by Mrs. Brown. NLIHC Board Member
Mrs. Brown: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss disaster recovery with you, Noah. These questions provide insight into how NLIHC and professionals view the intersection of climate change, disaster recovery, and affordable housing while also highlighting the roles of both government and private sectors in addressing these issues. The responses to these questions will give valuable perspectives for Tenant Talk readers who are concerned about the safety, resilience, and future of affordable housing in the face of a changing climate.
Noah, my first few questions are: How do you see climate change disproportionately affecting low-income communities, particularly those who are elderly, disabled, and low-income, living in public or Section 8 housing? What specific challenges do these residents face in terms of infrastructure and climate resilience? Can you speak to the ways in which public housing authorities (PHAs) have been preparing for or addressing climate-related challenges? Are there specific programs or policies in place to protect tenants from the impacts of climate change (e.g., heatwaves, flooding, or wildfires)?
Noah Patton: Thank you! I’m happy to be here and be interviewed by you, Mrs. B. I’ll say households with lower incomes are more likely to live in areas that are more likely to be impacted by disasters. Due to the broken nature of the current disaster response and recovery system, they’re experiencing the highest risk as well as receiving the lowest amount of assistance afterwards.
Individuals with a disability are two to four times more likely to die during a disaster than those living without a disability. The same danger is posed for elderly people. As we see climate change creating more frequent and destructive disasters, we will deal with this issue more within the affordable housing space. We must think about it as we’re organizing and working on housing-related issues.
Some challenges are more specific to residents, including things like FEMA’s disaster preparedness recommendation for a household. Some of their recommendations include, “have $500 in cash somewhere in your household for emergency use”, which is often the main financial suggestion for households in disaster impacted areas. This is very out of touch because it is a lot of money.for someone to have on hand. This underscores the fact that households with lower incomes don’t have the money necessary for emergencies that negate you leaving town or staying at a hotel elsewhere. Because of this, households with low incomes will rely on the disaster response and recovery system to keep them safe during a disaster and to provide recovery efforts afterwards.
Unfortunately, our recovery system is built around the idea that you’re ineligible for assistance until proven otherwise. This framework puts the burden of proving eligibility for assistance on disaster survivors themselves. Often, people impacted by disasters are trying to prove eligibility while trying to navigate the disaster and the inequities of having low incomes. It is difficult to access the level of assistance necessary to recover and what assistance you receive is often not enough for you to recover. This leaves many households facing displacement from their communities, their families, their support networks, and facing a higher risk of homelessness. We are witnessing this disaster after disaster.
In terms of public housing, there was a recent study in which public housing agencies (PHAs) were asked about their disaster preparedness plans. What they found was that there were many inconsistencies among what PHAs were doing to prepare for disasters. Some housing authorities might have a full disaster preparedness plan and can activate when needed, but others may only be concerned with the day-to-day operations as a PHA.
Mrs. B: Based on your comments, has the coalition worked with public housing authorities to create these plans for residents? Do you reach out to them to see how many residents in public housing, section 8, or multi-family, are affected by the disaster? Is there a tool to coordinate with the PHAs and if not, would you consider doing it? Is funding needed?
Noah: HUD provides disaster guidance for PHAs to create disaster plans, but it is not required. We (at NLIHC) have thought about creating legislation that would require PHAs to set up a disaster plan. However, this would require funding because you would need to hire an emergency manager that would update the plan every year. Bringing on an extra staff person can be a big ask for some PHAs.
We at the Disaster Recovery Housing Coalition (DHRC) will reach out to PHAs after a disaster to assess which buildings are impacted and what is happening to residents on the ground. From this work we have learned that most PHAs will offer public housing residents with vouchers if their building was damaged. However, this can be an easy way for PHAs to close public housing, especially because the emergency capital fund available to PHAs is not enough to get these buildings through disaster damage. My hope is that we work with tenant leaders to encourage their PHAs to work on the damaged buildings while we attempt to gain the support for more funding at the federal level.
