NLIHC and the NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) sent a memorandum to President-elect Joe Biden and his transition team on December 10 outlining steps the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) can take in the Biden administration to meet the immediate housing needs of people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic and redesign our federal disaster housing recovery framework to address and prioritize the needs of the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors.
The DHRC is a group of more than 850 local, state, and national organizations, including many working directly with disaster-impacted communities and with first-hand experience recovering after disasters, that works to ensure a complete and equitable housing recovery for the lowest-income and most marginalized households, including people of color, seniors, people with disabilities, people experiencing homelessness, people with limited English proficiency, and other individuals and their communities.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the inextricable connection between housing and health, the deep inequities in our nation’s disaster housing response and recovery system, and the urgent need for reform. Decades of systemic racism have resulted in the pandemic and housing crisis disproportionately harming Black, Latino, and Native people. With President-elect Biden’s leadership, however, our country can meet the urgent housing needs of the lowest-income and most marginalized individuals during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and reform federal disaster response and recovery efforts to be inclusive and intersectional.
The NLIHC-led DHRC looks forward to working with the Biden administration and Congress to ensure that federal responses to the pandemic and natural disasters are fair and equitable. In the memorandum to the transition team, the DHRC provides our recommendations on steps President-elect Biden and his pick to lead FEMA can take to address the urgent need for coronavirus-related emergency housing and homelessness resources and move toward a new federal disaster housing response and recovery framework centered on the needs of the lowest-income and most marginalized survivors and their communities.
Read DHRC’s “Memo to President-Elect Biden’s Transition Team” at: https://bit.ly/3m9tOZ1