Hurricane Sandy left a lot of destruction – and opportunities to construct new McMansions to replace older homes.

Long and many of her neighbors claim ostentatious monstrosities are changing the landscape of their modest and historic community, McLogan reported.

They accuse some of taking advantage of what Sandy wrought by raising and rebuilding their homes without any regard for the families next door — casting their smaller homes in shadow and gloom.

About 3,000 of Freeport’s 7,800 homes were damaged or destroyed in Sandy. New York Rising and the Federal Emergency Management Agency say rebuilding requires elevating homes at least a half-story from the street.

Freeport Mayor Robert Kennedy is fielding calls from residents frustrated by the number of McMansions being built, but he said neighborhoods must be protected from the next big storm.

Hurricane Sandy didn’t just destroy homes; it may just lead to long-term transformations of dozens of neighborhoods and communities. This is an unusual situation compared to the typical teardown where a new owner buys a single home in a neighborhood, tears it down, and constructs a new large home with some different architectural features. When so many homes are destroyed so quickly, neighborhoods could change quite quickly, regardless of whether the new homes are McMansions, a negative term applied to these new big homes, or not.

In a typical case, a critical mass of teardown McMansions tends to lead to a group of residents appealing to local government to adopt some sort of regulations that limit the size and/or designs of new large teardowns. Yet, these processes take time and I assume there is a quick timeline for some of these homes to be rebuilt. How this plays out remains to be seen…