Looking for Home: Post-Disaster Housing Policy after Katrina

BACKGROUND: Flooding after Hurricane Katrina destroyed thousands of homes in New Orleans and displaced thousands of residents, disproportionately poor and African American (e.g. Kromm & Sturgis, 2008). Over two years later, many of New Orleans' low-income residents have been unable to return. In this paper we will examine the trajectories of four different pre-disaster households: public assistance recipients, homeowners, renters, and those in informal housing arrangements, to illustrate the impact of various pre-and post-disaster housing policies on survivors' ability to return home or resettle in their host community. METHODS: This paper draws from a longitudinal, in-depth case study (Yin, 2003) of the experience of 71 displaced hurricane survivors and 95 social service providers in one host city over 2.5 years. In-person interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using N6 by examining survivors' housing experiences at four time periods (pre-storm, evacuation, short-term, and long-term) and the state, local, and federal policies that impacted their housing options. RESULTS: Overall, our findings illustrate the instability and limited options for post-disaster housing for low-income survivors and the failure of the disaster housing policy overall. Housing for survivors receiving federal assistance pre-storm was somewhat more stable as they could often go directly into HUD housing. Other households had to contend with confusing and contradictory FEMA programs. While FEMA emergency housing was critical to survivors' short-term relocation, FEMA's constantly changing rules were confusing to both survivors and service providers and created instability in both the short and long-term. Those in informal, shared housing experienced difficulties due to the “shared household” rule. The majority of survivors were not eligible for the long-term Disaster Housing Assistance Program. Affordable housing for survivors was often located in the outskirts of the host city, far from public transportation, jobs, and services critical for recovery. Renters were prevented from returning home by the continued destruction of public housing in New Orleans as a result of HOPE VI, while opposition from surrounding parishes kept poor renters from looking for apartments elsewhere. Due to the slow progress of the Road Home program, many homeowners felt pressured to return even without temporary housing or resources for repair. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS: Current federal housing policy, the result of trends begun in the 1970s and 1980s, provides cities with few resources to devote to affordable housing and they consistently face substantial shortages of affordable homes for the poor (Mueller & Schwartz, 2008). Disasters only exacerbate this problem (Comerio, 1998). FEMA is built on a middle-class homeowner model that does not serve low-income clients well (Bolin & Stanford, 1998) particularly after Katrina (Crowley, 2006). Despite concerted efforts by service providers in the host community, affordable housing remained a critical problem for hurricane survivors and continued displacement became an addition barrier to recovery (Carlisle, 2007; Kromm & Sturgis, 2008). The extreme difficulty that poor survivors, like those profiled in this paper, experienced finding permanent homes either in their host or home communities underscore the failure of current affordable housing policy and disaster policy.