Tag Archives: hurricane

Florida criminalized homelessness. Then came hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Originally published in Vox on October 7, 2024.
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In the wake of Hurricane Helene, a devastating Category 4 storm that has ravaged the Southeast, leaders rushed to restore homes, infrastructure, and power for millions of people. And now, another life-threatening storm, Hurricane Milton, a Category 5, approaches the Florida coast. Amid the overwhelming destruction and the mounting chaos expected from these back-to-back storms, and a death toll of at least 227 people across six states, one group risks being overlooked in the scramble: the homeless population, those already vulnerable before the storm.

Disaster relief for people who were homeless prior to a hurricane has always been lacking, as FEMA, the main federal agency tasked with providing aid, has a policy that explicitly excludes those unhoused people from most forms of help, including housing and direct assistance. In recent years, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has stepped up to try to plug some of those gaps in social safety, but a new bill moving through Congress threatens these efforts.

These dynamics have grown more pressing as major hurricanes increase in frequency and the number of unsheltered Americans continues to grow. In June the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Grants Pass v. Johnson, greenlighting local governments’ legal authority to clear out homeless tent encampments even if a city lacks any available housing or shelter for the unhoused person to stay in.

Since then, more jurisdictions have passed laws criminalizing homelessness, part of a broader effort to crack down on those sleeping outside. Just this month a new law in Florida — that bans sleeping on public property anywhere in the state — took effect. While the law includes exceptions during emergencies like major storms, those protections end when the hurricane order is no longer in place.

In practical terms, this means that when Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis or a county official lifts Florida’s emergency hurricane order, Floridians who were homeless before Helene and Milton — roughly 31,000 people — could face new criminal penalties. Local homeless advocates say there are countless questions and rumors circulating about how the new law will be interpreted and enforced in the wake of climate disasters.

Most people experiencing homelessness were aware the new anti-camping law was set to take effect, according to Martha Are, the executive director at the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “Some people are already trying to relocate their encampments to harder-to-find areas,” she told me in mid-September, about a week before Helene made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region.

Leaders like Are have little idea yet what to expect, and she hears unofficially that most jurisdictions are in wait-and-see mode, watching to see which city gets sued first and what the judge who reviews that lawsuit decides. (Under the new Florida law, any citizen or business can sue beginning in January if they feel the anti-camping ban is not being properly enforced.)

“It’s going to be a challenge for how leaders actually enforce these [anti-camping] laws, like if I’ve lost my house from a hurricane and I’ve lived in that town for a decade, will I be found in violation of the law and are they going to arrest me?” asked Noah Patton, the manager of disaster recovery at the National Low Income Housing Coalition. “These laws create significant complications, will really make aid more difficult to sort out, and what I have been saying is it makes a community less resilient to disasters.”

Moving homeless people to safety when a hurricane hits is difficult — and the anti-camping laws make that harder

It’s always a stressful scramble to try and reach homeless people when a hurricane is coming. “A lot of people have phones but they don’t have data, they aren’t getting texts,” said Kelly Young, the CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless of Houston and Harris County.

Typically, homeless outreach workers will try and go out to spread the word, and existing homeless shelters will work to make extra room, sometimes allowing people to sleep in places like the kitchen and hallways. Unhoused individuals can usually seek refuge in convention centers and public schools, or at newly-erected Red Cross emergency shelters. Some governments and nonprofits arrange transport for unhoused people to get indoors, while others leave it on the individual to figure out their own travel.

“We had up to 13,000 people at George R. Brown Convention Center after [Hurricane] Harvey and there was no distinguishing between the homeless versus people who had just lost their homes and needed a place to be,” said Larry Satterwhite, who leads the Houston Mayor’s Office of Public Safety and Homeland Security.

Not everyone experiencing homelessness gets the information they need, and not everyone living outside feels comfortable going to a shelter, said Eric Camarillo, the executive director of SALT Outreach, which works with unsheltered homeless people in Orlando and central Florida. Some people fear losing their personal belongings, while others may have had traumatic prior experiences at shelters.

