Sharon Louis worries that her Chicago neighborhood on the city’s South Side is on borrowed time.

Waves from Lake Michigan batter apartments along the coastline. Sinkholes from erosion pockmark the predominantly Black and working-class community’s streets. One crater, Louis recalled, opened up next to a streetlight.

While Louis and her neighbors press for solutions, one family whose windows were shattered by the waves last year has since built its own fortress of rocks, sand bags and concrete.

“If they didn’t do the work, they wouldn’t exist,” Louis, an activist with the advocacy group Black Chicago Water Council, said of her neighbors. “That’s how dire the situation is.”