Washington fails low-income hurricane victims

[DonViejo]

An alphabet soup of recovery programs helps middle-class neighborhoods bounce back, but poor and minority areas are often left behind.

By DANNY VINIK 05/29/2018 05:08 AM EDT

HOUSTON — Nine months after Hurricane Harvey dumped more than 50 inches of rain on the Gulf Coast, green grass has returned to plush Houston developments and the city’s downtown hums with millennial workers choosing a favorite food truck. But just a short drive away, Kashmere Gardens has not recovered.

Nearly every street of the 10,000-person neighborhood has homes that are gutted. Empty window panes reveal sparse interiors without walls, doors or carpets. Doors hang ajar and mold consumes living rooms and kitchens. Signs dot the lawns, promising homeowners that they can quickly sell out and avoid the messy process of rebuilding. One family lives in a tent in their driveway where mangy dogs circle around, shedding fur and leaving a rotten stench hanging in the air. Inside their wrecked home, two 4-year-old children sleep just feet away from open electric wires.

The challenges in Kashmere Gardens — where two-thirds of the residents are black and the median income is $23,000 per year — are not the result of any one policy or agency. They’re the consequence of a complicated, bureaucratic disaster-response system built up over decades that experts nearly universally agree is failing to provide critical support to low-income, minority communities when catastrophe strikes. “People just give up,” said Keith Downey, president of a local organization called Kashmere Gardens Super Neighborhood, which has been helping local residents recover.

A POLITICO investigation found that numerous low-income families were denied funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency because much of Kashmere Gardens was in a flood zone, and homeowners were thus required to carry flood insurance — a law that many of them were unaware of. Other families, struggling with language issues and inexperienced with the federal bureaucracy, simply couldn’t cope with a system that even FEMA officials agree is too complicated. Still others fell victim to shoddy contractors who took their money and failed to make repairs.

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https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/29/houston-hurricane-harvey-fema-597912

[Uncle Joe]

1. As the effect of global warming climate change continues to escalate these problems will only worsen

More areas that weren't in flood zones will be rezoned and no doubt poverty stricken areas will be hit the hardest.





Thanks for the thread DonViejo