“The face of homelessness is not the same as it was 50 years ago,” Camarillo added. “These are single moms who can’t afford day care, these are seniors in their 70s and 80s on fixed incomes who can’t afford their rent increases, and youth and young adults.”

The new anti-camping laws are intensifying the already tumultuous disaster response situation, as many homeless people living outside now try to become less visible to avoid jail time. The punitive laws are also expected to increase distrust between local government and homeless individuals, making it even more difficult for people to accept help if they are found.

“These laws exist, in my opinion, to push people away and out of sight which makes our job tougher,” said Eric Samuels, the president of the Texas Homeless Network. (Texas passed its statewide camping ban in 2021.) “And if people are badly hurt and they’re miles from public view because they don’t want to get a ticket, then emergency crews might not be able to get out to help.”

Disaster aid for those already experiencing homelessness faces an uncertain future

FEMA has the primary responsibility of providing disaster relief and works with states and local communities to manage emergency shelters, which are mostly run by the Red Cross. FEMA prohibits housing assistance from going to those who were already homeless — “because the need for housing was not caused by the disaster,” as their policy states — though homeless individuals may qualify for temporary transportation, funeral, child care, and medical aid.

FEMA policy does permit those who lived, pre-disaster, in “non-traditional forms of housing” like “tents, certain types of huts, and lean-to structures” to apply for a few months of rental assistance. But to receive this FEMA money, applicants must obtain verification of their pre-storm situation from “a credible or official source” which, according to Patton, makes accessing the aid virtually impossible.

“People do not apply,” he said. “It’s an exceptionally burdensome and administratively difficult process.”

Recently, in light of this, and after years of advocacy by housing organizations, HUD stepped up to establish the Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) program, using unspent funds from another emergency grant program. RUSH aims to help those who were homeless prior to a storm or other climate disaster, and the first grants were deployed in the wake of Hurricane Ian in 2022.

“We were very pleased to have the ability to launch the program because we see that people who are doubled up or experiencing homelessness during the disaster often don’t access FEMA funds or receive support from FEMA for long,” said Marion McFadden, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for community planning and development. “By providing funds specifically for these situations, we’re filling in gaps.”

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The other way HUD comes in is through its Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program (CDBG-DR), which is a highly flexible, long-term disaster aid program that can be used to provide months of rental assistance and build new affordable housing well after FEMA is gone. However the program is not permanently authorized — meaning it relies on periodic appropriations from Congress, which are often delayed and insufficient. The Biden administration has called for Congress to permanently authorize CDBG-DR, and a bipartisan bill in Congress has called for the same.

Yet a separate bill currently moving through Congress seeks to move much of this longer-term disaster recovery work back over to FEMA, something low-income housing advocates believe will threaten those who are homeless before a hurricane.

“We are concerned that the bill, as written, may lead to the misuse of scarce federal recovery funds and prevent critically needed long-term recovery assistance from reaching low-income disaster survivors,” more than 35 national housing advocacy groups wrote in a congressional letter in late September.

McFadden, of HUD, said there’s “a real role” for her agency to play in supporting communities after disasters. “We are making billions of dollars in grants every year and we understand the unique needs of low-income people and of low-income housing,” she told Vox.

FEMA was noncommittal when I inquired about the agency’s plans for unhoused individuals during a disaster if Congress granted them new authority, or whether they’d reconsider their stance on aiding the pre-disaster homeless.

“If additional or new authority is passed by Congress and signed into law, FEMA would then develop guidance necessary to implement the new authority,” an agency spokesperson said. “FEMA would focus on supporting communities’ recovery in addressing needs resulting from a disaster and adhering to the intent of Congress in approving any new authority.”

As climate change escalates, communities across the US face increasing threats not only from hurricanes but also from heat waves, floods, and wildfires. Advocates have been petitioning FEMA over the last year to expand its criteria for disaster aid to include heat and smoke, emphasizing the need for more adaptable responses to these challenges. The nation’s severe shortage of affordable housing worsens the struggles of both the newly displaced and the long-unsheltered, and addressing these intertwined crises of climate resilience and housing stability has never been more urgent.

