Short Wave - FEMA Has An Equity Problem, Part Two: Race

Episode Date: July 8, 2021

FEMA acknowledges that the way it distributes aid often benefits some people more than others--and those who receive less aid are those people with the fewest resources to begin with. Rhitu Chatterjee talks with NPR climate correspondent Rebecca Hersher about her investigation into FEMA and why the federal government's response to disasters may disproportionately hurt people of color and their communities. Read more of Rebecca's reporting in "Why FEMA Aid Is Unavailable To Many Who Need It The Most." You can email Short Wave at [e-mail]. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. I think I know the guy that, is this, what's his name's, Mama's House? I think so, yeah, Keith. Sometimes, if you're really lucky as a reporter, someone is willing to give you a personal tour of their hometown. It's really the best way to see a place. That's what happened when producer Ryan Kelman and I visited Port Arthur, Texas, earlier this year. Our tour guide was former city council member John Beard.

You know, that's my old high school there, Lincoln High School. And that's where also the band used to practice when I was in band. What was your instrument? Clarinet, unfortunately. John's roots in Port Arthur are so deep. Now where that little yellow house is, my aunt lived there. That's the Jaquette family home. Willie Jocquet is my wife's mother's cousin.

That was my godparents' house. And right here's where I was born and raised. Ain't much down here no more. This used to be a happening strip through here. There were beer joints, stores, confectionaries, barbecue pits, you name it, was all there. The neighborhoods he's pointing out were once the thriving core of Black Port Arthur. This was the Esquire Barbershop, where I used to get my hair cut. But this area is nothing like where it used to be.

I'm telling nothing at all. The neighborhoods we drove through were pockmarked with empty lots. A lot of houses had blue tarps. on their roofs or were missing windows. In some areas, whole blocks were empty. And Beard says one reason that black neighborhoods in his city are struggling is that people whose homes were damaged or destroyed in storms haven't gotten adequate help from the federal emergency management agency, FEMA.

And this is the second piece you've brought us about FEMA, Becky. Last week we talked about your investigation, which found that low-income disaster survivors are less likely to get some types of housing assistance from FEMA. Yeah, and today I want to talk about the growing body of evidence that FEMA doesn't do a good job serving people of color who survived disasters. And dig into what that means for people and for neighborhoods. I'm Rita Chattery with Rebecca Hersha. Today on the show, why the federal government's response to disasters is unfair to people of color and how that can ripple through entire communities. You're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

Becky, let's start with some basics about FEMA. This is the agency that helps people get back on their feet after disasters, right? What do we know about who exactly gets FEMA help? Right. So FEMA is providing this really crucial housing assistance. So money to repair your house or pay rent, basically. And this is what our investigation found. So if you're poor, you're less likely to receive some types of housing assistance. And when you do get money, you often receive less.

And FEMA's own internal analyses confirm this. But here's the catch. Academic research shows that there are similar disparities between white disaster survivors and people of color. But FEMA says it has not conducted similar analyses about race. So there's this research evidence showing all of this. What did you find about how that's really bearing out for families and entire communities? Yeah, so that's why I went to Port Arthur.

You know, for years, I've been running across individual families in black and Latinx neighborhoods who had trouble getting help from FEMA after hurricanes specifically. But the research I was reading suggested that entire neighborhoods were being affected. And Port Arthur is a really good place to go if you want to see the effects of hurricanes on whole neighborhoods. Because it's surrounded by water. It is right on the Gulf of Mexico. And it's been hit by four hurricanes since 2005. Wow. And FEMA has provided assistance after.

every one of those storms. But it sounds like the assistance hasn't really helped Port Arthur's black neighborhoods. Becky, what did you learn about why black residents haven't gotten adequate help? Right. So one reason seems to be a kind of paperwork issue. And I saw a really good example of this in a neighborhood called El Vista in Port Arthur. So this is one of the few places that black residents could live when the city was officially segregated. It is extremely low-lying. And it got hit really hard by Hurricane Harvey. back in 2017.

Everything here got flooded. Everything. And I'm going to really show you something that's going to blow your mind. So John Beard took me down to visit a homeowner who lives there, her name's Shirley Payne. Hi, how you doing? Ms. Payne home? And Shirley's house is brick. It's one of the only ones left on her block.

She raised her kids in this house. She raised her grandchildren in this house. And when we arrived, her great-granddaughters were playing outside. But during Harvey, she had four feet of water in this house. And she says the only reason she was able to rebuild is because she didn't have to rely on FEMA. She had insurance. But she says a lot of her neighbors, they weren't so lucky. They needed money from FEMA.