Mrs. B: It is a tall order. I would like to see NLIHC possibly provide training and education to residents on how to engage the PHAs and what questions to ask them.
Noah: Yes, I always say, "An organized building is one that is safer during a disaster than a non-organized one."
Living in a building that is already organized means you are aware of your rights, and you know the needs of your neighbors (e.g., who might need oxygen, who has mobility issues). This can be helpful information to know during a disaster because you will be able to immediately identify who needs additional assistance. In addition to being aware of this information, you should be asking your fellow residents if they have a disaster plan and what is in their plan. For example, do you know what to do if you need to evacuate because a hurricane is coming? Or what to do if there is a tornado coming? Who is facilitating the evacuation?
We’ve seen how a lack of an evaluation plan from the PHA endangered residents. Either the plan was never communicated, or they didn’t get any feedback. It’s important to create a toolkit and share it widely with residents.
Mrs. B: There tends to be gaps in resources or response that impact these specific communities. Have you given any thought on how to cure that? Do we teach residents to reach out to local electorates? As someone from the Tip O’Neill School, I can say politics is local. Perhaps we can create boiler plate letters they can use as a guide to send to their respective elected officials.
Noah: Yes! Way ahead of you. Last year we published a toolkit that covered advocacy strategies for disasters. We realized that we need to create advocacy materials, and we are currently working on creating those expansion materials including template letters, talking points, asks, letters you can send to your governor and mayor.
To your point, a lot of emergency management and disaster recovery and response work is locally led. I’m always pushing for community-based organizations to reach out to their emergency management office. You need to connect with emergency managers and talk about the disaster needs of this population because they are sometimes too busy to consider the specific needs of specific subpopulations, unless these subpopulations make their needs clear. Broadly, I think there are issues with how the country does disaster response and recovery that it is built around the idea of a “perfect disaster survivor”. This person is usually a white man who owns his own home, is fully insured, and doesn’t have a disability. The minute you do not identify with any one of those things, things can start going off the rails because the system is not built around your specific situation. Reiterating this to emergency managers at the local level is very important because they are not going to consider that on their own. It is very helpful to do this before a disaster occurs. We are pushing for the same thing for people experiencing homelessness. We need to create this dialogue so we can be productive pre-disaster.
Mrs. B: Considering the climate of the current administration, it’s hard to guess what will happen next. What are your thoughts regarding the role of the federal government in disaster recovery in efforts for low-income communities? It’s troubling because will we have funding? Do we have to rely on the legislators?
Noah: We can see what can happen when the federal government is not prepared to take a leading role in disaster recovery and that’s namely what happened with Hurricane Katrina. Before Katrina happened, the federal government was focused on other priorities (e.g., terrorism) and left disaster recovery work to states, specifically protecting the recovery of households with lower incomes. State and local governments are leaving people behind.
Mrs. B: Do we reach that goal by working with Republicans in rural and southern states? It is their constituents that are going to be impacted.
Noah: As of this interview, we’re trying to protect FEMA from getting dismantled. We’re trying to get Republican legislators from rural areas in southern states to step up and speak up about how their constituents will be impacted without FEMA. FEMA provides a lot of funding to these states so they can do local and state emergency management, post-disaster funds, and resiliency funding. They provide crucial funds necessary to make communities more resilient. I don’t think states and cities can take over disaster recovery and protect everyone in the same way they were previously protected. For example, the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management is 90% federally funded, so any pauses in grants would directly impact the people in charge of responding to a disaster. Disaster recovery workers would be cut and there would not be enough responses necessary to address a disaster. I spoke to someone in another southern state recently and asked them how long would it take them to replace the roles funded by FEMA. They said that it would likely take around two years, but if another disaster happened, they would not be able to respond without federal government assistance. That is very concerning to me and Republican legislators, but we need to push them to be more vocal about it. There is some bipartisan legislation being worked on right now to protect FEMA and reform it instead of getting rid of it, which is what we have been pushing for as well.
