For retired transit worker Frank Mosczynzski, Ocean Breeze on Staten Island’s eastern shore was the perfect place to raise a family and grow old. He had called the area home since the age of two when his parents moved there from Brooklyn. His work commute to Manhattan was easy, and he returned home each night to the beach, a backyard and peaceful respite from the city’s din.
He never imagined he would sell it 2014 to the state to bulldoze.
Sandy made landfall in the tristate area on the evening of Oct. 29, 2012, and the 16-foot storm surge that hit Staten Island resulted in 24 deaths, more than any other borough.
Mosczynzski’s wife and two adult daughters evacuated in advance, but he stayed behind as a volunteer for the search and rescue team. Some neighbors stayed behind despite warnings — and had to be saved from on top of their roofs or pulled out of the water by boats with ropes.
He said he knew at around 7 p.m. on the night of the storm, when he saw his neighborhood turn into a lake, that he would not return home again.
Mosczynzski’s own home was filled with 8 feet of water after Hurricane Sandy — and uninhabitable as a result. His family of four adults had to find a place to live, and start paying rent while also trying to buy necessities like clothes.
“It just seemed like it was doom and gloom for us in our whole area,” Mosczynzski said. “The house was totally destroyed except one or two boxes from the attic of Christmas decorations and one box of family pictures.”
That was only the start of his long journey through the Staten Island buyout program. New York officials created this initiative for the sake of managed retreat, which is when the government steps in and purchases private property for the purpose of getting residents out of a flood-prone area.
Family members walk through a flood-damaged kitchen on Nov. 1, 2012 in the Ocean Breeze area of Staten Island.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, according to Jane Brogan, chief policy and research officer at the Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery during the Staten Island buyout program from 2015 to January 2022. There were homeowners who couldn’t take the buyout because of title issues or imminent foreclosure.
But in total, more than 500 Staten Island residents sold their homes to the state at a total cost of $200 million. The buyout program also included more than 200 additional homes in Long Island. Ten years after Hurricane Sandy, the properties acquired in Ocean Breeze and neighboring areas look like a mixture of haphazardly mowed lawns and forests of phragmites.
The streets once teeming with generations of the same families living side by side in rows of shotgun houses are now almost completely deserted. The newly rebuilt houses of the few who stayed peek out from the desolate landscape, dominated by noisy geese.
The program also set off broader discussions about whether it’s sustainable to keep living in coastal New York and New Jersey — or if nature is evicting us, how does the government support those who want to relocate?
It's hard to walk away from where you've lived, where you've grown up and watched your kids.
“Buyout programs are needed in a recovery and resiliency toolbox, but they’re very expensive and can be a lengthy process,” Brogan said. “But there's also a lot of potential for climate adaptation and climate mitigation funding.”
GOSR had never implemented a buyout program before, but it had two main goals: keeping people out of harm’s way, while also providing natural storm protection. With planning, such programs could become permanent — a reliable resource for relocating homeowners in historical flood-prone areas before a disaster costs lives and property. They could also allow the government to make better decisions on what to do with the land it acquires.
“It's hard to walk away from where you've lived, where you've grown up and watched your kids,” Mosczynzski said. “But how many times can you walk out of your home and not be able to go back. Think of that.”
How the big buyout started
Despite the damage, Mosczynzski said his community were eager to rebuild their homes and move back. More than 5,000 Staten Island residents applied for FEMA assistance after Sandy. But as the weeks turned into months, he said recovery aid had not come through, and they didn’t know what to do.
The state can only initiate large-scale buyout programs when federal dollars are involved. But this relationship restricts how long the application window is open and when it’s offered, which can end up leaving out homeowners who need more time to decide or sort out their affairs.
Just 3 miles down the Staten Island coastline, local real estate agent Joe Tirone was facing the similar dilemma as Mosczynzski. Tirone’s community of Oakwood Beach, where he owned a rental property, was also toppled by the storm. His tenants subsequently abandoned the one-bedroom bungalow. Three people died on the block.
