PUBLIC HOUSING AND THE AFRICAN AMERICAN

Public Housing and the African American

Public Housing and the African American

Past disasters show that African-Americans' preparedness and mitigation of damages are lower than whites. African-Americans are less likely than whites to have emergency preparedness kits or stockpile supplies because of generally lower income levels. Denise Blanchard-Boehm (1997), Professor of Geography at Texas State University, and Director of the Lovell Center for Environmental Geography and Hazards Research, reports that financial constraints reduce the likelihood that blacks will make structural improvements so their houses can withstand natural disasters(Popple, 2005, p45).

Betty Hearn Morrow (1999), a sociologist and research associate at Florida International University, confirms that African-Americans tend to live in less well-constructed units with lower levels of maintenance and upgrading to meet disaster standards. Arizona State sociologist Robert C. Bolin et al. (1993), Fred Cooper and Laurie Laughy (1994) find that African-Americans are the most likely to inhabit housing that is unsafe in a disaster. The limited ability to prepare the housing unit structurally combines with a tendency for minority and low income neighborhoods to be in undesirable physical locations, resulting in more serious damage to the homes of African-Americans. However, the compensation levels for the damage are still low, due to lower values of black-owned property pre-disaster.

SINCE REBUILDING after a natural disaster is largely a private function, there are significant differences in the experiences based on tenure, with owners recovering more quickly and with greater satisfaction. African-Americans' experiences follow this general pattern, but both owners and renters face additional obstacles. In the temporary housing stage, blacks are most likely to live in large FEMA trailer parks, which are the least satisfactory of temporary housing options. The parks tend to be poorly run and far from the original housing site. There are consistently problems with temporary housing for renters, especially lower-income households, which are disproportionately represented in the black population. In Comerio's study (1997), housing vouchers provided enough units only when pre-disaster vacancy rates for affordable housing were high enough to absorb displaced families (ListHenslin, 2005, p45).

Blacks also have greater difficulties securing permanent housing. In previous US disasters, black owners experienced difficulty accessing sufficient resources to rebuild their properties. Bolin and Patricia Bolton (1986), of the Battelle Research Center in Seattle, and Cooper and Laughy (1994) found that limited savings and lower levels of insurance hindered African-American reconstruction efforts. Fothergill et al. (1999, 167) found that blacks were less likely to be approved for Small Business Administration (SBA) loans or FEMA grants for rebuilding property. Peacock and Girard (1997) found that blacks and Hispanics tended to receive insufficient insurance settlements unless they were insured by a major national carrier; blacks were the least likely to have such policies, due to insurance redlining of black neighborhoods(Popple, 2005, p45).

MANY AFRICAN-AMERICANS are renters, and disproportionately need low-income or subsidized housing. Renters have virtually no control over rebuilding their housing units. Rebuilding permanent housing is generally up to the owner of the property, whether landlord or ...