The Impacts of Small-Scale Disaster Homelessness on Poor, Low-Income, and Impoverished Communities

Session: Places to Live: Geographies of Homes and Housing
Type: Mixed Paper Session

Abstract

Each year, small-scale disasters (home fires and localized flooding) impact millions of people, leaving them without a community and a place to call home. Federal policies and funding streams have been created to address the impacts of large-scale disasters (hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes) including assistance with housing, recovery, and the subsequent return to normal. Small-scale disasters, however, are not usually covered under these policies or funding streams, which may force people in poor, low-income, and impoverished neighborhoods and communities, who may not have the additional resources or insurance to rebuild, out of their communities and into a state of disaster homelessness. This paper will focus on the impacts of disaster homelessness and small-scale disasters on a community and its people and why the impacts continue long after the event has occurred, while also considering how disaster homelessness affects the economic and personal security of the people in the affected community.

Authors