disaster recovery

Thirteen years ago, an ambitious government initiative set out to move hundreds of families away from perilous conditions, including landslides, in Ecuador’s capital. Today, 37 of those households are still waiting for the subsidies they need to become true owners of their new homes.

Thousands lost their homes in the Almeda and Marshall fires. Years into long-term recovery, a look at who received emergency assistance and who was left out can teach us a lot about which populations are most vulnerable to climate events.

Cities and counties have been slow to take advantage of the promise of full and retroactive FEMA reimbursement to expand emergency housing programs, frustrating housing advocates. What’s getting in the way?

The devastation that communities in the Rio Grande Valley experience is twofold: the initial destruction of the floods and the cycle of debt and poverty as a result of predatory loans.

All banking activities, regardless of whether they benefit middle- and upper-income or low- and moderate-income people and communities, could count in the next round of CRA exams. This would further disadvantage communities that are already disproportionately impacted by the pandemic.

When it comes to helping people maintain or recover their housing, hurricanes and fires aren’t as different from a pandemic as one might think.

Officials in large and small cities along the East Coast are realizing that maybe they shouldn’t rebuild on land that repeatedly floods. Instead they’re focusing on buyouts, building affordable housing on higher ground, and other mitigation efforts.

Communities need accurate maps and more access to data to increase flood resilience—but right now FEMA’s not providing that.

At Texas Housers, we’ve confronted a series of natural disasters over the past decade that forced us to develop new approaches for our housing advocacy. In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, we find ourselves back at it. Here are seven lessons we have learned.

Against the back drop of 2017’s California wildfires, a quickly organized session took place to discuss disaster response and recovery from the perspective of being a housing organization.

Social scientists reviewed all the recent research on disaster recovery and tell us that before the coordinated help arrives, before the Red Cross and all the other recovery groups descend with legions of volunteers, there are neighbors.

Throughout what we know will be a long recovery over the coming weeks, months, and years, Shelterforce hopes to share the stories of the people and organizations charged with serving […]