Five years ago this week, Hurricane Harvey devastated communities across Southeastern Texas. The first major storm to make landfall in the U.S. since Hurricane Wilma in 2005, Hurricane Harvey slowly moved across southern Texas, dropping more than 40 inches of rain – and in some cases as many as 60 inches – and becoming the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the U.S. Experts estimate that up to 30% of all land in Harris County, TX, was submerged following the storm. Across the region, 107 people were killed and almost 307,000 homes were damaged or destroyed.
Houston is one of the nation’s most economically and racially segregated areas. Historically Black and Latino neighborhoods in Houston have suffered from decades of disinvestment. As a result, low-income communities and communities of color have lacked the basic infrastructure needed to protect residents from the impact of major disasters like Hurricane Harvey. For example, nearly 90% of Houston’s open-ditch drainage systems are in low-income communities, which exposed residents to health and safety risks during and after the hurricane. Despite having the greatest needs, survivors with the lowest incomes have faced barriers in receiving FEMA assistance. More than 45% of households with annual incomes of less than $15,000 were denied FEMA individual assistance after Hurricane Harvey, while fewer than 14% of households with annual incomes of more than $45,000 were denied assistance.
More recently, additional mitigation funds were approved by HUD for use in the most impacted areas. The funds are meant to stave off the worst effects of storms like Harvey in the future. However, the distribution system designed by the Texas General Land Office (GLO) was found to have funneled funds to inland, majority white counties in violation of civil rights laws, after an investigation prompted by a filing by NLIHC partners Texas Housers and the Northeast Action Collective. The Texas state government has until the end of August to decide whether to comply with an order to redistribute the funds.
Meanwhile, many Texans are still awaiting housing repairs or replacement homes. While groups of community-based recovery and advocacy organizations are still hard at work pushing for recovery resources and actively assisting neighborhoods in recovering, HUD funds for long-term recovery have been only slowly dispersed, in part because the disbursal program is not permanently authorized at the federal level.
The Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) will continue to support the work being undertaken by disaster survivors and their advocates in Southeastern Texas and to share the lessons learned from their work to help other areas across the country prepare for storms like Hurricane Harvey when they occur in the future.