87 Fox Beach Lane in Oakwood Beach was the former address of Joseph Tirone's one-bedroom cottage. The mound of dirt indicates where the house once stood. Picture taken Sept. 28, 2022.
The previous year, Hurricane Irene had also flooded Tirone's neighborhood, but it didn’t bring death and destruction like Sandy. He, too, didn’t know what to do until a FEMA representative at the Small Business Administration office told him about a governmental buyout program for flood prone homes.
“I call it the miracle buyout. To me, it was like divine intervention,” Tirone said.
A month after the storm, his neighbors thought so, too. At a local resource meeting with 200 people, where food and supplies were distributed, Tirone introduced the idea of the government buying all their homes at pre-storm value — with the option to change their minds up until the last moment. When he finished his five-minute talk, he asked who was interested.
“It seemed like everyone raised their hand,” Tirone said. “I was shocked because the area was generational. It was grandparents living across the street from their grandchildren.
Most residents in the area — including Mosczynzski in nearby Oakwood Beach — learned of the buyout program from Tirone, who dedicated most of his time volunteering to help homeowners through the process.
A year after Hurricane Sandy destroyed the Ocean Breeze community on Staten Island, residents still waiting to rebuild put signs on their damaged properties showing how long they were waiting to return. Photo taken Oct. 21, 2013.
Typically, the process took at least 18 months from application to payout. Residents began posting signs on their property counting how many days it had been since they were last in their homes. Some signs were approaching the two-year mark, and some residents still lacked government aid to rebuild, according to Mosczynzski.
Much of Tirone’s energy was spent educating neighbors about their options and contacting loan officers to keep residents from foreclosure while they waited for the state to purchase their properties. He didn’t have time for his own business.
“I was completely overwhelmed. My phone didn't stop for a second. My email was constantly pinging and I was able, somehow, to keep up with it,” said Tirone, 65, a lifetime resident whose parents were also born on Staten Island.
A real estate deal that ends in demolition
Many Staten Islanders like Mosczynzski saw the buyout program as a way out of the situation of struggling to pay rent on a temporary home on top of the mortgage for an uninhabitable house.
“It was the first glimmer of hope after the storm of possibly a way to try to get your life back on track because months after we were all lost,” Mosczynzski said.
The application process for Mosczynzski and Tirone was simple and fast. The application took about an hour to complete and was processed through Housing and Urban Development via its community development block grant for disaster recovery. It allowed GOSR greater flexibility in implementing the program than if they went through FEMA, which had many more application requirements.
The minimum requirements were proof of clear title and location in a flood-prone area. GOSR assessed community risks by looking at the local history of flooding and extreme damage.
GOSR’s Brogan said they spoke to local officials to determine if there was a need for a buyout program as well as neighborhoods where there were multiple requests to be bought out of their homes, such as in the cases of Tirone and Mosczynzski.
Oakwood Beach residents were ready to go. That community lobbied the governor’s office to say we really think that this is the right area for a buyout.
“Oakwood Beach residents were ready to go,” Brogan said. “That community lobbied the governor’s office to say we really think that this is the right area for a buyout.”
Mosczynzski and Tirone’s neighborhoods fit the bill of historic repetitive and damaging floods. Tirone also said they argued that it was an expensive endeavor to keep rebuilding, and it might make financial sense for the government to take possession of the land.
But at the time, the state had no blueprint for that kind of long-term recovery program, so Brogan said they had to quickly design one based on local needs.
“Once we started demolitions of that first round of homeowners, they [neighbors] saw what the community was going to look like,” Brogan said. “They also saw it was successful, so there was this second wave of applications that came in.”
Relocating came with big financial incentives, too. On top of pre-storm value, an additional 15% of the sale price was added to the final payout. If residents bought their next home in Staten Island, they received another 10% of their home’s cost when they resettled.
Joe Herrnkind stands next to his fence at his home on Oct. 29, 2013 in the Ocean Breeze area of Staten Island.
Calculating the value of each home took a lot of back-and-forth between residents and GOSR. Homeowners supplied photographs as proof of upgrades and improvements they had made. Certified appraisers went out to assess the conditions of the homes the best they could considering the damage from Sandy, according to Brogan. They also used recent comparable sale price history along with historic records and pictures to determine property values.
