by Daniel Brouse
July 22, 2025
Climate change is rapidly accelerating the frequency, severity, and financial impacts of extreme weather events, while sea-level rise is outpacing previous projections. Originally estimated at 100 years, the climate doubling period--the time it takes for climate impacts to double in intensity--contracted to 10 years, then to 2 years by 2024. This means damage from climate change today is already twice what it was just two years ago. If this trajectory continues, damages could be four times worse in two years, eight times worse in four years, and up to 64 times worse within a decade, driven by tipping points, feedback loops, and cascading ecosystem failures that further shorten the doubling period.
The Jersey Shore is a ground-zero case study of the rapidly oscillating and unsustainable costs of owning coastal real estate in the climate crisis era. Increasing insurance costs, surging property taxes, infrastructure collapse, and saltwater intrusion are eroding property values across New Jersey's coastal communities.
Saltwater intrusion is contaminating freshwater drinking supplies and flooding sewer and water treatment systems, causing environmental and health hazards while requiring expensive upgrades that drive up local costs. After Hurricane Sandy, FEMA and federal flood insurance programs shifted to a managed retreat approach, permanently relocating many properties along the coast. Now, many homeowners are finding insurance premiums skyrocketing or coverage becoming unavailable entirely, leaving them financially exposed to inevitable future storms.
Meanwhile, property taxes are rising steeply as municipalities struggle to fund repairs and upgrades to stormwater management systems, roads, bridges, and sewage treatment facilities damaged repeatedly by floods and storm surges. Communities are left with a shrinking tax base as properties lose value and climate risks drive buyers away, creating a downward spiral of declining revenue and increasing costs.
Beach Replenishment: A Failing Band-Aid
For the first time since 1996, Congress has allocated zero dollars for federal beach replenishment, halting nearly three decades of continuous funding that supported sand dredging projects to protect beaches, infrastructure, and property values along the U.S. coast. Typically, Congress sets aside $100 million to $200 million annually for these efforts, but this year, no funds were approved, and the future of replenishment remains uncertain as climate-driven disasters drain federal resources and push other priorities to the forefront.
Even when funded, beach replenishment has become an unsustainable, short-term fix. The increasing frequency and severity of storms are washing away replenished sand faster than ever, requiring more frequent and costly projects to maintain even minimal beach widths. Rising seas accelerate erosion and increase the likelihood of storm surge damage, making each replenishment effort less effective and shorter-lived. This cycle of “sand dumping and washout” is becoming financially and environmentally untenable, signaling the need for alternative adaptation measures such as strategic retreat, dune restoration, and wetland buffers to protect coastal communities in a warming world.
Two planned beach nourishment projects at the Jersey Shore (Avalon, Stone Harbor, and the north end of Ocean City) for 2025 have already been canceled, while projects in Maryland and Delaware have also been paused indefinitely. Shore towns that have reliably supported and benefited from federal beach projects for decades now face the financial, infrastructural, and environmental consequences of erosion without federal assistance. In New Jersey, this means more frequent overwash during storms, greater damage to boardwalks and roads, and increased flooding of homes and businesses, all of which reduce property values and strain local economies reliant on tourism and seasonal rentals.
Communities like Avalon, Stone Harbor, and Ocean City are now left scrambling to find local or state funding to patch critical erosion hot spots, but these efforts are piecemeal and often unaffordable, particularly as costs for sand, labor, and dredging escalate due to limited contractors and tight environmental windows. Without replenishment, narrower beaches offer less protection from storms, increasing the risk of breaching dunes and damaging critical infrastructure such as stormwater outflows, water treatment facilities, and coastal roads. As beach widths shrink, the tourism economy -- a major driver of revenue for Jersey Shore towns -- faces decline, further stressing municipal budgets already strained by rising insurance costs, infrastructure repairs, and emergency management expenses tied to climate-fueled disasters.
In essence, the end of federal beach replenishment funding at the Jersey Shore is more than a budget line being cut; it is an inflection point that reveals the unsustainable nature of maintaining business-as-usual along a rapidly changing coastline. As climate change accelerates, these communities will need to decide between doubling down on costly short-term fixes or transitioning to long-term resilience strategies to protect people, property, and local economies from the mounting impacts of sea-level rise and extreme weather.
A Market in Decline
The intersection of climate extremes and the Jersey Shore housing market is eroding financial stability across the region. Rising mortgage delinquencies are becoming more common as insurance, taxes, and repair costs increase. Properties are losing value as buyers factor in the high risk of flooding, storm damage, and future uninsurability. Homeowners unable to sell or insure properties are trapped with declining assets, while communities face escalating costs to maintain failing infrastructure.
Without systemic climate action to reduce emissions, implement resilient infrastructure, and support managed retreat where necessary, the financial collapse of coastal property markets will continue to accelerate, impacting local economies and amplifying inequality as wealthier owners relocate while lower-income residents are left behind in increasingly unlivable conditions.
The Jersey Shore, once a symbol of leisure and prosperity, is now a warning sign of the climate-fueled housing crisis unfolding across the United States. The costs of ignoring these realities are compounding rapidly, demanding immediate attention to mitigate financial and environmental collapse in the face of a worsening climate emergency.
* Our climate model -- which incorporates complex social-ecological feedback loops within a dynamic, non-linear system -- projects that global temperatures could rise by up to 9°C (16.2°F) within this century. This far exceeds earlier estimates of a 4°C rise over the next thousand years, signaling a dramatic acceleration of warming.
We analyze how human activities (such as deforestation, fossil fuel use, and land development) interact with ecological processes (including carbon cycling, water availability, and biodiversity loss) in ways that amplify one another. These interactions do not follow simple cause-and-effect patterns; instead, they create cascading, interconnected impacts that can rapidly accelerate system-wide change, sometimes abruptly. Understanding these dynamics is essential for assessing risks and designing effective climate adaptation and mitigation strategies.