Troy

For those of you who know and love Troy, this won't be an easy read. That's especially true if South Troy is your neighborhood of choice.

Virginia Eubanks is with you. She hates having to talk about this. She calls South Troy the world's best neighborhood, without irony, and feels fortunate to live there. But she believes its future is threatened.

Reason No. 1 is climate change. Reason No. 2 is the resulting spike in flood-insurance costs.

"We will probably be the last owners of our house," Eubanks said. "It breaks my heart to say that."

I asked to meet with Eubanks after reading her upcoming article about Troy in The Nation magazine. (The piece is already online.) Together, we took a walk around South Troy, that scrappy neighborhood of brick rowhouses bordered by the Hudson.

Troy is the water and the water is Troy. And so floods are an unfortunate part of the city's history. They are likely to be an even bigger part of its future, given that a warming climate is expected to produce more powerful storms.

Quick note to climate-change deniers: Let's not do that here, OK? At this point, arguing over whether warming is happening is like debating whether the moon is made of cheese. It's silly.

More Information Contact Chris Churchill at 518-454-5442 or email cchurchill@timesunion.com See More Collapse

In any event, the National Flood Insurance Program has long been an affordable buffer to economic damage from flooding. Yet as floods have become more costly, and arguably more frequent, the federal government has responded by hiking premiums.

In a way, that's perfectly rational. We can all agree, I think, that taxpayers shouldn't subsidize protection for million-dollar homes perched at the edge of the sea. But Eubanks argues that rising premiums are devastating for working-class city neighborhoods near water, like South Troy.

Rising insurance costs rob lower-income families of the equity accumulated in their homes, she says. Since lenders make flood insurance a mortgage requirement in areas deemed risky, higher premiums also raise housing costs, forcing many potential buyers to avoid floodplain neighborhoods entirely.

Eubanks calls all this "climate redlining" — which references the federal government's racist refusal to back inner-city mortgages from the 1930s to the 1960s, a policy that fueled white flight and created urban slums.

Cities have only recently begun to recover. And actually, this is generally an optimistic time for cities, as evidenced by the wave of reinvention happening in Troy's downtown.

But you may have already surmised that Eubanks' article drags Troy's renaissance narrative into a back alley and gives it a good beating. Yes, downtown is thriving ... but the neighborhoods?

Eubanks, 44, and her partner live about mile south of downtown, on Ida Street. The property backs up to the Poestenkill, which makes the possibility of rising water even more of a threat. In fact, a good chunk of her magazine story recounts the harm done in 2011 by Tropical Storm Irene and how the neighborhood barely dodged catastrophe.

As we walked, Eubanks, a writer who has taught at the University at Albany, said her flood insurance premiums have been increasing about 10 percent per year. Many of her neighbors who don't have mortgages are simply taking their chances and going without the protection.

We crossed the Poestenkill at First Street and headed toward the river, which you can forget is even there in South Troy, given that it's hidden behind an industrial zone.

The only access point is the little fishing pier at the end of Madison Street. When we got there, Eubanks pointed to the city's seawall, which helps protect central Troy from rising water but may enhance the risk elsewhere.

"Because we're beyond the seawall, North and South Troy are extra vulnerable," Eubanks wrote in her story. "The wall stops water from entering downtown, by pushing it, like the prow of a ship, to either side, turning our neighborhoods into sacrifice zones."

As we walked, Eubanks and I passed my old apartment on Third Street. As sentimentality overwhelmed me — OK, not really — Eubanks told me the property is outside the floodplain, evidence that the neighborhood is unevenly impacted by higher flood-insurance costs, at least for now.

I asked Eubanks if she worried that publicizing the neighborhood's situation might intensify the disinvestment she fears. She said she wrestled with that question, but ultimately decided ignoring the problem posed a bigger threat.

Eubanks' difficult conclusion about her own house — that it will never have another owner — is based on her belief that buying it will make less and less sense as the climate warms. The house is becoming valueless.

That's financially devastating for her family. But it's the potential death of her neighborhood, Eubanks said, that brings the most sorrow.

