A system disconnected: perspectives on post-disaster housing recovery policy and programs

An agent-based financing model for post-earthquake housing recovery: Quantifying recovery inequalities across income groups

“…CDBG-DR grants must be re-authorized by Congress following each new disaster, so it often takes more than a year for homeowners to receive the first payments (Greer and Trainor, 2021; Spader and Turnham, 2014). CDBG-DR grants are also capped for a given disaster and community.…”

“…For many homeowners, federal aid is not sufficient to cover all the funds necessary to reconstruct their houses. In addition, many people do not want to go through the government’s bureaucratic process (Greer and Trainor, 2021), so other funding sources, such as private funding and particularly bank loans, are more desirable. A household’s ability to receive credit was found to be correlated with household income (Canilang et al, 2020).…”

“…However, based on California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD, 2019), the 2018 CDBG-DR is expected to be distributed evenly throughout each quarter from 2019 to 2025. For our model, we assumed that the CDBG-DR is distributed uniformly between 1.5 and 6 years after the disaster, given that CDBG-DR funding often takes over a year to be approved by Congress and many years to be disbursed to homeowners (Greer and Trainor, 2021; HUD, 2019; Spader and Turnham, 2014).…”

“…Following a large earthquake, homeowners often need to obtain funding from multiple sources to cover the total cost of reconstruction (National Research Council, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems and Geotechnical Board, 1994). However, the sheer scale of damage and the bureaucracies of government aid add further challenges to obtaining funding for reconstruction (Greer and Trainor, 2021). This is often seen in the United States, where homeowners are forced to rely on insurance, private funds, federal funding, or combinations of several sources (Comerio, 1998; Comerio et al, 1996; Kamel and Loukaitou-Sideris, 2004; National Research Council, Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences, Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems and Geotechnical Board, 1994) to rebuild following a natural disaster.…”

Roles and experiences of non-governmental organisations in wildfire response and recovery

“…The parallels between this study and those examining other disasters suggest that the barriers to effective relief and recovery associated with NGOs have commonalities across many types of disasters (Jenkins et al 2015;Edgeley and Paveglio 2017;Sledge and Thomas 2019;Woolf 2019). For example, other studies reveal frustration with FEMA due to FEMA's limited experience with wildfires (Edgeley and Paveglio 2017), confusion over FEMA's official role during hurricane relief (Schneider 2008), or unpleasant interactions with FEMA workers following floods (Greer and Trainor 2021). Disasters, including wildfires, generate disproportionate negative impacts on the most socially vulnerable in a community, particularly on minority populations and those of lower socioeconomic status, and can also expose new social vulnerabilities and inequities (Fothergill et al 1999;Davies et al 2018).…”