Hurricane Helene hit the United States pretty hard, if you’ve somehow missed hearing about it. The Final Fantasy XIV team wants to make sure that players affected by the hurricane’s impact are able to focus on putting things back together and recovering, not things in the video game. That’s why the team has announced that housing demolition timers for all North American data centers will be suspended moving forward, so you won’t risk losing your house from inactivity until the timers are turned back on.
There’s no definite resumption for the housing demolition timers, as the announcement specifies that the team will be watching the situation and considering when it’s right to turn things back on. It’s not a fix for a natural disaster, but it does at least mean that something rather valuable in a video game is not going to flit away from you if you can’t play for a while. And the developers wish affected players a swift recovery and their condolences, so that’s nice.