Loíza, Puerto Rico — Standing on the windswept beach, Guillermo Carmona looked out at the white-capped cerulean blue ocean and the hulk of a building that was once a beloved community center hosting town meetings and dances. Today, its scalloped roof slumps and its walls are pocked with gaping holes. The floor is littered with broken glass, sea bird droppings and trash. Nearby buildings are similarly decrepit; they once housed a fish market and an early childhood education program.

The structures are victims of Hurricanes Irma and María and —before that— the island’s struggling economy, forces that have devastated the homes and lives of many residents in this small community of Parcelas Suárez and across the island.

Many wealthier areas, like beachfront San Juan neighborhoods just 15 miles west, have rebuilt and even prospered since the hurricanes.

But the largely Afro-Caribbean community of Parcelas Suárez is starved of economic resources and faces another major challenge: drastic coastal erosion from strong Atlantic currents, made worse by sea-level rise and increasingly strong storms linked to climate change.

The beach alongside the destroyed community center is scarred by the relentless sea. Palm trees tilt toward the water, their roots naked and dangling. Concrete benches and picnic tables are crumbling, used only as shade by stray dogs. Carmona and other locals had hoped to rebuild the community center, originally opened in 1976 by a popular former mayor. But the building’s current state, the encroaching sea and the scarcity of money make that goal seem distant.

The Army Corps of Engineers is planning to build a 10-foot-high barrier of rocks to protect a 1,050-foot stretch of coast including the former community center, at a cost of $5 million in federal dollars. Erosion has been eating away at the beach since long before Hurricanes Irma and María, and since 2010, the Army Corps has been studying ways to curb the destruction. It studied “hard” options like a rock barrier and “soft” solutions like new dunes and vegetation. Scientists worldwide generally recommend soft solutions since hard infrastructure often changes the local ecology and can worsen erosion in adjacent areas, as currents are funneled to the sides of seawalls or barriers.