Update, October 7, 5:40 pm ET: This story was originally published on October 3 and has been updated with the current death toll of Hurricane Helene and new information as Hurricane Milton approaches the Florida coast.

This Hurricane Season, The Coronavirus Pandemic is Complicating Disaster Response Plans

Originally published in The Intercept on June 15, 2020.
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IN THE LEAD-UP to a hurricane, residents of high-risk areas may find themselves subject to evacuation orders. Some travel to other states that fall outside the storm’s projected path, while others stay with friends and family who live in higher-elevation homes. Many people flock to shelters prepared by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and its state and local counterparts. Volunteers pitch in to assist with first aid and essential supplies like food and toilet paper.

The coronavirus pandemic — and the attendant social distancing guidelines and stay-at-home orders — has upended hurricane planning protocol for the 2020 season, a five-month period that started on June 1. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted in May this season will be “above-normal,” with as many as six major hurricanes expected. To put this in perspective: The agency predicted two to four major storms in 2019, and three in 2018. Major storms are those classified as Category 3 or higher, with winds of at least 111 miles per hour, and are guaranteed to yield significant destruction and death.

It’s the first time in U.S. history that hurricane season planning will have to take into account social distancing, and the first time every state and territory has simultaneously declared a “major disaster” — a designation that allows them to access millions in federal funds and assistance from FEMA.

“This is very uncharted territory,” said Lauren Sauer, an assistant professor of Emergency Medicine at Johns Hopkins, where she studies disaster response and how disasters impact health care infrastructure. “Almost everything we’re doing is new, and we’re already seeing shortages on essential supplies.”

For now the federal government is projecting an air of confidence. In a recent briefing FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor told the president his agency is ready to handle the challenges of hurricane season and Covid-19, noting they’re “more than fully funded” thanks to an extra $40 billion allocated from recent pandemic appropriations, on top of the $40 billion FEMA typically begins hurricane season with. The agency also put out guidance last month on how leaders should plan to navigate the next few months. “FEMA is prepared to address unique disasters with a customized response that meets the mission need while minimizing the potential for COVID-19 exposure,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.

Like many workplaces around the country, FEMA has had to adapt to teleworking in light of the pandemic, and those adjustments will extend to hurricane response as well. In its recent hurricane guidance, the agency said it’s expecting “many aspects” of disaster response could be operated remotely. In an email, a FEMA spokesperson said that includes inspection processes, preliminary damage assessments, coordinating meetings with government officials, and increased public communications through internet and social media platforms. “Depending on the needs of a particular disaster, it may still be necessary to send Disaster Survivor Assistance teams, search and rescue, damage assessment teams or communications technicians into a disaster area,” the spokesperson said.

When asked how FEMA will provide remote services if internet and cell service is no longer available, the spokesperson said they coordinate with industry partners and federal agencies to provide “temporary communications solutions” if the traditional infrastructure is degraded. Still, independent experts and some members of Congress are less sanguine about the federal government’s readiness.

Last week Democrats on the House Subcommittee on the Environment sent a letter to FEMA criticizing its hurricane guidance as lacking important details and noted staffing shortages the agency is facing. The “available personnel qualified to lead field operations has fallen from 44 to 19, staff members have been pulled from responding to other disasters, training centers have been shuttered, and new employee recruitment efforts are on hold,” they wrote. The letter cited a Homeland Security Department inspector general report from March that reported FEMA lacked “a coherent strategy” for using advanced contracting during Hurricane Maria, and a Government Accountability Office report that documented FEMA’s challenges in responding to hurricanes and wildfires in 2017. The lawmakers requested a virtual hearing with Gaynor by June 22 to discuss FEMA’s plans for navigating Covid-19 and natural disasters, including tornadoes, wildfires, and hurricanes.

