Evening Roundup: Housing Fight Brewing in NJ, New Guidelines Create COVID Vaccine Hassle, Liberty Clinch Playoff Spot, and Fire Island Faces Climate Threat

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Sean Carlson: Housing fight brewing in New Jersey, new guidelines create COVID vaccine hassle, the New York Liberty clinch a playoff spot, and Fire Island faces climate threat. From WNYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Sean Carlson. A new fight is brewing over affordable housing in New Jersey. Housing advocates are asking state courts to crack down on towns for not meeting requirements to build affordable housing. WNYC's Mike Hayes reports.

Mike Hayes: Housing advocates and nonprofit developers were up in arms earlier this year when the Murphy administration and state legislature diverted $125 million from the state's affordable Housing Trust fund. Last month, WNYC reported on a project to build low-cost homes that was stalled due to lack of trust fund money. On Tuesday, the state's Department of Community Affairs announced it was restoring $45 million to the trust fund. The agency says 10 million of that will be earmarked for Habitat for Humanity projects, which builds affordable homes for low and medium-income families to own.

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Sean Carlson: Doctors and pharmacies in New York region say they've begun getting more requests for COVID vaccinations as back-to-school season gets underway. Shifting federal guidance means getting those shots is becoming more complicated. WNYC's Caroline Lewis says pharmacies are struggling to get blanket orders and are having to get creative.

Caroline Lewis: National chains are figuring out their own workarounds, like CVS and Walgreens. Both said they will start offering the new COVID shots in New York, but patients have to get a prescription from their doctor, something that has never been required in the past.

Sean Carlson: New FDA guidelines say COVID shots are approved for people over 65 and for younger people at high risk for severe symptoms. Conditions that make someone qualify include HIV, asthma, and diabetes.

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Sean Carlson: It hasn't been pretty, but the defending WNBA champs are heading back to the playoffs. Despite coming off a loss, the New York Liberty have officially qualified for the postseason. The Libs took an L Tuesday night and lost six of their last 10 games, but thanks to the Indiana Fever losing in Phoenix, the Liberty get in anyway. The team won their first-ever championship last fall and are looking to repeat. They have three regular-season games left, and the playoffs begin September 14th.

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Sean Carlson: Up next, Fire Island is one of the most sought-after beachfronts in New York, but now it's at the center of a climate crisis. We'll have more on that after the break.

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Sean Carlson: It's one of the most beautiful beachfronts in the entire Northeast, and it's been a haven for the city's LGBTQ community for decades, but Fire Island is also facing increased threats in the climate crisis. WNYC's Liam Quigley reports on a push to prevent it from becoming New York's version of Atlantis.

Liam Quigley: Getting to most parts of Fire Island requires a ferry ride or a water taxi along the Great South Bay. Once you arrive, you're met with natural beauty. The water is clear and there's a lot of sand to enjoy, but overall, it's a narrow little island. I only have to walk a few hundred feet from one side to the other to reach Henry Robin's house. Robin first came to Fire Island around 1998, and like many gay men of his era, the journey wasn't easy. He didn't come out until his first marriage to a woman ended in divorce.

Henry Robin: I didn't have the courage to come out to myself or to my family and friends and community until I was in my early 30s, when our marriage ended in divorce.

Liam Quigley: That's when Robin first came to the Pines. It's a largely gay community on the eastern half of Fire Island.

Henry Robin: It didn't take me long upon landing in New York to learn that if you are a gay man living in New York City, you got to experience Fire Island Pines. That's just a requirement.

Liam Quigley: Even though the island attracts two million visitors a year, severe storms and rising sea levels are increasingly threatening its communities. Just a couple years ago, a major storm had worn away most of the beachfront at the Pines.

Henry Robin: There was, of course, the real possibility that if the erosion were to continue and no repairs were to occur, communities, including the Pines, were at jeopardy of being lost.

Liam Quigley: Fire Island is more than a destination. It's a crucial barrier island that shields the entire south shore of Long Island from tides and storm surge, but it's also at major risk from climate change.

Henry Robin: The flooding, the erosion, the loss of property, and potentially the loss of life would be significantly more real and more threatening were it not for Fire Island.

Liam Quigley: Sandy threw the future of Fire Island into more serious doubt, and things were again looking very bleak just a couple years ago, after another big storm. The beach was almost gone, and the end seemed imminent. Now, thanks to $1.7 billion in funding approved by state lawmakers and Governor Kathy Hochul in May, there's a solid framework to keep the beach from being eroded for the next three decades. Robin runs the local Property Owners Association. He played a big role in fighting for Hochul to deliver for Fire Island in the state budget.

Robin is crediting Hochul for holding up the state side of a deal with the federal government. It's a three-decade plan to restore the beaches at regular intervals. Now she's getting a hero's welcome.

Speaker 1: Governor Kathy Hochul.

[applause]

Speaker 2: How are you?

Speaker 3: Good, thank you.

Speaker 2: [unintelligible 00:05:43]

Speaker 3: Cool. [laughs]

Liam Quigley: The return of the beach and the reassurance of regular replenishment work is like a calming wave for the community. It's also comforting for homeowners like Darren Jones

Darren Jones: To see this vast expanse of golden sand, and then you walk out to the tide's edge and look back, you can see practically the whole pines were so far out. It's very reassuring and necessary because we're protecting Long Island.

Liam Quigley: Jones also recognizes how Fire Island's future is precarious.

Darren Jones: For people being here, but it'd probably be better for the environment if nobody was here. [chuckles]

Liam Quigley: Less than 1,000 people live here full-time. The uncertainty of continued federal funding for beach replenishment gives experts like Rob Young some pause when talking about the future of places like this.

Rob Young: Looking 30 years down the road, I'm not positive that the federal match is going to be available for that period of time.

Liam Quigley: Young is the director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University. He said Fire Island is in a better position than other places that are fighting back the ocean because there's so much sand to use offshore. He said this is a battle being fought from Maine to Texas.

Rob Young: Beach nourishment, pumping sand on the beaches, has become our primary response to long-term sea level rise and shoreline change. We're basically trying to do it everywhere. This is not something that's unique to Fire Island or New York.

Liam Quigley: For how many decades is this sustainable? Young said there's enough sand to keep replenishing the beaches for the foreseeable future, and sand wants to move. Fire Island was once connected to the rest of Long Island on its eastern end. The work that will benefit Fire Island is part of a massive coastal protection plan for the whole south shore, so it doesn't benefit Fire Island alone, but the work it allows for might be more crucial here than anywhere else. The certainty of that money flowing for decades to come is a bigger question.

Rob Young: The main question is, how long can this really happen, and who should pay?

Liam Quigley: Under the 30-year plan to keep Fire Island beaches replenished, the federal government is on the hook for a large portion of the cash. By the time Hochul left the island, the party in the pines was roaring to life.

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Liam Quigley: Keeping beaches in place is going to get more expensive. Henry Robin says he's going to keep fighting to keep the sand and the island protected.

Henry Robin: It's a community that has such a strong history and such meaning today. It would be a shame to see that lost because of the inaction around taking smart, normal, effective measures at protecting the shoreline.

Liam Quigley: Nothing is promised for Fire Island, but for right now, the sun is shining on a big stretch of sandy beach, and the future is feeling a bit more secure.

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Sean Carlson: Thanks for listening to NYC Now from WNYC. I'm Sean Carlson. We'll be back tomorrow.

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