“It was treated as a real estate transaction,” Brogan said. “The state took ownership of the home and gave the money to the homeowner.”
While homes bought in a managed retreat are executed like a standard property sale, no brokers are involved or compensated in a managed retreat. Still, residents in the buyout program needed to find another home and using a broker who understood the buyout program’s contract of sale would be beneficial in making timely deals to go smoothly. Tirone trained four other real estate brokers about the program, and introduced them to residents who were looking for their next houses.
“It would've been my greatest deal ever – 550 homes,” said Tirone, who did not profit as a real estate agent from the managed retreat in Staten Island. New York state officials confirmed no brokers were used for homeowner sales to the the state. “That would've been nice, but I felt it was a conflict of interest for me to help them [homeowners who took the buyout] find a home.”
This set of six attached homes in Ocean Breeze still remains because everyone but one person took the buyout. Picture taken Sept. 28, 2022.
Soon after the sale contracts were executed, the government paid for the homes to be demolished. The land was regraded, reseeded, and maintained by the state.
There were more than 300 homes in Oakwood Beach purchased in the buyout, about half were in the Fox Beach section where Tirone lived. Less than 10% of his neighbors decided to refuse the buyout. Tirone said most who remained had no choice. They were already in foreclosure, had reverse mortgages, or simply were unable to move due to old age. There were still holdouts who just didn’t want to leave a place where they had roots.
In Ocean Breeze, a block from where Mosczynzski lived, a row of six attached homes still stands – all of them took the buyout except one.
“Why stay in an area that’s notorious for flooding that we’ve all experienced so many times here,” Mosczynzski said. “It made sense to give up your land, and make this area more resilient for future generations and move on.”
The aftermath
Mosczynzski left Staten Island in January 2022, and finally moved to a new home on the New Jersey Shore. As he walked the narrow, deteriorating roads of Ocean Breeze, he pointed to nearly every vacant green lot along the way – with a string of stories for each one about the families who once lived there.
“I miss my home. I miss our yard. I miss the neighbors – miss everything about it,” Mosczynzski said. “If my neighbor needed help, two or three of us would go over and help 'em or shovel the snow or whatever it may be.”
Tirone remains in Staten Island. When he drives down Fox Beach Lane to No. 87, he looks for the big grassy mound where his home stood on 5-foot pillars. He likes the view better now: the waterfront is covered in wildflowers and open to the public.
But with such a hefty price tag, the state could do more to utilize the land than abandon it to nature. Brogan said the land can be repurposed with a higher benefit to the state and constituents by utilizing it for government agencies, nonprofits, or for a recreational facility such as a ball field. Along with those uses, it could also be a natural strategy for climate adaptation by protecting land further inland from future flooding.
Oakwood Beach is located right on the water. The shoreline sits just beyond this sign. Picture taken Sept. 28, 2022.
And with the scattering of still-inhabited homes within the buyout areas, there are residents still living in a high-risk area even as their neighborhood acts as a barrier. Brogan said many of these holdouts were retirees who wanted to stay in their homes, but the program could be designed to accommodate them when they’re ready to move.
The program could also help make resettlement easier for homeowners by addressing needs for immediate, temporary shelter and relocation to permanent and affordable housing options, preferably near their old home or close to work.
“That does require a little bit more planning and time to think about it rather than just kind of being reactive to a disaster,” Brogan said. “But buyouts are very expensive so I think that planning is very warranted.”
Still, the state wants to continue to explore and expand the buyout program, but currently, it’s not doing buyouts because of lack of funding. The HUD monies that paid for GOSR were recently extended to September 2025 to complete any remaining open programs. After that, the state will assume the operating expenses of the agency, but there are no plans for current or future buyout programs.
“It’s basically a desolate, quiet, beautiful nature preserve where all of these people used to live here,” Tirone said. “But in the end, I know I did the right thing because people died on this street, and every time it rained, people were telling me they were in fetal position just from a rainstorm.”