WHILE THE FEDERAL government deliberates, states and cities have been taking steps to consider how they might plan for evacuation shelters while maintaining social distancing. Officials are hoping to screen evacuees with temperatures checks, to require masks, and to isolate anyone with symptoms. “States will most likely need to identify more sheltering capacity [than normal],” said Brant Mitchell, the director of the Louisiana State University’s Stephenson Disaster Management Institute. “One potential solution may be contracting with hotels due to decline in hotel capacity resulting from stay-at-home orders. Typically during disasters that is not an option for the state but may be a consideration due to the circumstances of the lockdowns.”

Another challenge is that often during hurricane season, many who lack the means to physically evacuate the state in an emergency make plans to shelter with a neighbor or friend whose house may be on higher ground. With coronavirus, though, there may be less willingness among individuals to let people crash in their home.

“The base elevation of our house is 9 feet so we’re completely safe from flooding and storm surge, and I’m pretty sure we’d be able to survive OK even during the worst possible hurricane,” said Hugh Gladwin, a retired Florida International University sociologist and anthropologist who studies hurricane evacuations. “We have a guest bedroom and we could take two people in, but I’m elderly, I have a heart condition, and I have to be certain they don’t have Covid-19 because I would croak.” Gladwin said he’s making plans with two friends who live in a condo on the Miami coastline but acknowledged it requires a higher level of trust and coordination than is typical.

Relatedly, hurricane experts are expecting less volunteer assistance both from within state and out-of-state due to coronavirus. “Typically we’ve relied on volunteers from the American Red Cross and partners from Division of Social Services and a lot of those volunteers are what you would classify as high risk population,” explained Mike Sprayberry, North Carolina’s director of Emergency Management, in a recent interview with ABC11. “We had 35-40 states that provided us with assistance during [2018’s Hurricane] Florence. … We’re pretty much going to have to be aware that we’re not going to be able to count on assets from other states like we would have in the past.”

Experts say evacuations could be a mess, particularly for vulnerable populations. And while such events are always challenging, public health officials recognize that a call to evacuate during a pandemic could confuse people who have heard for months that the safest thing they could do was to stay home and social distance.

“There will be a good chance some might assess that their risk is higher from getting Covid than the hurricane and they need to understand that if an evacuation order is issued, it’s incredibly important that they leave,” said Sauer.

Gladwin said he’s worried about highway gridlock while a Category 3, 4, or 5 hurricane goes over vehicles. “We’ve had almost no experience with that, just because we’ve gotten lucky,” he said. “We would have that with Irma” — a Category 4 hurricane that hit in 2017 — “if Irma had stayed on its original trajectory.”

In New Orleans, where many residents lack the means to evacuate themselves, Mitchell said Louisiana typically contracts with roughly 600 commercial buses to transport people to state-operated shelters and shelters in other states. “Due to social distancing requirements a commercial bus that may be able to transport 60 passengers may only be able to transport half that capacity or less,” he explained. “This will require either additional buses or moving the evacuation timeline up significantly to allow the buses to make multiple trips.” And whether states will welcome evacuees if they’re coming from a city that had a large outbreak is another area of uncertainty. I’m “not sure what the answer is but it is certainly something the state has to be prepared for,” Mitchell said.

In many ways, the states that frequently get hurricanes and are bracing for more severe ones this year may be somewhat better positioned than states that have less experience planning for and dealing with them. In Florida’s Miami-Dade County, for example, the local government mailed a hurricane readiness handbook to all homes in early June that included instructions on making plans amid the pandemic.

“I think we’ll make it through here in Florida, but I am extremely worried about other parts of the country,” said Gladwin. “Here we are in good shape in terms of hospital capacity, but take a state like Georgia or the Carolinas. If they’re still on their wave of coronavirus infections going up and their hospitals need more capacity, that could be a big problem.”

Mitchell agreed that Louisiana might also be better positioned and noted state officials started planning for shelter capacity and evacuation routes back in April. “The state will be as prepared as they can for a major hurricane making landfall in [Louisiana] during this pandemic,” he said.

Sauer says the most important thing the federal government could be doing right now is scaling up its emergency response workforce, planning ahead for transportation, and working to contain Covid-19. “I think more attention should be paid right now to where all these states are reopening and we’re still seeing a ton of hotspots,” she said. “We need to use public health interventions to keep those cases low.”