ENTRENCHED DWELLERS

Entrenched Dwellers

Entrenched Dwellers of Hurricane Katrina

“I had seen people who had lost everything and everyone they loved to war, famine, and natural disasters”

Above are the words of Chelsea Clinton and the theme of this paper. Life is beautiful! But unanticipated events can destroy all the pleasure and delight. As the above statement, of Miss Clinton suggests, that natural disasters play a major role in destroying one's life to an extent that they have to leave the place where these disasters occur. But there are few people who prefer to stay at their place no matter how hard the situation is. This paper also revolves around the same phenomenon and talks about Hurricane Katrina entrenched dwellers. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was the costliest disaster in the history of the United States and one of the deadliest (Norris & Rosen, 2009; North, et.al, 2008). Subsequent flooding from the hurricane caused massive destruction and loss of life in New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Despite this massive destruction, a small minority of people remained entrenched in their homes. While the masses had fled, this tiny group of people bunkered down in what remained of their homes. Before this disaster this small group has been part of a typical American suburban neighborhood, they now had lived as holdouts in a nearly uncultivated state with portable toilets, bottled water, electrical generators, and none of the typical infrastructure of a developed country. These entrenched homeowners would also commence rebuilding their homes before there was any assurance that water, electricity, or any infrastructure would ever be restored. The main objective of this paper is to explore the reasons that compel them to stay live in their destroyed homes. This paper would talk about the reasons from variegated perspective.

Literature Review

The literature on the phenomenon of entrenched homeowners is limited. A review of the economic, real estate, and appraisal literature revealed nothing specific to this population. Indeed, these people were statistical outliers who were simply ignored in economic studies. This reality made turning to the scholarly research and literature all the more important. In terms of the sociological and related literature, there was nothing directly on point regarding this minority population; however, there are a number of relevant domains that provide important insights into understanding this population. These domains include:

Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome

Abusive Relationships

Avoidant Personalities

Learning Helplessness

Laggards

Resiliency

Sentimental Attachment

The literature review takes into account above mentioned domains and makes an attempt to explore all possible reasons that urge these people to live at their place despite such destruction by relating the mentioned domains to the situation of entrenched dwellers.

Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome

Posttraumatic stress disorder (also known as PTSD) is an anxiety disorder that occurs in an individual as a result of experience of a trauma. The world knows the power of destruction caused by natural disasters such as storms, hurricanes and earthquakes. Many other equally know the misery caused by terrorism, violence, war and crime. In the past 25 years, more than 150 million people a year have been directly affected ...