Atlantic City Gambles on Rising Seas
This city’s famous casinos are on high ground, while its poor are in the floodwaters’ path. The people still there "haven’t figured out a way to leave yet," one lifelong resident says.
Atlantic City, New JerseyClaudia Waller’s anxious eyes flit across the living room of a home where her family has lived for more than 80 years as she ponders the moment when she’ll have to leave for good.
When even a moderate rain falls in Atlantic City, the streets flood, reminding her of when her family lost their house’s foundation to Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
Flood-damaged, abandoned properties are scattered throughout her neighborhood, roughly a mile from the city’s famous boardwalk, attracting homeless drifters, drug dealers, and sex workers. And making matters worse, Atlantic City’s public services are unreliable as the city is embroiled in a fiscal crisis.
“I get frightened every time it rains,” Waller says, biting her bottom lip. “It feels like all of us,