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5442 • @chris_churchill

Troy

For those of you who know and love Troy, this won't be an easy read. That's especially true if South Troy is your neighborhood of choice.

Virginia Eubanks is with you. She hates having to talk about this. She calls South Troy the world's best neighborhood, without irony, and feels fortunate to live there. But she believes its future is threatened.

Reason No. 1 is climate change. Reason No. 2 is the resulting spike in flood-insurance costs.

"We will probably be the last owners of our house," Eubanks said. "It breaks my heart to say that."

I asked to meet with Eubanks after reading her upcoming article about Troy in The Nation magazine. (The piece is already online.) Together, we took a walk around South Troy, that scrappy neighborhood of brick rowhouses bordered by the Hudson.

Troy is the water and the water is Troy. And so floods are an unfortunate part of the city's history. They are likely to be an even bigger part of its future, given that a warming climate is expected to produce more powerful storms.

Quick note to climate-change deniers: Let's not do that here, OK? At this point, arguing over whether warming is happening is like debating whether the moon is made of cheese. It's silly.

In any event, the National Flood Insurance Program has long been an affordable buffer to economic damage from flooding. Yet as floods have become more costly, and arguably more frequent, the federal government has responded by hiking premiums.

In a way, that's perfectly rational. We can all agree, I think, that taxpayers shouldn't subsidize protection for million-dollar homes perched at the edge of the sea. But Eubanks argues that rising premiums are devastating for working-class city neighborhoods near water, like South Troy.

Rising insurance costs rob lower-income families of the equity accumulated in their homes, she says. Since lenders make flood insurance a mortgage requirement in areas deemed risky, higher premiums also raise housing costs, forcing many potential buyers to avoid floodplain neighborhoods entirely.

Eubanks calls all this "climate redlining" — which references the federal government's racist refusal to back inner-city mortgages from the 1930s to the 1960s, a policy that fueled white flight and created urban slums.

Cities have only recently begun to recover. And actually, this is generally an optimistic time for cities, as evidenced by the wave of reinvention happening in Troy's downtown.

But you may have already surmised that Eubanks' article drags Troy's renaissance narrative into a back alley and gives it a good beating. Yes, downtown is thriving ... but the neighborhoods?

Eubanks, 44, and her partner live about mile south of downtown, on Ida Street. The property backs up to the Poestenkill, which makes the possibility of rising water even more of a threat. In fact, a good chunk of her magazine story recounts the harm done in 2011 by Tropical Storm Irene and how the neighborhood barely dodged catastrophe.

As we walked, Eubanks, a writer who has taught at the University at Albany, said her flood insurance premiums have been increasing about 10 percent per year. Many of her neighbors who don't have mortgages are simply taking their chances and going without the protection.

We crossed the Poestenkill at First Street and headed toward the river, which you can forget is even there in South Troy, given that it's hidden behind an industrial zone.

The only access point is the little fishing pier at the end of Madison Street. When we got there, Eubanks pointed to the city's seawall, which helps protect central Troy from rising water but may enhance the risk elsewhere.

"Because we're beyond the seawall, North and South Troy are extra vulnerable," Eubanks wrote in her story. "The wall stops water from entering downtown, by pushing it, like the prow of a ship, to either side, turning our neighborhoods into sacrifice zones."

As we walked, Eubanks and I passed my old apartment on Third Street. As sentimentality overwhelmed me — OK, not really — Eubanks told me the property is outside the floodplain, evidence that the neighborhood is unevenly impacted by higher flood-insurance costs, at least for now.

I asked Eubanks if she worried that publicizing the neighborhood's situation might intensify the disinvestment she fears. She said she wrestled with that question, but ultimately decided ignoring the problem posed a bigger threat.

Eubanks' difficult conclusion about her own house — that it will never have another owner — is based on her belief that buying it will make less and less sense as the climate warms. The house is becoming valueless.

That's financially devastating for her family. But it's the potential death of her neighborhood, Eubanks said, that brings the most sorrow.