Mrs. B: As an elderly, disabled, low-income person, I want to know how we would hold housing authorities and developers accountable for proper climate preparedness or disaster recovery? What steps can they take to make it safer for those at risk?
Noah: Reaching out to your local emergency management offices and local elected officials can be helpful. You can always reach out to NLIHC and we can boost those concerns to your PHA.
In terms of accountability, advocacy works best when it is a mix of both personal stories and then harder data.
For example, the Sandpiper Cove Report I shared earlier is full of personal stories from tenants left in the hot sun because nobody bothered to unlock the community center that was the evacuation meetup point for this subsidized apartment building. This report also has time stamped information about actions taken. For example, it includes information about when a tenant organizer called the Galveston disaster hotline and received no response, and when they attempted again and were told that buses were coming. These researchers were preparing to record the experiences as they were happening. They used it as an advocacy tool so tenants and residents weren’t being ignored.
It is hard for state and local public officials to dismiss the personal experiences of their constituents. Emergency managers will say they need specific details of an issue to do something, so having a detailed breakdown of your experience is helpful for the state and local emergency managers to address the issues and it makes it harder for them to discount experiences. When you can put things on paper, it makes it easier to hold them accountable.
Mrs. B: I get calls from the elderly from the East to the West Coast. I think that seeing something in print will be very helpful. I take my hat off to you, Noah. I appreciate you. What message would you like to send policymakers, developers, and the public about the importance of addressing climate change for the elderly, disabled residents in public housing or with Section 8? This is a very challenging time for many and there are many who do not want to complain because they fear they will be evicted. I want to provide some comfort and assurance to make their lives better.
Funding for climate preparedness is exceptionally important because of the legacy of gentrification and displacement. Households with the lowest incomes are living in areas more likely to experience risks. Climate preparedness funds are usually directed to places with greater civic power and higher incomes. Thus, there is a high risk of people being left behind. We need to fund preparedness for the future impacts of climate change, but we also need to be looking at who is receiving those funds, and how effectively the funds are being used. To ensure the funds are being the most effective, we need to be working with the people most likely to experience this climate impact. This can be a hard thing for a government bureaucrat or implementer to grasp, but it is necessary. What is necessary is collaboration between the folks with the money and the folks that are going to be experiencing the potential harm to learn from their direct experience and implement climate preparedness systems that meet the needs of the households with the lowest incomes from across the country.
Mrs. B: These comments reminded me of the statement from State Farm after the wildfires in California. They are going to raise their policy rates by 200-400%. Who is going to stop this? People are trying to rebuild their homes, but they can’t because they can’t afford it.
Noah: We’re seeing this occur across the country. We’re looking into whether those increases are actually driven by climate change and where it might just be an excuse from the insurance company to raise rates. One solution could be an “all hazard insurance,” which is a program that would cover damage from all disasters instead of one, a universal payment for all disaster damage. Another example is the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is federally funded. I think it depends on talking with people who’ve been impacted and figuring out what they want. I think that too often policy decisions on disaster recovery are happening in a silo away from what disaster survivors experience every day. We have to make sure disaster survivors and people in low-income communities being threatened by disasters have a voice in this process.
We believe the voices of residents must be amplified, especially when shaping policy and ensuring accountability in the realms of housing equity and environmental justice. Understanding NLIHC’s approach to supporting, educating, and empowering tenants will contribute meaningfully to that mission. I am so proud to be affiliated with an organization that believes in empowering the disabled, elderly, marginalized, and extremely low-income residents. Thanks for your “hard” work in making a difference in our lives.
Mrs. B: Noah, thank you for the time you have taken to answer to my concerns and provide solutions. The answers to these questions are intended to provide valuable insights for readers of Tenant Talk Magazine who are deeply invested in the future of affordable housing in the face of a changing climate. There are a few questions we can’t get to in this interview. Can you answer them via e-mail for the readers?
Noah: Yes.