Rebuild or Relocate? Resilience and Postdisaster Decision‐Making After Hurricane Sandy

Abstract

Hurricane Sandy struck the east coast of the United States on October 29, 2012, devastating communities in its path. In the aftermath, New York implemented a home buyout program designed to facilitate the permanent relocation of residents out of areas considered to be at risk for future hazards. While home buyout programs are becoming popular as policy tools for disaster mitigation, little is known about what factors influence homeowners to participate in or reject these programs. This study used mixed methods to assess the relationship between community resilience and the relocation decision in two heavily damaged communities in which the majority of residents made different decisions regarding whether or not to pursue a buyout. The sample was composed of residents from Oakwood Beach and Rockaway Park, both working-class communities in New York City, who participated via a community survey (N = 133) and/or in-depth interviews (N = 28). Results suggested that community resilience moderated the relationship between community of residence and the buyout decision, leading to opposite responses on the buyout decision. Contextual community factors, including the history of natural disasters, local cultural norms, and sense of place, were instrumental in explaining these different responses. Implications for disaster policy are discussed.

Transitions between risk management regimes in cities

“…Individual homeowners struggled with their decisions about how to respond to the damage: rebuild, relocate, or seek a buyout (Solecki 2016). Neighbors argued amongst themselves, and communities were split apart (Binder et al 2015, Binder and Greer 2016, Dietrich 2016. But, what has emerged now four years on is a de facto policy of retreat and, as is, represents a transition in the risk management regime for this area from an agenda of resistance to transformation.…”

Managed Retreat: A Rare and Paradoxical Success, but Yielding a Dismal Prognosis

“…Predominantly white working or lower middle-class owner occupiers with many years of residency (Binder et al (2015) they have sought and still seek to minimise government interference. Until Sandy, a manifestation of such independence, according to Kramer and Flanagan (2012), was the lack of coherent spatial planning and building code compliance here, and the generally unchecked development in the low-lying coastal areas.…”

Family Structures, Relationships, and Housing Recovery Decisions after Hurricane Sandy

“…Place attachment has also been the subject of numerous research studies as a potential factor in influencing recovery decisions [43][44][45][46][47]. Place attachment is generally defined as having two major constituents: place identity, which refers to residents' self-perception of their identity relative to their surrounding physical environment, and place dependence, which refers to residents' self-perception of the community's potential to address their needs [45,48,49].…”

“…The unapproachable home at the time of surveying was labeled for a maximum of two subsequent follow-ups. Procedures similar to this have been previously employed for data collection purposes in the aftermath of disasters in which the starting point of door-to-door surveying was randomly selected, and the rest of the addresses were selected using the randomly selected address as the starting point [44]. The basis behind selection of the targeted neighborhoods was the availability of subjects that were deemed to be more relevant to the subject of the research, as the majority of them experienced severe damages to their residences [76].…”