But they didn't have the paperwork that showed they owned their homes. A lot of people, the houses wasn't in their name. I mean, is this because the houses were passed down through families? Yeah, a lot of them were exactly. Like, maybe the house was in a grandparents' name or a sibling's name, or maybe it was owned collectively, you know, so it had been passed down and each family got a little piece of the ownership over the years. And that's really common in many historically segregated communities in the U.S.

Payne says it took months or even years to iron out the paperwork for houses like that. And elderly neighbors and people with young kids, they just couldn't wait that long for stable housing. They couldn't afford to pay the cost of a hotel or an apartment, and that left them no choice but to leave. A lot of these houses you see down street here, the one that's still boarded up, that's the result of Harvey. It's just, it's just sad. Today, about a quarter of the houses around there are empty. And I asked Shirley's granddaughter if she would want to inherit her grandmother's house, you know, raise her daughters there. And she said, no, that she feels like Black Port Arthur is dying. And is there evidence that this type of thing is happening in other places

after disasters? Yeah. So proving home ownership, this problem, it has showed up in black neighborhoods after Hurricane Katrina. It has showed up for residents of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. And there's a growing body of research that actually uses census data and financial data to try to quantify what those disparities do to families. So, for example, there was this study done after Hurricane Harvey, and it focused on Houston. And it found that bankruptcy rates spiked by almost 40% after the hurricane in neighborhoods where racial minorities lived. Because people in those neighborhoods were less likely to receive some types of FEMA assistance. And what is FEMA's response to this?

Well, FEMA acknowledges it has a problem. I interviewed Keith Turrey. He's FEMA's assistant administrator for recovery. And he said the first step is for the agency to start gathering data about race. We're not currently collecting demographic data for the survivors that we serve. We do plan to add that to our collection in the near future. And did he give details on what the near future meant in terms of a time frame? No, he didn't. And FEMA didn't respond to any follow-up questions about how this would work or whether. that information would be available to the public or any other concrete steps it's taking to make its programs more fair. Okay. So they are not telling you anything about this, but I mean, you've talked to a lot of experts, right, Becky? What are some potential solutions here to

address these racial disparities? Right. So, yeah, I really focused on interviewing disaster experts and sociologists, especially about this. And one idea that came up a lot is to limit who, who's eligible for female assistance, you know, make it more like SNAP benefits or Medicaid. So only people below a certain income or wealth threshold would be eligible. Another idea is to stop relying on disaster survivors to apply for help. You know, basically use the information the government already has to get money to those who need it the most, including people in marginalized communities. So you mean the fact that the government already knows who uses public health care

or gets money to pay for food or who's a military vet? veteran or has kids in the school system. So just use that information. Exactly. Yeah. And I talked to Chauncea Willis about this. She's the former emergency manager for Tampa, Florida. And she's also the co-founder of the Institute for Diversity and Inclusion and Emergency Management. And this is how she put it. We need to understand first who has the greatest need and who has the least access. And we're going to start from there. When you start from there, it benefits everything. I mean, that sounds like an obvious logical approach.

But we all know that changing the way a government agency does its work, it's a very slow undertaking. I mean, FEMA didn't even give you a time frame for all of this. Did you hear about anything that might push the agency to be more equitable? Yeah. So, first of all, I have to say, if you ask the agency, it's all about studying the problem and really understanding who is not getting the help they need. Like, if FEMA can fully understand the problem, then FEMA feels it can fix the problem. Sure.

But again, that's going to take a long time. Yeah. Yeah. And if you talk to people like Chauncey Willis, she says, actually what needs to happen is Congress needs to step in. So there's this law that governs how disaster aid is distributed. And it is all about preventing fraud. That's why all of those stringent requirements exist that we talked about earlier, you know, to prove that you live in a place or that you own your house, for example. example. But Willis and others say that is slowing FEMA down. It is making it really hard for people

to get the help they need and that the law needs to change if FEMA is going to be more equitable. I have to say, though, so far no one in Congress has seriously proposed that. Becky, thank you so much for digging into this and bringing your reporting to the show. We really appreciate you. Thanks for you too. This episode was edited by Giselle Grayson, produced by Thomas Liu and fact check by Indy Kara. The audio engineer for this episode was Peter Elena. Thanks for listening. This is Shortwave, the Daily Science podcast from NPR.

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