shore for the future, housing experts say.
“We really, culturally, need to start looking at optimizing things homeowners are doing anyway, because they’re spending a lot of money” on home projects, said Evans. “So there’s a lot of investment going on that maybe could be better optimized for performance.”
Yet, state leaders say the policies that force homebuilders to be proactive are lagging behind growing scientific data that says thousands of homes are in high-risk areas for storm surges, flooding and coastal winds.
“To the dissatisfaction of some and the inattention of many, we’re at the beginning of the big game of grappling with this issue,” New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Shawn M. LaTourette told the Asbury Park Press. “We want to see our communities thrive. … We want to see our beaches replenished and our tourism industry booming.”
Yet swaths of society have largely ignored the coming climate crisis, LaTourette said.
“We indeed see a crisis,” he said. “I say that not hyperbolically. There is a financial, an environmental, a public safety crisis that we’re putting off.”
The sea level along New Jersey’s coast is likely to rise 0.5 to 1.1 feet between 2000 and 2030, and between about a foot to 2.1 feet between 2000 and 2050, according to Rutgers University’s NJ Climate Change Resource Center.
Scientists also expect severe tropical storms to become more frequent, more intense and dump more heavy rain as the climate changes, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
That makes the work of Evans and Liaukus all the more integral. Beneath the hammering, banging and construction sounds that compose their research is an urgency: how quickly, and at what cost, can New Jersey’s housing stock be upgraded to withstand climate change?
“This is an area that Christina (Liaukus) and I’ve been poking around for probably seven or eight years now,” said Evans, “something we refer to as ‘opportunistic retrofitting.'”
In opportunistic retrofitting, a contractor who needs to repair aged siding or replace an old roof considers sustainability and climate change factors and uses a more resilient or a more energy efficient product. It means using siding that enables a home to stay comfortable longer without electricity, or installing a roof that is more resistant to high winds.
“A lot of the houses (in New Jersey) are built in a way that isn’t terribly durable for high winds,” said Liaukus, housing and community development manager at the NJIT Center for Building Knowledge. “Some (newer) houses have hurricane straps around the rafters and joists, but many older homes don’t.”
‘Scaring people isn’t sufficient’
Part of the state Department of Environmental Protection’s work is to get communities along the Shore to have the hard conversations about how best to prepare for climate change and their futures.
Already, time maybe running short, according to climate scientists. In February, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released a report updating sea level projections, expecting between 10 and 14 inches of sea level rise along the East Coast by 2050. Moderate flooding around the nation is expected to increase 10 fold in frequency compared to today’s levels, according to the report.
In places like Long Beach Island, the results could be catastrophic. Nick Angarone, the DEP’s chief climate resilience officer, said ongoing talks with community members are underway to craft a plan to prepare for future flooding and coastal storms.
“The impacts of (climate change) are so, so big, it’s easy to just kind of get overwhelmed and throw your hands up,” said Angarone. “We’ve learned over the last couple decades, just scaring people isn’t sufficient. You have to give them an outlet to help them try and solve the problem.”
Strengthening buildings under threat
New construction techniques — such as strapping roofs with new methods, using quick drying mold-resistant material and elevating structures in flood zones — has helped preserve newer homes through coastal storms, said Barrows, of the National Association of Home Builders.
Currently, building codes in Shore and flood-prone communities are determined by risk maps released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The agency’s maps take into account flood frequency risks, likely maximum water heights and wave velocity during storms in these neighborhoods.
“What FEMA and (building) codes have been starting to approach is… the recommendation (that) would be ‘don’t build there if you have to rebuild back’,” said Barrows. “But that’s really difficult thing to tell people when that’s their property.”
In some New Jersey neighborhoods, paying homeowners to leave — through the state’s Blue Acres program — has proven more economical than paying flood insurance claims year after year.
In other communities, like the Jersey Shore, experts are focusing their resilience strategies on building waterfront homes that will withstand strong waves and high winds, dry quickly after floods, or rise above them altogether.
Dan Newman, the construction code officials for Brick Township, said coastal flood maps are moving high risk areas further inland over time and accounting for higher wind speeds along the coast, up from 90 mph to as much as 120 mph. As a result, any new construction requires a different type of home engineering.
“The roof structure has to be tied to the top of the walls in a different way… you basically tie the entire system down to withstand higher wind speed,” Newman said.
Construction codes are likely to change again in the near future, said Edward Striedl, the construction official and flood plain manager in Keansburg. After Superstorm Sandy, about 10% of the borough’s housing stock was rebuilt or elevated after the massive storm breached the community’s protective dunes and flooded neighborhoods, he said.
Taller homes, bigger wind
Though elevating homes is the first line of defense to protect structures from future flooding, the height of the homes leads to new challenges, he said.
“You start elevating the homes, they naturally start to become more impacted by wind,” said Striedl. “You’re picking them up higher now and you got a wind load that you have to contend with.”
According to Rutgers University climate data, peak wind gusts in Ocean County exceeded 90 mph in Seaside Heights during Superstorm Sandy. The speed surpassed the older roof construction building design limit.
Coastal storms are not the only wind threat to New Jersey homeowners. In 2021, New Jersey recorded 13 tornadoes and 42 days where wind gusts reached at least 50 mph, according to Rutgers.
LaTourette, the Department of Environmental Protection commissioner, said extreme weather is likely to become more common in New Jersey as the climate changes.
“How do we build infrastructure in a way that is more future focused?” he said. “How do we ensure that we’re building or rebuilding homes in a way that is more future focused?”
The Department of Environmental Protection does not regulate building codes, which are adopted statewide and enforced locally. However, the department has some regulatory oversight on commercial, residential, public and industrial development in New Jersey’s coastal regions, through the state’s Coastal Area Facility Review Act.
LaTourette said changes to New Jersey’s flood hazard standards were “imminent” and expected to release details in the coming weeks.
“It’s incumbent upon us to make sure that folks are informed and aware (of climate change dangers),” the commissioner said. “When we’re building things, we want them to stand the test of time.”
Protecting homes from New Jersey’s growing climate threats require a careful balancing act against escalating construction and material costs, experts said.
Both affordable and resilient solutions are “a heck of a lot more difficult to come up with,” said Barrows, of the green sustainability subcommittee in the National Association of Home Builders. “People live in the homes (and) they could be on fixed incomes. You’ve got to respect the equity that they sunk into their home and … what their financial condition is now, whether they are able to afford some of these measures.”
Streidl, of Keansburg, said resilient home construction is an issue that cannot be ignored in the long term, dhe extra expense. Without building more resilient homes, flood insurance prices will become unaffordable in coastal communities, he said.
“It’s not sustainable for insurance funding to be continually spent on flood claims,” he said. “So what the future is going to bring, it’s going to be hard to understand. Everybody’s going to have to pull a little bit harder (in the housing sector) to try to get a better product.”
Amanda Oglesby is an Ocean County native who covers Brick, Barnegat and Lacey townships as well as the environment. She has worked for the Press for more than a decade. Reach her at @OglesbyAPP, [email protected] or 732-557-5701.
