The opening visual in Rick Rojas recent piece on the impact of disasters in poorer Black neighborhoods in Houston is jarring and heartbreaking: a 59-year-old homeowner keeps an opossom trap under the table. Some of the rooms in her home lack floors. Black mold grows in abundance up the walls…

Wildfires, hurricanes, flooding — these are natural disasters that we, sadly, expect to hit our country in some form each year. Last year, a new kind of disaster became part of our collective lexicon as COVID-19 touched communities throughout the U.S. According to The Brookings Institute research, the death rate…

In scale, if not total destruction, we’ve seen the beginning of new normal in the amount of families impacted by weather events. No doubt, Katrina destroyed more homes (more than one million) but last week’s freeze in Texas impacted more families. FEMA expects more than 15 million applications, compared to…

It is, no doubt, great news that the Biden Administration has lifted restrictions that have delayed Puerto Rico’s ability to access their congressionally allocated HUD Funding. The painfully offensive paper towel tossing that we witnessed when former President Trump belatedly visited Puerto Rico after the 2017 storm was a visible…

Late last year, FEMA’s National Advisory Council released an assessment of the agency’s work, concluding that the current distribution of disaster aid increases economic inequality. …

(Editor’s Note: October 29th marked four years since Hurricane Sandy devastated communities in the New York region, including many homes in Rockaway, Queens. Since the storm, SBP — a CGI member and the only nonprofit still providing rebuilding services for families in Rockaway — has rebuilt 250 homes in New…

As disasters become more frequent, U.S. disaster recovery policies are not ready. Here’s a better plan. Six months after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, my then girlfriend (now wife), Liz, and I first arrived in St. Bernard Parish as volunteers. There we met a World War II veteran named Mr…

The first half of 2016 saw eight “billion dollar” disasters hit the United States. In July and August, historic flooding devastated West Virginia and South Louisiana, adding to that total. Since 1980, only 2011 had more billion dollar disasters in the first six months than did 2016. Disasters today are…